The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

“Not necessarily, but that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” He swung around and grinned at me, eyebrows dancing. “After all, you did ask for this assignment.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Everyone knows. In fact”—he reached over to rip something off the printer—“everyone knows everything about you.”

  My neck stiffened as I thought about the hangman’s drawing in the closet last night. I didn’t think I wanted everyone to know everything about me, particularly where I was at all times, but I was hoping that’s not what Kevin meant. “I’d be really embarrassed if everyone knew my shoe size.”

  “Shall I give you the rundown?”

  I rested my hips against the long work counter that served as his desk. “Give it to me straight.”

  “You’ve been with the company fourteen years, all on the Majestic side. You started out as an airport agent and worked your way up from there. You’ve lived and worked in a dozen different cities. Somewhere along the way you managed an MBA by going to night school. You’ve spent the past eighteen months at headquarters getting staff experience. That done, you’re on a fast track to VP, maybe even to be the first woman vice president in the field.”

  I secretly loved hearing that last part. “You should write my résumés. Who’s the detective?”

  “There are no secrets here. One day someone knows. Before long everyone knows, and then it’s as if we’ve always known.”

  “So I’m finding out.” I pulled down a clipboard hanging on a nail and checked out the tour report. I hadn’t seen a tour report in the entire eighteen months I’d been in headquarters, so now I was taking every chance to look at one, to remind myself that I was back in the field, and every time I did, it gave me a little boost. It was like hearing a favorite old song that comes on the radio after a long absence and being reminded of how much you liked it. This evening looked more promising than last—skies were clear, at least for now, all equipment was in service, and no crew chiefs were on the sick list. I hung the clipboard back on its nail and drifted back over to the window, a chest-high rectangle that ran the length of the office.

  Directly outside, two rampers were loading bags onto a belt loader and up into the belly of the aircraft. Their movements were slow, disinterested. Not far away was a cluster of carts and tractors painted in Majestic’s deep purple colors. Paint was peeling, windows were cracked, and parking was confused and disorderly. In the distance, Delta’s operation gleamed. Even from where I stood, their safety markings and guidelines in reflective white and yellow paint were bright and visible. Every piece of equipment was in its proper place, and everyone was in uniform. I turned back into the office. “What’s going on around here, Kevin?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Crew chiefs are walking off their shifts, Dan Fallacaro looks as if he’s just stepped out of his own grave—”

  “Don’t blame Danny. He’s a good man and it’s not his fault. He’s the best operating man around.”

  “I’d like to think so, but to put it kindly, he’s been a little hard to pin down. Everyone is whispering, no one is doing any work, this place is a mess, and no one here seems to notice.”

  “No one does notice. We’re all accustomed to it.”

  “Are you saying this is normal?” I walked around so that I could see his face because it looked as if… he was. He was smiling. “Did I say something funny?”

  He glanced up from his screen. “Oh, no, I’m sorry. It’s just that you sound like all the rest when they first get here. People who come into this operation from the outside are always shocked and amazed. Don’t worry, it will wear off.”

  “I don’t want it to wear off. I’d rather fix the problems.” Jeez, was I really that pompous and self-important? “All I’m saying is—”

  “I know what you’re saying. What Ellen found out and what you will, too, is that nobody wants this place fixed or else it would have been done a long time ago. The game is rigged.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “You will.”

  “Maybe it was true during the Nor’easter years, but the merger makes it a new game with new rules.”

  “That’s what Ellen thought, too,” he said.

  “Maybe Ellen Shepard wasn’t the right person for the job. The field is a whole different story than staff, and she had no operating experience. Everyone in the field wondered how she even got this job. And we all resented her for getting it, at least until she killed herself.”

  “It would be nice to think that, wouldn’t it? That she succumbed to the pressures of the job?”

  “I’ve heard that the pressures were pretty intense.”

  “No doubt about that. I came to work one day and the freight house was on fire. A week later, all of the computer monitors in the supply room were smashed to smithereens. One night a full twenty-five percent of the entire midnight shift called in sick. And you couldn’t keep track of all the stuff that was stolen off this field. Worse than that, she was getting phone calls at home, threats and warnings of a personal nature.” He shook his head. “Terrible stuff. Very sad if you liked the woman, which I did.” The phone rang and he paused before picking it up. “Ellen Shepard wasn’t under pressure, she was under siege.”

  I’d stared out the window long enough, so this time I checked out the bulletin board. Most of what was up there was old enough to have turned yellow and curled at the edges. Kevin finished his call.

  “All this harassment,” I said, “was because she was trying to change around a few shifts and cut overtime?”

  “Ellen Shepard is not dead because she tried to cut overtime, and it’s not because of any personal problems she may have been having. That’s just the convenient party line. Her problems were all right down here on the ramp. One of them in particular just got the better of her that night, that’s all.”

  “Which one?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Why not?”

  “I keep my beliefs to myself,” he said. “That’s the secret to my longevity.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re one of the conspiracy theorists.” His expression didn’t change.

  “That is an absurd rumor,” I said, with a little more passion than necessary. “The police ruled Ellen’s death a suicide. And besides, if Ellen was murdered by one of her employees, what possible motive would the company have to cover it up?”

  “I’ve been at Logan a long time,” he said, “long enough to know that every rumor has some seed of truth, no matter how small.”

  There was just enough calm rationalism in his tone to unnerve me. If I believed he knew how to optimize gates and which aircraft to dispatch and when, why wouldn’t I believe him about this? “You’re really starting to disturb me, Kevin.”

  “You should be disturbed.” He stood up, walked over to the closed door, and mashed his cheek against the glass window, peering first to the left and then to the right. He came back to me and whispered in a tone that was urgent and serious. “This is not a safe place, especially for a woman, and if no one told you that, they should have.” The twinkle had gone out of his eye. “Don’t try to take on the union. Don’t try to be a hero, and don’t expect to make your career in this place. Just put in your time and get out in one piece. That’s the best advice I can give you.”

  Then he turned around and went back to work as if the conversation had never happened.

  I went to the window and watched the rampers working their flight. The sky, still clear, was already darkening in the early winter afternoon. I saw more winter gear on the ramp. Heavier coats. Gloves. It was getting colder, and I wrapped my arms tightly around me to keep from shivering. Low clouds were gathering in the western sky and I wondered, if I were outside, could I smell snow coming?

  Chapter Five

  Dan was already working when I arrived the next morning. I stood in the back of the ticketing lobby and watched through the crowd of passengers as he checked bags and issued boarding passes. He was doing
it just right, moving them through like cattle at auction, but somehow making each cow feel special, as if they were the only one in the chute.

  When I moved behind the counter, I spotted Dan’s briefcase on the floor along with a pile that turned out to be his overcoat and suit jacket. He hadn’t made it to his office yet.

  “Anything I can do to help here?” I asked.

  “I think we’ve got it covered,” he said, poking at his keyboard with two fingers.

  “I’m on my way to the office. Do you want me to take your coat and jacket?”

  “They’ve been in worse places.” He beckoned the woman who was next in line.

  “Okay.” All I could do was try. “When you’re finished here, I’d like to talk to you about a few things. How much longer do you think you’ll be?”

  He stepped up into the bag well and gauged the length of his line. “Fifteen minutes.”

  I checked his line, too, and it looked like a good thirty minutes to me. “When you’re finished, meet me down on the concourse for coffee,” I said. “I’ll buy.”

  Dan greeted his next passenger while I walked down the length of the counter, greeting the morning shift as I went, trying to tie names to faces and get to know my new employees.

  Forty-five minutes later, Dan was sitting across the table from me at the Dunkin’ Donuts, turning a black cup of coffee blond with five packets of sugar and two plastic tubs of cream.

  “You should take up smoking,” I said. “It would be better for you.”

  “We’re all going to die sometime.” As he took a sip, his eyes scanned the concourse like radar for any problem that might need his immediate attention. His plan seemed to be to give everyone and everything except me his close attention.

  “I want to know what’s going on around here.”

  “Say again?”

  “I think you heard me.”

  “I heard you, but I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

  “You do know, and this thing you’re doing right now, this deflecting, it’s annoying as hell. It’d be easier if you would just answer the question.”

  He chewed on the plastic stirrer and, in his own good time, turned slightly in his chair, enough that I could claim a small measure of progress.

  “I spent time yesterday talking to some of my new employees,” I said, leaning closer so that I wouldn’t have to raise my voice. “Half of them believe that Ellen Shepard was murdered by someone who works downstairs on the ramp. Almost all of them think that you’ve gone off the deep end since her suicide.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That you’re out of touch, disappearing, not answering your beeper. They can’t find you when they need you. Last night’s a good example.”

  He started to get agitated, but then clamped down as if he didn’t want me to see his reaction. As far as I could tell, he didn’t want me to know anything about him. “People are going to think what they’re going to think,” he said coolly, “and no one needs to worry about me.”

  “All right. Let’s not worry about you. Let’s talk about the operation. This whole place is paralyzed by rumors about Ellen Shepard, and almost no one believes she killed herself.”

  His eyes narrowed. “And why do you think that is?”

  “Because no one is talking to them. No one is giving them the facts and answering their questions. In the absence of the truth, they’re going to think the worst.”

  “And you know what the truth is?”

  “I know the police investigated, ruled the death a suicide, and closed their investigation. I know she was found hanging in her home, and I know that you’re the one who found her after she’d been there all night. I also know that she was your friend.”

  He was angled back, still chewing on the stirrer. He was wearing an enigmatic little smile and shaking his head, the message being that I would never get it.

  “If there’s more to it, why don’t you tell me?”

  “You want to know the rest of it?” The smile faded. “Ellen died a week ago. Since then not one representative of Majestic Airlines outside of this station has done one thing to pay their respects. No flowers, no phone calls, no letters or cards. Not from Lenny or goddamned Bill Scanlon. Just a whole bunch of cover-their-ass questions.” He almost knocked over his coffee and made a great save before slumping back in his chair. “The first thing we heard from outside the station was you showing up from headquarters to take her place.”

  “I’m not from headquarters. I’ve spent eighteen months there out of fourteen years. I’ve got as much field experience as you do.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Is that what’s going on here? Do you resent me because you think you should have gotten this job?”

  “I wouldn’t take the job if they begged me.”

  “Is it because I came from staff?” That was my last guess. I wasn’t going to play twenty questions trying to figure out what his problem was.

  “All I know is you’re on the fast track,” he said, “and I’m going to be in Boston forever. So it doesn’t matter to me. You understand?”

  “No.”

  “You can take all the credit when things go well, you can blame me when they go wrong. I don’t care about my career. I don’t care about getting promoted. What I do care about is being left alone to do my job the way I need to. Just because I’m not out where people can see me all the time doesn’t mean I’m not doing my job. And the next time you want to know something about me, ask me and not my employees.”

  Dan’s name boomed from the loudspeakers. Before they could even finish paging him, he was on his feet gathering up all the dead sugar packets and heading for the trash.

  “Dan, if you walk away from me like you did yesterday, it’s going to make me angry, which might not make any difference to you, but it will ruin my entire day because I’m going to have to spend it trying to figure out how to deal with you.” He stood with the trash in one hand, his cup in the other, staring down the concourse toward the gates. “I don’t want to deal with you.” I said, backing off a little, “I want to work with you.”

  He tapped his chair a few times with his free hand. He didn’t sit down, but neither did he walk away.

  “Losing a friend in the way that you did has got to be tough. If there is anything I can do to make it easier for you, I will do it.”

  “I’ll deal with it.”

  “Fine. While you’re dealing with it, think about this. Do you want to work with me? If you don’t, we’ll discuss alternatives.”

  His hand grew still on the back of the chair. “I’m not leaving here.”

  “That’s not what I asked you to think about. Do you want to work next to me? That’s the question and I want a definitive answer.”

  “I’m not leaving Boston,” he said flatly, then stalked over to toss his garbage. He came back and said it again, just in case it wasn’t clear. “There’s no way I’m leaving Boston. And if you and this fucking company try to get rid of me the way you did Ellen, I’m going to blow the whistle on what’s going on around here, so help me God.”

  He turned quickly and he was gone. He must have spotted the confused elderly woman as we were talking because he went straight for her. He read her boarding pass, offered his arm, and helped her to her gate. Then without looking back, he melted into the river of passengers, gliding smoothly through the crowd, weaving in and out until I couldn’t see him anymore.

  He’d disappeared on me again, leaving me to sort through a whole bunch of responses I never had a chance to give, and one big question. What exactly was going on around here?

  Chapter Six

  Molly was long gone by the time I made it back to my office, and Dan had been cagey enough to get through the rest of the day yesterday and all day today without bumping into me once. There had been Dan-sightings all over the airport, but I never managed to catch up with him. I sat down at my desk to try to find the bottom of my in-box.

  I dispens
ed with the mail from headquarters—the usual warnings, threats, and recriminations disguised as reports, memos, and statistics—putting it aside to ignore later. I reviewed the station performance report from Dan, which said we were over budget and underperforming. No kidding. And I drafted a perfunctory response to a perfunctory question from Lenny asking why that was. Most of what was left was from the suspense file, things that Ellen Shepard had reviewed and filed for later handling. Many of the documents had her handwritten notes in the margins. Her handwriting was careful, neat, and very controlled. You could have used it to teach cursive writing to schoolchildren. Halfway through the stack, I began to get a sense of her, to hear her voice. She spoke a language we shared, the language of work.

  You could tell by her questions that she was new to an operation. She had lots of them—questions about the equipment, manning, about why we do things the way we do, about people who worked for her and how much things cost and why. Her inexperience showed, but so did her doggedness. When she hadn’t gotten a thorough answer, she’d simply asked again. And judging from her correspondence with the union, she didn’t back down. She may have been a staff person and she may have taken a good field assignment away from someone more qualified—say, for instance, me. But I had to admit that she had worked hard. She had tried.

  When I finally hit the bottom of the stack, I had one item left that I didn’t know what to do with. It was an invoice from a company called Crescent Security. It had no notes, no questions, nothing to indicate why it was there and what I should do with it. So I did what I usually did in those situations—suspense it for a few days and deal with it later. With that taken care of, I sat back in my chair and stared straight ahead. It had already been dark for several hours, and the windows had turned into imperfect mirrors, reflecting back to me a picture of institutional emptiness—and there I was in the middle of it. As I sat and stared at my reflection, which was particularly chalky in the hard-edged, artificial glare of the fluorescent lights, I wondered, vaguely, what other people like me were doing tonight. I wondered if Ellen had ever looked at herself like this and wondered the same thing.