Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“Great,” said Kathy. “Maybe Sissy and I could fix the picnic together.”

Pace smiled. “Hugh hasn’t changed his mind about letting you off?”

Kathy shrugged. “It’s part of the new me, the me that stops to smell the carnations.”

“Roses.”

“Whatever.”

It delighted Pace to think of the three of them on an outing. He was more confident than Kathy that Melissa would accept the new woman in her father’s life. After all these years, he found it hard to believe his daughter still harbored hopes of a reconciliation between her parents.

He took Kathy in his arms and hugged her. “God, it’s so good to have you here.”

“Almost as good as it is to be here,” she said. “Having you around has helped me… well, you know.”

He pushed her to arm’s length and held her there, looking directly into her eyes. “Helped you cope with losing Jonathan? If that’s what you mean, maybe you should say it out loud. Dancing around the words won’t change anything.”

Tears filled her eyes. “I know,” she said. “It’s so hard.”

He held her again and stroked her hair. “It’ll come,” he said. “It’ll come.”

“Find out what happened, Steve. Please.”

“You don’t believe it was a bird?”

She pulled away from him gently. “And you don’t, either,” she said.

“I have doubts.”

“I know. I’m counting on you to reconcile them.”

He finished dressing and started to leave the bedroom. She called him back. “Steve, what’s this?” she asked.

He saw her holding the scratched metal ball he’d picked up on the field at Dulles.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly.

“Is it something you want to keep?”

He reached out, and she dropped it in his hand. He turned it between his thumb and forefinger and hoped for an inspiration that would identify it.

“I picked this up in the grass at Dulles when Mike was showing me some of the wreckage,” Pace said. “There were a couple more like it scattered around. I didn’t mean to carry it off, but we left in a hurry, and I forgot I’d put it in my pocket. I don’t think it’s anything important, but I can’t bring myself to toss it.”

“Then I’ll leave it where I found it,” she said, replacing it in the ashtray.

Twenty minutes later, as he sat down at his desk, his phone rang.

“Pace.”

“This is Detective Lieutenant Martin Lanier, District Police, returning your call from Wednesday afternoon. Sorry it took me so long to get back. What can I do for you?”

It took Pace a second to remember that he’d called Lanier after he talked to Clay Helm about the progress of the accident investigation.

“I had some information from the Virginia State Police that they were working with you to determine if there was a connection between the Antravanian and McGill deaths,” Pace said, surprised he was able to refer to Mike’s murder so casually only three days after the fact. Mike’s funeral was today in Memphis, but Pace hadn’t been able to leave Washington. He shook the memory from his head before it knocked him off balance.

“I know,” Lanier said. “I saw your story yesterday. It was correct as far as it went.”

“As far as it went?” Pace’s anticipation rose.

Lanier didn’t respond right away. Pace almost pressed him, but he resorted to an old interview technique. When he got an answer that was incomplete or evasive, he waited. Since conversation abhors a vacuum, the subject would become uncomfortable with the silence and start talking again, elaborating on a previous answer. Those afterthoughts often produced the best quotes and most pertinent information of an interview.

The technique worked again.

“I sort of owe you an apology for being so rough on you Tuesday night,” Lanier said. “When I got to thinking later about what you said about your friend being a target, I should have called you then. But I jumped to a conclusion about motive, and I shouldn’t have.”

“You mean you’re convinced now it was a setup?” Pace asked tentatively.

“Convinced of it, no,” Lanier said. “But considering it. On the basis of some evidence.”

Pace wanted to say he knew about the light-blue Ford van, but he had given his word to Clay Helm and he wouldn’t break it.

“Can you tell me what the evidence is?” he asked instead.

“No. But I will tell you word on the street is that nobody’s heard about two white junkies working drugstores together.”

“Uh-huh.” Pace acknowledged the information and then fell silent again.

“I’d be willing to be quoted as saying we are investigating whether Captain McGill was a target and the other drugstore victims were killed to mislead investigators.”

“That’s what happened,” Pace said.

“That’s your opinion again,” Lanier said. “We’re investigating other possibilities, too, among them that the shootings are exactly what they appeared to be in the first place, or the shooters are new in town or are embarking on a new career.”

“What about a possible link between the shooting and the accident in Virginia?”

“We haven’t made the connection yet,” Lanier said. “But we haven’t ruled it out, either. At this point, that facet of the investigation is being conducted principally by the Virginia State Police. Since the Antravanian death appears to be an accident, the Virginia cops will have to come up with evidence of homicide to keep that line of investigation open. If they have anything, I haven’t heard about it.”

“I should check with Captain Helm again today, anyhow,” Pace said. “Thanks for returning my call, Lieutenant.”

“Not at all.”

Pace punched in Clay Helm’s number and waited for someone to pick up the phone.

“I was headed out the door,” Helm said. “What’s up?”

Pace related his conversation with Lanier.

“So, the old hardass softened up a little, huh? I don’t see he had any choice.”

“What about you?” Pace asked. “Any progress?”

“Nothing I can talk about for publication, Steve, but you can say the investigation remains open and active.”

“That doesn’t advance things much, does it?”

“There’s nothing more solid to give you.”

“Leads?”

“Ideas more than leads. Procedures we know we need to pursue.”

“Can you say any more than that?”

“I can’t, no.”

Pace reviewed his notes. He could take the murder-investigation story a giant step beyond where it was two days earlier. He told Paul Wister about his conversations with Lanier and Helm, and got enthusiastic approval to write the story.

He stared at his blank computer screen and felt a queasiness rise in his stomach, the sort of feeling one gets when a car takes a small rise in the road too fast, or when a roller-coaster crests at the highest point of the track and starts the long plunge to the bottom.

Pace thought that appropriate. The whole bloody mess had been one long roller-coaster ride, with the highest highs followed by the deepest lows, one after another.

“Hold on with both hands,” he muttered to himself. “Here we go again.”

TransAm Flight 687 roared out of Logan Airport into the blustery spring sky and turned west-southwest on a course for San Diego. It would be an uneventful trip for the aircraft designated NTA2464. But it would be the last stress load the fracturing turbine disk in Number One engine would be able to take.

Drawn to his office on Saturday by a nagging conviction that something was wrong with the world of aviation, Ken Sachs sat behind his desk and read again the newspaper stories on Vernon Lund’s final press conference. In the background, CNN droned through special Saturday-morning programming on entertainment, travel, and fashion, but a regular news show would be up soon.