Kat nodded to Annette and turned back to Bostich, watching the color drain from his face.
"But you bought your computer new. Were those statements a mistake, too, Mr. Bostich? Did you misspeak? Were you misquoted? Or did your words really mean something other than what they said?"
"Ah, to hell with you, Bronsky. I've sat through manipulative interrogations a thousand times, and you're a rank amateur."
She nodded. "Perhaps. But you mentioned erased files back there, and you mentioned erased files up here, and I want to know the real reason why.
Did you ever erase any pornographic picture files?"
"No! I'm not going to answer any more questions from you."
"Well, I'm going to ask one more question of you, Mr. Bostich.
Since I think you've looked long and hard at each and every one of those pictures, I want to ask you why one in particular didn't affect you."
She leaned forward toward Bostich as he plastered himself against the seatback next to the window. Kat kept after him, confusing him, as she moved her face next to his to speak directly into his right ear.
"There was this one shot, Rudy..." she began in a whisper. "There was this little girl, tied to a chair, horribly bruised and battered. It was Melinda Wolfe, as you know, and the picture was taken by her killer."
She could feel Bostich tense.
"Get away from me!" he snapped.
She pulled back, watching the combination of fury and emotion overwhelm him as he fought against his own better judgment, letting emotion win out.
"How could you have that picture on this computer?" she badgered. "I didn't!"
"But it's there. I saw it myself." "I don't know anything about it."
"You want to see it again?" "No! I've never seen it."
"Why, it's right here, Rudy! It's on your computer, locked by your password! The most horrible shot I've ever seen. The picture on your computer right now, as we speak, is the very sickening shot I just described to you. THE SAME ONE!"
"Nothing like that was there, dammit!" He had his eyes closed, his fists clenched, and his jaw set.
"That could have been your little daughter. The same picture! How could you have had that picture?"
"I didn't!"
"Well, I can show the world that you did! Imagine your daughter like that."
He was shaking now, his teeth grinding.
"I-- don't--know--WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!"
She leaned close to his ear again to deliver the last portion of the description.
"In this picture, Rudy, Lumin had already used his knife and butchered her. You know what she'd lost, and you know the picture shows it.
Imagine your little daughter sitting there, bloody and butchered.''
Kat whispered the last few specifics of the butchery, knowing that the picture in Bostich's computer did not contain such details-and knowing that Rudy Bostich knew it as well.
"WHAT?" he yelped in reaction. "It's right here, in your computer."
"The hell it is!"
"You, a father, with a daughter who was once eleven years old, too.
How on earth could you carry such a picture?"
"I didn't! There's no such picture!"
"Are you going to tell me it was an evidence file, Rudy?"
He hesitated, obviously calculating whether such a claim could work, but realized he'd trapped himself. "NO! There's no such picture.''
"You can see the ragged skin, the blood, and the agony she's in!"
"Not in MY computer! NEVER in my computer!"
"It's here, in my lap, in your computer. THE SAME PICTURE, DAMN YOU!" she yelled suddenly, watching his eyelids pop open as he came forward to yell back.
"THAT'S A DIFFERENT SHOT THAN I HAD?
Kat left the stunned silence undisturbed as she watched Bostich's expression change from quaking fury to wide-eyed horror.
She looked down and nodded. "I know it is, Mr. Bostich." She looked him in the eye. "I wanted to make sure you knew as well.
You're right, as you well know. The picture of Melinda Wolfe in your computer does not show any mutilation, but you didn't know you were going to get any shots of a little murder victim, did you? You thought you were just buying the usual package from your supplier."
His eyes were wide, his mouth open, and there was no attempt to answer.
She glanced down again. "Look, Rudy. Men sometimes have some pretty weird feelings about women, and even though possessing pictures like you have on your computer breaks the law, I know that sometimes that sort of lurid interest begins as a deviant urge and grows, until one day, stupidly, you let your twisted fantasies take over, and you buy something you shouldn't have ever touched. Your supplier sent Melinda's picture as a warning not to expose him, didn't he?
DIDN'T HE?"
She saw him moisten his lips, his breathing accelerating as he watched her.
"You see, Rudy, I already know it was the supplier who gave you the tip about Melinda's murderer. You called Detective Matson in all innocence, trying to catch a murderer, but when the judge wanted to talk to you about it, your supplier, who gave you the information to begin with, warned you to say nothing about your source, or he'd expose your nasty little habit of looking at pictures of children being forced to have sex."
"Bullshit! I have no interest in such things!"
"That, of course," she continued, "would destroy your career, so you lied on the stand to protect yourself. Then you discovered Melinda's picture in the latest bunch, you got scared, you frantically erased everything, but you didn't know how to totally obliterate a file. You had no idea those pictures were really still there, just waiting for someone to hit the right button and reassemble them. Have I got it right so far?"
Bostich swallowed hard and pushed himself up slightly in the seat.
"That's all a complete fabrication, Bronsky."
"Oh, and I can't prove any of it?"
"You can't prove a thing because it's not true."
Kat looked over at Annette.
"You've heard everything he's said, haven't you, Annette?"
She nodded resolutely. "I'm going to write it down in lurid detail."
Kat looked back at Bostich.
"And thanks to the loan of your tape recorder, we have it all on tape as well. Okay, Rudy. Here's the deal. We're both still hostages here, as are all the people in the back. Despite the trouble you're in, we all may still die if Ken Wolfe doesn't get what he wants, which is your admission that you lied to that Connecticut judge."
She began counting off points on her fingers.
"One, we have the evidence from your computer, and that's enough to convict. Two, we know who your supplier is, and he's already been arrested and has agreed to testify he was the tipster because Lumin was his customer, too."
"That's a lie? Bostich snapped without conviction.
Of course it is, you slime! Kat thought to herself while maintaining a neutral expression. But you can't be sure, can you?
"We've got him, Rudy, and he'll give you up in a split second for a deal."
She looked at her hand and extended a third finger.
"Okay, and three, we have numerous witnesses to your contradictory statements and your interesting conduct aboard this aircraft." She looked up at him. "I don't think you're going to be heading up the Justice Department anytime soon, Rudy. The real question here is jail time, and if we survive this ordeal without your help and you're later convicted, I doubt anyone is going to be interested in leniency when you could have confessed and ended this hijacking."
"Go to hell!" he said quietly.
"It's over, Rudy! Face it. Make the best of it. You have some wiggle room to do the right thing for once. Let's get you on the phone to that judge in Connecticut. After all, as long as Lumin is out there, your daughter is vulnerable, too."
"My daughter is grown, and I don't even know where she is."
Kat looked concerned. "She won't have anything to do with you?"
<
br /> "No."
"How about her mother?"
"We're divorced."
"And your daughter lived with her mother after the divorce?"
"No. She ran away at sixteen." There was anguish on his face, and Kat calculated the odds of trusting her premonition.
"Rudy, you know, don't you?"
"Know what?"
"Why she ran away."
"No. I don't know."
"Oh, yes you do. It's been killing you for a long time. Knowing your sickness--and it is a mental problem, Rudy--your sickness is responsible."
He sat rubbing his temple with both hands, his eyes looking up at her in numb defeat.
"What're you saying? That I'm an alcoholic or something?"
"You wish it were that simple, Rudy, but you know it isn't."
He dropped his hands and glared at her. "How the hell can you know anything about me?"
She shook her head sadly. "You really don't understand, do you?"
"What?"
"The syndrome that owns you." She shifted her position and sighed. "I'm a psychologist, Rudy. Men with your fixation travel a predictable behavioral path. It's very sad you didn't know that, or maybe you could have gotten help in time."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"The perverted desires, Rudy. The midnight desires, the strange images in your mind, and the perverted things you imagine yourself doing to females. Those twisted fantasies have been in your head since you were a little boy, and you've never told anyone, have you?"
He looked away and shook his head in feigned disgust as she leaned forward, speaking in a calm, insistent voice.
"You can deny it to me, Rudy, but you can't deny it to yourself.
You've been fighting this all your life."
The overt motions had stopped, but she could see his jaw grinding back and forth as he looked out the window and listened.
"Those awful fantasies were always inappropriate, but they were always compelling as well. They always are. They involve your wife, your mother, and a reaction to all females. When hidden, they erupt in predictable ways, especially in a man who has this illness, doesn't know it, and then ends up entrusted with the care of a young, beautiful daughter."
He looked around at her in silence, his eyes wide. "I don't understand what you're saying."
"Yes you do, Rudy. If you hadn't molested your daughter as a little girl, she wouldn't have left at sixteen."
The explosion was slow to come, but it flared with anticipated fury as he came part way out of the seat, sputtering and spitting.
"Fuck you, bitch! Just-just fuck you! It's always the male, isn't it?
Always the man's fault. Never the female! Well, FUCK YOU!" He turned his head to the window as Kat nodded sadly and let the silence grow heavy before she spoke.
"Rudy, that is not the response of an innocent father."
She got to her feet and took a deep breath as she glanced at a thoroughly shaken Annette.
She looked back at Bostich. "Think it over. When I come back, if you're not ready to talk to the judge in Stamford and clear this up, I'm going to place you under arrest."
Aboard AirBridge Flight 90. 4:35 P.M.
Kat delivered the prescribed sequence of knocks to the cockpit door, and Ken opened it from within. She closed the door behind her and slid into the copilot's seat as Ken turned in her direction.
"Your phone rang," Ken told her, "but it was Frank, not Roger Matson. He told me Lumin's been arrested and is on the way to the county jail in Denver."
"Good!" she said.
"He also patched me into a call from Connecticut." Ken closed his eyes and winced, shaking his head slightly. "That was the hardest of all, Kat."
"I don't understand."
He looked up at her, the pain clearly visible. "Tom Davidson. The fellow who gave me a job when I desperately needed one years ago, flying his private jet. It was Tom Davidson who stood beside me and kind of forced AirBridge to hire me two years ago."
"How on earth did Davidson get Frank to patch him through?"
Ken shrugged. "North's political pull, I suppose. He has plenty. I'm still stunned that he's out there flying formation. I didn't realize, until Tom called, that North was involved. I mean, I knew he was the billionaire financing most of Tom's airline, but--"
"North didn't tell me," Kat added, "that he was an owner of Air-Bridge when we asked for his help."
Ken nodded. "I'm not surprised. He probably didn't want you to think he was protecting AirBridge's interests." He glanced at her.
"Tom was trying to talk me into landing and letting everyone go, including Bostich. He was thunderstruck to hear what we'd found on Bostich's computer."
"I can imagine," Kat replied, feeling off balance at such a call being relayed into the middle of a hijacking. "Does he know Bostich?"
Ken nodded. "For many years. He said the news that Bostich likes kiddie porn makes him wonder if he could have been connected with Lumin directly. He was very glad to hear that Lumin's been arrested."
"Well, that was one of your major goals, Ken."
"Yes, but the federal grand jury in Denver has said nothing about indicting him, and that has to be done."
Kat looked at him. "Ken, we're in luck. With what I just dragged out of Bostich, I don't think you're going to need federal charges. I think the state of Connecticut will be able to get the evidence back in."
Ken searched her face carefully. "You mean he confessed?"
She shook her head, averting her eyes, feeling strangely let down.
"No, but he trapped himself, Ken." She held up Bostich's tape recorder and locked eyes with him, her excitement returning. "I said nothing to him about your reconstructing erased files, but he already knew the files you found were erased, so he obviously knew they were there."
"That's nothing. That's obvious!" A dismissive look crossed his face, punctuated by Kat holding her index finger up in a stop gesture.
"Wait. He also knew Melinda's picture was there, too, and he knew precisely what was on it, and that unintentional admission was before a witness, and openly on tape."
"Anything else?"
"Now, Ken, this isn't hard evidence, okay? But by his reaction to my questions and his prurient interest in kiddie porn, I'm convinced he molested his daughter when she was little."
Ken's eyes had looked haunted from the moment she was forced aboard, but now a searing flash of pain careened across his face like a wave.
"You've got to be kidding," he said with obvious disgust.
She shook her head.
"I guess that figures. After we left Salt Lake, I found out he had a daughter named Annie, and his reactions when I pushed were not normal."
Ken sighed and looked at her. "But am I missing something here, Kat? How does any of that help convince the judge that Bostich lied about the tip to Roger Matson?"
"It helps destroy his credibility and correspondingly increases Roger Matson's credibility."
He was shaking his head as she continued. "Not enough."
"Ken, look, before today, Bostich could always win against an ordinary detective in a contest of credibility simply because of his position.
But not now, not after what we've discovered."
"State judges, too often, are self-righteous bastards with poor legal training, and that one was no exception. Can you imagine the gall of a robed idiot like that to free a murderer just to make a legal point to the police? There's no way he'd reverse himself just because we call from an airplane with allegations about Bostich. Only Bostich himself can cause a reversal."
"Ken," she tried again, unprepared for his reaction as he turned toward her with eyebrows flaring, his voice loud and angry.
"DAMMIT!" His right fist was clenched as he cocked his head to one side and locked his jaw, and just as quickly took a deep breath and motioned for her to wait. "Kat, get this straight! Either Bostich confesses to the judge, on the phone, in the next hour, while we're still flying, or
I'm still at square one with no way to prosecute Lumin, and that is NOT acceptable!"
Kat chewed her lip and stared blankly at the instruments, her optimism gone with the gut level knowledge that he was right. Something beyond Bostich's lack of credibility, his criminal possession of kiddie porn, and his reactions to her questions would be needed to reinstate the evidence against Lumin. Even the fact of Bostich's connection to the sleazy world of kiddie porn wasn't enough. Bostich himself had to testify that he called Detective Matson to pass on the tip about Melin- da's killer.
John J Nance - The Last Hostage Page 36
