solve crime of the century.
Justin looked at his watch, decided he’d better get going. He skimmed the rest of the paper, saw that the stock market had dropped 140 points, the main accounting firm connected to EGenco was being investigated for accounting irregularities, President Anderson’s approval ratings had gone up twelve percent since the bombing, and the Knicks had lost again. Then he drained his fourth cup of coffee and went to work.
At the East End police station, Justin stood at his desk, fumbled with some papers for a few moments, cleared his throat and asked Gary, Mike, and Dennis, the three young officers on duty that morning, if they would mind listening to him for a minute. When they looked up, he hemmed and hawed and finally told them about his conversation with Mayor Krill. Told them that he was the new acting chief of police. His announcement got nods of approval and quiet murmurs of congratulations. It was all he expected. This was not a time to celebrate a promotion. Jimmy Leggett’s loss was still an open wound. It would be a while before it began to heal. But, in the meantime, his authority was now established, and that was all he wanted to accomplish.
A few minutes later, Mike and Dennis went off on their appointed rounds-Mike to pound the Main Street pavement and ward off parking violators; Dennis to cruise the side streets and look for speeders and kids playing their boom boxes too loud. But Gary lingered in the doorway after they had left. When Justin raised his eyes in a questioning look, Gary said, “I’m glad for you. It’s a good thing. If you need any help, anything at all. .”
“Thanks,” Justin said. “I was already counting on that.”
Gary now looked toward Jimmy’s office. The door was half open.
“You gonna move in there?”
“I don’t think so,” Justin said. “Not yet.”
“Wouldn’t feel right, would it?”
“No.”
“Well, it’ll feel right sometime.”
“I know it will.”
Gary smiled, touched his forehead with two fingers, meant to be a salute, and headed outside. As soon as he was gone, Justin went to work on his computer.
The first thing Justin did was go onto Google and type in “FAA.” A list of possible sites came up and the first one he clicked on was “Aviation Standards National Field Office.” At the top of the screen it gave a post office box in Oklahoma City, and a phone number. Underneath that was, “Where can I learn about an aircraft accident or obtain results of an accident investigation?” That’s what he clicked on, but it wasn’t much help. The instructions said to provide the exact date, location of accident, and either the name of the airline or the aircraft identification number to Public Inquiry Section AD 46. Justin typed in the precise information, waited for a response.
There was no record of any private plane crash involving the tail number NOV 6909 Juliet.
After playing around with a few more sites, and going down a few more false paths, he returned to the initial listing of different sites and realized he’d been signing on to peripheral organizations rather than the main FAA Web page. In typical government fashion, they couldn’t even lead someone to the right agency with any ease. He finally hit on what he needed: the FAA link to “Aircraft Registration.” He clicked on that, checked the tail number again as he prepared to type it in, but then the following information came up on his screen:
GENERAL INFORMATION REGISTRATION INFORMATION
NOTICE: Due to increased security requirements, access to the public documents room by the general public has been suspended.
Aircraft registration information may be found at the interactive inquiry site. Copies of aircraft records may be ordered by letter, fax, telephone, or online at http://diy.dot.gov.
He clicked on “Telephone” and got the number for the Public Document Room in Oklahoma City. He decided that a little human contact couldn’t hurt.
The phone rang five times before an answering machine clicked on. Listening to the message, Justin swore under his breath-he’d forgotten about the time difference. The office wasn’t open yet. He almost hung up, but at the last second decided to leave word. He gave his name-gave it as Chief of Police Justin Westwood; every little bit helps, he decided-and asked if someone could give him a call, that he was in the middle of an investigation and needed some assistance.
Within seconds of his hanging up, the phone rang. He was impressed: they got in early in Oklahoma City. Except the call wasn’t from Oklahoma. It was from the Southampton police station, perhaps seven miles away. The call was about the Dr Pepper can he’d sent over. They had not been able to access any records that matched fingerprints to the ones on the can.
“How wide was the database?” Justin asked.
“We went pretty extensive. Started statewide, went national, and used the Feebies.”
Justin sighed. “Thanks for trying,” he said. “I appreciate it.”
“You’re taking it better than I thought you would,” the Southampton cop said. “A guy with your rep. It pissed me off, I gotta tell you.”
“What can you do? If there are no records, there are no records.”
“I didn’t say the records don’t exist. I just said we were blocked from getting them.”
“I don’t understand.”
The officer on the other end of the phone sighed as if talking to an idiot. “When we ran the prints through our friends in the FBI we were told we couldn’t access that information.”
“What does that mean?”
“Don’t know. Maybe it means whoever you’re looking for is out of our league.”
The cop hung up before Justin could ask any more questions. And Justin had plenty more questions, although he doubted the Southampton Police Department could help with any of them.
Here was question number one: Who
And question number two: What the hell was going on?
Now that he thought about it, maybe there was a third question. Fear was in the air. Fear made people do strange things. When you boiled it right down, fear was the cause of almost all murders: fear of betrayal, fear of being left alone, fear of poverty. So if this mysterious pilot had indeed been murdered, the answer to the third question might be the most important of them all:
The people who’d murdered him-what exactly were they afraid of?
6
Wanda Chinkle was the assistant director of the FBI responsible for the New England bureau. She’d been in charge for a little over two years now. She’d gone up there to work when Justin Westwood was still on the Providence police force, and they’d joined together on a case. She still felt a little guilty that she’d been unable to protect his family in the mob attack that ultimately took their lives, which is why, when their paths had crossed a year ago, when he’d gotten caught up in the middle of the hunt to stop Douglas Kransten and his Aphrodite experiment, she’d helped Justin out. That helping hand had greatly jeopardized her standing with her bosses. But Justin had managed to repay the favor and dig her out of the jam. She liked Justin. He could be charming as hell. He could also be cold as steel and just as hard. She hadn’t known him all that well before his daughter was killed and she sometimes wondered if he’d been any softer before that. Something told her that wasn’t the case. Wanda’s experience was that people didn’t really change. The older they got-the more life they experienced-they just tapped into what was already there. What was just waiting for an excuse to come out.
As soon as she heard Justin’s voice on the phone, Wanda knew he wanted something. That was okay. Very
