The Homecoming (2 page)

There was a graveyard silence in the tower except for somebody at the back of the room, who said, in a small voice full of awe, “Holy shit.”

Parkhurst swallowed with pain and got onto Fire and Ambulance. While he was calling it in, one of the other controllers, a new kid named Matt Lamarr, studied the flight roster for a moment.

He looked up at the other guys, all of whom were still staring out at the mushroom-shaped cloud rising up from the golf course, except now they were barking and yapping and snapping at each other like a pack of deranged Labradoodles.

“Hey, dudes,” he said over the din, and then he said it again, louder. “Dudes!”

Everybody but John Parkhurst turned around to stare at him.

“What?”

“Morgan Littlebasket took his Cessna up at 10:22 hours? Right?”

“Yeah,” said one of the guys. “So what?”

“So, like, where is
he
?”

The Niceville black-and-whites got to the scene of the Learjet crash in four minutes, followed closely by the fire crews. The fireball was raging and pools of jet fuel were burning off all around the splash zone. It was just too hot to work the blaze. There wasn’t much for anybody to do other than to wait for it to die down and check for collateral injuries around the perimeter.

All they found was one lone vic wandering around in a daze, a crumpled
little man with a heavily damaged nose and a badly singed face who identified himself as Thad Llewellyn.

From what they could decipher of his hysterical ramblings it sounded as if his wife had been in the center of the impact zone when the Lear came screaming down into the fourteenth green.

Her name was Inge and apparently she’d been holding the pin for him while he was trying to chip his way out of a sand trap.

The patrol guys refrained from making the obvious hole-in-one jokes—at least in the guy’s hearing—and gently helped him into a cruiser and sent him off to Lady Grace Hospital, lights and siren if you please.

Then they set up a ribbon barrier to keep the bystanders at a safe distance—mostly groundskeepers and a few folks who’d been having Sunday brunch in the Hy Brasail Room—and settled in to wait for the flames to subside to a workable level and the duty supervisors to show up.

In the meantime they watched the wreck of the Lear burn down into a debris field of shattered metal and glass and body bits out of which rose a billowing black cloud with bright orange fire at the center. The wind was carrying the smoke eastward, away from the caravan of cop cars, but they could feel the heat coming off it even from a hundred feet away. The fairway grass was blackened all around the site.

Basically the entire fourteenth green was a smoldering crater fifty feet deep and a hundred feet across. Which is what happens when an aircraft vertically deploys into the terrain.

Nick Kavanaugh and his partner, Beau Norlett, got to the scene a few minutes later. The fire trucks were stacked up along the cart lane and people in HazMat suits were out there spraying foam all over the place. The EMT vans were parked out of the way, the paramedic crews leaning against the front bumpers or standing around talking in clusters. Nothing for them to do. There were no survivors. Whatever was left of the passengers and of Thad Llewellyn’s wife, Inge, would eventually get tagged and bagged by the Forensics guys or the Transportation Safety Accident Investigation crew.

Nick rolled their navy blue Crown Vic up behind a big black Suburban with
SUPERVISOR
printed across the tailgate in bright gold letters. It was Mavis Crossfire’s ride. Nick looked across at Beau as he opened the driver’s door.

“Let the LT know we’re here. Tell Tig that Staff Sergeant Crossfire is on the scene too. Then go see what the First Responders have to say.”

Beau Norlett was a young black guy shaped like an artillery round. Raw, but eager and tough, and getting more useful every day. He and Nick had only been partners for a week now, but it had been one hell of a tour. A bank robbery with six killed, including four cops. A wealthy older woman named Delia Cotton gone without a trace, and her elderly gardener, a man named Gray Haggard, gone with her. A hostage-taking at a church which required the services of a police sniper. And just yesterday, his wife’s father, Dillon, vanished from his office up at Virginia Military Institute, not seen since.

And now this.

A hell of a week.

“Will do, boss,” said Beau, who was still running on the adrenaline high of the last few days. Since the Belfair and Cullen County Criminal Investigation Division unit had high sartorial standards—at least Nick did—he’d bought two new suits, a Kors and a Zegna, and three pairs of Allen Edmonds shoes. At his salary, with a wife and two kids, this was a major investment.

“They got a coffee truck over there, Nick. Want a coffee? Honey bun?”

“Coffee would be great, but don’t call me honey bun in front of the harness guys.”

Beau laughed, picked up the handset, flicked the
SEND
tab. Nick closed the door and took a moment to wring out the kinks before he put on his suit jacket. He was in charcoal gray today, with a black shirt. No tie. It was too damn hot. He slipped his gold detective shield onto his belt, tugged at the Colt Python he carried in a holster on his right side, and surveyed the scene, getting his head into the game again.

At thirty-two, Nick was young to be a CID detective, but he had served eight years with the Fifth Special Forces, so his thirty-two wasn’t like the thirty-two-year-old hairball who is still living in your basement trying to finish his doctoral dissertation on Gender and Race Bias in Neo-Kantian Hermeneutics.

Nick was just over six feet, gray-blue eyes, blue-black hair graying at the temples, still taut and fit, married to Kate Walker, a family practice lawyer, whom he adored and who, he hoped, adored him back, which, most of the time, she did.

He walked up to the driver’s side of the Niceville PD Suburban and tapped on the window. Mavis Crossfire grinned back at him as she powered the glass down. A big-boned pink-faced woman with short-cropped red hair and smile lines around her pale blue eyes, she was in harness this morning—a crisp dark blue uniform with a big gold badge on her Kevlar vest and staff sergeant stripes on her sleeves.

“Nick. Top of the morning.”

Nick shook his head. “Top of the morning?”

“You’re Irish, aren’t you?”

“I was born in California.”

Mavis smiled, took a sip of coffee from a thermos with an Ole Miss logo on the side, nodded her head in the direction of the crash site.

“There’s a hell of a thing.”

“Yeah. Any survivors?”

“Not a chance. And another vic killed when it came down on top of her.”

“Do we know who she was?”

“Inge Llewellyn.”

“Jeez. Thad Llewellyn’s wife? Plus-sized Nordic lady with a voice that could cut glass?”

“That’s her.”

“Tough week for Thad Llewellyn. First his bank gets robbed, and now his wife gets hers on the fourteenth green. Does he know yet?”

“He was over there in a sand trap when the jet came down. First Responders found him wandering around the fairway with no eyebrows. Saw it all.”

“Where’s he now?”

“Black-and-white took him to Lady Grace. They’ve sedated him.”

“I sure hope so. Poor bastard. I heard it was a crow strike?”

Mavis nodded.

“Tower saw it happen. Lear smacked straight into the flock. Thousands of birds. Never had a chance. Now get this. There’s
another
fire crew over at the base of Tallulah’s Wall, picking through a wrecked Cessna. Tail numbers come back as Cherokee Nation Trust. Inside is a crispy critter named Morgan Littlebasket.”

“I know that name.”

Mavis nodded, looking at her notepad.

“Yes, you would. That would be
the
Morgan Littlebasket, head of the Cherokee Trust and all-around Very Inflated Person up in Gracie. Tower
guys say he showed up for a joyride at oh-nine-hundred this morning. Seemed a bit distracted. Fooled around with a pre-flight check and then took off around ten twenty. Went south. Witnesses say he buzzed those old trees along the crest of Tallulah’s Wall. Then he came down, skimmed along the Tulip River for a half mile, powered up again and banked left, rose up to maybe five, six hundred feet, altered course to the northwest, leveled out, and flew himself right smack into the middle of Tallulah’s Wall.”

“Straight and steady flight?”

“Not a weeble or a wobble. In like a bullet.”

“Man,” Nick said, smiling at her. “What do you figure was going through his mind?”

“The windshield, and thanks for the setup.”

“Maybe a suicide? Any note? Any last words?”

“Nothing so far. We’ve got people going through his house right now. Could have been a stroke or a heart attack. We’ll have to wait and see.”

“He’s got daughters, doesn’t he?”

“Two. Twyla and Bluebell. Lost the mother to cancer a while back. Her name was Lucy. Twyla’s sort of Coker’s main girl, by the way.”

“Perky black-haired thing? Big brown eyes and candy-red lipstick? Curves like a French staircase? She’s a killer. I’ve seen her at the Bar Belle with Coker.”

“Apparently you have.”

“Young for him, isn’t she?”

“No comment. But Coker has that Clint Eastwood thing going for him, you gotta admit. And you’d be amazed how many gullible young girls think police snipers are sexy.”

“Do you?”

“No. I’m more inclined toward your ex–Special Forces steel-jacket CID detectives with flinty eyes and a gigantic weapon named after a snake.”

“Mavis, I never suspected.”

“I wasn’t talking about you. Anyway, I’ve got cars on the way to their homes, break it to them both as easy as they can.”

“We got a time frame for when Littlebasket hit the wall?”

“Various witnesses pinned it at 10:41.”

“And twenty-odd minutes later that Lear over there flies into a cloud of crows?”

Mavis nodded.

“That’s what I was thinking. Littlebasket hits Tallulah’s Wall, the explosion spooks all those crows that live in those trees around Crater Sink. Flock takes off and heads northwest. Enters Mauldar Field airspace just in time to get into the Lear’s flight path.”

“So just wrong time, wrong place.”

“Yeah. A thing like this, everything’s gotta go wrong in exactly the right way, but when it does, when all the dominoes fall, Bob’s your uncle.”

“I never know what that means.”

“Neither do I. Guess it’s like, there you go.”

“We know anything about the passengers on the Lear?”

Mavis looked down at her notepad.

“Plane was owned by a Chinese trading company based in Shanghai. Daopian Canton Incorporated. Two thousand Fortunate City Road. Pilot and copilot were employees of the company. Three other passengers, also employees. Top dog was a man named Zachary Dak. Title was Director of Logistics.”

“Where were they going from here?”

“Filed a flight plan for LAX to refuel and then on to Honolulu and then Macao.”

Nick worked through that.

“Macao? What were they doing in Niceville? Something to do with Quantum Park?”

“Says on their entry visa that they were looking at real estate for a possible branch office.”

“Who’d they meet with? A local agent? Somebody out of Cap City?”

Mavis gave him a tilted look. “What are you thinking?”

“Don’t know. I’d just like to know who they met with. And why. Five Chinese nationals, a private Lear, and now they’re garden mulch. We should be ready for a whack of questions from the State Department. Where were they staying? The Marriott?”

“Yes. Checked in Friday, flight crew and the three civilians. Separate rooms all around. Rented a Lincoln Town Car from Airport Limos. It’s still parked in the lot at the Marriott.”

“I don’t know. Something’s … not right.”

Mavis had known Nick long enough to take his instincts seriously.

“The manager on duty is Mark Hopewell. I’ve already called him and he’s pulling together whatever he has. Also, there’s a retired deputy sheriff at the Marriott, Edgar Luckinbaugh. Works as the senior bellman.
Edgar pays attention. I could go have a talk with him, see what he knows about these guys.”

“Or I could,” said Nick. “I know Luckinbaugh. He strings part-time for Coker, one of his CIs.”

Nick was quiet for a moment.

“Mavis, somebody should give Boonie Hackendorff a heads-up about this. The Cap City FBI will sure as hell get queried by State. I don’t want Boonie to get caught flat-footed.”

“I’ll see he gets the report. Right now he’s got his hands full.”

Nick heard something in her tone.

“Yeah? Why? What’s up with Boonie?”

Mavis had been sitting on this for a while.

She gave Nick an anticipatory grin.

“Well, it looks like, maybe an hour ago, on Highway three six six, just past the Arrow Creek on-ramp, State Patrol clocked Byron Deitz at one-forty, pulled him over, a hostile stop, guns out, the whole deal. He was in that fat yellow Hummer. They found a pill bottle full of ecstasy in the cup holder beside the driver’s seat, plain sight, so they cuffed Deitz and did a routine search of the Hummer. Guess what they found in the tailgate?”

“Please don’t make me.”

“Cash from the First Third robbery in Gracie.”

That rocked Nick.

Rocked him right back.

Byron Deitz was his brother-in-law, a thug and a wife beater. Kate’s sister was married to the guy. Just last night Beth had finally gotten one too many smacks in the mouth.

She’d packed her kids into the SUV, told Byron she was going to a hotel, and called Kate on her cell. When he’d left for work this morning, Kate and Beth were still in the sunroom talking it through. Nick was planning on dropping in to see Deitz later in the day, straighten him out, a righteous meet that had been too long coming.

But this?

The First Third robbery had happened last Friday afternoon. Take was at least two million five, maybe more. Four cops had been executed during the pursuit.

As much as Nick loathed the guy, he found it hard to believe that Deitz, who was retired FBI himself, could have had anything to do with something as ugly as the cold-blooded slaughter of four cops.