We Will Be Crashing Shortly (13 page)

I remembered it was to the chagrin of the board members, and even that of Officer Ned, that LaVonda had taken her new job at WorldAir so seriously. Since the title had been invented specifically for her, there had yet to be any concise job description created or even a list of duties pertinent to the position. So LaVonda took it upon herself to create her own duties, which turned out to consist mainly of following Officer Ned’s every move.

“You are not my assistant,” Officer Ned tried to reason with her one day recently. “It’s bad enough I have April here hanging out like this is the school cafeteria.” I perked my head up from my iPad as I lay on his leather office couch surrounded by empty peanut packets. “I don’t need you hovering around me all the time, too!”

“I am the WorldAir Trauma Liaison,” LaVonda puffed her chest out proudly, “and it says right here in my job description that my duties include . . . April, what’s a fancy way of saying ‘stick close by’?”

“‘Keep in close proximity to,’” I answered.

“Right, my duties include keeping in close proximity to the head of security, and that is you.”

“You just typed that into your iPad right now while we were sitting here!” Officer Ned hollered.

“So?” LaVonda made a flourish as she pressed the “save” button. “There, it’s official. Now don’t be tellin’ me how to do my job.”

“It actually makes sense,” I piped in. “If she sticks around you long enough she’s bound to run into someone who’s been traumatized.”

I knew Officer Ned would throw himself into an active volcano for my sake if he had to, and he’d probably do the same for LaVonda, too. All that blustering and hollering was just a facade to keep people from getting close. And you can hardly blame him. Look what happened the minute he took me under his wing: Two bullets to the torso, that’s what. But like I said earlier, he looks to have healed nicely.

Today, LaVonda was resolute in the power of support dogs to allay trauma. She hugged Beefheart to her chest and said, “Okay, I feel better now.”

I focused back on the subject at hand. “Hackman’s head didn’t walk off on its own,” I said. “Someone took it.”

“Why would someone steal a dead man’s head?”

Didn’t we all want to know that. I asked Officer Ned if he had the chance to talk to the investigators about the contents of the disrupted caskets that were also found at the crime scene. He looked at me with furrowed brow.

“April, there weren’t any caskets here when the police arrived,” he said. “And, believe me, I looked around the area before I climbed up here. I didn’t see any evidence of exploded corpses.”

“Are you saying you don’t believe me?” I was incredulous. “What do you call this?” I pointed to a small Rorschach pattern of specks below the knees of my cargo pants. I regretted having scrubbed at them with the pile of alcohol swabs I’d found in the first-aid kit the night before.

“That doesn’t look like human remains to me, April,” he answered worriedly. “Listen, are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

“How do you know what exploded gizzards look like?” LaVonda defended me. “Look at this poor child! She’s been crashed up, burned up, beat up, and thoroughly messed up in the last twenty-four hours. Look at that bruise on her forehead! She needs our help.”

“LaVonda, we talked about this, remember?” Officer Ned chastised her.
They talked about this?
“Remember your training.”

“I’m just sayin’,” she mumbled. “It could have happened like she said.”

“LaVonda, please focus, the doctor said the delusions can be quite convincing,” Officer Ned said.

“What doctor?” I panicked.

“April, you cracked your head pretty hard on the asphalt after falling off the bus, right? I saw the footage on YouTube.” Damn the advent of social media.

“This is not about me hitting my head!” I protested. “I didn’t hallucinate all this! It happened just like I told you!” Officer Ned reached out to put a caring touch on my forehead, and I smacked his hand away. “What about the dead guard in the security hut? Huh? I can’t conjure a dead security guard out of my imagination.”

“April, there was no dead guard in the security hut,” he informed me. I looked at him agog. He continued, “I talked to the actual guard who was there, or who was supposed to have been there, but he’d stepped out to use the can, and when he came back he found Hackman. He’s the one who called the police.”

I shook my head. “No, that’s not right.” I looked at LaVonda imploringly. “That’s not right, is it, LaVonda?”

She didn’t say anything, instead she handed me back Captain Beefheart. “Honey child, I think you’ve been traumatized.”

“Hell yes, I’ve been traumatized! Haven’t you heard a single word I said?”

LaVonda looked pained before saying, “I heard every word you said.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

Officer Ned interrupted, “April, we just want to do what’s best and make sure you’re getting the care you need.”

“What about Flo?” I brightened. “Have you spoken with Flo? She’ll tell you everything.”

“Ah, April,” Officer Ned continued cautiously, “we did call Flo and she said she hasn’t seen you since the day before yesterday.”

I guffawed incredulously. “She did not say that. Call her again, right now. Call her. And use her work cell,” I added, remembering her personal cellphone lay broken up somewhere off GA400.

Officer Ned did as I asked and put the phone on speaker. Flo picked up on the first ring. “What?” she groused. Officer Ned asked her to do him a favor and confirm once again where she was the night before. “I was right here, Thor, how many times you want me to say it? I was here all night drinking vodka and watching
MacGyver
DVDs. Same thing I do every night.”

“I think we have a bad connection,” Officer Ned complained to her. “What’s that sound?”

“That’s just me,” Flo said. “Tabasco sauce is getting low, I gotta smack it outta the bottle”—
smack smack smack.
“You can’t make a Bloody Mary without Tabasco sauce.”

“Okay, so you were home last night?”

“Tell the truth,” I implored her.

“Is that Crash?” Flo’s voice brightened.
Smack, smack, smack.
“Tell her I said to keep kicking ass.” He handed the phone to me.

“Flo, the truth,” I begged.

“I’m telling the truth, kid,” she chuckled.
Smack smack smack.
“I was right here, watching
MacGyver
. Season four, episode eleven.” Officer Ned gently took the phone from my hand, thanked Flo, and hung up.

He eyed me expectantly. LaVonda looked on guiltily. “This is harder than I thought it would be,” she mumbled.

“April, please, it’s better that you come with me.” He held his hand out to me. “Otherwise I’ll have to tell them where you are and they’ll have to come here to get you. If that happens I can’t guarantee things will go smoothly.” I held Beefheart close to me and backed away from him down the catwalk toward the avionics area. Officer Ned followed me, and LaVonda after him.

“Excuse me, Thor,” LaVonda interjected. Officer Ned winced at the nickname. Only two people on earth were allowed to use it: Flo, who called all tall, muscular men “Thor,” and LaVonda, who had been introduced to him through Flo as such. “But I did not sign up for this,” LaVonda continued. “You didn’t say anything about us throwing her over to the police like a bloody piece of meat. I’m here ’cause she in distress. She need medical attention.”

Exasperated, Officer Ned turned to her. “Oh my God! You believe her, don’t you? This is exactly what the doctor warned us about. She’s suffering from a TBI, LaVonda! Her delusions are going to be very persuasive, but we have to stand strong. If she doesn’t get the help she needs she could suffer permanent brain damage. And if she doesn’t go with us willingly, what choice do we have but to call the police? Get your head back in the game and focus.”

“Don’t tell me where to put my head,” she argued. “I know where my head needs to be, and just because some doctor—”

“Who is this doctor?”
I cried.

“—waved around a bunch of papers, some high-falutin’ FBI forensic psychologist, came into our office—”

“
My
office,” Officer Ned said.

“—talkin’ about how our sweet April here is suffering from some ‘psychotic episode’ and going around killin’ people—”

“What?”
I cried.

“—don’t mean we should roll over like a coupla hobos and let them have at her. She needs a lawyer, for one.”

“What she needs,” Officer Ned pointed at me with his arm outstretched, then looked back at LaVonda, “is a hospital.”

I reached into my back pocket and grabbed the handcuffs I’d picked off my wrists the night before. Before Officer Ned could react, I’d clicked a bracket around his outstretched wrist and locked the other one around the metal shelving grid supporting the avionics area.

At first he seemed disbelieving, tentatively shaking his arm like the cuff was a party favor that could break easily. Then the realization set in and he yanked his arm around more furiously. “April, give me the keys to these immediately. This isn’t funny.” I shook my head. “The keys,” he insisted. I shook my head again.

“Oh, girl, you did NOT just handcuff Thor to the airplane,” howled LaVonda. “I swear to Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, you did NOT do that.” She threw her arms above her head and paced up and down the catwalk, slapping her thighs and howling with laughter.

“April,” Officer Ned growled. “Unlock me this instant.”

I backed away from him and handed Beefheart to LaVonda, who calmed down to a few snorts and the wiping of tears. “Yeah, child, you gonna unlock him, right?”

“I don’t have a key,” I said. Officer Ned began yanking his arm in earnest now, and LaVonda lapsed into another laughing fit. I begged them to be quiet. “Just listen to what I have to say, please,” I implored. LaVonda covered her mouth and Officer Ned stilled himself into a solid wall of muscle and rage, glaring at me.

“I’m sorry, Officer Ned,” I began, “but you have to listen to me. Flo said she was home last night, alone,
like every night
. Think about that.”

Officer Ned should have known as well as I did that Flo had a flourishing social life, having stayed friends with all her ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends as well as all their new partners, who were constantly, to mixed success, setting her up with someone new. She lived next to the airport in Hapeville and hung out at a bar called the Bricklayer’s Arms, where the owners liked her so much they allowed her to get behind the bar and mix her own cocktails.

“She said she was watching
MacGyver
DVDs,” he countered.

“Flo mostly watches
MacGyver
on a portable DVD player while sitting in a jumpseat at work,” I reminded him. It was a pastime that violated a strict rule of employment at WorldAir. In fact, it was a miracle she hadn’t been busted by the cellphone camera of a disgruntled passenger, but Flo had a way with disgruntled passengers. It was a skill born from 47 years in the passenger-service industry; if you can’t keep passengers satisfied, at least keep them laughing. No one ever complained about her, or at least not that anyone knew about, as the person in charge of assessing WorldAir passenger complaints was also one of Flo’s ex-boyfriends.

But back to the point—yeah, the thought of Flo sitting at home alone belting hooch and watching reruns was ridiculous. Surely Officer Ned could see that.

He frowned and seemed to think about it, then shook it off. “April, don’t you see you’re acting crazy? Look at this.” He shook his handcuffed arm at me. “You’re deluded, suffering the textbook symptoms of a traumatic brain injury. LaVonda, tell her . . . wait, where’s LaVonda.”

Click.
LaVonda slapped another set of cuffs on his free hand and then fastened the other end to another part of the metal shelving grid. The effect had him splayed, like a big, handsome, black Fay Wray, across the bolted-down metal structure. LaVonda stepped away to escape his kicking legs, her eyes wide.

“I can’t believe I just did that,” she said.

“LaVonda, April, I’m serious, let me loose or there’ll be hell to pay,” Officer Ned roared, then calmed down, deciding on a different tack. “Okay, girls, heh, heh, joke’s over. This has been really funny. LaVonda, where the hell did you even get your hands on a set of handcuffs?”

“You keep a pair in the top drawer of your desk,” LaVonda said.

“These are my handcuffs?”
he seethed.

“They’re my handcuffs,” LaVonda corrected. “I had them commissioned from HR. If you get a pair, I get a pair, it says so in my job description.” At that, Officer Ned forgot about his new tack and became furious again, devolving into a mess of futile attempts to lunge at us. Finally he calmed once more.

“April, I will give you one minute to release me and we’ll forget this ever happened,” he tried to reason. “It’s not your fault. You’re suffering a psychotic lapse. And you,” he looked at LaVonda, “you’re suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.”

“Stock
-what
?” LaVonda said skeptically.

I was impressed that Officer Ned had taken his airline-security training to heart. The syndrome to which he was referring was named after an incident in Stockholm in the seventies, when a number of hostages were held captive in a bank vault during a robbery. Over time the hostages began to side with the robber, and even eschewed help from the police. After the situation was neutralized, many of the hostages even testified for the defense. Today, airline inflight personnel are annually versed on this and other hostage-related syndromes in their training exercises. Should a hijacking occur, this knowledge would come in handy. But I was not hijacking a plane. I was just trying to find my friend Malcolm.

“Hear me out, please,” I asked them. Officer Ned remained silent while LaVonda nodded her head and gestured for me to continue. “Flo mentioned
MacGyver
episode eleven, season four,” I began, “and you know I know all the episodes by heart, right?” A moot point; Flo had gotten them both hooked on the reruns as well. “In that episode, the plot involved two criminals talking on a tapped phone. Got that?
A tapped phone
.”

LaVonda nodded her head enthusiastically, but it was Officer Ned I needed to convince. I could see indecision begin to soften the features of his face.