Unaccompanied Minor (17 page)

April Manning:

At least.

Agent Kowalski:

At least!

Investigator DeAngelo:

Kowalski, stop with the hardball and let her finish her statement. April, what did you do next?

April Manning:

Flo took the device from my hand and said, “This looks like the thing the vet used to read the microchip on my fourth husband’s pit bull. Her name was Fifi Trixabelle, and it showed up on the reader just like that one does.”

“Your fourth husband had a pit bull named Fifi Trixabelle?” Malcolm asked.

“Sweetest thing you ever saw. Wish I’d gotten custody of her in the divorce.”

I walked across the galley and the scanner stopped glowing. More importantly, the bomb stopped beeping. I took the batteries out of the scanner, put them in my pocket, placed the scanner in the stowage compartment furthest from the crew bag, and clicked it shut. Then finally I spoke.

“Guys,” I said, “I think we found the bomb’s on-switch.”

“Is it that scanner?” Malcolm gasped.

“No, the scanner only activates the sensor.”

“Then what’s the sensor, kid?” Flo’s voice was getting hoarse from lack of nicotine.

“It’s Beefheart. He’s the sensor! That collar is for him!” I pointed to the choke collar attached to the boom box. It was one of those particularly nasty kinds of choke collars, with vicious spikes lining the interior meant to inflict maximum pain on the animal. “And look at the digital read on the boom box,” I continued. It had begun to show numbers rapidly counting down, then stopped. “If this thing starts up again, we have less than
one hour.
”

Malcolm shook his head briskly, in complete disbelief. “This makes no sense,” he insisted. “How can Beefheart… he can’t be… this makes no sense.”

Flo instinctively took out her pack of menthols, then remembered the bomb, cursed under her breath and handed the cigarettes and lighter to me, presumably to allay any force of habit.

“Look, Malcolm.” I rummaged through my backpack and pulled out the piece of notebook paper I’d taken from Kathy’s purse after she and Cinderblock murdered Jalyce. Kathy’s pterodactyl scratchings didn’t make much sense to me at the time, but now things were starting to clarify. “See this paper, it’s Kathy’s writing, right there it says ‘angels,’ and those scribbles next to it? They say ‘among us.’”

“Angels among us,” Malcolm recited. Realization was starting to descend upon his features, but Flo was still completely in the dark.

“What?” she insisted. “What the hell does that mean?”

I took Beefheart’s certification papers from a slot on his vest and unfolded them. “Look,” I pointed. “Angels Among Us is a pet-rescue organization based in Georgia. They cherry-pick dogs from among their strays to send off and be trained as emotional support dogs—it’s an experimental program put together by the Fulton County Penitentiary. Before they’re certified, these dogs spend months in the possession of prison inmates.”

Malcolm tightened his embrace around Beefheart. I didn’t blame him. Beefheart grunted sweetly, licked his master’s face, and wriggled his tail stub. I choked back a sob.

“We have to tell the pilots,” Flo said.

“If we’re being hijacked, how do we know who’s really flying the plane?” I reasoned. “Remember, Alby called
us
to give the code word. Not the pilots.”

“Then who do we tell?” Flo asked.

I furrowed my brow thoughtfully, then shook my head in resignation.

“What?” Malcolm asked. “Who do we tell?”

“Officer Ned,” I said.

I took out the imposter’s cell phone and punched in the contact number from the business card Officer Ned had given me what seemed like a century ago. It rang four times and then went to voicemail. I left a synopsized message detailing the day’s events as briefly as I could. Then I hung up and tried again. Straight to voicemail. Dang. Wouldn’t you know he’d probably be the only one who actually turned off his phone during flight.

So it was on to Plan B.

An L-1011-250 model with a lower galley like this one is designed with a hatch in the cabin floor near the mid galley. Flight attendants are trained to use this hatch in case the elevators stop working. A good thing about this hatch is that it’s flush with the aisle floor and its seams are indecipherable in the thin, grody old seventies carpet that lines the aisles of the aircraft. Many of these hatches have never been opened even once, and after decades of being trampled and spilled on, I was worried we’d be unable to open this one.

But after some rigorous scraping along the edges with the Swiss Army knife, I was able to dislodge enough grime to lift the hatch half an inch to assess the condition of the cabin, or at least the floor of the cabin. Malcolm held me aloft by gripping me around my thighs so that the two of us made a human extension of sorts. The side of his head rested right at my belly.

“Your stomach sure is growling,” he said.

“Shut up!” I smacked the top of his head lightly. Once again I was so glad, and simultaneously sorry, that he was here with me.

I was surprised to see the passengers in the cabin behaving as though nothing was wrong. Either they didn’t know we were in danger, or Alby’s message had been coerced, or worse, duplicitous. There was no sight or sound of any flight attendants nearby, so I took a moment to evaluate the surroundings, as this vantage point proved to be pretty advantageous.

Officer Ned, unmistakably identifiable by his black motorcycle boots, and his prisoner Old Cinderblock had the two window seats directly opposite the hatch on the other side of the aircraft. Directly next to the hatch was a carry-on bag with a box of thin spaghetti peeking above a pocket. I stealthily reached out, took it, and put it in my own pocket. Another nearby passenger had a stack of porno magazines sticking out of his bag. (Really, what is it about porno and airplanes?) Then, a few rows up on the copilot’s side of the cabin, I spotted the telltale sign of an ankle holster peeking out from beneath a man’s pant leg.

I closed the hatch and whispered to Malcolm to let me down.

“Flo,” I said. “The guy on the aisle seat at 29H, did you get a look at him?”

“Are you talking about the air marshal?” she responded.

“
Why didn’t you tell me there’s an air marshal on board?
”

“Kid, I would have gotten around to it eventually, but you gotta admit, two dead bodies and a bomb can be pretty distracting.”

“How do you know he’s an air marshal?” Malcolm asked. “I thought they traveled incognito, even to the flight attendants.”

Flo and I chuckled wryly. “They couldn’t be easier to identify if they wore a uniform, which come to think of it, they kind of do,” Flo explained.

“Yeah,” I clarified. “Just picture a Hawaiian shirt on a guy who looks like the last thing in the world he’d ever wear is a Hawaiian shirt.”

I put the packet of spaghetti in the pile of useful things Malcolm had culled from the crew bags. He looked at me curiously and asked, “Are we making lunch?” I smiled wanly and asked him to tear me another piece of paper from his notebook. Then I produced the Sharpie marker I’d borrowed from him earlier and wrote a note to Officer Ned. It read:

Then Malcolm handed over the most precious thing in his life to me. I took Beefheart, tucked the cell phone with the picture of the bomb in the slot on the back of his vest, and put the note in the dog’s mouth. Then Malcolm lifted us both up to peek through the hatch again. When I saw that the coast was clear, I widened the opening and placed Beefheart on the floor facing the opposite aisle.

“Boots, Beefheart!” I whispered with the excitement dogs love to hear. “The boots.” I pointed. “Go get the boots.”

Beefheart wiggled his tail stub eagerly and set off toward Officer Ned’s feet. Please, please, Officer Ned, I prayed, please don’t be a grump and kick the dog down the aisle or something.

Beefheart padded quietly behind the last row of seats in the mid cabin to get to the opposite aisle, then up a few rows toward Officer Ned. I could hear a few squeals of delight from some surrounding passengers as they caught sight of the small dog, because dogs don’t commonly walk the aisles of an aircraft, but that was all. No one created an uproar over pet allergies, like Malcolm and I have seen people react on past flights, thank God. Soon Beefheart reached Officer Ned’s boots and began scratching at them softly with his paw.

“C’mon, pick up the dog,” I whispered.

The leather on those cowboy boots must have been thick, because it wasn’t until the passenger across the aisle pointed it out to him that Officer Ned finally noticed Beefheart. First he petted Beefheart’s head, then he must have noticed the note in the dog’s mouth, because he reached down to pick him up.

“He got him! He got him!” I whispered excitedly to Malcolm. “He’s getting up! He’s coming over!” Then I waited, trying to keep the hatch opening as thin as possible. Then,
plunk!
, somebody stepped on the hatch and it thwacked down on my head. Hard.

“
Ouch,
” I smarted.

“You okay?” Malcolm asked.

“Yeah.” I rubbed my head. “Are you?”

“I’m fine,” he answered. He seemed to hold me up effortlessly, the side of his head still snug against my abdomen.

I pushed up on the hatch and it wouldn’t budge. It occurred to me that the person who stepped on it was still standing on it. Then it further occurred to me that the person standing on it was Officer Ned.

Flo was one step ahead of me and had already entered the elevator to go up and get him.

“Hey, Thor,” I heard Flo call. “This way.”

Finally the hatch didn’t resist when I pushed up on it. Then I heard the familiar churning of the elevator engine as the car descended, and soon Officer Ned was looking through the small window at us. Fury and worry seemed to fight for the expression on his face. Then Malcolm opened the elevator door, and Officer Ned unfolded his big six-foot-five self from the interior of the tiny elevator, and I immediately noticed two things missing.

“Where’s Beefheart?” Malcolm asked.

“Where’s Flo?” I asked.

“April, what is going on?” Officer Ned’s voice sounded more frantic than mad.

“We only know what we told you in the note,” I explained. “Please, where’s Beefheart and Flo?”

“Flo is… ?” He swirled his hand above his head to indicate Flo’s customary large hairdo. I nodded. “And Beefheart is… ?” He pinched his ear to indicate Beefheart’s lovely little half-chewed-off ear. I nodded. “They’re up there. They couldn’t fit in the lift with me, so Flo took the dog and said she’d be down right behind me.”

Malcolm and I looked at each other in a panic. Where were they, then? Suddenly the second lift churned to life, and we both breathed a sigh of relief. But when the door opened it wasn’t Flo after all. It was the coordinator, Ramona Thibodaux. Malcolm and I froze, not knowing what to think or do. She opened the door and smiled so sweetly at me that I felt my tension ease, then she took Flo’s gun from her apron pocket, pointed it at my head and fired twice.

Remember I told you about how Officer Ned chased down that escaped prisoner on the tarmac of the LAX airport? Remember I said I’d never seen anyone move so fast? I didn’t think I ever would again—until today in the lower galley of that L-1011 when Ramona Thibodaux pointed a gun at my head. It happened like a shadow, or a flash—a blink, I’m telling you. It was so quick that I wondered where the bullets went, because surely she had hit me, I thought. But no, the bullets didn’t hit me. They hit Officer Ned.

He had thrown himself between me and the gun.

Malcolm and I both screamed so loud that we could hear passengers above us start to react in astonishment. The popping sound of gunfire was not startling, because evidently old, rickety airplanes like this one made crazy noises all the time. But screaming, now, that was cause for alarm.

Malcolm ran to me and embraced me. I don’t think he understood I hadn’t been shot until he held me at arm’s length and assessed my condition. Ramona kept clicking the trigger on Flo’s gun to no avail. She banged it against the door to see if she could unjam it, then tried shooting it at us again. The gun must have been out of bullets, because she angrily stuffed it in her apron pocket, closed the door of the elevator and began ascending.

I was too stunned from what had transpired to stop her, but Officer Ned, bleeding and by sheer force of will, dragged himself to the elevator door and yanked it open. The car had nearly made it to the top, but not completely. When Officer Ned opened the door, it stopped the car in mid-ascent, exposing Ramona’s legs from the knees down. Officer Ned grabbed her ankles and tried to pull her back into the galley. But Ramona kicked like a bronco. Remember, she’s built like a brick house, and plus there was someone above who was pulling her up, not to mention the fact that Officer Ned had been shot twice, so in the end we lost that battle, and Ramona clambered up and out of sight, minus both her shoes.