Both Ends of the Night Read online

  The weather was cold but clear, and sunshine brightened the hilly streets of the college town. Fayetteville was an attractive city where old-fashioned clapboard houses mixed with more modern structures, and the redbrick buildings of the University of Arkansas clustered to the north. Near my hotel, a classic old post office—now a restaurant—sat in a square surrounded on four sides by buildings that must have dated from the mid-1800s; most had been converted into shops offering all manner of stylish merchandise. At this early hour on the day after the holiday they were closed and few people appeared on the streets. Even here in the shabbier area near the courthouse, where bail bondsmen’s and attorneys’ offices abounded, only a handful of pedestrians hunched against the strong wind as they hurried toward the federal building’s entrance.

  It was through one of those doors that a man named Ashton Walker had stepped over ten years before, and it was there in the office of the U.S. Marshals Service that he and his wife, Andie, had read and initialed each page of the Witness Protection Program’s Memorandum of Understanding before forever relinquishing their true identities. Ash Walker, who then had metamorphosed into Ron Fuller and, later, John Seabrook. Ash Walker, former U.S. Air Force flier, test pilot for Stirling Aviation—and man who knew too much.

  I hadn’t bothered to stop by the Marshals Service. Craig had supplied all the details I needed, and chances were that no one in the office would have talked with me anyway. I did speak to a clerk in the field office of the FBI, who told me that the agents who had conducted a major investigation of the aircraft company had been reassigned; the Bureau, he said, could not reveal their new locations. That left me at a dead end, unless I pursued my secondary course of action.

  From my pocket I pulled a scrap of paper on which I’d jotted the phone number of the local bureau of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, where Iona Fowler, the reporter who had chronicled Ash Walker’s testimony during a string of federal trials, had worked. I called, asked for Fowler, and found she was no longer with the paper.

  “She’s living up around Berryville now,” the man who’d answered added. “Got a farm or some such. That’s about all I can tell you.”

  I thanked him, broke the connection, and got out my map. Berryville was about ten miles east of the historic Ozark town of Eureka Springs, not far from the Missouri border. An hour’s drive—two at most. I called Information, got a listing for Fowler, and called her. She seemed eager to talk to me, and in a gently accented voice gave me directions involving a number of state and county roads, ending in a seven-mile unpaved stretch. I told her I was on my way.

  The northbound freeway took me through Alda, where Stirling Aviation was located. On the same sort of impulse that had made me visit the Good Buy store in Florida, I exited and drove along the frontage road until I found their facilities: a large airfield and numerous nondescript concrete buildings and hangars, covering many acres. The entire plant was fenced in chain-link topped by barbed wire, and one of Stirling’s early models, the single-engine Silver Explorer, stood on a massive pedestal near the gated entrance. I studied the layout for a few minutes, then drove on, thinking about what had happened there over a decade before.

  Stirling Aviation was founded in the late fifties by a former naval aviator, David Stirling. As the firm moved from manufacturing single-engine aircraft to making multiengines and small jets, it became one of the strongest in the state’s burgeoning aviation- and aerospace-products industry. But in the early eighties Stirling was disabled—ironically, in an auto accident—while en route to the airfield; unable to resume his duties as CEO, he turned control over to his only child, twenty-six-year-old Duncan.

  Duncan Stirling: in the accounts I’d read he’d been variously described as a master criminal and a rich boy dabbling in a dangerous hobby; as a clever manipulator and a naive tool of his associates; as a man in control of himself and those around him and a cokehead whose habit controlled him; as a sociable man who threw lavish parties and a loner who frequently disappeared for weeks at a time. All agreed that he was more interested in guns, cocaine, and living on the edge than in aviation. And being given free rein over his father’s company was all it took to push him over that edge.

  Within months Dunc, as he was known, formed a cadre of greedy and unscrupulous pilots who flew secret missions for high wages; some were recruited from the ranks of test pilots at Stirling, others through that web of connections spun around any area of enterprise, legal or illegal. The Stirling plant became headquarters for a fleet that exported arms and imported drugs; employees who would jeopardize the organization were let go, and the process of transforming the aircraft company into a multimillion-dollar illicit empire began.

  Eventually the Arkansas State Police became interested in the unusual activity at Stirling Field. Planes touching down at night without their headlights aren’t all that uncommon; a lot of pilots, myself included, feel landing lights distort their perception by making the runway seem to come up too fast at them. But the fact that most planes arriving after dark at Stirling were without both landing and position lights was cause for suspicion, as was the fact that the aircraft never made a blip on the radar screens at the nearby Fayetteville airport. And then there was the heavy truck traffic at the field, as well as employees working around the hangars at late hours.

  The state police called in the FBI, and the usual bureaucratic squabbling ensued, about which agency had primary jurisdiction over the investigation. Finally the state agency continued to monitor the airfield and look into tips from disgruntled former employees of Stirling; the federal agency examined the company’s bank accounts and tax records, taking note of a gradual decline in production. And Dunc Stirling went about business as usual, ignoring the warnings of his cohorts. Whatever else he might have been, Dunc was arrogant and thought himself untouchable; mere mortals like the law simply didn’t trouble him.

  Strangely enough, what brought Stirling down was not the main thrust of his operations but a nasty little sideline in murder-for-hire. It began when he asked one of his pilots to “take care of” a former girlfriend who was attempting to barter her silence about the organization for an upgrade in lifestyle. The next victim was a mechanic who wanted out after he heard about the killing. Murder done once may cause shock waves, but repeated incidents make it routine; soon several of Dunc’s employees had no hesitation at accepting contracts to take out people who were causing trouble for their boss or his associates. And Dunc Stirling remained oblivious to the growing horror of a pilot named Ash Walker.

  When Walker was approached about flying import-export missions, he was twenty-nine, on the verge of bankruptcy due to a failed business venture, and awaiting the birth of his first child. Six weeks later his wife miscarried, and Walker plunged into the illicit work with a vengeance. He’d always kept to the straight and narrow, and in exchange he’d been eased out of a promising military career because of downsizing. The airlines weren’t hiring, and his own small fixed-base operation, which he’d financed with funds borrowed against his home and airplane, inexplicably failed. And when he’d finally found a good job and was looking forward to reducing his debts and starting a family, the company was handed over to a criminal. Then anxiety about the situation precipitated his wife’s miscarriage.

  Maybe, Ash Walker reasoned, it was a sign that he wasn’t meant for the straight life.

  Later Walker would admit to a great deal of self-doubt during his time at Stirling, but one doubt he never entertained was about his inability to stomach—much less commit—murder. Quietly ingratiating himself with Dunc’s inner circle, to the point that Stirling used him as his personal pilot when temporarily incapacitated by a knee injury, Walker began to gather evidence and keep a detailed journal. And three years after Duncan Stirling initiated the destruction of what his father had labored to build, Ash Walker went to the federal building in Fayetteville and turned over the accumulated evidence to the FBI.

  The Justice Department moved swiftly, securing a s
eries of indictments against Stirling and his associates, ranging from conspiracy to distribute controlled substances to capital murder. But the day after the indictments were handed down, a federal judge in Fort Smith—who had been appointed by a former governor whose campaign fund had benefited substantially from David Stirling’s contributions—decided that Duncan Stirling, in spite of his access to aircraft and large amounts of cash, posed no significant risk of flight. Released on a half-million-dollar bond secured by his father, Dunc vanished within twenty-four hours. Ash Walker made a convincing witness against the other defendants and all were convicted, but the man who had given the orders got away.

  So maybe he was above mere mortals.

  Six months after the last sentence was pronounced in Fort Smith, Ash Walker’s wife, Andie—now known as Marie Fuller—was gunned down in a grocery-store parking lot in Florida. Ash and his young son, Roger, were taken to a Marshals Service safe house in Miami, and sometime during the night they slipped out and disappeared. Disappeared, until a pilot named Winthrop Reade, now CEO of the revitalized Stirling Aviation, spotted Ash at Los Alegres Municipal Airport.

  Soon I turned east onto a highway that narrowed to two lanes; traffic gradually grew light as the road climbed into the Ozarks, and the pavement wound sharply, yellow-and-black-striped markers warning of dangerous curves. I sped through a series of switchbacks, and looked down on gently rolling valleys that were gray with bare-limbed trees. The strong wind whipped dried leaves across the road and made the little car shudder.

  Tourist cabins and motels told me I was approaching Eureka Springs; at the turnoff for the town’s historical district I came up behind a slow-moving tram that reminded me of San Francisco’s motorized cable cars. Thanksgiving weekend, and it was packed with sightseers. Their carefree faces brought to mind my call to Ted and Neal’s from Dallas–Fort Worth Airport yesterday afternoon: festive noises in the background, including a Texas-accented whoop that had to be Keim’s, and Ted on the line saying he was sorry Hy and I couldn’t make the party, but he understood.

  Hy wasn’t there? I asked, surprised.

  No, he’d called with his regrets.

  Ted put Neal on then, and after we talked, Neal summoned Rae; Rae, in turn, summoned Ricky, who later turned me over to Zach. After I’d spoken with nearly everyone there, I tried to locate Hy, but there was no answer at any of his numbers or my own.

  Off somewhere—and doing what? Most likely brooding because he felt ineffectual and powerless. He hadn’t been able to save Matty, and now he feared his chances of avenging her death were slipping away. Yesterday morning when I told him this trip to Arkansas was one I had to make alone, I’d seen his frustration. He understood my reasoning: we both had too emotional a stake in my investigation, and under such conditions our feelings tended to feed on each other’s, often building to dangerous levels. Still, he hadn’t liked being excluded, and I didn’t blame him.

  By the time my Fayetteville flight was called, I was well into some serious brooding of my own. Over the course of our relationship Hy and I had encountered obstacles that would have finished most couples, but we’d confronted them head on—and together. I didn’t lie to him; he didn’t lie to me. If we disagreed on a course of action, we aired our differences—often heatedly—and compromised. But since Matty’s death we’d begun telling half-truths and going about our business separately. I didn’t really know why he’d gone down to RKI’s headquarters on Wednesday; he might even be pursuing an investigation that paralleled mine.

  With such thoughts on my mind, was it any wonder that I’d drunk a whole bottle of expensive Chardonnay with my lonely room-service Thanksgiving dinner?

  After the tram turned off, I put on speed past fast-food outlets and the ubiquitous crafts and antiques shops. At Berryville—a larger town than I’d imagined—the road widened to four lanes and I began looking for my turnoff. Iona Fowler had said it was difficult to spot, but I found it easily. Then I drove straight past the next turnoff, had to double back, missed her dirt road, and ended up in Missouri.

  So much for my navigational prowess.

  After backtracking, I located the road, marked by a dead end sign. It took me past several frame farmhouses—and through several axle-threatening potholes—and downhill over a creek; pastureland where brown-and-white cattle, huddled against the cold wind, stretched uphill. A graded track bisected the cattle graze and disappeared behind a stand of trees at the top; I followed it and came to a brown frame house with a red barn behind it.

  The house was small and attractive, girdled on two sides by a wide deck overlooking the valley. A collie lay at the foot of its steps, and as I pulled in next to a Jeep Cherokee, the dog got up and came to greet me; its cold nose nuzzled my hand when I got out of the car. Together we went up on the deck and I knocked at the door, then turned to take in the view: rolling pastureland falling away to a line of bare-limbed trees through which I made out the silver-gray flash of a river.

  The tall, handsome woman who answered my knock had a thick braid of white-blond hair wound around her head like a crown; she looked down her long nose at me in a way that would have seemed haughty had it not been for the lively curiosity in her blue eyes. When I tried to show her my identification, she waved it aside.

  “Come inside quick!” Iona Fowler exclaimed. “Colder’n a witch’s titty today, but I’ve got coffee brewed and a fire in the woodstove. No, Jody, not you, you’re all muddy from your run through the creek.” She blocked the collie with one booted foot, held the door open for me, and shut it emphatically against him.

  The room I stepped into was a cozy one, with overstuffed chairs centered around the woodstove and lots of plants. The walls were hung with colorful quilts, and a sewing machine stood in an alcove, the table next to it heaped with scraps of fabric. Iona Fowler pointed me toward the chairs and went to fetch us coffee from the kitchen at the opposite end of the house. When she came back, I was warming my hands at the fire.

  “You have a lovely place here,” I said as she sat on the chair across from me, pulling off her boots and curling up her long denim-clad legs.

  “Thanks. I guess it was meant for me; came on the market the day I decided to get out of Fayetteville.”

  “How come you chose this area?”

  “I had a couple of friends in Berryville. When my life fell apart, they suggested I visit and look at property.”

  “Your life fell apart? How?”

  “That’s right—you wouldn’t know. Had to do with my series on Stirling Aviation. After the trials I was contacted by a New York publisher that was interested in having me expand the pieces into a true-crime book. When I told them there was more to the whole business than most people suspected and that I thought I could put it together and back it up with evidence, they were even more enthusiastic. We were negotiating the contract when the threats started: middle-of-the-night phone calls, petty vandalism to my house and my car.

  “Now, I’m not the sort who scares easily, but next somebody deleted the Stirling files from my office computer. No big problem, I always kept hard copy. But that night, before I could make extras and put them in a safe place, my house was torched and I lost everything. Not just the files but tapes of interviews and my notes of things that were said to me off the record. And two days later, when somebody took a shot at me in front of the friend’s house where I was staying temporarily, I said the hell with it. I’d planned to quit my job to do the book anyway, so the day the insurance money came through, I was out of the Democrat Gazette and Fayetteville.”

  “Who do you think was behind all that?”

  “Old man Stirling and his political cronies. I was after a story of corruption in high places, and I’d made no secret of it.”

  “You mean the father using connections to get the son freed on bond?”

  “I truly believe that was only the tip of the iceberg.”

  “Oh?”

  Fowler’s gaze slipped away from mine. “Don’t ask me what
was going on; I don’t know. I never got to do any serious investigating. Oh, I probably could’ve reconstructed a lot of the material, but the task seemed so overwhelming, especially as depressed as I was.”

  Something wrong there. Something she wasn’t telling me.

  “You know,” she added, “I came up here and sat around doing nothing but feeling sorry for myself for two solid years. Then one day I woke up to spring sunshine and told myself, ‘Woman, it’s time you got yourself a life, so take yourself into town and sign up for those classes in cattle-raising and quilt-making.’” Her wide mouth quirked up. “Now I’ve got all those beeves and all that fabric. I’ve even got a live-in gentleman friend. You’ll meet him, if he ever decides to come in from Manly World.”

  “Manly World?”

  “The barn. He holes up there when he wants to contemplate… whatever it is he contemplates. Sits by the electric heater and carves heads.” She paused, her brow furrowing. “I don’t know, if I did wood carving, I don’t think I’d carve heads. But that’s his thing, so more power to him. But let me ask you this: why’re you interested in an old crime like the Stirling operation?”

  In hope of getting her to feel she could trust me, I gave her a truthful, although abbreviated, account of my investigation, stressing Zach’s predicament. She listened without interrupting, then stared somberly into her coffee mug, clearly disturbed. Finally she said, “Well, under those circumstances, I’ll be glad to help you. What d’you need to know?”

  “Let’s start with David Stirling. Is he still alive?”

  “Yeah, the old fool. Lives in the same limestone mansion down in Alda, and I hear he’s made it into a kind of shrine to his drug-dealing, murdering son.”