Divisible man nine lives.., p.17
DIVISIBLE MAN--NINE LIVES LOST, page 17
I wasn’t ready to pilot that Buick back down the mountain in the dark. My limbs felt weak and uncoordinated. I dismissed the idea of pursuit. Danzig was long gone. At best, Danzig took Wally with him. At worst, Wally lay at the bottom of the canyon, completing the fall Danzig intended for him from the start. Even through lingering brain fog caused by the shotgun blast, I saw no logic or reason to chase after Danzig. I had another idea.
I cruised back up to Martian Mike’s house. Outside the back door, I slowed to a near crawl and bypassed the corpse on the back steps—
— wondering how I can possibly report this
—wondering if animals will get to the body before the authorities
—floating over the porch rail and through the open patio door into the expansive overlook room. I had the good sense to remain vanished and weightless. By slow maneuvering with the BLASTER, I avoided touching anything.
I slipped past the kitchen where the package of General Tso’s Chicken lay thawing on the countertop beside a single empty plate. A short hallway took me to the office, which was now dark. Inside the open door, I found the wall switch with my elbow and flicked on a desk lamp.
Empty.
The desk that had been cluttered with piles of paper, magazines, and files looked pristine, like something from a furniture store showroom. The monitor with the PC screensaver I’d seen before was gone, along with the PC and its power cords. The empty outlet on the wall near the floor molding suggested that even the surge protector, if there had been one, had been taken.
The walls were bare. No maps. No bulletin boards. No pinned clippings.
Cleaned out.
Danzig and his crew had several hours. They made the most of it. Martian Mike would be found dead of an apparent suicide and his house stripped of any sign of his past passion.
Poor guy. He sold out and slipped into a depression.
He gained a bank account and lost his purpose in life.
The conclusions would be easily reached. Meanwhile, I not only failed to find what led Lillian Farris to Martian Mike, I now had to wonder what Danzig had taken—and more importantly, why?
I made a cursory search of the rest of the house but had no illusions about finding a secret stash of vital clues. Danzig had much more time to search than I, and possibly better control of his motor function, although I took a measure of pleasure in the fact that he’d been inside the other thing the same as me when he pulled the trigger of his shotgun. With any luck, he felt as shitty as I did.
I gave up and returned to what was left of Martian Mike on the back porch. My stomach lurched at the sight of his head. Gore leaked down the front of his shirt and pooled on the steps. His khaki trousers were black across his abdomen and crotch, but dry along his left thigh where I found what I had hoped to find.
I pinched his phone and slid it from his pocket, said a prayer that the device was not locked, and swiped the screen. A selection of icons appeared over the bulbous head of an alien with eyes the size of tennis balls and the color of coal.
I dialed.
“9-1-1, what is your emergency.”
“Frederick Michael Dowd, the owner of this phone, was murdered tonight by a man named Scott Danzig. The murderer also kidnapped and may have killed a young man named Walter Hadley Vandenlock of Sterling, Colorado.”
“Sir, what is—”
I wiped down the phone and laid it beside Martian Mike with the connection open and the operator urgently asking for a response.
Reappearing at the driver’s door of the Buick nearly brought me to my knees. Weight on my legs caused them to quiver so badly that I quickly vanished again. For the first half hour of driving back down the mountain and onto Highway 34, I stayed that way, tightly strapped to the seat and holding onto the wheel. There wasn’t much traffic. If anyone saw the driverless car rolling down the highway, they didn’t see it long enough to let their eyes convince their skeptical brain.
I watched for emergency vehicles. Nothing raced in the opposite direction, but that didn’t mean that someone hadn’t been dispatched via a different route. At the very least, the emergency services dispatcher would pinpoint the call location and investigate.
Around the time I transitioned from the foothills to the flatland, I tried reappearing again. There was no question that being vanished numbed the pain and reduced the demands that weight puts on the body, but the shakiness diminished. My motor control improved. I stayed visible.
By the time I parked the S.S. Buick outside the FBO, I estimated that I might be able to walk without looking drunk. As for flying? That remained to be seen.
First things first. I needed to deal with what I’d been putting off.
“It’s me, Boss.”
“Then I’m gonna guess it’s not good news.” Earl’s rapid assessment of the hour and the caller cut straight to business. “What’s the story with Tammy Day?”
“I’ll explain in a minute, but I need to ask you a question first. When were you going to tell me that Lillian Farris reached out to you?”
“You mean that Dr. Farris woman?”
“The same.”
I almost heard Earl scratching his leathery scalp over the cell connection.
“Christ, I dunno. She called me a couple weeks ago. I thought she was just some busybody. Told me she knew Tammy, spent time with her in Montana, and hadn’t heard from her. Wanted to know if I heard from her. I didn’t think it was any business of some goddamned stranger and I told her so. ‘Course, it got me to thinking. I tried calling myself. Then I asked you to take a look-see—three goddamned days ago, fer chrissakes! Didja lose your phone?”
“Did my name come up?”
“You? Why the hell would your name come up?”
“Because I know the woman. And I’m starting to think the reason she called you was to point me in this direction. How would she know to call you about Tammy anyway?”
“’S what I asked her. She told me that she got my name from Tammy herself, who told her the story about her brother, in which context my cursed name came up.”
Earl Jackson. Of Essex County Air Service. The connection back to me was obvious but convoluted. Why wouldn’t Lillian reach out directly to me?
“Did she mention an outfit called ParaTransit? Or a guy named Peter Giles?”
“Nope.”
“Or Scott Danzig?”
“Never heard of ‘em. Are you gonna tell me what’s going on?”
I spent the next ten minutes explaining what I’d seen and learned. Earl, about as far from being a patient person as any man I’ve ever met, said nothing until the end.
“So, this Danzig fella killed the Martian guy and probably killed this kid whose aunt and eight other people are most likely with Tammy, wherever she got herself…is that how you see it?”
“Pretty much.”
“And you think this Para-whatever outfit is pulling the strings?”
“That would be my guess.”
“And you can’t report any of this to anyone because you can’t answer the first goddamned question a cop would ask.”
“Nail on the head, Boss.”
“Christ!” Earl huffed loudly into the phone. “I’m starting to see why this thing you do ain’t exactly a blessing.”
“You heard about that autistic boy that showed up at our house?”
“Rosemary II mentioned him. Her girl has taken an interest in the child.”
“Lane?”
“Yup.”
That part, I did not know. It didn’t surprise me. Lane Franklin has a huge heart. I wondered if Lane had become involved via Andy.
“That boy was in Lillian Farris’s custody. It was her car he was driving. I think that whatever happened to Tammy Day and her fellow UFO congregants may have happened to Lillian, but not before she set that child on a path in my direction.”
“And what, exactly, would that be?”
“You mean Tammy and the people at the ranch? They freaking disappeared.”
“Whaddya mean, ‘disappeared’?”
I explained as best I could, trying hard not to sound completely nuts.
“That’s completely nuts,” Earl barked.
“You might want to check the news. It’s a local story in Montana.”
“Din’t see nothing here.”
“Which might be a good thing. The last time a big cult story hit the national news it was because of a mass suicide—”
“Heaven’s Gate?”
“Right, so if you haven’t seen a story that tells me they haven’t found bodies yet.”
“Jumpin’ Jesus. Are you coming back? ‘Cuz if you are, you best get moving. Have you seen the Prog charts?”
“Yeah. I figure I have about twelve hours before the shit hits the fan across the Great Lakes.”
“Might be less.”
Not what I wanted to hear. “I’d really like to try and find that kid Wally. I feel like it’s my fault he was grabbed. I should have dropped him off like I planned to do.”
“Sounds to me like they would have found him anyway.”
“I’m not sure they knew he was alive. I’m guessing that came as a shock to them.”
“Where’re you gonna start?”
“Beats the hell out of me. Around this time in the movies, a perfect clue pops up outta nowhere. All I have is a snowstorm coming.”
“Then I suggest you get your ass home. Your wife is a lot smarter than you, anyway. She’s more likely to figure this out than you are.”
“I’d be insulted if that weren’t absolutely true.”
At that point, I think Earl hung up. He never says goodbye. A moment later the screen reported that the call ended.
41
The trip from Greeley to my home base flight planned at over four hours, which was too much to undertake in one shot for a pilot as fatigued and bodily beaten up as me. After returning the crew car, I camped in the FBO pilot lounge for a couple hours, dozing fitfully. Then I strapped in the pilot’s seat of the Baron for another attempt at a nap in the vanished state. It didn’t work as well the second time. After an hour and a half of fitful dozing, I gave up and went back inside the FBO for coffee and a bathroom break. I texted Andy my plans. Fifteen minutes later, I went wheels up.
I broke the flight into two legs. I had a good reason for stopping and refueling at the halfway point. I wanted to talk to someone at the Sioux City Airport and I got lucky. The person I had in mind started her shift at five a.m. She waved me into a parking spot a little after five-thirty and waited for me as I shut down first the left, then the right engine of the Baron.
“Welcome back,” the dark-haired girl called out when I cracked open the door. “Nice to see you again. Need services?”
I didn’t try to climb out, at least not with her watching. Hopping from the front seat of a Beechcraft Baron onto the wing requires a degree of flexibility, and at that moment I felt about as flexible as frozen roadkill.
“Can we top off all four, please?”
“Sure thing. Lemme get the truck. I’ll be right back.
I watched her trot in the direction of the FBO office, then hooked my headset on the control yoke, double-checked to make sure all the appropriate switches were off, and slid over to the right seat. There was no easy way to do it. I swung my legs out the door and onto the wing, then pulled myself out. I prayed no one was watching as I slid myself down the wing on my sore butt until one foot extended past the flap and reached the step. I sounded and looked old and feeble for the next few seconds, heaving myself off the wing and upright with a loud grunt. I gripped the handhold long enough to confirm that my knees wouldn’t betray me.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered, hating the way the effects of the blast on Martian Mike’s wooden porch plagued me. My muscles, bones and joints were not on fire, but they smoldered.
By the time the girl returned with the fuel truck, I managed a reasonable facsimile of walking. I strolled the length of the wing’s leading edge, opening all four fuel caps for her.
She hooked up the static line and unreeled the hose.
“Mains first?” she asked.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Got some weather coming,” she said. She fueled the right auxiliary tank. I walked to the end of the wing and propped my elbows on the tip.
“What’s your name?”
“Delilah.”
“I’m Will.”
“They call me Del around here. Nice to meet you, Will.” She said it without taking her eyes off the task of filling a fuel tank without splashing overflow down the wing. I also detected her guard lifting. I understood why. An attractive young woman working the flight line meets a lot of men with oversized egos. Some with poor manners.
“Del, I need to ask you something.”
“Fire away.”
“When I was here, we talked about that C-23 Sherpa. You mentioned that the crew wasn’t from Enterprise. Do you recall our conversation?”
“I do.” I gave her points for not being evasive.
“Can you tell me anything about them? The crew?”
She squeezed the last of the fuel into the aux tank, turned the nozzle upright, and then capped the tank. All without looking in my direction. She moved to her left and began filling the main tank.
“I really…I hope you understand…I really shouldn’t discuss other customers with anyone. Kinda policy here. Besides, ECG fuels their own equipment.”
“I do understand. Here’s the thing. My wife,” I held up my left hand to show her the ring, “is a police detective with the City of Essex in Wisconsin. My question relates to an investigation she is conducting. More importantly, the life of a young man—a kid about your age—may depend on any information you can give me.”
“How so?”
“If he’s alive, they may have taken him. If he’s not, it may be because of them.”
She lifted her eyes and looked me over.
“Del, I’m asking pilot to pilot. I need to know where those guys came from. If you have any idea, it could help lot.”
The mains were not as depleted as the auxiliary tanks. She finished up quickly and capped the tank. I followed her to the left side, keeping a courteous distance.
“Maybe you should talk to Carrie over at Enterprise.”
“I already did. She’s in a worse position than you are. For her it’s a legal issue involving contracts and liability. You and me…we’re just chatting.”
“I know, but I probably shouldn’t say, either. I mean—no offense—I have no way of knowing what you’re saying is true.” She finished the main tank and moved to the aux tank.
“Okay. I understand. I don’t want to put you in an awkward position. I appreciate you talking to me, Del. I’m going to hit the restroom. I’ll meet you inside to pay the bill.”
I pushed off the Baron’s nose to take the long way around the right wing.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Will. Call me ‘sir’ and you make me feel like an old fart.”
She laughed, just a little bit forced.
I did my restroom business, then spent a few minutes bending, stretching, and flexing, hoping no one would come in and catch me. I felt better when I emerged. At least someone watching me wouldn’t think I’d had too much to drink.
At the front counter, Del’s friendly demeanor returned. She handed my credit card back with a warm smile.
“Coming back anytime soon?”
“I hope so. Excellent service.”
“Well, thank you. You have a good flight.”
I paid her a nod and left the office. On the walk to the Baron, I switched my concentration back to piloting. A quick session on the iPad would give me a weather update. My flight plan for the final leg home was already filed. If nothing got in the way, I expected to land in Essex County just before sunset and ahead of the first snowflake. At the end of this long road, I envisioned a shower that would use up all the hot water in the house.
“Lemme get the chocks for you!” Del caught up to me on the ramp.
“Thanks.”
We walked without talking. I split off to climb the wing. Del hurried around to the nose and pulled the chocks from the wheel. She stood up and approached the leading edge between the right engine and the nose. She looked up at me with dark, serious eyes.
“They came from Frankfurt.”
“Germany?”
She smiled. “That’s what I asked. No. Michigan. Some cargo operation out of there. They fly a C-23 but it was down for maintenance, and they had an emergency they had to deal with. Really bad timing, the guy said, but lucky because they know somebody here in Sioux City.”
“Did you get a name?”
“Nah. Just ramp chatter. I didn’t really feel like hanging out with them.” She made a face that landed her opinion of Danzig in line with mine.
“How did they get here? Commercial?”
“Business jet. A Citation.
“Thanks.”
“You have a good flight.” She flicked the chock rope over the back of her head and let the blocks rest against her neon reflective vest. She turned to step clear.
“Hang on. Did you say you don’t have your multi-engine rating?”
“I’m hoping next summer. It’s really expensive.”
I leaned into the cockpit and unzipped one of the small pockets on my flight bag. I pulled out a card, jotted a word on the back, and handed it to her. She read my scribble.
“Pidge?”
“You bring that card up to Wisconsin, to Essex County Air Service. Ask for Pidge. She’s a multi-engine instructor. Best there is. If you pay for the gas, I’ll see that you get her time and time in this Baron at no charge. Checkride, too.”
“Are you serious?” The smile broke out, startled and genuine.
“My name is on the flip side. I don’t work there anymore but look me up. My wife and I will toss in a place to stay, if you want. Okay?”
“Holy shit, sir—uh—Will. Do you really mean it?”
“Swear on my pilot’s license. And don’t worry. We never had the other part of this conversation.”
