The Quick Adios (Times Six) (29 page)

We entered the river mouth almost at treetop level, too fast, much too fast. The stall buzzer squawked, loud and adamant. I knew what it meant.

We were riding in a grand piano.

“If I don’t make it and you do,” said Sherwin, “kill Beeson for me, okay?”

The right wing dipped and I prepared for massive pain. But the tail touched first. It felt as if we were riding on a vast field of concrete rumble strips. No brakes, no shocks, no sense of deceleration. If anything, the sensation of going faster and faster made worse by the pounding spray, our loss of visibility. If we kept skidding without slowing, we could run ashore, become a traffic accident instead of a ditched aircraft. Would I rather swim ashore or T-bone a tractor-trailer? I heard a window crack and fall inward, but it was safety glass and it didn’t shatter. In spite of my restraints, my head hit something hard. The aircraft spun 180 degrees and I wondered if my feet on the rudder control pedals had caused our spin. I heard flashes of old conversations, someone yelling at me, laughing, then an angry voice. Then, except for the pitches and wallowing on the surge of our wake, all movement stopped.

I recall awakening to a wetness in
my
pants, but it wasn’t piss. It was seawater. I heard gurgling noises as the plane rocked slowly on the inshore waves. Had I been out for two seconds or thirty? Unfastening my seat harness, I tried to speak but my breath had been knocked from my lungs. A moment later I said, “Sullenberger.”

Rodney Sherwin was catatonic. I realized we had bumped heads on the abrupt U-turn. Then he slurred the magic words. “What do we do now?”

I unfastened his harness. “Let’s get out and walk on the wings.”

A
smell of strong disinfectant woke me and I felt so cold my toes hurt, so cold I feared that I had been declared dead in error, then heaved into a stainless horizontal locker in the coroner’s frozen basement. The only proper payback might be to open my eyes just before the autopsy and say, “Fish sandwich, small fries and a Coke.”

The examiners wouldn’t laugh because they knew the inquiry would be a son of a bitch. I would insist on state-funded warming therapy in St. Barth’s.

I had a hazy memory of hearing far away sirens and Harleys, and of trying to see in mist lifted by the downwash of chopper blades. I was pulled through sea grass and bait fish and petroleum scum, examined for spinal damage and broken bones, strapped into a harness, hauled through intense brightness to the foredeck of a powerboat, wrapped in a thermal blanket and fed Snickers bars. The chocolate still in my mouth caused a sensitive tooth to ache. If the tooth and my toes were my only pain, I thought, it was either good news or very bad.

It’s not your whole life that zooms through your mind just before death. It’s more like selected short stories, random fragments of memory, chronology be damned. I can tell you no more about them right now than I could had I croaked. The hospital, like all others, I assure you, was too frigid and bright. Much better to heal in a dim night club with soothing West Coast jazz and VSOP cognac in a snifter. A lukewarm bottle of San Pellegrino on the side. On second thought I wished I was five yards off Woman Key with a striped umbrella stuck into the sand, flat out on a float mattress, a chilled beer resting on my belly and my raft tethered to the umbrella post so I didn’t drift off to Texas.

“Off the record, an FAA tech is already calling it sabotage,” said Sam Wheeler.

“What are you doing here?” I said, surprised more by the sound of my own voice than Sam’s presence in the room.

“Came to pick you up. They told me I had to go to baggage claim.”

A flannel shirt and long trousers? I had never seen Sam dressed for cold weather. He looked ready to shoot darts and arrows at Bambi. He looked older as well, as if I had been asleep for a long time, and held a well-worn John D. MacDonald paperback in his hand.

I had no desire to sit up, but I wasn’t hooked up to monitors. There were no tubes in my nose, no IVs in my arms. I saw twilight outside the blinds and asked what time it was.

“Five-thirty in the afternoon,” he said, “exactly one year later.”

“Oh, kiss my ass. What stinks?”

“Alcohol we can’t drink.”

“Why do I need picking up? Can’t I take myself out of this meat locker?”

Sam shook his head. “Liska got a call from a Bradenton cop who monitored your flight. He called Beth and she called me. All we knew was that you and the pilot had survived a crash. No grim details.”

“Answer my question,” I said.

“An adjuster repping the aircraft liability policy is trying to get you discharged as soon as possible. He’ll ask you to sign release forms. If he makes a cash offer, I would, as your agent, advise settling for the value of five lost days of work. It’ll pay for our celebratory supper tonight.”

“What’s with the American Eagle bag?”

“We heard when we landed that you’d probably be able to leave today. Beth made us stop at Edison Mall so she could buy warm clothes for you.”

“Please don’t tell me you chartered a flight.”

Sam shrugged. “Beth’s in the lobby with a bunch of law enforcement officers. The nurses gave her everything you had in your pockets. She read a note that was sticking out of your wallet and got right on her phone. I heard her ask for Mr. Fecko, and she started making notes to herself.”

“How can they already know sabotage?”

“You had the Lee County Marine Task Force on scene in ninety seconds. You were pushing your pilot out the emergency exit, but he was dead weight. After the team got you both aboard the Cape Coral S&R Team’s 33-foot Aronow steel hull, they attached floatation to the King Air. They towed it into a marina, steadied it with a yacht club boat hoist, brought over a crane and had it ashore in forty-five minutes. The FAA guy was in town on some other case. He pulled both engine cowlings right away.”

“A leak in the oil coolers?”

Sam canted his head, gave me a strange look.

“The pilot guessed, when he was still thinking straight.”

Sam nodded. ‘The coolers had been drilled and the pinpoint holes patched with something that would melt at a certain temperature, after you’d been up in the air awhile.”

“Why so many cops in the lobby?”

“Count the cops, count the reasons,” said Sam. “The plane is evidence, parked in a special hangar. They won’t let anyone near it.”

“The pilot okay?” I said. “Rodney Sherwin?”

“Concussion, two broken ankles. He’s four rooms down the hall. He keeps staring at the ceiling and saying, ‘Chesley, baby,’ over and over.”

“That was Rodney’s zone before we splashed down. At least he pulled it off. I tried to keep him talking so he could fly by instinct. I didn’t want him to be distracted by actual thoughts.”

“A big Cape Coral cop named Eric said it was picture-perfect,” said Sam.

“Rodney told me before our flight that fear keeps him alive.”

“Probably copped that line from the TV.”

We stared at each other. Sam’s expression screamed that I had been lucky.

“Please don’t offer to fly me back to Key West,” I said. “I would rather skateboard the length of Alligator Alley…”

“When you almost drown, you’re supposed to jump right back in.”

“I’m tired of looking down at it,” I said. “For a week or two I want to appreciate the ocean at sea level.”

“I’ll swap my budget rental for a van so you can stretch out.”

“Thanks. Any chance of looking at Beth’s face instead of yours?”

A smiling, energetic nurse walked in, knocking on the door as she passed it. She looked about fifty, stocky with light brown hair, her eyes full of mischief, cute from the day she was born. “Awake now, sweetie?” she said.

“Why am I here?”

“Gotta check you for internal bleeding, disorientation. Were you in another plane crash a couple of days ago, too? Some of your torso injuries, discoloration…”

“I was run into by a police officer,” I said.

“That explains all them officials in the reception area,” she said. “You have a good nap, honey? You had a good dream seventy-five minutes ago, I’m here to tell you. We had a state fair tent pole for a little while.”

Sam raised his eyebrows, stood to leave. “I’ll send in Beth.”

“I got him for four minutes,” said the nurse. “The doctor will be here in ten. After that he’s a free agent.”

Beth carried in a plastic shopping bag. “Hello, my lover, the survivor.” She gave me a sad smile and bit her lower lip. I smelled jelly doughnuts.

“Thank you for coming,” I said, “wherever we are.”

She kissed my forehead. “Twice in the almost two years I’ve known you.”

“You’ve come? Or kissed me on the forehead?”

“Hundreds of times, those. I was talking about how often EMTs deliver you to an emergency room. You could inspire hospitals to build drive-thru lanes.”

“Not until they start providing electric blankets. Sam said you stopped at a store. If you bought socks, could you put them on me right now?”

“This is action I view as extremely romantic…” She found them in the Nike bag, lifted the sheet, began to rub my feet and ease on the socks. “You’re at Lee County Memorial in Fort Myers.”

“I haven’t helped you much this time around,” I said. “Hell, now I’ve pulled you away from an active case.”

Beth covered my feet, sat where Sam had been and looked me in the eye. “When Liska called six hours ago, I was afraid you were dead. When he said you were hurt, I wanted to get on my motorcycle. I didn’t want to waste time arranging a flight. Sam called and convinced me that I couldn’t see to drive if I was crying.”

“How does that change…”

She held up her hand to shush me. “You know I appreciate your advice, Alex. But I didn’t take my job with the idea that you would always be standing behind me. I took it because it’s what I dreamed of doing. I didn’t even know you then. I didn’t know how much you would boost my spirits or give me great ideas. I love you and I want you to support me, but I’ve never wanted to recruit you. It’s for damn sure I never expected you to put yourself in danger.”

I stared at her, waiting, expecting more. But that was the whole speech. She had opened up to me, offered a rare moment. It was almost a scolding, but it was what I had wanted to hear for months, regardless of circumstance.

“You steered me to Wiley Fecko,” she said, “and he had a little more for me.”

“Am I permitted to ask what Wiley gave you?” I said.

“First a message for you. He said that Gamble represented Caldwell years ago. Is this something I need to know about?”

“Yes,” I said, “but it’s not urgent. What else was there?”

“Greg Pulver and Ocilla Ramirez were definitely moving money through clients’ computers. But Ocilla had something else going with large amounts of cash. Even if she was a hooker…”

Distracted by scuffling steps in the hall, Beth turned toward the door.

Manatee County Detective Glenn Steffey peered into the room. “Mind if I join the party?” He entered in clothing identical to what he had worn the morning Tharpe found Amanda’s body. Dark slacks, an open-collar blue button-down shirt and a tan sport coat that had missed a trip to the cleaners.

I introduced Steffey to Beth Watkins, and each pretended to be impressed by the other’s job.

“I’m sorry your trip turned out the way it did, Rutledge,” said Steffey. “But glad, of course, that you came away intact. By the chatter out front, the aircraft’s engine failures are now top priority.”

“You drove this far down I-75 just to say that, detective?”

“It was only seventy-seven miles,” he said, “but you’re right. I bring ironic news. Just before noon, due to new evidence, our prosecutor postponed the grand jury. Our need for your help is not as urgent as it was yesterday. Justin Beeson, I would expect, feels the same way. It’s not because of your accident and, please be assured, if we need you in the future, a commercial air ticket will be provided.”

“Does the new evidence have anything to do with Beeson?” I said.

“The victim was his ex-wife so, indirectly, everything links to him,” said Steffey. “Analyzing this case is like unraveling a fist-sized knot of fishing line.”

“Are you here because the plane crash might tie in…”

Steffey held up both hands to stop me. “Justin Beeson didn’t want you dead. We determined that he knew about your law enforcement work before he hired you. He knew your rep for being good, for helping to solve several crimes. If he was part of a conspiracy, a plot to kill his ex-wife, he wouldn’t want you at that scene. No killer in his right mind would invite you along. I have no doubt that you complicated things for Amanda’s murderer.”

“I can’t believe my reputation carries beyond a ten-foot circle.”

“Well it does,” said Steffey, “and… I don’t mean to blow breeze out of your sails, but your photo expertise offered Beeson credibility with the IRS. It allowed him to write off that first flight.”

“He expensed the plane because of me? The bastard said that?”

“He stressed that he needed your artistic input. The second flight, he needed your truthful and respected testimony. He paid for the air charter as a defensive move.”

“Artistic input, my ass. I’m a frigging tax deduction. Also, for what it’s worth,” I said. “Just before we hit the water, Rodney Sherwin, the pilot, said, ‘If I don’t make it and you do, kill Beeson for me.’”

“Whoa,” said Detective Steffey. “I’ll definitely follow up on that. He didn’t provide a basis for that threat, by any chance?”

“He mentioned Beeson only once, before we took off. Said he was afraid to fly, and that tied into something Anya told me the night before Amanda’s body was found. She said a friend of his had died in an air crash thought to be sabotage.”

“So maybe he was the target, is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying only what you just heard, detective. I’m not a cop and it’s not up to me to make assumptions.”

He glanced at Beth, then at me. “I have another question to ask.”

“Why are you suddenly looking at me like I have ten previous convictions?”

“And why,” said Beth, “are you acting like you want me to leave the room?”