Cold Quarry Read Online Free PDF Page A

all over again. “His arms were spread out wide. Face was turned toward the ground.”
    “You could tell he was dead?”
    “Yeah. I felt his neck for a pulse and didn’t feel anything. I turned him over, blood all over his clothes, but there was nothing to do ‘cept call the cops.”
    “They came right away?”
    “I called on my cell phone. Took ‘em about a half hour to get up there.”
    “No sign of the bird?”
    “No, sir. That’s what I did while I waited for the sheriff’s department to show up. Chester had his yagi and receiver with him. I picked them up and tried to see if I could get a reading on the bird, but there wasn’t a thing. Not even a signal.”
    “But the unit was still working?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Where is it now?”
    He shrugged. “Deputies took it, I suppose.”
    The talk of telemetry and tracking made me think of the GPS unit I’d found earlier belonging to my assailant.
    “What do you think happened to Elo?” I asked.
    “I don’t know, but I’m especially worried about what happened to that bird.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Ain’t you heard?” Farraday looked at Toronto. “Didn’t you tell him?”
    “Tell me what?” I looked over at my former partner. Toronto’s activities over the past year had been even more mysterious than usual. We hadn’t talked much. I’d been busy working under a new subcontracting arrangement with a northern Virginia investigative agency, helping with a mountain of background checks on both existing and prospective government employees. Nicole, who’d been working for me part-time ever since she’d been a student at UVA, was now trying it out full-time since she was on winter break from her senior year. We were becoming a pretty good team.
    But Toronto often seemed preoccupied with his own brand of increased business, the extent of which I could only imagine. He maintained a number of contacts from his time spent in the military before we’d worked together on the force in New York. At least twice in recent months he’d said he had to leave the country for a couple of weeks, although to where he wouldn’t say. The second time, he’d brought his two birds over to Chester’s place in Nitro for safekeeping.
    He spoke without looking at me. “Chester told Farraday here that Elo had been sick. Some sort of illness and partial paralysis. The vet ran a bunch of tests, but wasn’t sure what was wrong with him. Sent some kind of labs out for further analysis. Chester called me about it too.”
    “But Chester was out hunting with Elo when he was killed,” I said. “He recovered?”
    “Yeah. Elo got better,” Farraday said. “Chester said he thought he was going to be all right.”
    I thought about that and what it might have to do with my own encounter in the woods. How many people walked around the woods like that toting a military-style shotgun? Did the guy in the mask have something to do with Chester’s murder and Elo’s disappearance?
    “Maybe the bird just raked out on him,” I said.
    “Maybe.”
    “What’s the vet’s name?”
    “I don’t know where he took him. You, Jake?”
    Toronto said, “He told me he took him down to see Dr. Winston. Winston’s a local vet, not an expert on raptors, but he’s treated Chester’s birds and a handful of others for a few years now, so I suppose he knows what he’s doing. I’ve met him on a couple of occasions with Chester. Seems like a good man.”
    The Scout rumbled over a rough patch of road, causing my forehead to scrape against the ceiling, doing wonders for my throbbing cheek.
    “Sorry about that,” Farraday said. “Got to get the shocks looked at one of these years.”
    We had been heading down First Avenue along the railroad tracks straight into Nitro. What was left of the WWI boomtown created specifically for the manufacture of gunpowder were the hulking foundations and shells of the former Explosive Plant C, row upon row of orderly streets populated by mostly bungalow-style