Lynne Heitman - Hard Landing

I should go, I kept thinking. I should get up and take this tape to the proper authorities. But all I did was sit and stare and watch the sun come up. I couldn't seem to do much else.

The computer monitor flickered. Another report was up. I turned and looked, squinting at the bright screen to keep the characters from fuzzing together. When I saw what it said-same as the last one-the dull pain behind my right eye surged again, this time through the center of my skull. I pushed at it with the heel of my hand, but the throbbing wasn't going to stop unless my heart stopped beating. I punched Print Screen and slumped back in my chair.

"It's good to see you in one piece."

The voice, unmistakable, came from the doorway behind me. I hadn't heard him come in, but that's how Bill Scanlon always came into and out of my life- without warning and on his terms. I swiveled around to see him, too tired to be startled, too numb to have felt his presence.

He leaned against the doorjamb with his leather briefcase in one hand and that familiar blue cashmere coat in the other. His suit hung perfectly from his lean frame, a deep charcoal gray that brought out the fine strains of silver in this thick black hair. Impeccable, as always.

When I didn't answer, he stepped quietly into the office and put his coat and briefcase on the floor and closed the door. "Are you all right?"

I wasn't all right, might never be again. The look on my face must have told him as much because be started to come to me. More than anything I wanted him to. I wanted to put my face against his chest and feel the steady comfort of his breathing, to feel strong arms against my back, keeping me from flying to pieces. But before he could round the desk, I shook my head and nodded toward the windows. Someone might see. He stopped, but his eyes seemed to be asking, "Are you sure?" When I nodded again, he moved to the chair across from mine and sat down. "Tell me," he said, "I want every detail."

I couldn't find my voice. Instead, when he sat, I stood. Rising from my chair, my spine creaked and my muscles ached. Moving across the floor, I felt like a bent old woman that had lived too long. I felt him watching me as I stared out between the wide slats of the blinds, and I knew that he would sit quietly and wait for me, wait as long as I wanted.

The snow that had been so cruel last night was brilliant this morning. Lit by the early morning sun, it was a glistening carpet that rolled from the far side of the runways all the way down to the bay. Beneath my window, rampers were filtering back to start the first shift, and the scene was beginning to look normal again. The only reminder of last night was the sweet, sticky odor that kept drifting up from the dried rum stains on my shirt. That and the answering machine on my desk.

"It would be easier if you tell me what you already know," I said finally, without turning around. If I didn't have to look into his eyes, I could function at least marginally.

"Actually, I already know quite a lot. I was on the phone all night from the airplane. I know that this Pete Dwyer person, the son, he killed a man, the one you were trying to meet with. Angelo, right?"

"Yes."

"Then he tried to kill you and Fallacaro. There was an altercation of some kind and he ended up hanging from a propeller. He's dead and you're a hero. Is that about the sum of it?"

It was hard to get the words out, hard to keep from crying. "Keep going."

I heard him stirring behind me, pictured him crossing his legs and leaning forward, elbows on the arms of the chair and hands clasped in front of him. He would be uncomfortable not asking all the questions, not directing the flow of the conversation. He didn't like not being in charge.

"Lenny is in custody," he went on, "for reasons I can't figure out. There seems to be some indication that you were right, that this Little Pete did kill Ellen, but there's still no evidence to prove it and we don't know why he would do such a thing. As it turns out, with him gone, we might never know."

The tears started to come, flowing down the tracks worn into my face from a night filled with crying. I put my head down and covered my eyes with my hand. When I heard him stand, my breath caught in my throat When I heard him move toward me, I told myself to step aside, to move away, to get out of reach before it was too late. But I felt so exposed. I felt as if my very skin had been stripped away and that even the air hurt where it touched me. I needed comfort so badly, and I knew that if I didn't turn from him right now, I might never turn away. Still, I didn't move. Couldn't. But I said the one thing I knew would make him stop. "The police have the package." Then I closed my eyes and waited.

My computer hummed quietly on my desk. A shout came up from the ramp, a man's voice muffled by the heavy glass window. Bill said nothing. I wiped my eyes and turned to face him. "Lenny tried to destroy the evidence," I said. "He had it. He took it down to the ramp last night and tried to burn it in a trash barrel."

His face was perfectly calm, placid even. When I tried to swallow, the front of my throat stuck to the back and it was hard to keep going. But I did. "The storm was so bad that he couldn't get it to burn. One of my crew chiefs caught him."

The thought of John McTavish with his big hand around Lenny's wrist while his brother Terry pried the envelope loose gave me one tiny moment of satisfaction in an ocean of pain.

"They saved the evidence, Bill. The confession, the video-the police have it all."

There was the slightest hesitation before a smile spread across his face. "That's great," he said. "So there was a package. You were right about that, too." He probably would have fooled someone else. But I heard the forced enthusiasm, felt him straining under the veneer of graciousness. I knew with a certainty that was like a knife through my heart that the warm regard in his brown eyes, focused so intently on me right now, was false. He started moving casually away, tracing the edge of the desk with his index finger as he backed toward the window. "What was in this rescued package?"

"Don't make me tell you what you already know."

He smiled uncertainly. "I don't know what you mean."

I went to my credenza, where the schedules I had printed were lying in the tray. I lifted the first one out, laid it on the desk, and pushed it across the glass-top surface, a distance that seemed like miles. "That's your travel schedule for the past twelve months." He looked down and read it, then looked at me as if to say, "So what?"

I placed a second sheet next to the first, the list of Ellen's secret destinations, and tried to still the shuddering in my chest. "This is Ellen's. You were in the same city with her fifteen times out of a possible fifteen different occasions." I pulled the wrinkled page from my back pocket and smoothed it on the desk. Spots appeared like raindrops as my tears fell onto the page, bleeding into the paper, smearing the black ink as I read Ellen's note one more time.

… I feel myself going under again, and the only thing that keeps my head above water is the motion of reaching up for him. And I can't let go. Because when I'm with him, I exist. Without him, I'm afraid I'll disappear. Disappear to a place where God can't save me and I can't save myself.

I laid it on the desk in front of him. "She wrote that about you."

He never looked at the second schedule. He never looked at Ellen's note. He looked at me. He fixed his gaze on me and wouldn't let go. "What are you trying to say, Alex?"

"I don't have to say anything, Bill." I reached across the desk to the answering machine and started the tape.

The voices had the hollow, tinny quality of a cheap answering machine, but there was no mistaking Ellen's voice with that light Southern accent, still so unexpected to me. The tape was queued up right where I'd left it, at the point where Ellen was talking, her words tumbling out in a torrent of anguish and pain.