Free The Night Falconer by Andy Straka Page B

do you know about the lawsuit between Grayland Tower apartment owners and Watisi?”
    She hesitated for a moment. “Nothing, really. My boss says we’re not supposed to talk about it. We’re supposed to just go on with business as usual. The lawsuit is for the lawyers and newspapers to get all worked up about.”
    I said nothing.
    “I’ve got to get going.” She forced a tight smile.
    “This guy you say you saw with the bird could be totally unrelated to Mr. Watisi, you know.”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just telling you what I saw. You people are the detectives—you figure it out. I gotta go.” She pushed away from the table and stood to leave.
    “Thanks for taking the time to talk with me, Jayani.”
    “No problem.”
    She hurried out the door of the coffee shop and disappeared up the sidewalk.
    A few seconds later, Nicole appeared on the sidewalk and entered the shop.
    “I thought I’d find you here.”
    “Did you see Jayani go by you just now?” I asked.
    “Yeah. I bumped into her. She confirmed my guess.”
    “She say anything else?”
    “No. She seemed in a hurry. Why?”
    “Nothing. Just wondering.”
    “Think she’s legit?”
    “Near as I can tell.”
    “She looked worried about something.”
    “Maybe just her job.”
    “She saw something then?”
    “So it appears.”
    “An owl?”
    “Sounds like it.”
    “Could the guy really be hunting with a bird like that at three o’clock in the morning, right here in the middle of the city?”
    “Or just carrying it around for some other purpose. Maybe for show.”
    “Harry Potter,” she said.
    “What?”
    “You know, the Harry Potter books. Harry’s got a snowy owl named Hedwig.”
    “Right.”
    “Except I don’t see any witches or warlocks or magic flying brooms around here,” she said looking over her shoulder.
    “Well if you do, you be sure and let me know.”
    “I can do better than that.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Our apartment’s got a great high speed internet connection,” she said. “Wait until you see what I’ve found.”

9
    Nicole hunched over her laptop in the kitchen of our temporary apartment. She’d been surfing the web, she said, for the past couple of hours, trying to find more information about Dominic Watisi and his various enterprises as well as our client Dr. Lonigan and the Grayland Tower restoration.
    One bonus: our apartment was as nice as the finest suite at the Ritz-Carlton. The floors were covered in the plushest thickest pile carpet I’d ever sunk my toes into. The furniture was top of the line deco modern. The kitchen, like Lonigan’s, was enormous and chockfull of the latest super sized appliances and conveniences. In the bathrooms heated Mediterranean tile on the floors would keep our bare feet from ever suffering a chill as we stepped from the shower.
    “So what do you have?” I asked.
    She flexed her fingers and pounded the keyboard. “A lot. First of all, our client isn’t all she’s cracked up to be.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Dr. Lonigan was arrested twice in Oregon in the 1980s on suspicion of vandalism and arson.”
    “Convicted?”
    “No. The charges were eventually dropped.”
    “Let me guess. Something to do with logging.”
    “You got it. She was part of the movement that said they were trying to save the spotted owl.”
    “Woman must have a thing for owls. But so what? She was probably just out of college then, right?”
    “Yup. Vassar, class of ‘84.”
    “So she earns her spurs in left wing activism, grows up a little, and moves back east to go to medical school and enter the real world.”
    “More or less.”
    “And she’s made no secret that she’s still an animal rights activist.”
    “Not just that, she’s listed as a major contributor for about half a dozen different groups, most of which have to do with the environment or animals.”
    “So what’s your point?”
    “I just think we should watch ourselves with her, that’s