An excerpt from ...
THE ALLEGHENY MOUNTAIN CHRONICLES
By David Harford
To Hunt Like The Hawk
Part I: The Hawk
I watched the hawk circling, hunting, circling slowly, dipping low, then rising high, gliding on the lofty air currents.
The small window through which I watched the bird was set high up the wall--for security reasons, I imagined--so I couldn't actually see the wide open field I knew the bird was soaring over, scanning to pick out the slightest movement: a small rabbit hopping, a flip of a squirrel's tail or some other small rodent/prey making a frantic scramble for safety. It was a big red-tailed hawk on the hunt, undoubtedly hungry.
Behind me, more as background noise than anything, came the low drone of Feldman's and Longstreet's voices; Feldman's voice more subdued than I'd ever heard him.
The hawk continued its slow, calculated, almost leisurely circling flight; sharp eyes never leaving the field, all instincts tuned for seeking, ever seeking any kind of movement.
Feldman's voice rose from a harsh whisper to a near whine. "Why's everyone asking me about that brooch, Longstreet? The police wanted to know what I knew about it and now you ask me too. I'll tell you what I told them. I first saw it last Thursday night. Sarah and I were in the back seat of her car. It was a warm night; the crickets were chirping; the fog was rolling in off Kinzua Creek. You get the picture? I unbuttoned her blouse and there was that brooch staring at me."
I heard Longstreet push back in his chair. "What did it look like?" He'd had been talking with Feldman through the heavy mesh wire for the last half hour, while I stood off to the side listening, watching the hawk.
"It hung on a gold chain around her neck. Pretty good sized. Pretty piece of jewelry too. Shaped like a an eagle's head with a pair of eagle eyes looking back at me. Indian jewelry, it was."
"Did she say where she got the brooch?"
"No. We were in to other things. The cops asked me that too."
"From what I've heard, she wasn't wearing it when the police found Sahara the next day on that logging road, beaten so bad you could hardly recognize her and then shot. Nor did they find that brooch when they searched her house."
"I don't know about that. I don't know anything about her death. All I know is, I'm in jail because of a fight. But the police, they want to know about a bunch of things other than my fight. They showed me a broken gold chain and asked if it was like the one Sarah was wearing when I saw the brooch around her neck. They played me a cassett recording out of Sarah's answering machine and asked if I recognized a certain voice. I didn't." Feldman raised his eyes from where he was studying the scraped and scabbed knuckles of his thick fingers. He looked Longstreet right in the eye. "I didn't have anything to do with Sarah's death, Longstreet." His gaze never wavered, his eyes never dropped. "Most folks wouldn't believe it, but Sarah was lonely, so lonely. I know all about loneliness. I think I could have loved her, believe it or not. And quit callin her Sahara."
The recently deceased woman in question found dumped in a crumnpled heap along a logging road was Sarah Dulles, a young, much too young, but not-so-pretty widow from Johnsonburg, a paper mill town down the road from Westline about fifteen miles. Most of us called her Sahara, because on one hand she was flat and uninteresting, but on the other hand, she could be very hot. Feldman apparently found out just how hot she could get; as a lot of other men before him had found out.
"It was like she was trying to fill a void in her life, like it was a bottomless pit and she was always trying to fill it, seeking to fill it with the comfort of as many men as she could. Of couse, when she met me, I told her to get rid of her other boyfriends--"
Longstreet cut Feldman off. "I'm not interested in your night moves. Let me tell you about that brooch, then I want you to tell me what was on that tape recording." Longstreet paused a moment to gather his thoughts. "The brooch actually belonged to Marcia Colby. It was stolen along with everything else out of Colby's camp. And the theft in Colby's camp was just another in that string of camp break-ins that have been going on all spring and summer around here. Mr. Bartlett's camp was cleaned out too. Need I go on? Chuck Colby, as you already know, is as dead as Sahara is. Sarah, I mean. That's why the state police are interested in what you know about it. That brooch is linked to two murders, Chuck Colby's and now Sarah's."
The hawk I was watching tipped in the high blue cloudless sky, banked and the October sun glistened off the shiny brown feathers of its back. From what I could see of them, the Allegheny mountains rising on all sides of the county jail where Longstreet and I had come to talk with Feldman, were deeply involved in bright autumnal colors: the reds, the oranges, yellows of oak and cherries, some green from the hemlocks, the red-ish purples from maples. It all made me think of how a sopping wet rainbow might have been wrung out and then hung out to dry, dripping and bleeding an array of glossy colors all over our mountains.
"Well, I didn't kill her," Feldman insisted, nearly pleading. He tugged at the collar on his blue county jail coveralls.
"I don't think anyone believes you did. You're in here on assult charges, that's all. What the hell did you have to hit the guy so hard for?"
"He said Sarah had peanut butter legs."
I chuckled to myself, hoping Feldman wouldn't see me. Creamy smooth and easy to spread. Old joke, but very appropriate.
"So you took his head off?"
"Hey man, she's my girl."
Longstreet twisted in his chair. "She was everyone's girl, Feldman," he said.
The hawk flapped its wings a couple times, tightened its circle and it looked as if maybe its patience was about to run out and it might try another spot.
"Here's how it went down with you," Longstreet said to Feldman, his friend, our friend. "According to what I've heard, there was an off duty state policeman in the bar in Bradford when your fight broke out that evening. He overheard you mention that brooch being around Sarah's neck to the guy you eventually decked. Of course, by this time the police know all about that brooch; that it came out of Marcia Colby's camp, and they also had just found Sarah's body with that broken gold chain still around her neck. So they put two and two together and suddenly they got lots of questions for you."
I turned to study Feldman's reaction and saw his mouth was turned down at the corners in a frown. "What the hell am I mixed up in?" He asked. "Get me out of this cage. I hate this place." He scanned the cement block walls of the county jail.
"Now tell me about the tape recording." Longstreet said.
Feldman thought a moment. "It came out of Sarah's answering machine. Hell, even some of my messages to her were on there. But the cops had me listen to one guy who said, 'About that little present I gave you a few weeks ago. I need it back. But I've got something worth even more to give you. Meet me as soon as you can where we usually meet. We'll just swap--' And then Sarah picked up and I heard her say. 'I just got in from my one o'clock class. I'll be ready in a few secs.' And then she shut the machine off."
"And you didn't recognize the male voice?"
"Nope. Probably one of her ex boyfriends."
Sometimes Feldman could be real naive.
"What did she mean by her 'one o'clock class'?" Longstreet asked.
"She was taking a course at the University of Pittsburgh campus in Bradford. It met at one o'clock every Friday."
"And it was early Friday evening that those hunters came across Sarah's body."
"By that time I was in Bradford drinking."
"Where else were you that day. Were you drinking anywhere else before you went to Bradford?"
"I started out drinking at the inn in Westline about noon, when they opened Friday. I was there until about five."
"Who was at the inn when you were there?" Longstreet asked. "I want you to tell me exactly what you did with who. Were you drinking with someone?"
"Skull. I was drinking with Skull until he left. Then he came back again. Maybe an hour later."
"Who else?"
"There were some leaf peepers and I think a business man was there. I'm not sure if he was a businessman or not. He was dressed like one: suit, tie. Herbicide was tending bar."
"While drinking at the inn, did you tell anyone about the brooch you saw hanging around Sarah's neck the night before, like you did later in Bradford? You brag to Skull about scoring with her?"
"I may have told him. I don't know. If I did it was just in passing." Feldman wrinkled his forehead, trying to remember. "Yeah," he said suddenly, "I told him. I remember now cause Skull laughed and said 'Welcome to the club. What took you so long to join?' That frosted me he'd say that about her. I don't think he was ever with her."
Really, really naive, I thought.
"And I could have mentioned the brooch. Yeah, probably did. In fact, I know I did."
"And Skull left later?"
"He went out to pop a deer."
"You see the dead deer when he came back?"
"No. But I know he did because when he came back, like I say about an hour later, and we had a few more, he had fresh blood on his sleeves from when he gutted it out."
"What time was this Friday?"
"Sometime after two. I'm not sure. Maybe later."
I turned away from watching the hawk. "Was the businessman staying at the inn? Did he have a room upstairs?" I asked him.
"I don't know. If he did, he probably registered as Mr. Smith. You don't realize how many Mr. Smiths there are in this world until you hang around a hotel somewhere. The reason I say that is, I've seen him there before off and on. With a different girl each time. But I think he was staying at the inn."
"And you knew none of the leaf peepers?" Longstreet asked.
"Nah. Just your usual horde of city folks driving out to the country to look at the foliage. Half dozen or so, most with kids, in the barroom eating sandwiches."
"With Herbicide tending bar, did he seem to know Mr. Smith?"
Herbicide was Herbert A. Snyder. 'The chicks call me Herb or Snide,' he told us the day he was hired to bartend part time. And that first day, mostly because he was nervous and unsure, was about the only time he was half way personable. It didn't take any of us local Westliners long to dislike him, to tag him with Herbicide, which fit him in more ways than one, because he was something of an irritant. He had an overly inflated opinion of himself, was showy and pretentious, lazy behind the bar and worse, he seemed to view the rest of us as a bunch of backwoods hicks he could do without. So he fit in with us about as well as a glove might fit on your foot.
"Herbicide talked with the guy, sure. With the leaf peepers too. It's his job. He gets bigger tips that way. Not long after Skull left to pop that deer, Herbicide went out and called his girlfriend from the phone booth outside the inn. I remember that. She lives in Rew and it's long distance and the inn doesn't like long distance calls made on their phones he said. One of the waitresses watched the bar for him."
Set back deep in the woods the way our town was, many of our calls, even to near neighboring towns, were long distance.
"You see him make the call? You see him out there the whole time?" Longstreet wanted to know.
"I got up and walked around, thinking about what I was feeling. For Sarah, I mean. I looked out the window and saw him on the phone at the phone booth outside, yes. He said later he couldn't get a hold of her. It rang and rang and rang, he said, but apparently his girl wasn't home. He kept trying, but no good. That seemed to put a bee in his bonnet."
"So, you mentioned seeing that brooch to Skull and I'm assuming you were talking in your usual loud voice, and Skull suddenly gets up and leaves for a while. Herbicide goes out to use the phone. It couldn't have been Herbicde you heard on Sarah's answering machine tape, could it?" Longstreet asked.
"I don't believe it was."
I turned back to watch the hawk.
"You know though," Feldman said, "that businessman must have left too sometime. I wasn't paying much attention to him. He and Herbicide had been talking most the time. But after Skull came back from getting his deer and Herbicide was back from the phone and three of us were doing shots that Herbicide bought for us---well, actually the inn bought them for us, because although Herbicide said they were on him, I never saw him dig in his wallet and actually pay for the drinks---I noticed the businessman again and he'd changed clothes sometime during the last hour or so. So he must have left sometime and he must have been staying at the inn. Or he was using a camp near-by."
"And all this happened after two; between two and three would you say, after you mentioned the brooch to Skull?" Longstreet asked.
Feldman nodded yes.
Our time was up for visiting Feldman. Just as Lonstreet was standing to leave, Feldman asked, "Why are you interested in all this, Longstreet?"
Without hesitation and with a hint of anger in his voice, he said, "Because of Mr. Bartlett's camp, that's why."
I gave the hawk one last glance. Some small animal in the field below the bird must have committed a fatal error and moved. Perhaps frightened by the hawk's shadow. I watched it hover, its wings flapping slowly, holding it in position as if suspended momentarily in the sky by a piece of wire. I knew it was sighting in on whatever had moved below. Then the hawk kind of tucked its wings in tight and dropped like a dive bomber straight for the ground. A few seconds later it rose into my view again gripping what looked like a small rabbit in its talons.
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