Nevertheless, the desire to learn the truth, which had motivated him to come to Colorado, was the tiniest fraction as powerful as the wrenching need to find his younger daughter, which now raged in him to a degree beyond the measurements used to define mere compulsion or obsession.
At Denver International Airport, he returned the car to the agency, paid the bill in cash, and retrieved his signed credit-card form. He was in the terminal again fifty minutes before his flight was scheduled to depart.
He was starving. But for two cookies in Mercy’s kitchen, he had eaten nothing since the two cheeseburgers the previous evening on his way to the Vadance house and later a chocolate bar.
He found the nearest restaurant in the terminal. He ordered a club sandwich with french fries and a bottle of Heineken.
Bacon had never tasted half as good as it did now. He licked mayonnaise from his fingertips. The fries had a satisfying crunch, and the crisp dill pickle snapped with a spray of sour juice. For the first time since another August, he not only consumed his food but
On his way to the boarding gate, with twenty minutes to spare, he suddenly took a detour to the men’s room. He thought he was going to be sick.
By the time he got into a stall and latched the door, his nausea passed. Instead of throwing up, he leaned his back against the door and wept.
He hadn’t cried in many months, and he didn’t know why he was crying now. Maybe because he was on the trembling edge of happiness with the thought of seeing Nina again. Or maybe because he was scared of never finding her or of losing her a second time. Maybe he was grieving anew for Michelle and Chrissie. Maybe he had learned too many dreadful details about what had happened to Flight 353 and to the people on it.
Maybe it was all those things.
He was on a runaway rocket of emotion, and he needed to regain control of himself. He wasn’t going to be effective in his search for Rose and Nina if he swung wildly between euphoria and despair.
Red-eyed but recovered, he boarded the plane for Los Angeles as they issued the final call.
As the 737 took off, to Joe’s surprise his heart made a hollow racket in his ears, like running footsteps descending stairs. He clutched the arms of his seat as though he might tumble forward and fall headlong.
He hadn’t been afraid on the flight to Denver, but now he was in the lap of terror. Coming eastward, he would have welcomed death, for the wrongness of outliving his family had been heavy on his mind — but now, westward bound, he had a reason to live.
Even when they had reached cruising altitude and leveled off, he remained edgy. He could too easily imagine one of the pilots turning to the other and saying,
Since Joe could not get Captain Delroy Blane out of his mind anyway, he withdrew the three folded pages of the transcript from an inner jacket pocket. Reviewing it, he might see something that he had missed before — and he needed to keep his mind occupied, even if with this.
The flight wasn’t heavily booked, a third of the seats empty. He had a window seat with no immediate neighbor, so he was afforded the privacy he needed.
In response to his request, a flight attendant brought a pen and note pad.
As he read through the transcript, he extracted Blane’s dialogue and printed it on the note pad. Standing apart from First Officer Victor Santorelli’s increasingly frantic statements and shorn of Barbara’s descriptions of sounds and pauses, the captain’s words might allow for the discovery of nuances otherwise not easy to spot.
When he was done, Joe folded the transcript and returned it to his coat pocket. Then he read from the note pad:
One of their names is Dr. Louis Blom.
One of their names is Dr. Keith Ramlock.
They’re doing bad things to me.
They’re mean to me.
Make them stop.
Are we recording?
Make them stop hurting me.
Are we recording?
Are we recording?
Make them stop or when I get the chance…when I get the chance, I’ll kill everybody. Everybody. I will. I’ll do it. I’ll kill everybody, and I’ll like it.
This is fun.
Whoooaaa. Here we go, Dr. Ramlock. Dr. Blom, here we go.
Whoooaaa. Are we recording?
Are we recording?
Oh, wow.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Now. Look.
Cool.
Joe didn’t see anything new in the material, but something he had noticed before was more obvious when Blane’s dialogue was read in this extracted format. Although the captain was speaking in the voice of an adult, some of the things he was saying had a distinct childlike quality.
This was neither the phrasing nor the word choice most adults would use to accuse tormentors or to ask for help.
His longest speech, a threat to kill everybody
Blane’s reaction to the roll and plunge of the 747 was like that of a boy thrilling to the arrival of a roller coaster at the crown of the first hill on the track and, then, to the first stomach-rolling drop. According to Barbara, the captain had sounded unafraid; and there was no more terror in his words than in his tone of voice.
Those words were spoken three and a half seconds before impact, as Blane watched the nightscape bloom like a black rose beyond the windscreen. He seemed gripped not by fear but by a sense of wonder.
Joe stared at that final word for a long time, until the shiver it caused had passed, until he could consider all the implications of it with a measure of detachment.
To the end, Blane reacted like a boy on an amusement-park ride. He had exhibited no more concern for his passengers and crew than a thoughtless and arrogant child might exhibit for the insects that he tortured with matches.
Even a thoughtless child, as selfish as only the very young and the incurably immature can be, would nonetheless have shown some fear for
Delroy Blane. Family man. Faithful husband. Devout Mormon. Stable, loving, kind, compassionate. Successful, happy, healthy. Everything to live for. Cleared by the toxicological tests.
What’s wrong with this picture?
