Passenger 19

by Ward Larsen

  He nearly shut the files, but paranoia got the better of him. From the government papers he extracted Reyna’s old airman medical application and the background check form. He looked for a copy machine and found a brand new one in a side room. Better yet, it had paper, toner, and was already powered up. Not for the first time, he saw that Marquez was a good organizer. The man had El Centro running smoothly in little more than a day, not the usual chaos of monitors without cables, cameras with bad lenses, and an unreliable electrical supply. The crash site recovery effort was also gathering steam, and soon would begin the chore of moving wreckage to long-term storage. It would probably be housed in a nearby hangar or warehouse. Davis was sure the colonel had that under control as well.

  He replicated the two documents and the photographs of both pilots, then folded all four copies to fit in his pocket. From a supply table he pilfered two cheap ballpoint pens and a pad of Post-it notes. Davis put the files back together just as he’d found them, squaring them neatly on the desk with his fingertips. He was energized by what he’d found, yet at the same time cautious. Fatigue weighed on his body. Part of him wanted to stay all night, digging and sifting, but he knew that at a point it became counterproductive. He needed sleep because he wanted to be sharp tomorrow. He bid a friendly buenos noches to a pair of soldiers manning the night shift, and as he reached the door the thought recurred and began looping in his head.

  Marquez was good.

  Almost too good.

  He walked into the viscous night air and shook the notion away. He smelled the soot from passing cars and the tang of seasoned meat on a grill. The bar across the street was running a lively patio affair. The city glittered yellow in the distance, and above that he saw a bewildered sky, broken clouds reflecting urban light in some quarters, and elsewhere opening up to the stars. A night unresolved, looking for direction.

  Davis picked up his pace.

  It was midnight on Monday.

  He had a great deal to think about.

  * * *

  Davis wrenched off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. The springs creaked under his weight, and a paper-thin pillow did little to cradle the knot on the back of his skull. His third dose of Motrin had done the trick—the headache he’d woken with was gone, as was the soreness from spending a night on a concrete floor. Unfortunately, the biggest ache of all was more acute than ever.

  He closed his eyes and, as was his custom in any investigation, made a concise mental scorecard of what he’d accomplished. The results were decidedly more troubling than usual. Escape from prison—check. Visit plane crash from which daughter’s body was missing—check. The day’s findings bounced in his brain like plastic balls in a lotto tumbler. He knew the problem. Every fact and facet, every theory and indicator, was colored by one insurmountable backdrop.

  Jen.

  His list of advances, such as they were, remained encouraging on one level—he had not yet visited the morgue to identify a body. Most of his findings were little more than negatives, things he’d proved hadn’t happened. For all the effort, Davis was no closer to finding his daughter, or even proving that she was alive. He would give anything for one shred of proof, one phone call from a hospital or a reliable witness who’d caught a glimpse of a survivor. As it was, he was clinging to the same brittle hopefulness he’d arrived with.

  On the nightstand he saw his most notable discovery: Jen’s iPod. How many times had he given her that warning on a flight? Don’t put anything valuable in the seatback pocket. You’ll forget it. He was mildly discouraged she hadn’t listened, but it proved she’d been on board. And he was buoyed by the tangible connection to his daughter.

  Davis had begun charging the device as soon as he’d reached the room, and now he hit the power button and watched the cheerful little screen spring to life. He scanned his options and touched the music symbol, then scrolled through menus to a playlist called “Jen’s Faves.” He wondered what his daughter was listening to these days. He recalled posters of boy bands on her bedroom wall, but that was a long time ago. He scanned three pages of songs. A few he recognized, but most were a mystery, artless soul that he was. He wished she’d shared them with him. Wished he had taken the time to ask.

  The earbuds were still attached to the device, and he unwrapped the wires from the case and stuffed them in his ears. Drowned out were the Bogotá traffic and the rush of an airliner taking off in the distance. The first track that flowed was an instrumental jazz piece by a group called Down to the Bone. It was good.

  Davis listened and relaxed, the music sweeping his mind clear like a cool gust of wind. His thoughts drifted as another song began, misty jazz, vocals this time. Since when did she listen to jazz? He closed his eyes and succumbed to stillness.

  As the miller told his tale

  That her face, at first just ghostly,

  Turned a whiter shade of pale

  Davis drifted off in the middle of the fifth song, the time on the clock having lost all meaning. He slept surprisingly well, feeling closer to his daughter than he had in a very long time.

  ELEVEN

  “Donde es hospital?” Davis asked in butchered Spanish.

  He’d woken late, thrown on his clothes, and rushed to the hotel lobby. The woman behind the desk, a smiling and bosomy matron who certainly had grandchildren somewhere, replied, “Cúal?”

  Which one?

  Davis said, “Kennedy.”

  She tapped a spot on the city map pressed under a sheet of glass on her counter. The map was colorful and dotted with cartoonlike drawings of museums and children’s carousels.

  She said, “Taxi, a diez minutos,” and held up ten fingers to be sure he understood.

  “Taxi,” he replied, nodding vigorously.

  The merciful woman phoned him a cab, and Davis gave her a muchas gracias before heading outside. While he waited, he was happy to find an English-language daily at a corner newsstand, and happier still that the vendor didn’t mind taking a U.S. dollar for it—he still hadn’t found time for things like currency exchange.

  Minutes later he was en route to Al Hospital Occidente de Kennedy, his life in the hands of a cabbie whose eyewear resembled shot glasses. If the man had a visual deficiency he didn’t seem to care as he wove through traffic like a slalom skier. Thinking it better not to watch, Davis hung on tight and flicked through The City Paper.

  He found five paragraphs relating to the crash of TAC-Air Flight 223, all of it on page three beneath a grainy photograph of the crash site—one that he was sure had been taken from Marquez’ Huey. Yesterday the accident had been front page news, but interest was fading quickly. There were no scintillating pictures, no Hollywood celebrities or soccer stars unaccounted for. Better yet, more entertaining stories had found traction—the mayor had a new mistress, and a particularly nasty presidential race in the United States was heating up. Davis tossed the paper aside. He suspected that if Marquez were to make his hijacking theory public, the crash would quickly move back to page one.

  He tried to steer his mind to positive thoughts, but it was hopeless. His daughter was missing and presumed dead, and so a visit to the city morgue could be approached with nothing less than trepidation. Davis forced his eyes outside and studied the city around him. He was reminded of Albuquerque, a blend of old and new, all trying to breathe in the thin air over a mile above sea level. Bogotá, of course, was on a larger scale, twenty million people living in a bowl carved by mountains, the biggest of these being Monserrate with its orange cable cars and moody cloud cover. Like so many cities, a place full of inviting corners, but one that collectively remained at arm’s length.

  On reaching the hospital he settled with the driver, and after fencing with a receptionist in broken Spanish, Davis was directed to the basement level. At the foot of a staircase he found bilingual placards on a stone wall listing a number of departments, including radiation oncology and nuclear medicine. With two minutes to spare, he found Marquez. The colonel was standing under
a sign that was written only in Spanish, but one that even Davis could translate: Depósito de Cadáveres.

  The cadaver depository.

  Marquez was not alone. Standing next to him was a man in uniform, although not one issued by either the Colombian Army or Air Force. If Davis were to lay odds, he would say he was looking at a policeman. The two men looked tense as they conversed in hushed Spanish.

  Marquez spotted him coming, and with a raised hand, he cut the other man off in midsentence. “Thank you for coming,” he said to Davis, shaking his hand with businesslike formality. “This is Major Raul Echevarria. He represents the Bogotá Region One Police, Special Investigations Unit.”

  Davis was inwardly pleased at the accuracy of his guess.

  The two Colombians were standing next to an air-conditioning grate, probably an acquired behavior this close to the equator, and when Davis shook the man’s hand it was cool and moist, like a wad of wet clay. Echevarria was a big man, almost as tall as Davis but padded in the middle, an effect magnified as he stood next to the smaller Marquez. His uniform was quilted with embroidered insignia, and thin wings of hair puffed from the sides of a blue beret. A Saddam Hussein mustache stood front and center, and most prominent of all was a set of coal-black eyes, frayed powder at the edges—it was like looking down a pair of gun barrels.

  The major smiled, perhaps a bit more than he should have, and asked, “Is this your first time in Colombia, Mr. Davis?”

  “I was here once before, a long time ago,” he replied, suspecting this was something Echevarria already knew.

  “Marquez tells me you are a good detective.”

  The policeman’s decoupling of Marquez with his superior rank of colonel was not lost on Davis. He had seen such dynamics before, brusque interactions between military and police forces that typically functioned independently. In the best case it evolved to no more than healthy competition, committed individuals who answered to separate chains of command. In the worst case, careerist officers butted heads with corrupt government ministries, or even loosely tethered criminal elements. As a general rule, Davis stayed clear of infighting. If time wasn’t critical, he might have left right then for the nearest place that served coffee and eggs.

  He said, “If I was really good none of us would be here right now. We’d all be in our offices writing after-action reports.” Echevarria almost replied, but Davis cut him off. “If there’s something here to see, let’s get on with it. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.”

  Marquez said, “Yes, we all do. The medical examiner has completed her autopsy of the two pilots. Because certain findings suggest criminal involvement, the police must take part in our inquiry.”

  Davis didn’t argue—there were criminal matters at hand. He did not, however, like this new trajectory. In certain countries, all air crashes were subject to mandatory criminal investigations. Police with zero knowledge of aviation plundered evidence and harangued witnesses, while attention-seeking prosecutors spouted cockeyed theories to the media. The United States took a very different approach. Air safety was considered paramount, and so NTSB investigators were given exclusive authority. They granted broad immunities to aircrew, mechanics, and air traffic controllers in exchange for the full and absolute truth. Barring willful negligence, the criminal justice system kept its big nose out. This latter model was widely recognized as the most significant advance to air safety since the seat belt, even if it did little to advance the careers of tort lawyers and prosecutors. Wishing he were in Kansas, Davis said, “Are we talking about a full criminal probe, Major, or are you here to observe?”

  “Hijacking is a serious matter,” Echevarria said in a light tone that was at odds with his words. “Here in Bogotá—”

  “Here in Bogotá,” Marquez interrupted, “we have an ambitious general prosecutor who cares less about victims than what he can do for himself. I think we will see a great deal of Major Echevarria.” The two Colombians exchanged a look that discarded any pretenses of civility.

  Davis thought, I really don’t need this. He said, “Let’s hear what the medical examiner has to say.”

  Echevarria led inside the morgue, no doubt familiar turf for an officer of the Bogotá Special Investigations Unit. The place looked and smelled like every other morgue Davis had visited. Clammy and cool, the schizophrenic lighting was eerily subdued in some quarters, and blazed like a supernova in others. The decorator had settled on gray as the dominant color, walls the hue of a battleship, a spalled concrete floor, and dull steel furnishings. At the far end of the room were two sheet-shrouded metal tables under harsh examination lights. A woman in scrubs was waiting. More greetings were exchanged with the medical examiner, a genial woman named Rosa Guzman, and she launched right into her briefing. Thankfully, her English was superb.

  “All remains from the crash site have been brought here to our facility. Last night I performed postmortems on the two pilots. As requested by Colonel Marquez, this was our first priority due to the evidence of gunshot wounds.”

  Arriving at the first examining table, Davis recognized the copilot, Moreno. The autopsy had run its course, and he’d been stitched back together with all possible dignity and left in a restful supine pose. The body was very different from how Davis had last seen it, sprawled on top of the captain and wedged against a circuit breaker panel. Guzman launched into a detailed summary of her findings, much of which went over Davis’ head. Professionals everywhere liked to impress laymen. The salient points for Davis: Moreno had been shot once at close range in the back of the head, and he displayed a host of other injuries that had likely occurred after death, all of these consistent with the trauma of an air crash.

  When she finished, Marquez and Echevarria seemed satisfied.

  Davis asked, “Can you tell what time he died?”

  Guzman referenced a clipboard hanging from a hook on the examining table. “I set the time at nine o’clock on the night of the crash.”

  “One hour after takeoff,” Marquez said helpfully.

  Davis looked at Marquez, then the ME. “Exactly nine o’clock? That’s pretty precise. Isn’t there usually a window?” Davis saw an exchange of confused glances, and he realized his linguistic error. “I mean, isn’t there a range?”

  Guzman said, “There are always assumptions in such estimates. The postmortem interval, the time between death and when I examined the victim, was nearly two days, so, yes, there is definitely room for error. I would say plus or minus three hours is a certainty.”

  Davis nodded, and he asked no more questions. Neither did anyone else, and they moved on to Captain Reyna.

  The captain’s body was in worse shape. Same sutures, same restful pose, but bearing the severe cranial damage Davis had noted in the field. Guzman’s second briefing was much like the first, and she looked directly at him when she said, “The time of death is roughly consistent.”

  “Roughly,” Davis said.

  “If anything, it might be a bit earlier.” Guzman pointed to an advancing green hue on Reyna’s stomach. “That is putrefaction, bacteria beginning the process of decay. It is more advanced in this body, but not significantly so.”

  Echevarria launched into an extensive line of questions regarding the bullet entry and exit wounds, which Guzman tackled capably. He then asked Marquez, “Have you found the slugs yet?”

  Marquez replied defensively, “We are in the process of recovering an entire airliner from a jungle basin. It will take time to find and identify every small piece of debris.”

  “This shooting should be your most important task,” the policeman countered with newfound gravity. “I am going to send my own team to the crash site. Clearly we are facing a criminal investigation.”

  “Do as you like,” said Marquez, “but they will not be riding on my helicopter.”

  With that the floodgates opened. Marquez and Echevarria began a hushed argument that reverted to Spanish. Fingers jabbed the air, and soon they withdrew to an office to take turns usin
g the phone—apparently cell reception in the basement was nil. When Guzman left to play referee, Davis saw his chance.

  Still standing beside Reyna’s body, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the ink pens he’d pilfered the previous night. Having already unscrewed the tops, he extracted one plastic ink sleeve and cracked it between his fingers. He rubbed the resulting seepage of ink over Reyna’s right thumb, and then pulled out the Post-it notepad. He rolled Reyna’s finger over the pad, but there was too much ink and his first result was nothing but a blotchy mess. With a glance at the glass barrier between the examination room and the office, he discarded the top note and tried again. This time he got a crude but usable print.

  Guzman reappeared and Davis pocketed everything, his fingers working blindly to fold an unused note from the pad over the good impression.

  Guzman gave him a suffering look as the donnybrook continued in her office. “Is there anything else I can tell you?” she asked.

  “Actually, there is,” he replied. “I’d like to take a quick look at another body—one of the passengers.”

  “You have the name or identity tag number?”

  “Thomas Mulligan.”

  Guzman checked a board on the wall, found the name, and led Davis toward a row of holding drawers.

  “Have you inspected this body yet?” he asked as she was reaching for a handle.

  “No, a technician does our receiving, and I’ve been busy examining the pilots.” She pulled out the drawer and looked at Thomas Mulligan for the first time.

  Davis watched Guzman. He saw the recognition in her eyes.

  Then the surprise on her face.

  * * *

  How the world around him worked had long been a mystery to Martin Stuyvesant. It was the simple things that most bedeviled him. His father, rarely present in his youth, had never taught him how to use a screwdriver or shut off the water to a toilet. His mother, rarely sober, had never taught him how to cook, although one of her less surly lovers, a tattoo-sleeved short order cook, had once given a rambling dissertation regarding the various grades of deep-fryer oil. Some years ago Stuyvesant had misplaced his wallet and left it at that—an imperceptible loss really, since he rarely had cash to carry in it, and because he didn’t keep a driver’s license since he didn’t own a car. The everyday machinations of life did not exist for Stuyvesant, which at times simplified things. The downside was that it made him highly dependent on others.