Final Approach (20 page)

Chapter Thirty-nine

Trish and Scud pointed their flashlights at the perimeter of the hole.

“Go on,” Scud said.

I knelt on the mound of damp earth surrounding the pit, as if to pray, and made the sign of the cross.

“Forget that,” Trish said from the blackness behind me. “You can chat in the afterlife.”

I scooped blocks of mud into my fists.

Behind me, twigs snapped and her flashlight beam jostled. I kept my head bowed and steadied myself.

Her foot pressed into my back. I slid sideways and hurled a loosely packed ball of mud toward her face. She looked away and shielded her eyes. I knocked the flashlight from her hand. It landed silently in the crude grave.

Before I could stand, she raised her gun. I flung the other handful of dirt at her and dived for her knees. She thudded onto the ground before she could get off a shot, but Scud fired a round and missed.

Trish yelled. “She’s right on top of me!”

A car hummed up the main road. I squinted through the trees and thought I saw the flicker of headlights and taillights.

I grabbed a thick shock of her hair and wrenched her head backward. She cried out and pried at my fingers. I used my other hand to rake fingernails over her face until I found her eyes, then I dug in. She screamed and let go of me, reaching instead for her face. I staggered to my feet and ran toward the road.

Twigs and brush scraped my legs and I lost a shoe in the sticky mud. I knew Scud was close behind me.

A car turned onto the dirt driveway ahead.

I ran toward its lights, but it continued past me.

“Wait! Help!”

The car was going to the cabin.

A shot fired; it was so loud it seemed the gun was right beside my head. Heavy footfalls tramped in the brush behind me. Scud was gaining speed. I tripped in a low spot and caught myself on a tree. The car kept its course.

“Stop!” I screamed again.

Another shot fired, and a sharp crack exploded from a tree in front of me. The car reversed. I dodged behind a tree and stayed low and still.

From the driveway, someone shouted my name.

It was Vince.

I couldn’t answer without giving myself away.

“Emily! Are you there?” he called again. “Are you okay? Emily?”

His voice was getting louder. He was coming into the woods to look for me.

“They’ve got guns!” I shouted.

I sprinted for him.

“This don’t concern you, Vince,” Scud yelled, and fired again.

As I neared the driveway, I made out the area surrounding Vince’s car, but didn’t see him. I zigzagged to stay behind trees and finally hid behind one large enough to cover me.

The car, still running, was in the driveway with its lights on. Vince had left the driver’s door open, and the interior was illuminated by the dome light. But I couldn’t spot Vince anywhere. Was he taking cover on the other side of the car?

In the distance, a helicopter approached and the aggressive chop of its rotors told me it was closing in fast. Within moments a spotlight swept the woods around us. Its aimless ray was off-target, but I hoped it was enough to scare Trish and Scud.

I caught sight of Scud’s flashlight beam; he was about twenty feet to my left and inching closer. I stayed low behind my tree.

A gunshot sounded, and Scud toppled to the ground, doubled over. Vince bolted from the shadows and ran to the driver’s side of the car.

“Emily!” he shouted. “Get in the car!”

I emerged from the woods about ten feet in front of the car. I was hurrying toward its passenger door when I spotted a figure on the drive. Trish was the same distance behind the car as I was in front of it, and her gun was trained on me. I was trapped in the headlights of the car.

“Drop it,” Vince said.

She swung the gun toward him, but his weapon was already raised. Trish wouldn’t hesitate to kill him. I worried the same might not be true for Vince.

“This isn’t about you,” she said to him. “Don’t make me do this.”

He didn’t move.

They stared at each other, weapons drawn, and I had the sensation more was being said silently between them than what I could imagine. Down the road, a shrill chirp sounded, followed by the beginning wails of several sirens.

In a fluid motion, Trish whirled and redirected her aim on me. Vince fired twice. She collapsed in a heap on the edge of the woods.

I started toward the car as he lowered the gun. He turned and reached for me with his other hand. I began to sob when his hand closed around mine.

“When I heard what you were planning,” he said, “I called Trish to try to reason with her. Heard the train in the background and figured she was hiding up here. Your text message to Jeannie confirmed my hunch. This was her dad’s hunting cabin.”

Above, the helicopter was deafening as its spotlight converged on the secluded old shack. Agents onboard would expect Trish and her henchmen to be inside. I panicked; they might not know about the kids. If they opened fire, Annette or Casey could be killed in the siege. I watched the helicopter hover and spin as it jockeyed for the best view. Then I turned to tell Vince why I had to go.

It seemed his body jerked before I heard the round that hit him. A small patch of red appeared below his shoulder, and before he lowered his eyes to look at it, the stain spread to the size of a grapefruit.

I squinted toward the tree line. Vince slid down the side of the car until he was sitting on the ground next to me. He pushed his gun up into my hand.

On the other side of the car, Scud leaned beside a tree, his abdomen dark with blood. His face, once so striking, was cadaverous and pallid in the diffuse headlights. He kept his gun raised, but trembled as if the effort were exhausting. His eyes flashed and locked on mine. Suddenly his aim steadied.

I leveled the gun and fired until it was empty.

Epilogue

In seventh grade, I asked my dad if he ever shot anyone in Vietnam. We were walking through a parking lot, on our way into a grocery store. He tucked his sunglasses into his front pocket and said, “If they shot at me, I shot back.” We entered through automatic doors, he picked up the weekend sales flyer, and that was that.

It took twenty years, but I finally appreciated his brevity. Strangely, I gave little thought to having killed Scud.

In the days following the shootings, I spent many hours in interview rooms, dutifully remembering specifics. Then I spent even more hours trying to forget them. Kurt, I was told, bolted when he heard the sirens and helicopter that night. A boat launch a mile further into the woods offered the best explanation of how he’d gotten away. He’d left Casey and Annette alone in the cabin, probably unwilling to jeopardize an escape by slowing himself down. Reinforcements intercepted him a few miles down the shore. Difficult as it was for me to believe, prosecutors considered him a low level offender. They used that as leverage in exchange for information about bigger fish in his organization, namely Trish Dalton. Only a subset of his resulting story interested me, the details about what happened to Jack and Annette.

Claiming no involvement in the crime that destroyed my family, Kurt gave up the few facts he’d gleaned from Trish on the day of the shootings. Jack’s boat—the one I should have been on—was ambushed on Lake Erie, far enough off shore that no other boaters saw what happened. His attackers took Annette, who’d be profitable on the black market, before killing Jack and damaging his boat, making the death look accidental. The explanation validated my suspicions and should have provided closure, but instead only made my heartache worse.

Prosecutors were building a case against Trish. Vince’s shots had been damaging, but not fatal. He told me bone fragments had damaged his cousin’s spinal cord in the lumbar region, leaving her unable to walk and suffering persistent neuropathic pain. After the requisite stay in a guarded hospital room, Trish would be released into federal custody, where it seemed she’d spend the rest of her life as a “special needs inmate.” I often wondered if it was better or worse for Vince that she’d lived.

No one I asked would speculate on what Trish’s capture meant for their racketeering ring. I concluded from vague, open-ended answers that folks were sparing me the truth. Clement had described the size of the underground organization that he and so many other agents tirelessly worked to bring down. I imagined that when one leader got incarcerated, another probably got promoted to fill the empty seat. Maybe the beast had been wounded, but I figured it was still very much alive.

Jeannie and I made frequent visits to Vince’s hospital room. Once, on our way up the elevator with Richard, Jeannie suggested we try her hospital pick-me-up porn idea. She said we’d missed our chance with Clement, but Vince was a better sport anyway.

I’d never heard Richard laugh before. His laughing with us, clowning around that day, felt like amends for things I’d left unsaid, or poorly said, in the aftermath of all I’d misunderstood about him years ago. Before we said goodbye, he passed me an envelope. Karen Lyons had written to thank me for my part in bringing back her son. She included a picture of the two of them. I’d never seen Ms. Lyons before; the dimples I loved so much on Casey were from her.

Four days passed before a DNA test confirmed Annette was mine. Not that I’d had any doubt. In the interim, I couldn’t have her, and neither could the Fletchers—the couple she knew as parents. My parental rights were ambiguous without a test result, and the Fletchers were deemed a flight risk. Annette was placed in short-term foster care.

I used the time to put my affairs in order. When I returned to Cleveland, I quit my job at BioTek, which was timed well, because Bowman was probably about to fire me anyway. Jeannie offered me five hundred dollars and a session at her swanky hair salon if I’d take Johnny Paycheck’s approach and tell Bowman to “take this job and shove it” during his weekly staff meeting. She’d throw in a manicure if I’d smack my ass on my way out the door. Instead, I wrote a polite letter explaining my unanticipated family changes and expressed regrets for not providing two-weeks’ notice. My colleagues took me out to lunch and presented a gift certificate for Toys R Us.

Movers came and loaded the essentials onto a truck. I left the remainder behind, in my house, where Jeannie would live rent-free until my indefinite return. Meanwhile, I’d be in Texas, taking baby steps to forge a relationship with a little girl who might never call me Mom.

When the test results came back, and the Fletchers couldn’t produce a signed waiver of my rights, I received full legal and physical custody of Annette. Yet, what joy is in an outcome that breaks your child’s heart?

My relationship with the Fletchers was tenuous to say the least, but we shared a genuine interest in what was best for Annette. We attended family counseling together and agreed to cooperate while transitioning our little girl. They’d been told Annette was from an abusive family. The operative who handled their case went so far as to produce falsified medical records. In their desperation to have a child, and their sympathy for mine, they looked the other way when details of their adoption process were sketchy and hurried. The adoption, they said, had been surprisingly quick, but they’d attributed that to the higher “agency fees” they’d paid. Neither seemed the type to knowingly commit a felony. It was obvious the same crime that had broken my heart was now breaking theirs.

Not surprisingly, Kurt was less forthcoming with details of Annette’s most recent abduction, but between Betsy Fletcher’s story and Annette’s account, we formed a reasonable idea about how he’d pulled that off. On the day Annette was kidnapped from their home, Betsy opened the door to a telephone company worker without a thought. He forced himself inside and took Annette, then shoved her into the back of a phone company van waiting in driveway. Betsy ran to grab her cell phone and car keys and tried to follow them as she called 9-1-1, but it wouldn’t matter. Annette was switched to a new car a few blocks away. The man who’d snatched her “peeled the pictures off the side of his van” before driving it away. Clement’s team figured the only reason Betsy hadn’t been shot on sight was because Trish was planning to ransom Annette back after leaving me dead in the woods.

The Fletchers urged me to consider letting Annette make a gradual transition into my care. I supported the sentiment, but told them outright that I wouldn’t risk losing her again. If the FBI thought they might flee with her, why should I believe differently?

I rented an apartment two miles from their home and Annette moved in with me. It wasn’t the ideal situation for anyone, but I think the Fletchers appreciated my efforts. They sent over many of her favorite things, including a green pair of sneakers and a stuffed giraffe named Georgina. We had dinner as a foursome most nights, at their house or mine, and spent much of our weekend time together too. I resented the ever-present third and fourth wheels, but needed them. I didn’t know Annette was afraid of spiders or that she’d only eat spaghetti if there were no meatballs. Without Betsy to translate and explain my daughter to me, our reunion would have been a clumsy mess. We’d both suffered the terror of losing our little girl and, if nothing else, those experiences bonded us in empathy. Eventually, I realized I had nothing to fear in the Fletchers.

“My mommy said there was a mistake when I was a baby,” Annette said one afternoon in March. We were playing Crazy Eights. She had a milk mustache and too many cards for her small fingers to manage. A jack flopped onto the kitchen table.

“What kind of mistake?”

“Somebody was supposed to give Mommy a baby who needed a new family. But I didn’t need a new family.”

I set down my cards.

“That’s true,” I said. “I’ve always been your mommy. And I would have come sooner, but I couldn’t find you until now. I’m so thankful your mom and dad took such good care of you for me.”

She shoved the misplaced card back into her stack and nodded.

“We’re both lucky, you know,” I continued. “I get to love a beautiful little girl, and you get an extra parent.”

She giggled. “A bonus parent.”

My telephone rang.

“Oh!” she said. “Can I answer it? I know how.”

I smiled, and she picked up the handset.

“Hello?” she said, then listened. She shook her head. “Nope, sorry. My mommy’s not here.”

I held out my hand and gestured for the phone. It was Vince.

“I’m calling to collect my pizza dinner,” he said.

Annette maneuvered onto her knees and leaned forward in her chair, watching me.

I heard guitar strumming on Vince’s end. “You promised to take me out for pizza when I learned to play the F chord,” he said with laughter in his voice.

“You were medicated when I said that.”

“Still. You said it.” He strummed the F chord over and over, but it wasn’t quite right.

“You’re not holding the strings—”

“So, what are you ladies doing later? Because I think it’s pizza night.”

I covered the mouthpiece. “Do you want to go out for pizza with my friend Vince tonight?”

“Is he bringing his dog?”

Vince chuckled. “You bring your girl, I’ll bring mine. We’ll get take-out and eat at the park.”

“It’s your turn,” Annette said to me, and pointed at the discard pile.

“Sounds good,” I said into the phone. “Talk to you later.”

Annette hung up the phone for me. I drew from the deck and discarded.

She took her turn and sighed.

“Sometimes, can we do it the other way, where I live with my mom and dad and visit you?” She put her elbow on the table and leaned her chin into her hand.

I squeezed my lips together.

“Would that make you happy?” I finally asked.

She smiled broadly and her eyes squinted the same way Jack’s used to. His laugh lines were the only thing missing.

“Then I suppose we could do that once in a while,” I said, unsure and yet strangely certain at the same time about the rightness of her request.

She laid down a card. “Can we especially do that on the nights you cook fish?”