Lynne Heitman - Hard Landing

Finally, Dan roused himself to stand up and go over to the television. He was going to pop out the cassette, but I stopped him. "I want to watch it one more time."

He turned to look at me. "Why? Are you looking for something?"

"The passengers' faces." I needed to see them again, to see them as individuals-as men and women, children, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives. I didn't want them to be fused together into an entity that I knew only as "the twenty-one people killed in the crash of flight 1704."

Without a word, Dan qued through the tape and found the beginning of the boarding process. This time as we watched in normal speed, I made sure to look at each one as they passed by in the rain and climbed the boarding stairs.

Seeing their images on tape reminded me of Ellen's video, of how I had felt when I'd heard her voice, when I'd seen her smile, saw doubt on her face and frustration and determination-all the things that make us who we are. Seeing her that way had made real to me someone I'd never met. It had created a void in my life for someone I'd never even known.

As I stared at the screen, I thought about the surviving family and friends of these victims, what it was going to do to them to see the people they had loved, still loved, in their final moments, and the silent black-and-white image started to blur again.

Dan stared at my computer monitor. "Who's H. Jergensen?" he asked.

"I don't know." I was trying to wrangle the papers on the floor in my office into one pile so that Molly wouldn't have a heart attack when she arrived for work on Monday. The heat had finally stopped pouring in, and our offices were now merely sweltering as opposed to life-threatening. "Why?"

"Because you've got an e-mail message from him and it's urgent."

"What's in the subject line?"

"Matt Levesque."

Matt… H. Jergensen… H… Hazel. "Hazel. Is it Hazel Jergensen?" I raced over and almost lifted him bodily out of the way so that I could sit at the keyboard. "Move, move, move."

"All right. Jesus Christ. What is it?"

"It's the invoices to Crescent, finally. Or at least a reasonable facsimile." I sat down and clicked into the Majestic electronic mailroom to find the message. "Hazel Jergensen worked for Ellen on the task force and, according to Finance Guy, kept records of everything. He thought she might have a record of who signed the invoices to Crescent. Dammit." I was talking as fast as I could, typing as fast as I could, and missing keys. "We're going to find out once and for all if Ellen was in on this, at least the embezzlement part." After multiple tries I found the message, double-clicked, and waited for it to come up.

Dan hadn't responded, and when I turned to find him, he was as far away from the computer as he could be and still be in the office. "Don't you want to know?"

"To be honest," he said, "I've already found out more than I ever wanted to know."

"What if it wasn't her? We don't know for sure, Dan. This will tell us."

The CPU seemed to labor endlessly, whirring and clicking as I watched the blinking cursor on the screen. The wool fabric on my chair was making the hollows at the backs of my knees sweat right through my jeans. When the message finally appeared, it was in pieces. "Here it comes."

Half a note from Hazel appeared first, saying simply that Matt had asked her to… the rest of the message came up… forward the information. I punched up the attachment. The first section included titles and column headings-vendors, amounts paid, check numbers, and in the far right-hand column "Approved by:" I tried to stay calm, but it was tough. If it was all here, Hazel had sent us exactly what we needed.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," Dan coaxed. I hadn't even noticed, but he was now leaning over my chair, breathing over my shoulder as the report began to appear.

The screen changed hues as the last of the data popped up. The spreadsheet was so big, we could see only the first few columns.

I scrolled down through the A's. There were lots of B's. Lawyers, accountants, auditors, consultants- advisers of every stripe. At one point I got frustrated and went too fast, and we ended up in the H's. Finally I found it. My heart did a little tap dance from just seeing it there. Crescent Consulting-big as life.

I took a deep breath and heard Dan do the same. "Are you ready?" I asked him.

"As I'll ever be. Go ahead."

I shifted the view so that we could see the whole spreadsheet. When we saw the signature, we both sat back at the same time, me in my chair and Dan against the desk. I thought I heard him deflating back there. Or maybe that was me. I scrolled down until we'd seen all of the Crescent entries.

Ellen had signed every one.

I felt sad. That was the best way to say it. Disappointed and sad. Dan had drifted away again. "Dan, I'm sorry. But isn't it better to know than not to know?"

He turned around, started to say something, and his beeper went off. Before he could respond, mine went off and they beeped together, making for an eerie, syncopated stereo alarm.

"Operations," I said, silencing the tone on mine.

"Both of us," he said quietly. "It must be something big."

"Yeah, Kevin… uh-huh… in my office…" Dan held the phone to his ear. "No, I've had the phones rolled over… What? When?" He hesitated, glancing at me. "I'll get in touch with her. Okay, I'll be right down."

"We haven't dispatched an aircraft in over an hour," he said after he'd hung up. "We've got one on every gate, at least two on the ground trying to get in, more on the way, and visibility is for shit. Kevin says everything just stopped."

"Weather?"

"It's not the weather."

Even in the overheated, overcharged atmosphere I felt a deep, deep chill as he dashed into his office.

I followed him. "Then what is it?"

"All the rampers have disappeared." He snatched a hand-held radio from the charger. "Kevin can't find anyone."

There was a current running through Dan. I could feel it. The high-voltage kind that's always marked dangerous. His engines were revving. I took a wild guess. "Are the Dwyers on shift?"

"Little Pete is. He must have swapped with someone."

I clamped onto his right elbow, afraid that he might be out the door and into the operation before I knew he was gone. "What are you planning to do?"

"I'm going to see if I can get some airplanes off the ground."

"Don't bullshit me. You're going down there to find Little Pete."

"I'm not going down there to find Little Pete, but if that cocksucker happens to be around, I won't walk away from him."

"There's something not right here, Dan. An entire shift doesn't just disappear. Someone's trying to get us down there. Don't be stupid."

"No one ever accused me of being smart."

He was standing still. He wasn't doing anything but looking at me, yet I could still feel his momentum pulling us both toward the door. I was panicked that if I let go, he was going to slip away, and this time I'd never see him again.

"Let me go, boss."

I looked at him closely. He was tired, disheveled, unshaven-and completely still. I'd never seen him so still, and I knew I had no chance of stopping him. I let go, but only to reach for the second radio still nested in the charger. Before I had it clipped in place, the door to the concourse opened and slammed shut. We stared at each other. "Dickie's package," I said.

"What did you do with it?" he whispered.

"Did I have it last?"

The footsteps were approaching, albeit slowly.

I bolted next door to my office and found the envelope on the desk, right where I'd left it. We'd never replaced the ceiling tile, and as Dan jumped onto the file cabinet, I handed the package up to him. The footsteps grew louder, but the pace was downright leisurely, out of place in an airport operation, especially in this one on this night. I thought I even heard… yes, he was whistling. Hurry, Dan, hurry up. As he maneuvered the tile back into place, he ducked and I flinched as something fell from the opening, bounced off the side of his shoe, and landed on the floor. I could see it back there between the wall and the cabinet. It was a small, plastic object, clear plastic.