Night Flight

by Donna Ball

  Dave said nothing. He wondered, not for the first time in his life, who would be making those arrangements when his own time came. The force was his only family, and that seemed a sad state of affairs. He had never intended to end up like that, but somehow over the years things had just gotten away from him. His father he had never known, his mother was dead twenty years now, and Alice . . . that was where it had all begun to fade, he supposed. With Alice, who first taught him that life wasn't always fair.

  "Chief."

  Mathison, the duty officer, was beckoning him across the room, and Hayforth went to him.

  Dave slid open the desk drawer to replace the pen, and his eyes fell on a nearly flattened pack of Camels. He had stopped smoking a year ago, after two years of Toby's constant nagging, but he had kept one cigarette—"for an emergency," he'd told Toby. He picked the package up, creasing it between his fingers until the outline of the single cigarette was clearly visible.

  Toby, waving away a fog of smoke in the car. "So you want to kill yourself, fine. But don't my lungs get a vote?"

  Dave, chuckling as he lit another. "In your line of work, you expect to live forever?"

  He held the package a moment longer, then carefully replaced it and slid the drawer shut.

  Hayforth was right, there was nothing more he could do tonight. He'd had one chance with Cathy Hamilton, and it was gone. Either they'd pick her up on the APB or they wouldn't, and either way it didn't matter to Dave. She didn't have the answers he needed, she was no longer his concern.

  He glanced across at Kreiger, then at Mark. “Read me off her telephone number, will you?”

  Mark clicked the mouse and Dave picked up the telephone. He punched out the numbers are Mark read them.

  He could feel Kreiger's eyes on him as he listened to the telephone ring on the other end.

  ********************

  Cathy cried out; she couldn't help it. At first she couldn't see anything for the blinding glare in her eyes, but she could hear a man's voice, muffled by the closed window and the sound of the engine. "FBI! Open the door! Keep your hands where I can see them and get out quietly, and there won't be any trouble."

  After that it all happened very quickly, almost simultaneously: a series of impressions, connections, actions, and reactions that tumbled together so rapidly they almost seemed to be happening outside of her awareness . . . and yet at the same time it was all too slow, too painful, terrifyingly clear. FBI? Had he said FBI? She pushed back in her seat, shading her eyes from the glare, and she caught a glimpse of the man's shadowed form. She heard the click of the door handle and frantically looked at the door lock. It was unlocked. She scrambled for the automatic door lock, but too late, and the door began to swing open. Why was the FBI pointing a gun at her? Had she heard him correctly? Frantically she tugged at the seat- belt release, twisting around, looking for escape. And that was when she saw the car that had pulled up silently behind her, its presence masked by the sound of her own engine noise. A light green sedan. The light green sedan.

  The door was open now, and the flashlight beam swung away as he lunged toward her. That was when she saw in his hand the cool steel of a gun, short and snub nosed, pointed at her.

  And that was when the cold, paralyzing horror of disbelief evaporated into fury, whitehot and sharp edged. It wasn't fair. She had done nothing. Her brother was dying—didn't they know that? — his children needed her, she had to get to them because she was all they had and it wasn't fair.

  She screamed, "I didn't do anything!" Her hand, almost of its own volition, grabbed the gear shift lever and slammed it into drive, and her foot stabbed the accelerator. Tires spun, flinging dirt and gravel, and there was a high, thin screaming sound that might have been mechanical, or might have come from her own throat. The car lurched forward and she heard the man's shout—shocked, defiant—and the thump of the car as it struck his body, struck it and made the car swerve with the impact. And then Cathy did scream, because she saw the man's body fly like a broken doll past her eyes and land in the weeds at the side of the drive. She thought, He's dead, I've killed him, I’ve killed a man . . . but she couldn't stop for that now. Some day she would stop and she'd think about it and she'd hear that sound, that dull, bone-cracking thump the car made when it hit him. She'd hear it over and over again until she went mad from hearing it . . . but not now. Now she couldn't think about it and now she wasn't sorry.

  It was him or you, Cath. You had to.

  She swung right out of the drive and onto the road, and as she did the door slammed shut. That sound. She gripped the wheel, dragged in one sobbing breath of air, and pushed down harder on the accelerator.

  That sound.

  *********************

  Hayforth said, "The dumpster behind the mini- mart. They found a woman's body, her throat cut."

  Kreiger looked up at him slowly.

  Dave said, "Laura?"

  Hayforth was looking at Kreiger. "Seems like a bit of a coincidence, doesn't it?"

  "It's Delcastle's style," agreed Kreiger. "He found out she was going to turn and he wanted to send you boys a little warning."

  "So that's it, then," Hayforth said. His voice was heavy, tired. "We've been chasing the wrong woman." And then his voice sharpened, as though he were focusing his attention, and he looked at Kreiger again. "We're going to need a positive ID. Can you send somebody out to do that?"

  Kreiger scowled and made a sharp dismissing gesture with his hand. "No time for that. We've got to bring in the Hamilton woman."

  "We've got every patrol car in the state looking for her. If she's out there—"

  "That's not good enough! We need choppers, more manpower—"

  "If I had it, don't you think I'd use it? God damnit, I've got three murders here, and that's about three times as many as I get in a year! That's my first priority right now, do you understand that?"

  Dave said quietly, "Where was she going?"

  Both men looked at him.

  "A schoolteacher from Lynn Haven, California . . . What was she doing up here at one-thirty in the morning?"

  That was when the phone was answered at Cathy Hamilton’s house Lynn Haven.

  "Cathy?" The woman's voice was breathless, anxious.

  Kreiger picked up an extension.

  Dave said, "This is Detective Dave Jenks, with the Portersville Police Department. Is this the residence of Ms. Catherine Hamilton?"

  A sharp indrawn breath, the pain of which pricked at Dave even across the miles of phone wire. "Oh, no. Please ... oh, God, what's happened? Is she okay? I knew I shouldn't have let her go alone, she shouldn't have been driving, the state she was in . . . was it an accident? Is she—"

  Dave said, "She's all right, ma'am, as far as I know. But she might be in trouble, and I need to ask you some questions. Who am I talking to, please?"

  After a moment's hesitation, the voice that came back was tinged with caution, which gradually grew into suspicion and indignation. "This is Ellen Brian, Cathy's friend. . . . Listen, where did you say you were from? Because with what's happened, if you're not calling about Jack you've got a hell of a nerve . . ."

  "What about Jack?"

  "Who are you?"

  "Detective Jenks, Portersville police," Dave repeated patiently. "Miss Brian, your friend drives a red Honda, doesn't she? And she was on her way north?"

  The caution was heavy, but the outrage had lessened. "That's right."

  "Portersville is about eighty miles north of you. Miss Hamilton stopped here about an hour ago, and there was an incident . . ."

  "Oh, for Christ's sake! If you're talking about a traffic ticket or a fender bender—the woman gets a phone call in the middle of the night saying that her brother, her whole family, has been in an accident and they're in a hospital three hundred miles away, so I think you could allow a little—"

  "Where?" Dave demanded. "Where are they?"

  More alarm than caution now. "Albany. Oregon."

  "And that's wh
ere she's headed?"

  "That's right, but-"

  "You said her brother was in an accident?"

  "Yes." The woman's voice was unsteady. "He's in Mercy Hospital in Albany, Oregon, and that's where Cathy was going. . . . Detective, it wasn't just a traffic ticket was it? It was something bad. Is Cathy all right?"

  Dave said, "Don't worry, Miss Brian. We're going to do our best to see she gets to Albany safely. Thank you for your help."

  Dave returned the phone to its cradle and leaned back in his chair. Jesus, he thought. Could it get any worse?

  Kreiger ripped the sheet off the notepad where he had jotted down the information Ellen Brian had given them. "All right," he said, his voice taut with satisfaction. "Now at least we know her route. If we don't get her on the road, we have her when she arrives. But this narrows it down to a field we can play in."

  Dave looked at him steadily. "Who's after her, Kreiger?"

  Kreiger strode toward the door.

  Dave called after him, "Do you still want the state patrol to bring her in if they find her first?"

  That stopped Kreiger, and he turned, meeting Dave's eyes for a long moment. Then he said mildly, "Of course."

  Dave watched him until he had pushed through the door and disappeared, and still he watched the place he had been, frowning and uneasy.

  He couldn't shake the feeling that Cathy Hamilton had been a lot safer when Kreiger was still inside the building.

  And who was following her?

  *********************

  Chapter Six

  Cathy's parents had died when she and Jack were no older than Jack's twins were now. Cathy had other memories of that age, but the death of her parents was cloudy, indistinct, almost unimportant, as though it were something that had been told to her rather than something she'd experienced. Jack remembered it much better than she did, and he had understood long before Cathy did what "not coming back" meant. For Cathy, it was going to stay at Grandma Floyd's house, with the big oak tree in the yard and the flowered curtains at the windows. She had always loved Grandma Floyd's house. It was like being on holiday all the time, and by the time that holiday feeling faded into what the rest of her life was going to be like, Cathy barely noticed, and never questioned.

  Her parents had died in an airplane crash that had taken twelve other lives. Sometimes now, when she heard about a plane crash with loss of life, she would stop and think, Someone is going to miss them. Someone's life is going to be changed forever. Someone isn't coming home, ever again. It was the only way she knew of paying tribute to her parents, because she didn't remember losing them. Their deaths had never touched her.

  Growing up had been fairy-tale perfect. Their father had been a real estate developer and he had left his children well provided for; they lacked for nothing. Their maternal grandparents were strong, healthy, and bursting with pride and love. And if ever they felt lonely, out of place . . . they had each other. They had their secret twin signs, they finished each other's sentences, they shared each other's thoughts, for a while they even had their secret twin language, until they realized it was upsetting their grandparents and stopped. They were both bright, outgoing, high achievers, though it was generally acknowledged that Jack was the brightest, the most charming, and would therefore go the farthest. When Cathy looked back on her childhood she couldn't remember anything bad happening to her. Ever.

  For her tenth birthday Cathy had received a Persian kitten that she loved beyond all reason. When the cat was a little over a year old it disappeared, and Cathy cried as though her heart would break. But even that story had a happy ending: the next day the cat returned, a little more aloof, a little less eager to purr and cuddle, and those were characteristics it never regained. Otherwise it was none the worse for wear. Not until she was an adult did Cathy learn that the cat had wandered out of the house and been hit by a car; her grandmother, unable to bear Cathy's heartbreak, had substituted another cat of the right appearance and temperament, and the child had never known. Once again, death had brushed close but had not touched her.

  And perhaps that was why, even now in the dark, fetid shadow of death's dusty wings, she could not accept the possibility. Jack was not going to die. She was not going to die. The man back in the churchyard was not dead.

  He might not be dead. She had gone perhaps three miles when the realization rose up, cold and clear. How could he be dead? She had never committed an act of violence against another human being before; she had assumed in her panic and horror that any force would be deadly, but it wasn't. She had struck him with the car going less than ten miles an hour. The sight of that body flying limply past her was imprinted on her brain forever, but if she had looked back would she have seen him struggling to his feet? If she had stopped to check, would she have found him battered and stunned, moaning and hurt . . . but still alive?

  She couldn't have killed him. It was physically impossible for her to have done so. But she had left him for dead. He might be dead now, or soon . . . And what if he had been with the FBI?

  But he had tried to kill her. FBI men didn’t try to shoot innocent women in church parking lots.

  Did they?

  Are you just going to leave him there?

  "What am I supposed to do?" Her voice, so ragged and taut with terror it should have been a scream, was little more than a broken whisper. But it was a whisper that filled the interior of the car, echoing around and around and redoubling on itself.

  She would be crazy to go back now. Even if she could find the place again, the man had tried to kill her. Hadn't he? The green sedan... it was the same one. The gun. . . she had seen it. And did it matter? Whatever his intentions had been toward her, she was the one who had committed the violence, and if she left him, if he died . . .

  Her hands tightened on the steering wheel, bone white. The dryness in her throat went all the way down to her stomach, and it was hard to breathe. Just let me get out of here. God, please, let this be over. . .

  She tried to think, to concentrate on her driving, on planning a sensible route. The signpost up ahead said Highway 11 and the designation looked familiar; she might have seen it on the map. She took the turn, relaxing just a fraction with the knowledge that now, at least, she knew what highway she was on. She would stop and check the map after a while.

  That man . . .

  But she wouldn't think about it. Her fingers tightened; she concentrated fiercely.

  The quality of the night seemed to change somewhat, fading into a lighter shade of black. It took Cathy a moment to understand what that might indicate. Lights. Civilization. Perhaps even the freeway.

  But it was nothing so glamorous. A cluster of roadside shops, all closed now, illuminated by a faded streetlight. A couple of junk shops, a secondhand clothing store. Her headlights flashed off the windows and left them dark again.

  A hundred yards ahead was a gas station. It was closed, but there was a phone stand outside.

  Her muscles tightened, and she gripped the wheel as though to physically prevent herself from being dragged from the car. She thought, No. I'm not stopping. I'd be crazy to stop.

  Can you live with yourself if you don't? It seemed like Jack's voice.

  No, don't do this. Don't. . .

  She turned into the parking lot of the service station, close to the phone booth. Deja vu. She put the car in park but left the engine running. Then she sat there, trembling, afraid to move, afraid even to look around at what might be waiting there in the shadows. She couldn't do this. Why did she think she had to do this?

  Because, she could almost hear Jack say, sometimes the line that separates the good guys from the bad guys is the only thing that's clear. Don't blur it now, Cathy.

  She caught her breath and clenched her fists briefly, tightly, digging her nails into her palms to stop the shaking. Then she reached into the coin drawer for change.

  She got out on the passenger side and left the door open, the engine running. The pavement was damp an
d foggy and her sneakered footsteps echoed when they struck it. Two-and-a-half steps to the telephone. The car door open and welcoming, three feet away. Behind her, the faded clapboard facade of the gas station looked decrepit, abandoned, a sheltering haven for rats or vagabonds or watching eyes. The two pumps were old fashioned, and looked unused. Maybe the place was abandoned. Maybe the phone didn't work. Maybe . . .

  She lifted the receiver and heard a dial tone. She dialed 911.

  She had no idea what county she was in, what street, what church she had left the victim at. She might have been talking to the same dispatcher she had called before, she didn't know. And she was taking no chances.

  When the woman answered, " 911. What is your emergency?" Cathy took a breath and made her voice steady.

  "There's an abandoned church with gables and a leaning steeple," she said. "There's been an accident there and a man's hurt. Please hurry."

  She replaced the receiver quickly and then brought her fingers to her lips, breathing lightly, shallowly through them while a wave of dizziness passed. Then, before she lost her courage, she lifted the receiver again, deposited the coins, and dialed another series of numbers.

  An eternity passed. The engine hummed beside her, using up precious gas, filling the air with exhaust fumes. Something crackled in the weeds to her right and startled Cathy so badly that she almost ran for the car. But in the next instant, something with small, luminous eyes darted toward the woods, and then the operator answered.

  "Yes," Cathy said quickly, "this is collect from Cathy." Her eyes scanned the darkness and she didn't add, please hurry though she wanted to. Her skin was tight, prickled with anxiety.

  One ring. Two.

  "Ellen," she murmured, pressing the phone tighter against her cheek as though to communicate the urgency through it. "Please . . ."

  Ellen's voice. "Hello?"

  "Ellen, thank God-"