Death Flight

by Melissa Yi

  Someone gasped.

  Tucker shouted, "That's enough!"

  Otherwise, utter silence reigned in business class, apart from my heart pounding in my ears.

  None of it made sense (cunt prick?), but every one of us understood the hatred and the violence seething in her.

  I glanced into a sea of faces, some of them shaking their heads. Most avoided my eyes, although Compton stared back at me, blank.

  Pascale stood still, her mouth agape.

  Movement caught my eye. The little Portuguese boy had wandered into the cabin with an iPad. He was filming her outburst.

  Slowly, the blood returned to my face. She'd just confessed to hating her demented husband. Not as good as a full confession, but more than enough to strike a death blow on social media.

  Mrs. Yarborough followed my gaze toward the Portuguese boy and said, "Oh, no, you don't. Delete it. Delete it immediately! You little shit on a stick. Give me that. I'll pay you a thousand dollars if you delete it right now. You can have my wedding ring. Come here. Give me your iPad!"

  Oh, boy. Literally. The Internet trolls might secretly cheer and/or try to join in raping me with a thousand cocks, but none of them would condone yelling at a cute little kid with huge brown eyes.

  "You think you're going to get me to confess to murdering my husband? Well, I'm not! I want a lawyer, you little shits. Fuck you, and fuck this entire airplane with a whale dick!"

  Now she sounded insane. Or demented. Or possibly like a Shakespearean swear word app. They sure knew how to curse in Pornucopia.

  In the back, Gideon barked frantically. He could tell that she was a madwoman.

  "Be quiet," said Basso Profundo.

  He unfolded his bulk from beside Compton. He unsnapped his seat belt and stood up. He rose and rose into the air, seeming to double the height and weight of anyone else in the area.

  He loomed over her. He didn't speak.

  I hovered. I couldn't let him beat up an old lady. He wasn't quick, but he had sheer mass on his side, and her bones were more fragile than her words.

  "You are a vile woman. Now be quiet and stop shouting," said Basso Profundo. He may or may not have liked golden showers, but I knew three facts about him: he could afford business class, he could calm down Compton, and he wasn't afraid of the ShapeR millionaire.

  Amazingly, Mrs. Yarborough fell silent too. The Portuguese boy filmed it all, including the flight attendants descending on her with zip ties.

  Once she'd been secured, with Trina offering to switch places with her, we made our way to our seats. Tucker hugged me and whispered in my ear, "Sorry, Hope. I should have shut her down.”

  "No, I wanted her to confess to plotting against her husband." I buckled my seat belt. "She didn't quite. I don't know if it'll hold up in court. She'll claim she was coerced, or on medication, or something."

  "ShapeR has become a shapeless mess, though," said Tucker, his mouth quirking. She'd torpedoed her own company. Sure, some of her fans would stick with her, but of all the shapewear companies, why buy from the one who screams "cunt prick" at a doctor who helped save her husband's life?

  The Businessman of the Millennium would ban her too. Socially and financially, she was already toast.

  There was a rough justice to that. I smiled at Tucker.

  35

  Now that Mrs. Yarborough was semi-controlled, Elizabeth stood beside our seats and indicated the tablet. "You have to see this."

  It seemed like we couldn't have one minute of rest. On the other hand, all this crap was like a band aid. Better to rip it off.

  Tucker took the tablet and pressed play.

  Someone had filmed the brawl with Joel J. We could see more on a bigger screen, although it was still mostly the top of people's heads. The perspective had changed, though, and when the cameraperson deviated to the left and showed the seated passengers' faces, including a startled Margaret Thatcher, I realized that this one was filmed from the front of economy class.

  Joel kicked Tucker on-screen. I felt him tense beside me as he watched it.

  Then Joel slugged me on camera, which made real-time Tucker's hands clench on the tablet and his breath whoosh out of his nose.

  On-screen me fell out of sight. On-screen Tucker dropped down to tend to me, also out of sight.

  The cameraperson focused on Joel, on the ground.

  Off to the side, barely within the frame, Margaret Thatcher ventured out of her seat and bent down. Her hand grasped something off-screen, but she clearly jabbed his side before she rose.

  Then Gladys's bulk eclipsed the rest of the show.

  Tucker replayed the video.

  I hit replay the third time.

  We stared at each other.

  At the very least, we had to speak to Margaret Thatcher.

  At best, the camera had caught the killer.

  "I'll come with you," said Elizabeth, and we nodded. Her presence should help.

  As I pushed myself up out of the chair, my arms and legs ached, and my head seemed to swing on my shoulders. I was confronting someone against my will.

  Margaret Thatcher seemed like such a nice woman. Why couldn't we pin this on Staci Kelly?

  Before I spoke to Margaret Thatcher, I glanced down the aisle at row 33.

  Herc met my eyes from the aisle seat, 33C. In the middle seat was a lump covered by a navy blue blanket, presumably the remains of Joel J, and in the window seat, glaring back at me, was Staci Kelly.

  She was awake. She wasn't screaming. She was biding her time, which was even more eerie given her seat mate.

  Death flight.

  In contrast, Mrs. Thatcher appeared to be the ideal passenger in row 17. She'd been reading while swathed in a navy blanket. When she caught our feet in her peripheral vision, she turned off the e-reader and folded the case over the screen before she placed it in the seat pocket in front of her.

  "You know why we're here," said Tucker. He and I blocked the aisle to the front. Elizabeth had preceded him and stood behind Margaret's seat, sealing off her egress to the rear, but Margaret Thatcher didn't attempt to flee.

  She simply looked at Tucker and shook her head.

  "Would you like to talk here or in the front?" he asked her.

  Mrs. Yarborough yelled from business class, " ... and your little dog, too!"

  Margaret Thatcher didn't stir. "I assume it's not about the dog." We'd passed Gideon and Gladys on the way. Gideon had watched us while Gladys rubbed his fur ruff and murmured to him. They weren't causing a disturbance, and no one was complaining about allergies.

  I leaned around Tucker to get a better look at Mrs. Thatcher's body language and to lip read, since her measured voice was difficult to hear over the engine noise.

  "Would you like to come with me?" Tucker asked. He was giving her the chance to minimize witnesses. I stepped backwards to give them room to walk up the aisle.

  "I would not," said Margaret. She surveyed Tucker from behind her glasses. She glanced over her shoulder at Elizabeth, nodded at her, and met my eyes directly. Here was a woman who'd been consistently ignored and underestimated. She was twenty times more dangerous than the sound and fury of Staci Kelly.

  I no longer assumed she was a nice woman.

  Tucker gazed down at her. "Then can you explain what happened with Mr. Joel J. Firestone?"

  She shook her head. "He was a madman. Who can explain him?"

  Tucker exhaled.

  I had to unclench my teeth. My head ached, my vision swam, and I was in no mood for word games. "Look. You know what we're asking. We have a lawyer here if you need her."

  "I haven't been retained," said Elizabeth.

  "Right. But you could be. We're trying to make this easier for you," I told Mrs. Thatcher. "You can wait for the police, and for your own lawyer, but someone saw you at Joel's left side—"

  "Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable," said Mrs. Thatcher.

  Tucker shook his head. "This eyewitness is reliable."

&nbs
p; As long as it doesn't get deleted.

  "Then why do you need me, if you've already convicted me in your mind?"

  "Right now, everyone on this plane is terrified that we're stuck at 35,000 feet with a murderer." As I spoke, my lips felt numb. I hadn't had a chance to dwell on it, but if I'd been trapped in my seat, I would have armed myself with anything at hand—a paper clip, the tab off a soft drink—if I thought it might keep the airplane killer at bay.

  She folded her arms neatly. "Do you expect me to confess, as they do at the end of every detective novel?"

  "That would be nice," Tucker shot back. He kept a stiff hand on my shoulder. "Let's start at the beginning. What's your name?"

  Margaret Thatcher shook her head.

  "You won't even give your name, rank, and serial number?" I said. It seemed positively unneighbourly.

  She raised an eyebrow. "'It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.'"

  It sounded like yet another quote. I ignored it. "No one here thinks you're a fool."

  "'Silence is the language of God. All else is poor translation.'"

  "Are you going to be like the witch in A Wrinkle in Time who spent all her time quoting other people?" I'd loved that book, but I'd never considered how annoying that would be in real life.

  "Mrs. Who," Tucker murmured. He's Mr. Trivial Pursuit.

  She inclined her head, as if she were accepting that as a title.

  "You want us to call you Mrs. Who?" No way.

  "I prefer to be called nothing at all. I prefer to dwell in silence."

  I tried to gauge her based on direct observation instead of forcing her to talk. She looked ordinary. Fuzzy dyed-red hair, a slightly prominent nose, good teeth, a beige shirt and khaki slacks with walkable brown shoes. Maybe she was younger than the sixties I'd assumed, but she was someone you'd pass over in a crowd, like those deliberately neutral FBI agents.

  She'd been sitting in the exit row, which is hard to get unless you're either rich, charming, or an advance planner. I'd bet on the last one.

  I gave up. I couldn't read her. I'd have to force her to talk. "You were seen beside his torso, picking something up from the ground." I didn't tell her what object it was, or how she'd been seen. Maybe I could trap her.

  Tucker shifted beside me. He wanted to talk. He was the would-be psychiatrist, the people person. I was the concussed wild woman. I should leave this to him, and yet, I couldn't. Not yet.

  I said, "We spoke to the flight attendants. You haven't gone to the bathroom since the—incident, so you didn't have a chance to flush any weapon."

  Her impassive face remained composed. She wasn't scared of me.

  I'd have to force her hand some other way. "Either it's on your person, or you hid it somewhere around you. It should be a fairly simple matter to search every passenger, take apart everyone's baggage, and rip apart every seat. We'll end up sitting on the tarmac for twelve hours once we land, but that's life, right? Merry Christmas to all of us."

  "Hell, no," a short, square, fiftyish woman burst out from row 20. Her cartoon voice reminded me of Cartman on South Park. "I got grandbabies to see."

  "If this lady would tell us what she did, and where she hid any weapon, we could all disembark more quickly," I said.

  "Weapon. You saying she's the one who stabbed that guy?" said the South Park woman.

  "She must be," chipped in the man beside her.

  The rest of economy class erupted into whispers and not-so-whispers.

  "How do they know that?"

  "I thought so."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "She looks shifty."

  "What are we waiting for? Just search her."

  " ... SUE YOU!" shouted Mrs. Yarborough from the front.

  The guy in the red ball cap cracked his knuckles, one by one.

  A very tall black guy stood up in his window seat. He almost had to bend himself in half so he didn't bash into the overhead compartment, but he, too, was fixed on Mrs. Thatcher.

  Her eyes widened.

  Ah. Here was another clue. She was scared of big, black men. Interesting, because I knew of one other one whom I could call from row 33 if I had to, although it would leave Staci Kelly guarded by only her dead husband.

  It was a delicate operation, leveraging the air rage on the plane, but my job was to make her uncomfortable. I'm pretty good at that.

  "There was one case where people were stuck on the tarmac for fourteen hours, in Ottawa," I said. "They didn't get any water or food. The air conditioning broke. Someone started vomiting. The toilets got backed up. Parents ran out of diapers. The airline refused to let them off the plane." I couldn't recall every detail, but the point wasn't historical accuracy. The point was to paint a story. I could do that. "They were trapped. Just like we're going to be trapped with this murderer. I bet it'll take longer than fourteen hours. We've got a dead man. We have a killer. We have to find that weapon. You know how the cops always say, 'Don't leave town'? We're not leaving this plane."

  It must have been my imagination, but I felt like I could smell Joel's body as I spoke, adding to the pressure.

  "Show us the knife," called the man in the baseball cap.

  "You can't keep us on here," said the businesswoman, her voice lifted in fear.

  Oh no. There must be people with mental illness on the plane, and I was exploiting them. Ruthlessly.

  I kept my face stern. "We're at the mercy of the large northern weather system in the air, and then we'll be at the mercy of the police when we land, all because one person wants to get away with murder."

  "I have anxiety," Gladys singsonged from her row. She'd crouched over her dog while he lay on the ground.

  Gideon got up on all fours. At first, I thought he was trying to shake her off, but he didn't move his shoulders much. He had a weary look in his eyes as his hind legs settled into a squat that brought his rear end closest to the ground.

  "I think he's going to—" I called.

  The smell of dog feces assaulted our nostrils.

  We gasped. Someone started praying.

  I held my breath and breathed through my mouth. I've smelled pilonidal abscesses (butt pus) and melena (stool with digested blood), which smelled worse, but I hadn't been locked in the belly of a plane with either of those. My stomach roiled.

  Don't let me throw up. I can't puke now.

  "Oh, Giddy," said Gladys, "did you have to go? I'm sorry. Mommy's sorry." She made no move to scoop the poop.

  Gideon continued to crap, even as Magda squeaked and ran at them from the galley with a newspaper. Elizabeth moved out of her way, holding her nose.

  The South Park woman shouted, "I can't take it!"

  She unbuckled her seat belt and bounced out of her seat.

  I thought she wanted Gideon, but she headed straight for Mrs. Thatcher's seat. "Did you stab him? Yes or no?"

  Mrs. Thatcher didn't answer, but her lips, chin and hands trembled.

  "Show of force," I muttered to Tucker. He and I and South Park surrounded Mrs. Thatcher.

  We didn't have to speak. We didn't have to threaten. We didn't need a gun. But we did need a mob.

  Tucker waved his hand, beckoning the rest of the plane, and people detached themselves from their seat belts and stood up.

  "Sit down," called Linda, from the curtain. She was clutching something in her hand.

  No one sat.

  "I'm getting off this plane," said the businesswoman, holding her nose.

  "Not if I get off first."

  "They can't hold us here!"

  "They can do whatever they want."

  "Come here and tell her what we need," said Tucker.

  "All we need is the knife," I said, never looking away from Mrs. Thatcher. "That's all. One knife, the one that was used to stab Joel J. Firestone, and then we can all get off the plane when we land."

  The businesswoman squared her shoulders.

  The Portu
guese father stood up, even though his wife pleaded with him.

  People clogged the aisles in a silent, staring mass.

  I could hear the people breathing. Breathing in the foul air, which made all of us even angrier.

  One white guy at the back of the plane flexed his hands. He had a scar from the corner of his left eye down to his mouth, and tattoos on both arms and his neck. I couldn't have picked a more threatening figure if I were casting a movie.

  Mrs. Thatcher sat the epicentre of a very ugly, very determined mob.

  If she didn't start talking, the mob—infuriated by the weather, the delays, and cramped seats, then scared out of their minds by the death of one of their own, and goaded to the limit by dog shit—they might take it all out on Mrs. Thatcher.

  Mobs have done terrible things. They have poured hot tar on people and rolled them in feathers. They have set them in arenas with hungry lions. They have castrated men and hung them from trees. They have immobilized them with tires and set them on fire. They have attached people's limbs to four different vehicles and driven away, tearing each limb from the torso.

  I could feel their rage. They were ready.

  The man with the red baseball cap swore under his breath.

  The scarred, white man glared.

  The tall, thin black man towered over all of them.

  "Show us the knife," said Tucker.

  Mrs. Thatcher's lips trembled before she pointed to her seat cushion.

  36

  "Don't touch it," I warned Tucker. "It's evidence. And you don't want your fingerprints on it."

  "I have to make sure it's there, though," he said. "She could be lying to us. Linda, do you have one more pair of gloves?"

  "Don't touch it, John Tucker." My voice escalated. I was terrified I was going to lose him. I didn't care that Linda was steering Margaret Thatcher into the aisle. The mob wasn't laying its hands on her yet.

  Tucker snapped on a pair of too-small blue gloves. The airplane must be running out of equipment, or Linda had grabbed the wrong size.

  "Let me do it!" I said, but he was already reaching for the seat cushion, starting with the edge near the window.

  His back tensed. “I see it. There's something metal here. Does someone have a flashlight?"