to catch the bad guys in the act, whatever that act might be.
I’m not thrilled about deceiving her in this manner, but I don’t feel like there is any alternative. As civilians, Marcus and I do not have the right to do what we might wind up doing, and if Laurie had the knowledge of it, her job would compel her to prevent us from doing it.
Going into this operation, I knew there were a couple of possible downsides. For one, we could wind up getting killed. Actually, I can’t picture Marcus getting killed, so I’m more worried about me. Second, we could accomplish nothing except wasting a lot of time and effort.
Sitting in the car now, about fifteen minutes into the first day, I realize I hadn’t factored in another downside. I’m stuck alone in a car with Marcus.
I feel like I should make conversation, but I don’t have the slightest idea how to have one with Marcus. “Sandwich?” I ask, thinking he might like one of the sandwiches I made and brought with us.
“Unhh,” he says.
“I’ve got roast beef, turkey, and turkey pastrami.”
“Unhh,” he says.
“I’ve never actually seen a turkey pastrami, have you? I mean, do they look like regular turkeys? Or regular pastramis?”
“Unhh,” he says.
“To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t know what a pastrami looked like if it were sitting in the backseat.”
“Unhh,” he says.
“Anyway, they’re in the cooler in the trunk if you want one,” I say. “Just help yourself.”
This time he just nods; maybe he feels like he’s been chatting too much.
Suddenly, I realize that the radio is not on. I don’t know if playing the radio violates stakeout etiquette, but I’ve got to do something to cut through the silence. “Okay if I turn on the radio?” I ask.
He shrugs his assent, and I turn it on. Classical music blares through the speakers, and in about four seconds I find myself longing for silence. “I’ll tell you what,” I say. “You listen to what you want for an hour, then I get the choice for an hour, then you, and so on. That work for you?”
He nods.
“Great. This your choice for now?”
Another nod.
“Okay,” I say, looking at my watch. “We change over at about… oh… nine-sixteen and thirty-one seconds. Somewhere around there.”
Still another nod; it looks like we have a deal. I think I’ll grab myself a sandwich.
Seven hours into our stakeout, I may even be getting to like classical music. “Like” may be too strong; “tolerate” would probably be more accurate. We’ve just concluded the latest hour with some Beethoven, and my critical assessment would be that it’s got a good beat, but you can’t dance to it.
I’ve been using my precious hours for a combination of news and sports, and I start this one with news. The newscaster introduces a feature piece about “the obesity epidemic in America,” and I see Marcus perk up, seeming to listen intently. It surprises me, since his percentage of body fat is slightly less than absolute zero.
I lean over and turn the volume up a little, to allow him to hear better, but in a quick motion he reaches and shuts the radio off entirely. This seems to be a violation of our arrangement, but I don’t complain because it’s now obvious that Marcus wasn’t listening to the newscast at all. He was listening to a sound that seems to be overhead.
We are about a mile and a half east of the airstrip, and the previous planes have come in from the northeast. We chose this location to give us a vantage point from where we could see the plane without the people in the plane seeing us.
Right now the plane is coming from the same direction as the previous times, but something seems different. I soon realize that it’s lower this time, perhaps in an effort to avoid radar detection.
Marcus starts the car, and we drive toward the airport. I climb in the backseat so I can watch the plane through the rear side window. Not only is it lower, but it’s losing altitude in preparation for landing.
But this plane is not heading for a landing at all. It’s too low, too far from the airport, and as I watch with a combination of fascination and horror, its nose tilts downward and goes crashing into the otherwise peaceful countryside, about three hundred yards from us.
The resulting explosion lights up the Wisconsin sky, and even Marcus seems mesmerized by it.
Nobody could have survived this crash, and if Alan Drummond was on that plane, he’s just answered for his crimes.
And whatever secrets he had went down with him.
• • • • •
WITHIN TEN MINUTES it seems like every fire truck and police car in Wisconsin is on the scene. The area where the plane crashed is an open field, surrounded on three sides by trees. The field might have been long enough for a successful emergency landing, but the way the plane smashed down, nose-first, it never had a chance.
Laurie arrives with three of her officers, though the state police have taken temporary control of the scene. Nevertheless, I tell her that Marcus and I witnessed the crash, and she conveys that message to the authorities. Marcus and I are then told to remain on the scene to answer questions.
The fire is put out relatively quickly, and all that remains of the plane is a charred shell. It’s in pieces, but those pieces are not spread over a large amount of land, possibly because the plane was moving down vertically at the time of the crash.
A number of cars from Center City arrive as well, and I see both Keeper Wallace and Stephen Drummond. They are surrounded by at least four uniformed servants of the Keeper, though I don’t recognize any of them as being the ones that kidnapped Madeline.
Both Wallace and Drummond look properly somber as they are led in to talk to the authorities. Drummond sees me, and his face reflects his surprise that I am there, but I doubt he dwells on it very long. He’s got other, bigger problems with which to deal.
I see Drummond again about twenty minutes later; he and Wallace are leaving the trailer that’s been set up as command central as Marcus and I are being escorted to it. Drummond is attempting to appear composed and in control, but his face is tearstained, and the anguish is evident. Alan Drummond must have been on that plane.
Officials from both the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board have made their way out here, and they seem to be sharing a dual command. With terrorism being the first thing that everyone thinks of when a plane crashes, the FBI will treat the location as a crime scene until they find out otherwise.
Marcus and I answer questions from FBI Special Agent Ricardo Davila. Marcus is as unresponsive as ever, which proves not to be a significant factor when he says that he didn’t see the crash. He’s telling the truth; I was the one in the back watching while he was driving.
I report the salient facts: that I saw the plane coming in far too low to reach the airport and that it was rapidly losing what altitude it had. The nose was pointed down, at least forty-five degrees, and if it made any effort to straighten out, I certainly didn’t see it.
“What were you doing out here?” Agent Davila asks.
“We just went for a drive,” I say.
He looks at me, then at Marcus. Then he looks at me again and then at Marcus again. “The two of you went for a drive?”
“That’s right,” I say.
He nods, though it clearly doesn’t compute. “Did the plane break apart at all in the air?”
“Not that I saw. And I had a clear view.”
“Nothing fell off of it? It stayed completely intact?”
“Completely intact,” I say. “And there was no smoke either. Not until it hit the ground.”
Davila asks a bunch of additional questions, then calls over a guy from NTSB to ask a bunch more. Satisfied that they’ve extracted all the information they’re going to get from us, they take our names, addresses, and phone numbers and send us on our way.
Marcus and I head toward our car but stop when we see Laurie and Cliff Parsons. “Was it Alan Drummond?” I
