Final Approach (6 page)
Authors: Rachel Brady
Wal-Mart. One place I did not foresee a sleuthing rendezvous, but there I was.
At ten o’clock on a Thursday night, the parking lot was as busy as noon on Saturday. A mammoth SUV hogged the center of a lane, laying claim to a spot when another was vacant three spaces behind it.
I made my way inside, where I was greeted by a middle-aged man in a blue vest and dopey octopus hat. A small McDonald’s occupied a front corner of the store, and when I walked inside, Richard was leaning against the restaurant’s wall waiting for me.
“Let’s sit.” He steered me toward a table. The photo envelope was in his hand.
“Hi, Richard. Good to see you too.”
He shot me a look of flat irritation as I slid into my side of a booth.
He removed the photos from their envelope. The picture on top of the stack included the group I’d jumped with right after my dive with Vince. Scud and Marie had jumped into the shot for fun, but I didn’t remember the names of the others. I reached for my handbag. My logbook was there, and I’d written down all the names earlier. I flipped to the entry, ready to match forgotten names with faces, when Richard surprised me.
“This one, right here,” he said, tapping the glossy print. “Karen recognizes this woman. Who is she?”
I frowned. The name wasn’t in my book, and I’d never even thought to ask it. In the background of the shot, between Scud and Marie’s heads, a woman was walking across the landing field. Richard must have read my confusion.
“What is it?” He leaned in close, hungry for information I didn’t have.
“I don’t know her name,” I said, shaking my head. “She was our pilot.”
An obese woman in a muumuu and flip-flops lumbered past us with a loaded tray, and two chunky school-agers followed several paces behind her. Richard slumped backward into the hard plastic booth. At first I thought he was reeling from disappointment. Then he bit his lower lip and started nodding.
“That actually makes sense,” he said, mostly to himself. “Here’s the thing. Eric worked for a local petrochemical plant. Sometimes the job took him away from home for extended periods.”
I kept my mouth shut and let him go on.
“Karen was a stay-at-home mom, so sometimes she and Casey traveled with him.” He did his salesman nod. I nodded back to show I was following.
“They traveled on the company jet.” He looked hard at me. “Who flies the company jet?”
How the hell should I know? I wondered. And then, mercifully, the light came on. I grabbed the photo off the table and pointed to the woman in question.
“
She
does?” I said. “She flies for Eric’s company?”
“Karen recognized this woman from the airstrip Eric’s company uses.”
I digested that.
“If this woman flew the Lyons family around, she’d know about Casey,” I said.
Richard pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and grabbed a napkin from the tabletop dispenser. He scribbled a note.
“Easy enough for her to get their address,” he said.
One of the kids with Muumuu Woman shuffled past us on untied sneakers to get a few paper cups full of ketchup.
I lowered my voice. “What would she want with their child? Nobody asked for ransom money.”
He clicked his pen shut and shook his head.
“Oh my God!” I whispered. “Do you think this woman had something to do with Eric’s murder?”
Richard shrugged. Questions were coming too fast for both of us.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, concentrating.
A moment later, they snapped open. “I need her name. Some background.”
“Okay,” I said. That would be easy to get from the chatty crowd at the DZ.
Richard continued, “It’s been six days. You know what they say about missing kids and the first twenty-four hours, right?”
“Their odds plummet after the first day.”
“Casey’s been gone for six days. Finding out this pilot’s name and story might not be enough.”
“What are you saying?”
He regarded me briefly. “How comfortable would you be searching through the drop zone office?”
My stomach lurched.
“Define ‘searching through.’”
The look on his face said it all. He wasn’t going to define “searching through.” I felt bile rise into my throat.
“If I were to search the office, Richard, what would I be looking for, exactly?”
“Maybe the name ‘Lyons’ on some paperwork…evidence of a baby being around the place…something fishy in the day planner. Just look for stuff,” he concluded vaguely. “Interesting stuff.”
I conjured more images of a jail cell.
“How many offices have you searched in your time, Richard?”
He shrugged. “Dozens.”
“Any tips?”
He grinned. “Don’t get caught.”
I exhaled. One question remained.
“When am I supposed to search?”
Richard gave the tabletop a two-handed smack I read as our conversation-closer.
“Tonight I guess.”
Tonight he guessed. Great.
That night I lay awake in my tent, waiting for the middle of the night to come, unsure when exactly that was. I had one o’clock in mind, but at that hour, some folks were still loafing by fires. So I pushed it back to two. By then, the airport was silent, except for an occasional exchange between frogs.
I rolled onto my stomach and unzipped a few inches of the window panel in my tent. No one was around.
Pop-up campers and tents were set up around the field. A platinum moon, mostly full, illuminated the acreage stretched around me. I pulled on sneakers and let myself out of the tent. Remnants of campfire smoke hung in the air.
Moisture soaked the toes of my shoes and made my feet cold. The hangar door was slightly ajar so campers could use the showers and restrooms. I ducked inside, where the Cessna was parked for the night. Tomorrow a rented Otter would take its place for the weekend.
Vagrant jumpers slept on the hangar’s carpeted floor, in the shadow of the plane. I tip-toed around air mattresses and sleeping bags and stalked toward the office, careful not to step on anyone.
I eased the door open and stepped inside. Thin rays of light escaped from the restrooms at the far end of the office; their doors were cracked open. The only other illumination came from the giant blinking light on the old, cassette-style answering machine.
The place was stone silent. I scanned the deserted, shadowy office with my hand still on the doorknob and felt like a common thief and first-rate fool.
A hasty sweep of the countertop revealed nothing in the message pads or ledger. I opened drawers, rifled through notebooks, and thumbed through receipts, but none of the paperwork stood out as a possible link to Casey.
Beside the phone, old copies of
Parachutist
magazine were wedged between a bookend and a small metal box serving as its counterpart. When I reached for the box, something rustled behind me.
I pulled my hand back and whirled. It was only Rick’s cat, nosing through a dish of kitty chow. My pulse quickened and pounded behind my forehead. Its rhythm sounded like “Id-i-ot, Id-i-ot, Id-i-ot.”
I caught my breath and went back to the box, which turned out to be a stash of jellybeans. I helped myself to one and snapped it shut.
The last place to check was the rigger’s loft. I’d left my own gear there for the night to spare some room in my cramped little tent.
I crossed the office and slipped inside the narrow loft. There was no way I’d flip any light switches. The best I could do to get some light was to prop the door open with a waste paper basket. A reasonable person would have remembered a flashlight.
The workbench ran along one wall. Three rigs in various stages of assembly waited on its wooden surface. Tools were meticulously arranged on a pegboard suspended over the bench. A few manufacturers’ guides were opened to dog-eared pages. My own rig hung on the opposite wall, behind a queue of student rigs, all neatly aligned, ready for tomorrow.
I pulled open a drawer and found some outdated flight logs and a pack of gum. The drawer beneath it had a stapler and a canister of Pringles.
A TV and VCR monopolized a tabletop beside the far wall, next to a computer and a stack of blank DVDs. The loft was doubling as an editing room. Archived DVDs and VHS tapes filled a row of overhead shelves. I fingered the tapes one at a time, turning my head sideways to try to read their labels, but it was too dark.
I stepped toward the computer.
“Looking for something?” Someone spoke from the shadows behind me.
My pulse quickened again. How could anyone have come in so noiselessly?
I faced the doorway, but couldn’t tell who was there. He leaned on the doorframe, one foot crossed over the other, and his shadow spanned the loft like a long, bony hand.
“I was in for a bathroom stop,” I said. “And I was…curious, I guess.”
The man stepped back into the dim office, still looking at me. The subtle change in lighting revealed the rat face of Craig Clement.
“The loft is for employees only.”
“Got it,” I said. “Sorry.”
I offered an awkward wave and left, brushing past him because he wouldn’t move out of my way. I treaded around the sleepers in the hangar and made my way through dewy grass back to my tent, fervently wishing it were all steel with a door to lock. The best I could do was zip myself inside.
I sat on my sleeping bag and second-guessed myself. Why had I agreed to come to Texas in the first place? Four days had passed, we had a sketchy lead at best, and now things were getting freaky.
When my watch beeped at five, my head was thick with the kind of fatigue I remembered from college all-nighters. There was no way I was going on the first load, even though it meant passing up my free balloon jump. I stumbled to the hangar, drank coffee, and ate eggs and sausage links while making excuses. A young skydiver named Donna, who’d recently gotten her A license, was trying to talk Rick into a cheaper gear rental. I remembered my early jumps, when enthusiasm for the sport outweighed my budget. I told Donna I’d be glad to share my rig. She said I “rocked.”
The morning was chilly, so I stayed in the sweatshirt and sweatpants I’d slept in and found an empty lawn chair facing the landing field. I watched the balloon jumpers and Cessna loads and looked for the pilot from my picture, but didn’t find her. Someone was filling in, and it wasn’t Vince. That was lucky, considering how rough I looked.
Later that morning, I’d just warmed up another cup of coffee when a curvaceous middle-aged blond in leather pants and a tight sweater gingerly crossed the soggy parking lot in unsteady high-heeled boots. She draped an arm casually around Rick as he led her toward the hangar, apparently welcoming her in the same benign, flirtatious way he’d greeted me. Even from a distance, I could see the familiar lacquered red fingernails and overdone lip-gloss. Jeannie!
Right then, Scud sidled up and patted my behind. I was mortified he might have felt the same little jiggle I did. He followed my gaze to the parking lot and locked onto Jeannie.
“Mm, mm,” was all he said.
I wanted to leap into her arms and hug her. But instead I turned for the office before she spotted me. Explaining how we knew each other could be tricky. It’d be better to find her later, on my own.
***
Rick and Jeannie weren’t in the parking lot or the packing area. I wandered out back to the landing field, but they weren’t there either. When I passed the training room adjoining the hangar, the morning’s ground school class was inside. Students were lined up beside a wooden Cessna mock-up, practicing exits and PLFs—parachute landing falls.
Finally, I found them standing off to the side, watching. It looked like Rick was explaining the drills to Jeannie. When he left, I sneaked up behind her and leaned toward her ear.
“Gonna give it a go?”
She turned, startled. “Jeez, Emily. You scared the crap out of me!”
My sweatshirt protected me from the slap she levied on my shoulder.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” I said. “I’d have baked a cake.”
She smiled. “You look like shit. Where’s your make-up?”
I ignored her.
She pulled a pack of Salem Lights from her handbag.
“Can’t smoke in here.” I led her outside.
She promptly lit up.
“What are you doing here?”
“Checking on you.” She took a drag on her cigarette and exhaled, careful to blow the smoke away from me. “So what’s the skinny?”
Jeannie had to repeat the question, because my attention was elsewhere. Behind her, Craig and the pilot from my Spy Cam were filling up the Cessna at the fuel station beyond the runway. They talked with their backs to us, but I’d seen enough to recognize the woman. Jeannie followed my gaze.
“That woman’s a pilot here,” I said. “The missing kid’s mom recognized her from her ex-husband’s company. The guy’s staff here too. I pissed him off last night when he caught me snooping.”
She looked from them to me, eyebrows raised, and flung her cigarette into the damp grass where she smashed it under the toe of her boot.
I described my mucked up search and how Craig had caught me. “He gives me the creeps. Those two together spell trouble.”
Craig turned from the pump station to walk back to the hangar and Jeannie and I looked away. Jumpers headed toward the runway and I spotted Donna with my beautiful Mirage strapped to her back.
“There goes my baby,” I said.
Jeannie gave a questioning look.
“My gear. The girl over there with the spiky hair is borrowing my gear.”
Jeannie studied the brightly colored jumpsuits and rigs.
“Tell me the truth, Em. Could I do that?”
I laughed. “Probably, sweetie. But it would mess up your hair.”
She flipped me off with an expertly manicured middle finger and sashayed to the office without a look back, off to do God knows what.
***
Foot traffic was picking up and I recognized several jumpers, but I didn’t spot Vince. I’d changed into decent clothes and applied rudimentary make-up in case there was a sighting.
I chatted with a small group of jumpers in the landing area. Someone nearby called out, “Jump run!”
The Cessna was passing ten thousand feet overhead and looked like an aluminum fly ball in low orbit. I held a hand over my eyes to block the sun and craned my neck. This was Donna’s load.
When a dark speck peeled off from the silver speck, it meant jumpers were away. We couldn’t make them out as individuals until about thirty seconds later, when they tracked away from their formation to open. Soon after, like Technicolor popcorn kernels, canopies snapped open, making sounds like miniature thunderclaps.
A voice in the crowd called, “Cutaway!”
Sure enough, someone had chopped. Jettisoned from its harness-container, a discarded main tumbled over itself, looking more like a sheet in the spin cycle than a parachute. It wasn’t until I saw a solid yellow reserve inflate that I realized the cutaway parachute was mine.
Around me, skydivers and spectators excitedly pointed to the sky and speculated, but the sight of a fully inflated reserve, obviously piloted by a conscious jumper, greatly diminished the original wave of alarm. Still, I was uneasy. I didn’t like the coincidence of a malfunction on the morning following my first real lead.
Rick emerged from the office with his keys and headed for his pick-up truck. Donna would need a lift back to the airport. She was following the cutaway main canopy instead of steering toward the landing field. She knew that if she lost sight of my expensive equipment, it might be gone for good. I jogged to catch up with Rick, explained it was my gear, and asked to tag along. We climbed into the cab and he drove the length of his bumpy, muddy landing field until we came to a barbed-wire fence bordering a neighboring farm. An A-shaped stepladder straddled the wires, telling me more than one skydiver had landed there before. Donna was already on the ground when we got to her. She was unhurt, gathering up gear.
I used the ladder to cross the fence and sank into soft earth when I stepped down. Rick followed me. “What happened?” he asked Donna. “You okay?”
She frowned. “Line twists. Lots of them. More than I could kick out of, so I had to chop.”
I wasn’t sure what type of malfunction I’d been expecting her to report, but it definitely wasn’t line twists.
“I’m sorry I cut away your main, Emily.” She looked distraught. “I tried hard to fix it but it was taking too long and I started to get low and—”
I hugged her. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Rick waited for her to finish daisy chaining the lines and helped her out of the rig. A few yards past her, I gathered up the cutaway main. The three of us climbed the ladder back to Rick’s side of the fence, and Rick placed the rig and main in his truck bed before turning to her.
“Was that your first mal?”
She hesitated. Skydivers don’t admit first anythings. It means they have to buy beer for everyone else.
He put an arm around her. “That’s what I thought. Looks like you’re buying tonight, beautiful.”
At least he made her smile.
I was too bothered by the line twists to smile. I’d packed the rig myself and I don’t pack messes. I had the sudden, horrible feeling someone had tampered with it.
It wouldn’t have been difficult to do. After all, if I could get into the loft overnight, anyone could. I thought about Craig’s strange behavior in the office the night before and shuddered. He was staff, and a rigger. He could go in the loft and open a rig in full view of anyone and no one would give it a passing thought. I berated myself for not locking the gear in my car.
Whoever messed with my gear had to know why I was there. But how could that be? And why not sabotage my reserve too?
I decided it might be a stall tactic. I’d be tied up for a while, awaiting another repack. Maybe I was closer to a discovery than I thought. Maybe someone was buying time.
