by Wally Duff
He waved at the photographer he’d brought with him and pointed at the Lexus. The man took out his equipment and began to set it up behind the crime scene tape.
“Are you certain you’ll be safe?”
“I’ll be with the cops. What could possibly go wrong?”
Carter supervised his photographer. I joined Janet. She closed her cell phone.
“The cops in the black and white in front of Fertig’s house say there’s no activity,” she said.
“I think I know where he’s going,” I said. “To his plane.”
“What plane?” Tony asked.
“You missed that meeting,” Janet said. “Guess you were too busy interviewing Diane Warren.”
He ignored her comment. “What about a plane?”
Janet took out her notebook. “He has a big jet at the Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling. He can fly it almost anywhere in the world.”
“If I’m on the run, that’s where I would go,” I said.
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Janet and Tony walked toward a Chicago PD Ford Police Interceptor. I followed.
“Why don’t we take one of your cars?” I asked.
“We need a functioning computer to hook up with headquarters,” Janet said. “We don’t have one in either of our private cars.”
Tony climbed in the driver’s seat. Janet opened the back door, and I got in. She closed the door and jumped into the passenger seat. They pulled on their seat belts. I did too.
“We have a serious jurisdictional issue, Tony,” Janet said. “The Wheeling cops won’t be happy we’re invading their territory.”
“Screw ‘em,” he said. “Figure it out later.”
“We will figure it out right now,” she said. “I’ll call the captain and request a warrant and then call the Wheeling police and let them know we’re on our way. They can meet us at the airport to make the arrest.”
“Why don’t you call the airport and tell them to ground his plane?” I asked. “Then he can’t fly away.”
She turned to me. “We don’t have a warrant for his arrest, meaning we don’t have a legal leg to stand on. The airport guys won’t do anything to help until we have the proper papers.”
“What do we do?” I asked.
“See how fast I can get us to Wheeling,” he said.
As Tony drove, Janet simultaneously worked her cell phone and the computer. The patrol car’s blue lights flashed, and the siren howled as we roared down I-9.
I prayed we would get there in time.
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The paperwork was waiting for us when we arrived at Signature Flight Support, the largest of the fixed base operators at the Chicago Executive Airport. The Wheeling Police were there, too, along with their SWAT team.
There was a large private jet on the tarmac.
“That’s his plane,” I said.
“How do you know?” Tony asked.
“Tail numbers, 915 RF,” I said. “It’s his plane.”
One of the Wheeling SWAT officers ran up to us and held out his hand. “I’m Saul Lopez. My team’s ready to roll. That’s his plane, right?”
“It is,” Janet said.
“Is the subject armed?”
“Ask me,” I said to myself.
They looked at me. “Sorry, but I should know. He shot at me several times.”
“What kind of gun?” Lopez asked.
“A big one,” I said.
“They all look like that when a suspect shoots at you,” he said. “How many rounds did he fire?”
“At least ten.”
“Good for us, because from what your captain told me, the suspect probably didn’t have a chance to reload.”
“Unless he has other guns on board,” Tony said.
“Guys, is he even here?” I asked.
Lopez looked at us. “We don’t have a sighting. Because of the holdup on the paperwork, we didn’t get here until ten minutes ago.”
“He could have boarded without anyone seeing him,” Janet said.
“All Signature can tell us is that they were told to preflight the plane,” Lopez said. “They said a flight plan has been filed to fly to Senegal.”
“No extradition,” I said. “I did a story on that once. Fertig used to travel there to set up medical clinics.”
I made a mental note to have David check the foundation’s records and see if a large home was recently purchased in Senegal.
We heard the engines of the plane fire up. “Looks like the doctor is getting ready to take off,” Lopez said.
“Tell them to stop his departure,” she said. “Your team ready?”
“We are,” Lopez said. “You guys need vests?”
“We do.” She pointed at me. “She doesn’t. She stays in here.”
“What’s the plan?” Tony asked.
“Block the plane from the front with one of our trucks,” Lopez said. “Blow out the front window with a stun grenade. Follow that with tear gas. If he doesn’t come out, we go in.”
They snapped on their vests. “Let’s do it,” Janet said.
I watched from inside the building.
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I watched the SWAT truck screech to a halt directly in front of the plane. A stun grenade was fired through the window. That was followed by a loud explosion and a blinding light. Tear gas followed.
The door from the plane flew open. The landing stairs came down. I stepped outside of the building. I could hear what was going on.
“Weapons ready!” Lopez yelled. “Here he comes!”
Smoke poured out of the plane’s interior, then three men and one woman staggered down the stairs.
I was close enough to hear what was being said.
“Hands on top of your heads!” Lopez yelled. “Keep walking straight ahead!”
The people coughed, and tears ran down their cheeks. None of them were Fertig.
“Is he one of these guys?” Lopez asked Janet.
“No, you gotta go in and dig him out,” she said.
Lopez gave a hand signal to the two men to his left. They put gas masks on and rapidly ascended the stairs. We waited for gunshots, but none were heard.
The men came out five minutes later. “Not here, Sergeant.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
Lopez turned to us. “Sorry.”
“No more than we are, dude,” Tony said.
“Ideas, Tina?” Janet asked.
“We’re missing something here,” I said. “You said they told you the plane was going to Senegal, right?”
“I did,” Lopez said.
“That’s what’s wrong,” I said. “Fertig had to assume we might know about this plane. Maybe he used it as a diversion to make us waste our time coming out here.”
“That’s a possibility, but why?” Janet asked.
“He’s a pilot,” I said. “He flies planes. Maybe we have the wrong one.”
I called Cas and told her what happened. “He’s on the run, but he’s not using this plane,” I concluded. “Can you have Joe’s guys check for another private plane Fertig might be using?”
“Will do,” she said.
“One thing. It won’t be from this airport because we’re already here.”
“That’ll help because there aren’t that many private airports around here.”
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We watched the SWAT members put their gear away. Cas called back in two minutes.
“The MidAmerica Foundation also owns a Piaggio Avanti,” she said. “But it can’t fly more than 1500 miles without refueling.”
“At least he can’t get to Switzerland,” I said.
“But he can get somewhere, and wherever it is, you better hurry.”
“Why?”
“He’s flying it out of Aurora Municipal Airport.”
Janet and Tony began making frantic phone calls to various members of the Aurora Police Department and their own captain at Chicago PD. It was obvious that a mad dash to Aurora to sto
p Fertig wasn’t going to be possible, because he had too much of a head start.
According to one of the employees who worked on Fertig’s big jet, it took well over an hour to preflight a plane of that size. He told me a Piaggio Avanti was smaller and could have been ready to fly when Fertig arrived.
When Janet began screaming into the phone, I knew we were in trouble.
“Assholes!” she yelled. “They won’t do anything without the proper paperwork!”
“Which we have,” I said.
“Which we have right here,” she said, “but not there.”
She made another phone call and yelled some more, but it didn’t help.
“Is it always this hard to arrest a bad guy?” I asked.
“Do it right, or they walk,” she said. “The captain is faxing all the documents to them. We might as well saddle up and head out to the Aurora airport.”
“But can’t we do something right now?” I asked.
“Praying might be good for me,” she said, “but considering all of the things Tony’s done, it probably won’t get through.”
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Tony didn’t have on the flashing lights or siren, because there was no need. With heavy traffic, the trip to Aurora would take a lot longer than it would for Fertig to fly away.
I took the downtime to call Carter and fill him in on everything that had happened. He had checked on Alexis. She was in the recovery room, and the surgery had been a success. She wasn’t going to have any permanent damage to her leg.
I texted David to check on a home purchase in Senegal. There hadn’t been one.
“How far did you say this smaller plane can fly?” Janet asked, after I told them the good news about Alexis.
“Cas said maybe as far as 1500 miles,” I said.
Tony glanced at Janet. “Canada. Call the captain. Have him alert the Canadian authorities and have them look for an airport where he could land.”
She held the phone in her hand but didn’t dial. She turned to me in the back seat. “Are you willing to swear under oath that the man you saw shoot and kill Wickham was Fertig?”
“I am.”
“You aren’t saying that to write this story, are you?”
I paused. That was exactly what I was doing.
“You still have what he did to Alexis,” I said.
“Call the hospital and tell them to get her off the pain meds long enough for us to record her statement,” she said.
“Janet, she just got out of surgery,” I said. “She’ll be in a lot of pain.”
“Do you want to catch Fertig?” she asked.
“Of course I do.”
“She’ll have to suck it up and take one for the team,” she said.
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We were still twenty minutes from Aurora.
“What about sending up fighter jets to force him to land?” I asked. “They do that with terrorists.”
“Dude isn’t a terrorist, last time I looked,” Tony said.
“He’s a killer. Isn’t that about the same thing?”
“Alleged killer, according to you,” Janet reminded me. “All we can do is wait for him to land and hope they hold him long enough for us to send them all the necessary papers.”
“This is frustrating. How do you guys stand this?”
“Maybe we should shoot a perp like him,” he said.
“Works for me,” she said. “Wonder why I didn’t think of that.”
“A man thing,” he said. “Women aren’t supposed to be smart like guys are.”
“All we’re supposed to be is barefoot and pregnant,” I said.
He slapped the steering wheel. “You finally get it. I knew you’d come around eventually.”
Janet’s cell phone rang. All she did was listen. Her jaw muscles twitched and then relaxed.
“Turn around, Tony,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
“But we’re almost there,” I said.
“There’s no need to go any further,” she said. “For the past fifty-one minutes, they’ve tracked Fertig’s plane on radar as he flew north. They lost contact.”
“He put down the plane down?” he asked.
“You got part of it right,” she said. “His plane is down. The radar guy in the tower says the plane suddenly went straight down somewhere in Wisconsin.”
“Straight down?” I asked. “How could he land like that?”
“He couldn’t,” she said. “The plane crashed with half a load of fuel.”
Part 7
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Alexis was in the intensive care unit when Tony dropped me off at the hospital.
He handed my Glock to me. “Here, sweets. We don’t need this anymore.”
“I probably don’t either,” I said.
When I stepped into her ICU room, I saw that she was asleep. Carter sat in a chair next to her bed. He worked on his laptop.
She had another unit of blood running into one of her IV’s. The oxygen prongs in her nose and the catheter were still in place.
Her right leg was propped up on pillows, and there was a plastic tube coming out of the middle of the thick dressing. The tube ran down to a plastic suction device. It contained serum and diluted blood.
I sniffed and detected the odors of disinfectants mixed with cleaning solutions. Carter nodded toward the hall. When we got outside the room, he hugged and then kissed me.
“I’m very, very glad that’s not you in there,” he whispered in my ear. “It brings back many scary memories.”
He referred to the ICU I was in after I was blown up in Arlington. He came to visit me every day, sometimes more than once. It was during my recovery that we fell in love.
“But we found each other, and we have a fabulous daughter. I’ll never complain about it.” I looked around. “Although I have to admit being in an ICU does freak me out a little bit. How is Lex?”
“Since I’m not a family member, I’m not having much luck in ascertaining exactly what they found.”
“Stupid hospital rules,” I said. “Let me see what I can do.”
We walked to the nurses’ station. They were congregated behind a large desk. Some drank coffee and sodas. Others worked on computers. None of them noticed us.
“Excuse me,” I said.
No one looked up.
“I need to speak to the nurse taking care of Alexis Jakkobsen,” I demanded.
An obese young female in black scrubs put down her coffee cup. “You can if you’re a relative.” She pointed at Carter. “I told him the same thing.”
“And if I’m not?” I asked.
“We can’t give out any patient information without her consent.”
She picked up her cup and turned around to a computer.
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“Listen here, you...” I began.
I felt a tug at my arm and turned around.
“Sweetie, I’m Alexis Jakkobsen’s brother,” Rick said, from behind me. “She rarely talks about me because, well, you know how it is. She wants to keep me in the closet, but that is so yesterday, don’t you think?”
The nurse looked over my shoulder and stared at Rick.
“And I want to know how my little sister is doing, and I want to know right now. I don’t want to be a bitch, but I can be if I have to. Now, chop, chop. Let’s have a report here.”
David was next to Rick. He stepped forward and put his hands on the counter.
“And I’m Ms. Jakkobsen’s lawyer of record,” he said. “I need to know the extent of her damages incurred while she was at this hospital, which obviously does nothing to protect its visitors from egregious and life-threatening incidents like this.”
The nurse’s eyes widened. “That won’t be necessary.” She jumped up. Her hands shook as she opened Alexis’s computer chart and began reading. Carter took out a small pad from his pocket to write down what she said. He also recorded it on his cell phone.
