Lisa Scottoline - Think Twice

Alice blew out the cab door.

Running into the terminal.

Mary and her parents looked over as a nurse bustled into the room, her smile bright despite the late hour.

“Party’s over!” she said, cheerily. “I cut you a break, but it’s time to go.”

Mary frowned. “Too bad Frank didn’t get here in time.”

“It’s fine.” Judy waved her off. “Thanks for coming.”

“Your need to rest, Miss Carrier.” The nurse took a blood pressure cuff from a plastic basket affixed to the wall. “I have meds for you, too.”

Mary gave Judy’s arm a quick pat. “You gonna be okay, all by yourself?”

“Yep.” Judy looked up, her blue eyes washed-out. “How about you, without Anthony?”

“Sure.” Mary managed a smile as her parents took turns kissing Judy.

“My, my.” The nurse laughed, wrapping the black cuff around her upper arm. “You got any face left?”

“See you, honey.” Mary picked up her purse and waited for her parents, who trundled out of the room, their faces falling as if they’d checked their trouble at the door. She slipped an arm around her mother, and they walked past the nurses’ station.

“Poor Jud,” her mother said softly, and her father shuffled behind, alone.

Mary couldn’t remember the last time her parents hadn’t walked together, and they went down the elevator as a somber threesome, the triangle of their family reconfigured. Nobody said a word as they left the hospital, where Mary hurried them past the reporters, shielded them from the videocameras, and shouted a steady stream of “no comments.” She hailed a cab, stuffed them inside, and got in. The cabbie took off, and Mary gave him their address, which was when her mother finally spoke.

“ Maria, stay home, tonight. Stay home.”

“Sure, Ma,” Mary answered. She knew her mother was hurting, but she couldn’t see her expression in the dark. They passed under a street lamp, and it flashed like a strobe light, exposing rather than illuminating them.

They rode the rest of the way in silence, and Mary listened to the raindrops thunder on the roof of the cab. Fog clouded the windows, walling them inside. They reached South Philly, crawling through the rainswept streets, and she didn’t bother to check her BlackBerry. Anthony hadn’t written, called, or texted. They were really over.

The cab pulled up in front of the row house with the D on its screen door, where her father opened his wallet, and her mother let out a tiny sigh.

“Home sweet home,” said the cabbie.

Bennie hurried out of the police cruiser with Grady and the two cops, hitting the pavement running. They ducked into an unmarked door at a side entrance of the terminal, then hustled down a series of corridors, passing two airline employees catching a secret smoke. They reached a steel door that read SECURITY and went inside, letting it close with a metallic clang!

TSA employees, uniformed cops, airport personnel, and two men in blue FBI windbreakers filled the room, which was dimly lit and surrounded on three sides by sixty-odd surveillance-camera monitors, their flickering images glowing in front of a long, gray counter dotted with coffee cups and an open box of picked-over donuts.

Bennie glanced at the screens. “Which one is the monitor for the Miami flight?”

“There.” An airport security guard pointed to the middle screen, on the far right. “Miami is at Gate 3, Terminal A. It’s waiting to board. She’s booked on a connection to Nassau, and that’s delayed, too, because of weather.”

Bennie eyed the grainy images, changing every second, with time and date tickers running along the bottom of the screen. They showed women sipping drinks, men tugging roller bags, sleepy toddlers with stuffed bunnies, a teenage boy checking an iPod dial, a little girl toting her own bedpillows, and business types with Bluetooths in their ears, talking to the air. None of the travelers were Alice.

“See her?” the security guard asked.

“Not yet.”

Grady added, “I don’t either. She had on a tan suit today.”

“She’s your identical twin, right, Ms. Rosato?” The security guard glanced up, then returned to the screen. “They sent us a photo.”

“Yes, but she might have disguised herself somehow, guessing we’d be on the lookout. There’s plenty of stores in the airport where she could pick up a fresh set of clothes.”

“Most of them are closed this late.”

“She’ll find an open one, or she’ll beg, borrow, or steal new clothes.”

“A disguise won’t help her. The seat is booked under her name, or rather, your name. She’ll have to identify herself to board.”

“Of course. Has she checked in yet?”

“No.”

“Even this late, she hasn’t checked in?” Bennie watched the screen, puzzled. “Isn’t that strange?”

“Not really,” answered a TSA employee, standing with the cops. “If she called the airline or checked the flight status online, she would’ve seen that it was delayed.”

“So we won’t know who she is until she tries to board, as me. Is that right?”

“Yes, and the airline won’t board her. Nobody wants trouble on the plane. They’re cooperating with us, and we’re all on the same page.”

“Is it a full flight?” Bennie kept her eyes on the screen.

“No.”

“So what’s to stop her from buying a ticket with cash and going on as somebody else?”

“That would take ID.”

“She could have fake ID.”

“We’ll see her get on, right here.” The TSA employee gestured at the Miami monitor. “As soon as we ID her, she’ll be apprehended and arrested. The cops already have a team in place, waiting in the security office in Terminal A. They’ll go as soon as we give them the word.”

Bennie nodded. “Did you circulate her photo to other ticket desks, for other airlines, so they could be on the lookout, too?”

“No.” The TSA employee frowned. “We had no reason to, and no time, anyway. This flight was already ticketed to a Bennie Rosato.”

“Maybe it’s a decoy. Maybe she’s setting us up.” Bennie ran through the possibilities. “What if she took another flight, to somewhere else? Flew to Nassau direct or went another way? Changed it up at the last minute?”

“She can’t. There are no more direct flights to Nassau on any carrier. Besides, she doesn’t know that we know about her ticket.”

Suddenly something on the Miami monitor caught Bennie’s attention. A group of tall teenage boys headed en masse toward the gate, lugging backpacks, plugged into earphones, and wearing baseball caps worn low over their eyes. They were all too tall for them not to be a basketball team, but one of the boys in the back was looking right and left, for no apparent reason. He wasn’t walking with the others, and no one was talking with him. His cap had a telltale bulge that could have been hair, tucked underneath.

“Look at him.” Bennie pointed. “The one in the back.”

“Hello?” The TSA employee snorted. “They’re boys. It’s a boy’s beach volleyball team, from California. I have the manifest.”

“She could be dressed as a boy. Her hair’s under her cap. See it?”

“My God, you’re right!” The TSA employee turned excitedly. “Tom?”

“That’s her!” Officer Stern said, moving toward the door.

“We made her!” somebody shouted into a Nextel.

“We’re on, people!” Officer Rigton and the other cops bolted for the door, with Bennie and Grady on their heels. They tore down one corridor, then another, finally bursting through doors that let them out in the terminal, which was engulfed in a melee. People shouted, screamed, and ran for cover. A team of uniformed cops shouted for them to get down and streaked ahead to the Miami gate.