Flight Risk

by Jennifer Fenn

  He ducked his head and shouldered his way into the living room, where the stereo was thumping and a bunch of guys were crowded around a muted television. Was that the back of Dalton’s head? If Robert didn’t find him in the next five minutes, he was going to leave.

  A girl yelled. “It’s him!”

  The party quieted. Then the news rippled through the crowd. A few kids raised their phones, snapping pictures. Robert smiled stiffly. This visit had been his stupidest idea yet. A crowd surrounded him.

  Dalton leaped up from the couch to bump Robert’s fist. Skinny as ever, though he’d buzzed his shaggy hair and was wearing a hoodie instead of Sea Brook’s uniform tee and khakis. “Dude!” He patted Robert’s back. “The Lollipop Kid himself!”

  Dalton whipped out his phone and began frantically thumbing and tapping. Robert leaned away from the flashes. He wished Dalton hadn’t used that nickname, that alias. “Dude, don’t take a picture.”

  “No, look. Check it out. What do you think of the merchandise?”

  Dalton held up his phone. Onscreen was a picture of a T-shirt, baby blue with red words circling a red drawing of a Cessna—Where Would Robert Fly?—flanked by two little illustrated lollipops. Across the back, in that bright red: The Lollipop Kid.

  “They’re fifteen a piece. I’ll cut you in,” Dalton explained.

  I’ll cut you in. A promise that, in Robert’s experience, was meant to be broken. Robert shook his head.

  Dalton slapped him on the back again. “Anyway, the shirts are selling, man. I’ve got preorders. Can you believe that shit?”

  A dreadlocked kid pushed Dalton back on the couch. “Yo, can you just let him chill? Everybody. Stop taking pictures and shit. Christ, he wasn’t in Twilight.” He held out a cup of beer. Foam sloshed over the side. Robert waved him off. “I’m good.”

  “Good call, man. Don’t drink and fly,” Dreadlocks grinned. Suddenly, Robert recognized him. Adam Neff, another member of the slow kids’ club. They’d had science together back in the fall, but never really talked. He wondered how many other partygoers he knew.

  “Christ, you look like you just climbed out of a wreck. You’re so dirty,” Dalton laughed, pointing at Robert’s shirt. Then he asked, “So what are you gonna do, man? Leap the border?”

  “That’s the idea,” Robert replied as Dalton showed Robert his phone again.

  “Here. Check this one out.” Same concept, except this one had Robert’s mug shot in the center instead of the Cessna. Beaming his lottery-winner grin. The photo was recent enough, and yet somehow Robert didn’t think it looked all that much like him anymore. He ran his hand over his prickly, grown-out hair.

  Still he said, “That’s awesome, man.”

  “So how’d you learn to fly a friggin’ plane, man?” Dalton asked, shaking his head. “I mean, Mr. Drew didn’t go over that shit.”

  “I just—” Robert turned toward a flash of light, like an exploding firecracker. Some girl had taken another picture. He’d wanted to tell Dalton the whole thing, beginning to end, but there was no way he could do it here, with all these people. “I don’t think I should say. Actually, I gotta get going.”

  Adam pointed. “Ain’t that you, man?”

  Robert looked at the television just in time to see that same mug shot. Then his trailer flashed onto the screen. On TV the dumpy mobile home looked smaller, squatter. The blue tarp on the roof flapped like a flag. He hadn’t given the patched ceiling much thought in a long time, but now he wished his mother would get it fixed.

  “Turn it up!” Adam scrambled for the remote. “The police were up at your place, man.”

  “It’s not really my place,” Robert mumbled. Certainly his mother had just made that very clear. Now he wished he had a cup of beer to stare down into.

  “Sheriff What’s-His-Nuts, man, this guy’s a dick.” Dalton waved his beer at the screen. “He thinks he’s, I don’t know, fuckin’ Robocop.”

  “Kindergarten Cop,” Adam said, and everybody busted up. Robert laughed, too, but he studied Holt. That gray he’d spotted from his copse of trees was more evident on TV. He must have polished his sharp-cornered badge every night.

  “How is it, Sheriff, that Robert Jackson Kelley has been able to evade the law so flagrantly, on such a small island?”

  “Cuz he’s the man!” Dalton held up his palm and Robert smacked it.

  Holt answered quickly. “I can assure the residents of Yannatok that my office, partnered with resources from the state, are working around the clock to bring Robert Kelley to justice. We’ve just announced a reward for any tip that brings about his capture, and we urge the public to remain vigilant.”

  “Is the sheriff’s office working with Travis Tennant?”

  “That’s the guy!” Dalton yelled, pointing at the TV. He sloshed beer over the side of his cup. “That dude came here and tried to fight me!”

  “At this time, Mr. Tennant is working privately,” Holt replied. “Again, we urge anyone who sees anything suspicious to call the tip line. I wouldn’t try to approach Mr. Kelley yourself, as he may be dangerous.”

  Dangerous? He’d been in maybe one fight in his whole life. Even in his mug shot, he was smiling. And now Holt thought Robert was dangerous?

  The party busted up, cheering and laughing, so Robert laughed along. Dalton slapped Robert’s back and flopped against the couch cushion. A phone number flashed across the screen while the reporter intoned, “With a fifty-thousand-dollar price on his head and Travis Tennant on his tail, Robert Jackson Kelley’s flight from the law might soon come to an end.”

  “Fifty thousand dollars!” A big kid crumpled his red cup. He glanced back at Robert. Had they had algebra together? “Sorry, man, but fifty thousand dollars! I might turn you in!”

  They laughed. Adam said, “Naw, man, we ain’t gonna. Shit, though, I wanna be on a shirt. I’m going down to the docks. Steal me a boat and call myself the Tootsie Roll Kid or some shit.”

  Suddenly, the TV flickered and went dark. A guy in an oversized white tee and black jeans was wielding the remote. He was bulkier, like he’d made good on his plans to start lifting weights, and his hair had grown out, but Robert would have known him anywhere.

  Joey Kovach.

  “C’mon, dude,” Dalton complained. “We were watching that.”

  Joey dropped the remote, like an MC hurling a mic. He took a long gulp from his plastic cup. He nodded in Robert’s direction. “You think you’re the shit now.” Spit flew from his lips. “Face on T-shirts. You look like the same old asshole to me.”

  Robert raised his hands, retorting, “I didn’t put my face on a shirt.”

  Joey continued. “Here’s what I know. I steal a road sign, I spend a night in jail. I sell pills, I get kicked out of school. And I didn’t get sent to no Girl Scout camp. I spent two months in juvie. Do the crime, do the time. You’re stealin’ planes and walking around like it’s nothing.” He turned to Dalton. “What’s so cool about that? You were locked up, too, and had to stay there until they let you out, and this dude just up and goes.”

  “Joey, dude.” Robert spread his hands wide. “I didn’t get you caught. You wanted those pills.”

  Joey sneered and kept talking to Dalton. “If I were you, I’d turn his ass in. Make yourself a lot more money than these stupid shirts,” he spat. Then he jerked his chin at Robert. “Snitch.”

  A few guys snickered. Eyes crawled over him, watching to see what he would do.

  What the Lollipop Kid would do.

  Robert raised his voice. “The truth is that you ripped me off. You’re either the worst Addie salesman ever or you stole from me.”

  “I didn’t steal nothing!”

  “Did you pay me? Did you ever pay me anything?” Robert stepped toward Joey, and to his total surprise Joey took a step back. Was he actually scared?

  I wouldn’t try to approach Mr. Kelley yourself, as he may be dangerous.

  Robert raised his shoulders. “What do you call it when you take
something and you don’t pay for it?”

  “Don’t ask Joey complicated questions like that,” Dalton cracked. A smattering of laughter rose from the group clustered around them.

  Joey flushed. He started to speak, but Robert cut him off. “And then you snitched on me. The first chance you had, you squealed. And I was locked up for your stupid idea.”

  “But they can’t keep him locked up!”

  Robert swiveled to see who’d yelled, but soon everyone was cheering again, raising their plastic cups. So he repeated it. The ending they all wanted. “But they can’t keep me locked up.”

  Dalton slapped his back like he was a boxer ready for his next round.

  Joey scowled. “Whatever. I’m leaving. And I’m no snitch, so don’t think I’m gonna turn you in. When you get caught, it’ll be on your own dumb ass.”

  * * *

  Robert said his goodbyes to Dalton at the end of the house’s gravel driveway. They shook hands, slapped each other on the back. Robert slung his bag over his shoulder. He should ask Dalton for more food, some clothes, but somehow that seemed uncool now.

  “So, uh, don’t get killed or nothing,” Dalton said.

  “I’ll try not to,” Robert replied. “You could make a sweet T-shirt out of it, though.”

  Dalton grinned. “In memory of the Lollipop Kid. R.I.P.”

  “‘He said they’d never take him alive, and he was right,’” Robert joked, but when a car peeled down the driveway, he jumped.

  Would Joey turn him in? Could any one of his former classmates have already made the call?

  Was there anyone he could trust?

  They shuffled around in the porch light’s shadows. The party was winding down, but shouts and laughter still drifted outside.

  “Hey, why don’t you come with me?” Robert asked. He hadn’t planned on offering. He wasn’t even sure what he’d do once he landed in Canada. Was he suggesting he’d take Dalton up in a plane?

  “What?” Dalton laughed shortly. “Dude, I mean, I can’t. I can’t get in any more trouble. I’ll go to, like, jail jail. Like don’t-drop-the-soap jail.”

  “Yeah, I understand,” Robert said quickly.

  “I mean, I’m getting hooked up with a job. Just construction, but the pay ain’t bad,” Dalton continued. “And I’m thinkin’, like, with this T-shirt thing, if I could be a real artist or something. Like, come up with some more and do that for a job eventually.”

  “No, I get it.”

  “It’s cool, though, what you’re doing,” Dalton said. “Like, everyone thinks it’s cool as shit.”

  “Yeah.” Robert offered his hand for another handshake, another shoulder bump. “When I get settled somewhere, I’ll look you up.”

  Then he headed for the woods.

  Interview with Mira Wohl, Willamette University cafeteria, October 2, 2010

  From Flight Risk: The Robert Jackson Kelley Story

  “I saw him, and so did Riley and Justine.

  “Dalton White saw him.

  “And everyone has a story from that party, whether they were really there or not. But no one turned him in. They coulda made it a hundred thousand, half a million, wouldn’t have mattered. Nobody wanted to snitch on him. Team Robert!”

  Transcribed from Hunt for Justice with Vera Hunt, MSNBC, February 13, 2010

  Vera:

  Before we get to our lead story tonight, the bombshell dropped in today’s testimony in the case of wife-killer Jack Benson, we are also following a disturbing breaking story involving a possible terrorist cell on the West Coast. Our own Jonathan Richards is live from tiny Yannatok Island, where a small town has been plunged into a nightmare! Jonathan, what’s going on out there?

  Jonathan:

  Vera, Yannatok is pretty much a ghost town during the winter, home to only about five thousand people once the tourists head home, but the country’s eyes have been on this West Coast island since photos were released yesterday of a teenage suspect wanted for the theft of two small aircrafts, both of which were found crashed not far from where they were stolen, and, unbelievably, the thief appears to have simply walked off.

  Vera:

  Unbelievable!

  Jonathan:

  And the story just gets stranger. The suspect, Robert Jackson Kelley, is an eighteen-year-old runaway, a Yannatok native, who escaped from Seattle’s Sea Brook Youth Home only last week. And at both crime scenes, the suspect has left behind Dum Dums, the lollipops I’m sure you’re familiar with, and some are saying he is mocking the police by leaving this evidence.

  Vera:

  And look at that crash site! It’s a miracle no one was killed by this recklessness! The audacity to leave candy, of all things! So what I want to know, Jonathan, is how does this young man even know how to turn a plane on, let alone get one up into the air? I’m shocked that this is even possible!

  Jonathan:

  Well, not a lot of information regarding the specifics of the crimes is being released, for fear of copycat criminals. But a spokesperson from the Yannatok Sheriff’s Department has told us that they are working on gaining access to Robert Jackson Kelley’s computer, as they believe flight simulators may have played a role in these incidents.

  Vera:

  Flight simulators, like the kind the 9/11 hijackers used to prepare for the World Trade Center attacks. Is this young man a terrorist? Is this the work of a terror cell? Perhaps a trial run for something much more sinister?

  Jonathan:

  At this point, Vera, no one really seems to be sure, though of course a serial plane thief is certainly a major concern, post-9/11. And people on this island are wondering how Robert Jackson Kelley could possibly be acting alone, given his lack of formal flight training.

  Vera:

  And no one on this island can catch an eighteen-year-old? Where are the police?

  Jonathan:

  Vera, the sheriff’s spokesperson assured me that all manpower has been focused on this case and bringing Robert Jackson Kelley to justice before he can cause any more destruction. But I spoke to some citizens who felt that the manhunt had been botched and were outraged by the sheriff’s response thus far. They were certainly locking their doors.

  Vera:

  I’m sure no one will sleep well on that island tonight. Thank you, Jonathan, and we will certainly continue following this explosive situation. Up next: what did Jack Benson’s mother, Dottie, know, and when exactly did she know it? Bloodshed in the heartland, coming up!

  FEBRUARY 14, 2010

  The party had drained him so much that Robert was actually glad to return to the woods. Robert had talked more to Dalton and his buddies than he had in days. Now the forest’s darkness, thick as a blanket at one a.m., felt more like home.

  He shrugged into the sweatshirt his mom had packed and unfurled the towel. The cheery yellow shade wouldn’t make good camouflage, but he might be able to hang it from some branches and fashion a makeshift tent. After a few minutes of trying, Robert rolled it back up to use as a pillow.

  And then there was the fight with his mom, returning like a muscle cramp, like a side stitch, slowing him, winding him. One minute she was making sure he had clean underwear, the next she was telling him to never come back.

  Could she have actually meant that?

  Whatever, he told himself. Didn’t matter. He was leaving anyway. He just wished he’d made it clear it was his choice, his plan all along to be rid of Yannatok forever.

  He knew he needed to think, to plan, but his head bobbed with exhaustion. Before he went to sleep he dug through the pine needles, darkening his fingertips, until he hit damp dirt. He smeared his forehead and arms with pungent earth, hoping to conceal any exposed flesh. Dirt mottled the rim of his hood and sweatshirt cuffs. Pine needles clung to his eyebrows.

  He drifted in and out of a fevered sleep, the sting of insect bites interrupting his dreams. In one he had two hatchets instead of hands and kept accidentally scratching his face. An owl’s screeching morphed i
nto the shriek of torquing metal, a plane’s squealing stop.

  The trees were still wrapped in darkness when he gave up on sleep and woke for good. Robert stood, pressed his hands to the small of his back, unwrapped a granola bar, and chewed despite the gritty foulness of his unbrushed mouth.

  Going to the party, getting his picture snapped, acting like a celebrity, had been a major risk. If anyone from the party had called the sheriff, then they’d know he was still on the island, hadn’t somehow hitched a ride or slipped onto the ferry. They’d be waiting for him at the airstrips right now. Yannatok County Airport, which he’d taken care to scope out, the only place he’d yet to break into, was probably lit up like the Fourth of July. A cop convention.

  But what about Tomkins?

  Surely they’d bulked up their security. Surely they’d warned their pilots, their staff.

  But would they really expect him to return to the scene of his most recent crime?

  No. They’d be waiting for him at Yannatok County, because they wouldn’t think he’d have the audacity to lift a second plane from the Tomkins airstrip.

  But Robert Jackson Kelley, the Lollipop Kid, who they couldn’t keep locked up, most certainly did.

  He sat up. Better to go now, while the darkness still hid him.

  * * *

  Yellow police tape fluttered across the door he’d jangled, bullied, and finally kicked in, three nights before, when he’d stolen his second plane from this very airstrip. The door hadn’t been replaced, the splintered wood still gaping like he’d left it.

  Perhaps they were preserving evidence, but it certainly felt like they were inviting him in.

  He stepped over the tape, but he knew he hadn’t crossed the finish line just yet.

  Then he scrambled for the hangar door and pulled it up, rattling on its track. Cold air rushed by him into the cavernous room, chilling his clammy skin.

  This time he had to move fast. No rummaging for food. No thumbing through the manuals. Pick a plane.