Ridley Pearson - Cut and Run

“Give me the short form,” he told Wegner. “And slow down.”

“Homeland Security requires ATC to track every bird in the sky for variations from their regularly filed flight plans. Since the abduction of the Stevenson girl, ATC has recorded a half dozen first-time single-engine aircraft into the St. Louis area, and we’ve accounted for the pilot and the reason for the visit in each case. Eleven twins, most of which simply landed and refueled. Employees at FBOs are encouraged to keep track of passenger pickups and drop-offs, something initiated by Homeland. All FBOs have been advised of the little girl. Intel gathered an hour ago from ATC concerns”-he leaned over Rotem and turned the page, directing him to a line about halfway down-“a fractionally owned private jet. In and of itself, it’s not too remarkable; in the past day we’ve logged seven privately owned jets landing there for the first time. But in each case, the paper trail made sense-that is, the fractional owner was a corporation, or at least a known entity, and the passengers listed on the manifest checked out. This one,” he said, tapping his finger strongly on the open page, “is the exception. We’ve been on the horn with Sure-Flyte, the corporation that sells and maintains the fractional ownership fleet, and we’ve also run a background on the fractional owner-a corporation out of Delaware -and it’s murky, to say the least. Past flights, and there haven’t been many, have been Seattle to Providence, round trip. Seattle to here, Washington, D.C. Seattle to Reno a half dozen times. Always originating with a passenger in Seattle. The passenger names listed on the manifests are for people who certainly exist-of course they do-but I’m betting ten to one they’re recent victims of identity theft. You look at their incomes, these people did not ride a private jet around the country.”

“Is Homeland involved?”

“They’ll be all over this once they hear about the aliases.”

“Let’s delay that for now,” Rotem said. “Where’s it scheduled to land?”

“That’s what caught our attention. The pickup is Washington, Missouri. It’s a small strip west of St. Louis, just big enough to handle a jet like this. And get this: no tower, no FBO. No witnesses. Sure-Flyte has never, let me repeat that, never , landed one of their jets at the Washington strip.”

“A private jet of dubious ownership,” Rotem repeated, “landing for the first time at a strip just out of town where no one is likely to see who gets on or gets off.”

“And the first time a passenger flight for this company did not originate in Seattle. Which is why I brought it up here in person rather than put it into the paper mill.”

Wegner lived in an office cubicle where the only light came from fluorescent tubes and the only smells from his armpits or the coffee machine. For a reward, Rotem felt tempted to bring him as a field-side spectator for the day-to see his efforts in action-but decided he needed him on the front line of paperwork.

“You may have saved a life, Wegner.” Rotem watched as the man grew a few inches taller. “Maybe more than that. Maybe many more.”

Wegner lingered a little too long.

“Now get back to it,” Rotem said, already growing impatient with him.

A thunderstorm cracked wildly with twenty minutes to go before the scheduled landing.

With the small girl bound and gagged in the trunk of the stolen car, Paolo sat off a farm road across a small poured-concrete bridge to the east of, and with a good view of, Washington Memorial Airport ’s landing strip. He’d rigged the car’s jack to make it look as if he were dealing with a flat. In fact, he could drive away, leaving the jack behind if needed. By car, he was less than five minutes from the tarmac and the sole hangar. On foot, they would have to cross a farmer’s field, ten to twelve minutes if the girl stayed on her feet; but this option would allow him to abandon the stolen car in the woods along the creek and thereby limit the evidence connecting the kidnapping to this airfield. He waited. Which would it be? He’d been told the pilot had his cell number.

He couldn’t get the image of the girl out of his mind: dripping wet head to toe, caught between the motel bed and the TV, a stunned look of surprise as he came through the door.

He’d waited for her to say something. And she, him.

Finally, he broke the silence. “Get out of those clothes and dry yourself. You’ll catch cold.”

She turned around and headed for the bathroom.

“I need you to do something for me,” he called after her.

She stopped just outside of the bathroom and turned to face him as if expecting more from him.

“It’s the duty of every prisoner to attempt escape,” he said. “Once,” he added, “and only once. I’d have done the same thing.”

“I want my mommy.”

This stung him but he said, “I’ll hurt you if you do that again. Hurt you bad. Count on it. But no one’s going to kill you, Penny. Least of all me. That’s a promise.”

The kid never flinched. “I want my mommy.”

“Get out of those clothes. The motel has a washer/dryer. You can wear one of my T-shirts.”

“I don’t want to.”

His eyeball had swollen and blistered to deformity. Yellowish fluid leaked in bursts down his cheek. For a moment his eye would actually feel slightly better; then the stinging would return, escalating to unbearable pain, and then it would squirt out its foul juice, and the cycle would repeat itself.

“I need you to do something icky,” he told her. “Something’s in my eye, and it has to come out.”

“I don’t like icky things.”

“Neither do I. But you’re going to have to do this.”

A few minutes later she had changed and opened the door for him. Her clothes lay in a heap by the front door-all but her socks, which she refused to take off. She wore his Oakland Raiders T-shirt like a dress.

He mopped up the bathroom floor with a towel and had her sit on the counter while he held his damaged eye open to the bright light.

He described the melted contact lens and pointed to it. “You’re going to have to pinch it, and pull it off,” he instructed. “I tried, but I couldn’t see what I was doing.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Yeah, you can.”

“No, I can’t.”

“You act like this, and you’re going back in the closet. You help me out, and there’s ice cream and cartoons.”

“What if I hurt you?”

“You’re going to hurt me, but it’s not your fault. Just pinch and pull, okay?”

“It’s disgusting.”

He tried to think of other kids he knew-kids who lived on the Romero compound. He said, “What if it was a kitty cat with something in her eye? Would you help the kitty?”

A reluctant “Yeah?”

“So forget it’s me. Pretend it’s a kitty cat, and you’re the only one that can help it, the only one who can save it. Can you do that?”

“Maybe…”

“We’re going to do this now. You and me. Ready?”

“I guess.”

“Okay.” He pried open his bad eye, gritted his teeth, and watched as the two little fingers converged, blocking what little sight he had.

A moment later he screamed. It stuck to her finger like stubborn mucus, and when she shook it off it landed on the bathroom floor, a little glob of yellowish goo.

“I got it!” she said. “I got it.” Without thinking what she was doing, she almost hugged him, then shrank back.

“You got it,” he said, swallowing a scream. His one good eye met hers, and for a moment, neither knew what to say.

The assigned hour of 2:37 P.M. growing near, Paolo checked his watch repeatedly, his good eye rotating from the distant airfield to the airspace above the field, to the rearview mirror, and back again. He’d covered the injured eye with an athletic headband worn askew on his head, a makeshift eye patch.