by Rachel Brady
“Me,” he said softly.
“They bribed you to set up the switch, didn’t they?” I asked. “And you did it.”
It was the first time I’d confronted him to his face.
He stood and reached for his wallet.
“No,” he said, sounding beaten down and exhausted. “They didn’t bribe me. They threatened me. They knew things about my kids…where they had ball practice and dance lessons, what time they caught the bus. I didn’t put too much stock in it until…”
He shook his head.
“Until what?” Jeannie asked.
“Until the boat wreck,” I said quietly, finishing for him. For the first time, I realized Jack and Annette’s deaths might not have been accidental.
Richard laid a twenty on the table and silently walked away.
Chapter Nineteen
“Emily!” Scud called from the front of the Twin Otter. I could barely hear him over the engines, and wasn’t in the mood to try.
I wanted space to think. Privacy to reorganize my memories and move them around until they fit with Richard’s new information. History demanded to be set right in my mind.
But instead, I was sandwiched between jumpers on the floor of the gutted plane, sitting underneath a bumper sticker stuck to the wall that said No Farting.
It was Sunday, the last day of the boogie. That night most people would leave, and probably take with them any chance I had to get answers. Trish Dalton was our only lead and I had to learn more about her. So I’d compartmentalized my feelings and manifested on her boyfriend’s load.
“Emily!” Scud yelled again. “Get us some extra altitude!”
I checked my altimeter. We were passing through twelve thousand feet, nearing jump run. Skydivers near Scud laughed, but I didn’t get the joke. I looked at them, confused.
Scud held his wrist-mounted altimeter overhead and pointed to it like a watch. He yelled again, “More altitude!”
Then he pantomimed raising his shirt to flash me.
I’d heard stories of women skydivers flashing the pilot to get an extra couple thousand feet of air. Whether this actually happened—or worked—I didn’t know.
I flipped him off.
Booing and laughter erupted in the fuselage.
I thought about Trish and the similarities between Mattie’s abduction and Casey’s. My conspiracy theories seemed alternately plausible and insane.
Now there was a new, sickening question. Had Jack and Annette been murdered? The suggestion had me out of my head with grief and rage.
Linda, seated behind me, tapped my shoulder.
“Trish won’t go for it when she’s flying,” she said. “The boys have tried to flash her, but they got nothin’ she wants to see.”
I turned around and looked past Scud, at the pilot’s seat. Vince was flying today, the noise in his headset apparently shielding him from the nonsense. I wondered how many times he’d been flashed.
David was in front of me, near the door. In front of him, Rick was in the spotter’s position. Everyone on board was in two neat rows, facing the door in the back of the plane. Each of us was wedged between the legs of the jumper behind us. Our seatbelts, which were actually more like floor-belts, since there were no seats, were all unfastened.
I stared at the back of David’s helmet and thought about him and Trish. She wasn’t working today. What was she doing instead? David was doing a four-way with Linda, Big Red, and me.
Vince let Rick know it was time for the spot. His group shuffled onto their knees, putting goggles into final positions and double-checking throw-out handles and chest straps.
“Door!” Rick yelled, and those of us near him yelled it again to make sure jumpers behind us heard.
Rick slid the Otter’s door overhead like a garage door and frigid, deafening wind rushed inside. The rest of us moved into semi-standing positions and crouched under the low ceiling of the fuselage. Rick gave two heading corrections, both for five degrees left, and when he was satisfied, he climbed out and gripped the bar on the outside of the door while the rest of his group moved swiftly into position. With an efficient “Ready, Set, Go,” they dropped out of sight and the Otter lurched upward with its lighter load.
Our group was next. Big Red and David climbed out immediately, Big Red in the front-float position, David in the rear. I crouched beside Linda in the door, my left hand gripping Big Red’s chest strap, my right clutching Linda’s shoulder gripper.
She started the count.
On her Go, I left the Otter behind. A big planet holding all my unanswered questions was headed straight for me.
***
“So, how long have you known Trish?” I asked David as he drove us into town. He’d volunteered to pick up lunches for the group, and I’d offered to give him a hand.
David did some mental arithmetic.
“Coming up on five months. She moved in after two.” He looked at me sideways, like he thought I’d disapprove.
I shrugged. “Who’s to argue with love? My friend got engaged on her third date.”
“Yeah? How’d that work out?”
I thought of Jeannie’s ex-husband, Travis, a fledgling car salesman who turned out to be so stupid he wouldn’t have known a credit report if it stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “It didn’t. Now she sleeps with men on the third date instead.”
He laughed.
I picked up a photograph of David and Trish that was tucked in the dash. I could make out the scripted T on her wrist.
“I noticed Trish’s tattoo the other day,” I said. “I meant to ask her about it.”
“She and her brother got those when their dad died,” he said. “Their old man had the same one.”
I thought about that.
“What’s her brother like? You met him yet?”
David pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall offering Pizza Hut or Subway. He shook his head and seemed to struggle for words.
“He’s got problems. In and out of trouble with police…”
He eased into a parking space. I wanted to hear more, but didn’t want to interrogate him.
“They say every family has one,” I said.
He smiled.
We got out of the car and I followed him toward the Subway.
“Mark’s problem is serious,” he confided. “Drugs.”
He held the door for me at the sandwich shop and I stepped inside. A young Hispanic boy at a booth with his family said, “Coach Dave!”
His parents turned, and David said hello to everyone as we stepped in line. When we were away from the table, he explained how a friend roped him into helping with Little League. I glanced over my shoulder and overheard the boy tell his sister that Coach Dave was the “coolest one.” It seemed high praise for a man accused of being a racist.
I couldn’t concentrate on the overhead menu. Choices of breads and toppings were ridiculous compared to other matters struggling for attention in my mind. How had David gotten tied up with Trish? What was the deal with her drug-abusing brother? Was the brother the man I remembered from the day I found Mattie?
The wall clock near the cash register caught my eye. It was almost one o’clock. Most folks would leave the drop zone by seven or eight.
David reached into his jacket pocket for the list of orders. When he opened his hand I saw the wadded list and a tube of lip-gloss in his palm.
“Trish’s.” He shoved the lip-gloss back in the pocket. “She wears this jacket more than I do.”
It was a simple brown bomber jacket; the leather had aged beautifully.
“I can see why.”
“Gotta watch her though,” he added, and pointed to a light spot on one elbow. “She set her arm in grease at the airport. The dry cleaning bill to get that out was huge.”
I watched the girl behind the counter spoon meatballs onto a twelve-inch sub.
“Then last week she borrowed it,” he continued, “and lost fifty bucks in jump tickets I’d stuffed in the pocket.”
Chapter Twenty
I shoved a Subway sack into Jeannie’s hand and motioned to an empty corner of the hangar. She followed me and we sat on worn carpet remnants spread over the cool concrete slab. I told her about David’s missing jump tickets.
Her eyes widened. She didn’t seem to notice she was squeezing her sandwich.
I extracted my own from its clear plastic bag and began to unwrap it. A breeze blew through the open doors and I tucked our napkins under my leg to stop them from blowing away.
“What’d Trish do with that kid?” I asked.
Jeannie looked over her shoulder to be sure no one was near. “That creepy guy, the one who caught you snooping…do you think he’s in on it?”
I removed my wrapper and shoved it under my leg with the napkins.
“Craig Clement. I bet she got him this job. Look at the timeline. He gets hired, and two months later Casey’s missing. I’m sure they could have planned it in two months.”
Jeannie nodded. “I could plan a kidnapping in two months. Easy.”
I looked at her. She probably thought she could train for a marathon in two months.
“Then there’s David,” I said, “Trish moved in with him three months ago, you know.”
She raised her eyebrows. “No. I did not know. Add that jewel to the timeline.” Jeannie pulled her sub from its bag and started unwrapping its paper.
The wind was blowing annoying wisps of hair around my face. I sighed and readjusted the elastic band that was supposed to be holding it back. “I hear you. But I don’t think David’s part of it. He wouldn’t incriminate himself by mentioning those lost tickets.”
I took a bite of my sandwich but was too distracted to taste it.
Jeannie made a quick inspection of the inside of her sub. “Maybe they don’t know the police found a ticket.”
I stopped chewing.
She continued, “David would think nothing of mentioning it then.”
I imagined myself in his position.
“No,” I said. “Trish would worry about where she lost those tickets. If he were in it with her, she’d warn him they could be at Casey’s house. Then he’d never mention it.”
Jeannie shrugged, apparently unconvinced.
“He works with at-risk kids, for crying out loud,” I added. “And coaches Little League. Kids love him.”
“Women liked Ted Bundy.” She bit into her chicken and bacon sandwich.
We ate in silence for a while, thinking.
“What’d she do with Casey?” I asked again, so frustrated I nearly raised my voice.
Jeannie pulled a napkin from the stash under my knee and wiped her mouth. “Sold him, I think. Like that Shelton boy back home.”
It was becoming difficult to separate the two cases. The couple in Austin I’d seen in the restaurant with Mattie was about to pay thirty grand to “adopt” him when I intervened. They couldn’t be located at trial time. Without them or me, the case against Mattie’s kidnapper disintegrated. Of course, I hadn’t known that back then. In hindsight, the entire situation reeked of foul play. An uneasy feeling washed over me. I set my food down and closed my eyes.
Jeannie’s hand closed over mine. I thought about what Richard said at breakfast and tried to assimilate it with what I remembered of that couple. Their disappearance, at the same time as my own, was beginning to seem too timely to be an unfortunate coincidence.
“Hang in there,” Jeannie whispered, and scooted closer. She wrapped an arm around my shoulder. Tears squeezed past my lashes and dropped to my chin.
I leaned into her. “All I can think about anymore is how much I miss my little girl.”
Someone shuffled up and stopped in front of us. I wiped my cheeks without looking up from the floor.
Jeannie sighed audibly. “What do you want?”
When there was no answer, I raised my head and was eye-level with hairy legs and a knee brace. Scud was looking down at us. His expression had none of the dalliance or humor I’d come to expect. Instead, he looked at me with what I interpreted as genuine concern.
“Didn’t mean to butt in,” he said quietly. “I’ll catch up with you two later.” He paused before leaving and added, “Emily, I’m real sorry about Annette.”
He turned, and seemed to gauge who to drop in on next.
When he was gone, Jeannie said, “That was decent of him.”
But as I watched him cross the room, I grew paranoid. I dropped my head into my hands.
“What is it?”
I stood, flustered. Napkins began to slide across the floor.
“I never told Scud her name.”
“What?” Jeannie scrambled to her feet. She stomped napkins and gathered them into wads.
I left without her and stalked outside toward the dirt road. I needed to walk and think.
Soon, she caught up. “What’d you say?”
“Last night, Scud asked if I had kids. I told him about Annette, but I didn’t say her name.” I stopped walking and faced her. “Only Vince knows her name. So either Vince is a loudmouth or Scud’s an eavesdropper.”
Jeannie looked confused. She placed her hands on the outside of my shoulders and made sure she had my attention. “Honey, calm down. Don’t work yourself up.”
I studied her. “You don’t believe me.”
I shook her off and started walking again.
She didn’t follow. Instead, she called from behind, “you have a lot on your mind. Maybe you told him and forgot.”
The Otter’s engines hummed overhead to my right. I turned to watch its approach, squinting at sun reflecting off its silver skin. Vince was inside at its controls. Had I overestimated him?
Jeannie was beside me again. “Let’s talk about something else, okay?”
I looked from the plane to the horizon.
“Okay?” she asked again, and gave my ponytail a playful tug.
I groaned and began to walk.
“Let’s think about Trish some more,” she said. “Go over what else you know.”
The gravel and dirt crunching under our shoes was louder than the airplane noise now. I didn’t feel like talking. But Jeannie never required conversations to be two-sided.
She answered her own question. “Trish flies for the company Casey’s dad worked for. She was fired from another job for using planes without permission.”
I kicked a stone.
Jeannie continued, “Flight logs are missing…She’s probably up to her old tricks, sneaking around with Rick’s planes too. Shuttling stolen kids, I bet.”
When I didn’t respond, she said, “Well?”
“So she’s using the planes,” I snapped. “So what? Where’s she taking them? When’s she doing it? How is she doing it?”
My struggle to pull it together felt like I was failing the Sheltons, the Lyonses, and—worst—maybe even my own husband and daughter.
Her expression morphed to indignation and she stopped. She planted one hand on a hip, and used the other to wave an admonishing finger at me.
“Look. I came down here to make sure you were okay. I helped you with Craig. Then I stood up to Richard. And even Farmer Freak over there,” she gestured toward Cromwell’s place, “didn’t give me as much attitude as you.”
I looked past her to Cromwell’s farm. Another half-formulated thought swirled in my overloaded brain. When it culminated, the “click” I imagined might well have been audible.
“She’s doing it at night.”
Jeannie’s scowl didn’t soften, but she tilted her head. She wanted to hear me out.
I pointed over her shoulder toward Cromwell’s land. “Your guy from Deliverance was complaining about plane noise, carrying on about how he couldn’t get any peace, day or night. Right?”
She nodded.
“But Marie told me they don’t do night jumps here anymore.”
We stood in the middle of the dusty road and looked at each other, watching pieces fall into place in each other’s minds.
***
“I suppose it could be other planes from that airport,” Richard said, when I brought him up to speed. I’d tugged my cell phone from my pocket as soon as Jeannie and I made amends. We were walking back to the hangar.
“Could be,” I said, “But this airstrip looks more like a hobbyist’s parking lot than anything else. The only planes in the air all week have been Rick’s.”
I studied the vacant metal buildings and hangars as we passed them. All were chained shut. One had a faded metal sign bolted to the door: Man with shotgun guarding premises three nights each week. You guess which nights.
No lights were on inside any of the buildings, and no cars were outside either. Small planes around them were all tied down. Grass stood tall around their landing gear, telling me they hadn’t been moved for a while. What better place for criminals to set up shop?
I told Richard what David said about Trish’s brother.
“I’ll check the name Mark Dalton and cross-reference it with the restaurant in Austin,” he said. “Let’s see if Trish’s brother is the manager you remember from Mattie’s case.”
“You got anything on Craig Clement?”
“Not yet. He’s tough. I do have a good start on David Meyer, though. He has a government job, so there’s a nice paper trail on him.”
I filled Richard in about David’s troubles at CPS.
“Hard to do much on a Sunday,” he said. “I’ll call tomorrow when folks are back at work.”
I realized tomorrow was Monday. I was supposed to be back at my own desk at eight o’clock. That further soured my mood.
“Anything else?” he asked.
There was something else. Richard had played a part in setting Wesley Reed free and had inadvertently contributed to the catastrophe that broke my family. But his own family had been threatened and I should tell him I understood—even if I wasn’t sure I could forgive. But this didn’t seem the right time.
“No,” I said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
I closed my phone and turned to Jeannie. “Got a few problems.”
“Don’t we all.”
“Tomorrow I might get fired. And the boogie’s almost over, so tonight we’ve got no place to stay.”
