Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

Once she shut down, she wouldn’t refuel. She wasn’t going to wait for the fuel truck. It would take forever, might never get to her, the way things were going. She’d lock up the helicopter and grab her car and race to Manhattan. Barring any further delays, they should be in the Village, in her loft, by half past one. That was cutting it close for a two a.m. interview they’d never get again-an interview that might lead to Hannah Starr, whose disappearance had captured the public’s morbid imagination since the day before Thanksgiving, when she was allegedly last seen getting into that yellow cab on Barrow Street. Ironically, just blocks from where Lucy lived, Berger had pointed out more than once. “And you were home that night. Too damn bad you didn’t see anything.”

“Helicopter niner-lima-foxtrot,” the controller said over the air. “You can proceed to the ramp. Landing is at your own risk. If you’re unfamiliar with the airport, you need to inform us.”

“Niner-lima-foxtrot,” Lucy said with no inflection, the way she sounded before she offed someone or threatened it. She nudged the helicopter forward.

She hover-taxied to the edge of the ramp, made a vertical descent, and set down on her dolly, situated between a Robinson helicopter that reminded her of a dragonfly and a Gulfstream jet that reminded her of Hannah Starr. The wind grabbed the tail boom, and exhaust fumes filled the cabin.

“Unfamiliar?” Lucy chopped the throttle to flight idle and turned off the low-RPM warning horn. “I’m unfamiliar ? You hear that? He’s trying to make me look like a crappy pilot.”

Berger was silent, the smell of fumes strong.

“He does it every damn time now.” Lucy reached up and flipped off overhead switches. “Sorry about the exhaust. You okay? Hang in there for two minutes. Really sorry.” She should confront the controller. She shouldn’t let him get away with it.

Berger took off her headset and opened her window, moving her face as close to it as she could.

“Opening the window makes it worse,” Lucy reminded her. She should walk over to the tower and take the elevator up to the top and let him have it inside the control room right in front of his colleagues.

She watched seconds tick by on the digital clock, fifty-something to go, and her anxiety and anger grew. She would find out the name of that damn air traffic controller and would get him. What had she ever done to him or anybody who worked here except act respectfully and mind her own business and tip well and pay her fees? Thirty-one seconds to go. She didn’t know his name. She didn’t know him. She’d never been anything but professional over the air, no matter how rude he was, and he was always rude to everyone. Fine. If he wanted a fight, he’d get one. Jesus Christ. He had no idea who he was tangling with.

Lucy radioed the tower, and the same controller answered her.

“Requesting your supervisor’s phone number,” Lucy said.

He gave it to her because he had no choice. FAA regs. She wrote it down on her kneeboard. Let him worry. Let him sweat. She radioed the FBO and asked to have her car brought out and her helicopter towed into the hangar. She wondered if her next unpleasant surprise was going to be damage to her Ferrari. Maybe the controller had seen to that, too. She cut the throttle and silenced the warning horn one last time. She took off her headset, hung it on a hook.

“I’m getting out,” Berger said inside the dark, stinking cockpit. “You don’t need to pick a fight with anyone.”

Lucy reached up for the rotor brake, pulled it down. “Hold on until I stop the blades. Remember, we’re on the dolly, not the ground. Don’t forget that when you step down. Just a few more seconds.”

Berger unfastened her four-point harness as Lucy finished the shutdown. Making sure the NG was zero, she flipped off the battery switch. They climbed out, Lucy grabbing their bags and locking up. Berger didn’t wait, headed to the FBO, walking fast between aircraft, stepping around tie-downs and dodging a fuel truck, her slender figure in her long mink coat receding and gone. Lucy knew the routine. Berger would dash into the ladies’ room, gulp down four Advil or a Zomig, and splash her face with cold water. Under different circumstances, she wouldn’t get into the car right now but would give herself a chance to recover, walk around for a while in the fresh air. But there wasn’t time.

If they weren’t back in Lucy’s loft by two a.m., Hap Judd would get spooked, would leave and never contact Berger again. He wasn’t the type to tolerate excuses of any sort, would assume an excuse was a ruse. He was being set up, the paparazzi were around the corner, that’s exactly what he would think, because he was paranoid as hell and guilty as hell. He’d blow them off. He’d get himself a lawyer, and even the dumbest lawyer would tell him not to talk, and the most promising lead would be lost. Hannah Starr wouldn’t be found, soon or ever, and she deserved to be found, for the sake of truth and justice-not her justice. She didn’t deserve something she’d denied everybody else. What a joke. The public had no hint. The whole fucking world felt sorry for her.

Lucy never had felt sorry for her but hadn’t realized until three weeks ago exactly what she did feel for her. By the time Hannah was reported missing, Lucy was keenly aware of the damage the woman could do and in fact had done, just hadn’t recognized it was deliberate. Chalked it up to bad luck, the market, the collapsing economy, and a superficial person’s superficial advice, a favor that got punished but nothing premeditated and malevolent. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Hannah Starr was diabolical; she was evil. If only Lucy had given more weight to her instincts, because the gut feeling she’d gotten the first time she and Hannah had met alone in Florida wasn’t good, wasn’t close to good, she realized that now. While Hannah was polite and nice, almost flirting, there was something else. Lucy realized that now because she hadn’t wanted to realize it then. Maybe it was the way Hannah kept looking at the high-performance boats going by, obnoxiously loud below her glitzy North Miami Beach apartment balcony, so loud Lucy could barely hear herself talk. Greed, unabashed greed. And competitiveness.

“Bet you have one of those tucked away somewhere.” Hannah’s voice, husky, lusty as a 46 Rider XP, triple-stepped hull, inboards at least nine-fifty HP each, headed out to sea, sounding like a Harley full-throttle if your head was next to the Screamin’ Eagle pipes.

“I’m not into go-fast boats.” Lucy hated them, truth be told.

“No way. You and all your machines? I remember the way you used to drool all over my father’s cars. You were the only one he ever let drive his Enzo. I couldn’t believe it. You were just a kid. I should think a cigarette boat would be right up your alley.”

“Not at all.”

“And I thought I knew you.”

“They wouldn’t get me anywhere I need to go unless I have a secret life of running drugs or errands for the Russian Mafia.”

“Secret life? Do tell,” Hannah had said.

“I don’t have one.”

“God, look at it go.” Another one leaving a wide swath of lacy white wake, thundering into the inlet from the Intracoastal, under the causeway, toward the Atlantic. “Yet one more of my ambitions. To have one someday. Not a secret life but a boat like that.”

“If you have one, better not let me find out. I’m not talking about boats.”

“Not me, hon. My life’s an open book.” Hannah’s art deco diamond ring flashed in the sunlight when she placed her hands on the balcony rail, gazing at the aqua water and the powder-blue sky and the long strip of bone-colored beach scattered with furled umbrellas that looked like candy swizzle sticks and feathery palms that were yellowing at the edges of their fronds.