The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  I followed the most direct path to the bag room straight across the ramp and past the commuter gate, the same gate that Dan and I had seen on the videotape. When was that? I’d lost all sense of time. Another Beechcraft was parked there, and I wondered why no one had taxied it to a more sheltered spot. We’d be lucky if it was still in one piece tomorrow.

  What was normally a two-minute walk seemed to take forever as I put my head down and trudged into wind. I stopped now and then to look around for Dan and to make sure I was still alone out there. Someone could have been right behind me and I wouldn’t have heard him.

  Stepping into the outbound bag room and out of the shrieking wind brought relative calm and deep silence. I stood inside the doorway, searching for my radio and trying to get some feeling back.

  “Kevin, come in. Kevin Corrigan, come in please.” It was hard to talk with frozen lips.

  Bags were everywhere—on the piers, on the floor around the piers, and at the ends where they’d dumped off into huge, uneven piles that clogged the driveway all the way to the ramp-side wall. The bag belt had apparently run for a while before someone had figured out the crew had abandoned ship.

  “This is Kevin. Go ahead.”

  “Do you have an update?”

  “Partial.”

  “Call me on my cell phone.”

  “Roger.”

  It took seconds for him to call. “The troopers are busy,” he said.

  “Busy?”

  “Everyone’s occupied at the moment by an aircraft excursion.”

  “Whose?”

  “TWA had one slide off the runway, so there’s a bunch of them down there. Apparently the roads coming in and out of this place are a nightmare, so all the rest of them are on traffic control.”

  “Traffic control? Did you tell them what’s going on?”

  “I told them, but it’s a pretty wild story, you have to admit.”

  I pushed a clump of half-frozen hair out of my eyes and would have gone to Plan B if I’d had one. I’d been counting on help from the troopers.

  “They said they’d respond as soon as they could break a unit away. I’ll keep calling them.”

  “What about Big Pete?”

  “His wife doesn’t know where he is, but she says he’s got a beeper. She doesn’t have the number, but Victor does, if you can believe that. I’m waiting for Vic to call me back.”

  “You haven’t heard from anyone, have you?”

  “Does Lenny count? He’s upstairs hyperventilating. He sounds like he’s going to have a heart attack.”

  “Good. Nothing from Dan?”

  “No, but Johnny Mac called for you. Did you hear?”

  “What did he say?”

  “He talked to Terry and he says you should go to the other bag room—inbound.”

  “Goddammit.” I was in the wrong bag room. I hung up, put up my hood, and went back out into the storm.

  The door to the inbound bag room was a heavy steel slab, but it might as well have been balsa wood the way it whipsawed back and forth in the storm. I found the brick doorstop and used it. I wasn’t sure that it would hold, but it was dark in there and dim light from the ramp was better than no light at all.

  The heavy air trapped within the four concrete walls had smelled of plaster and paint and turpentine when I’d met Big Pete there. As I stepped through the doorway and around the drop cloth, the same one that had blocked my way last night, I couldn’t smell anything. Hoping not to go any farther, I cleared away the anxiety that had lumped in my throat and called out, “Dan?”

  The only response was the swishing of the tarps as the wind pushed in through the open door behind me.

  To turn on the lights I had to find the fuse box, the one Big Pete had showed me. I wasn’t sure I could remember where it was. I was sure that it was farther in than I wanted to go. I called again for Dan and listened. Nothing.

  Damn.

  I pushed the hood off my head—the better to sense someone coming at me from the side—then took a few edgy steps. I tried to feel left and right with my hands, but my fingers were numb from the cold. I used my palms to guide me, brushing them along the heavy drop cloths as I moved, trying to visualize the narrow corridor that they made. I could almost feel the darkness thickening around me as I moved deeper into the silence.

  “Dan, are you in here?”

  I leaned forward trying to hear, took a step, and landed on something slick. My heart thumped into my throat and stayed there as my foot skated out from under me. I made an awkward, spine-twisting grab for something, anything to keep me from going down, and for the longest moment I hung backward over the cement, clinging to a tarp that couldn’t possibly hold my dead weight. Adrenaline kicked in as I pulled myself upright, driving my heartbeat into a wild, demented rhythm that made me dizzy. I leaned over, hands on my knees, and took a breath. Then I took another, and another, breathing deeply until the stars in front of my eyes had faded.

  Even bent over with my head that much closer to the cement, it was too dark to see what I’d slipped on. But I had a sinking, sickening feeling that I already knew. I held on to the tarp as I slid my foot back and forth, trying to feel what it could be. I wanted to believe that it was oil or grease or some strange lubricant that only felt like blood, but the rational part of me wouldn’t go for it.

  I pushed aside the tarp I’d been squeezing, angling for some light. The second I moved it, it gave way from whatever had anchored it to the high ceiling. I slipped out of the way—barely—as it crashed into a heap. Everything in me said to bolt, but I was transfixed because without the tarp to block it, a slant of light had fallen across my feet. The light was dim, but enough to show that it wasn’t a pool at all that I was standing in, but a thick stream that flowed along the floor under the drop cloths—a thick stream with a deep red hue.

  This time my breath couldn’t make it out of my chest. I kept sucking in air, fighting for oxygen, but nothing came out. I started creeping back, moving until I was backed up flat against a wall. There was so much blood. I stared at it, and all I could feel was a miserable, stinging pain in the tips of my fingers. They were starting to thaw out.

  I reached down for my radio, held it close to my lips, and pressed the button, squeezing until I thought the housing would crack. “Dan Fallacaro, come in please.” My tongue was too big and my mouth felt as if it were coated with chalk. “Dan, are you out there?”

  Static.

  I tipped my head back against the wall. This was the wall where Big Pete had found the fuse box, right? It had to be the same wall. If it wasn’t, what else was I going to do? Slowly, I began to feel my way toward the place where I thought the box was. Once my knuckles scraped against the box’s open door, it wasn’t hard to find the heavy switches behind it. The first one I flipped turned on the overheads.

  I closed my eyes, waited for them to adjust to the light, and opened them again. All around me were the blue tarps. I couldn’t see farther than four feet in any direction. The dark stream at my feet had turned to vivid red. It was coming from the direction of the bag belt. I turned myself that way, pushed aside the first tarp, and made myself move as far as the next. The motion was slow and forced, jerky and detached because I was afraid—terrified—to go forward.

  “Dan, if you’re out there, please respond.” My breath vaporized as I tried the radio again. The static seemed to go right through me. I was coming apart inside. My eyes burned as I pulled aside the next plastic curtain. I thought about Michelle.

  “Please, Dan, please.”

  I wondered what she looked like, if she had his green eyes. I called again, I think I did, as I approached the last curtain, and tears were coming because I knew he wasn’t going to answer. I lowered my head and squeezed my eyes shut. I hadn’t prayed to God in fifteen years, and I pictured him in his heaven laughing at me as I tried to now.

  O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee…

  I opened my eyes. My white running shoes we
re smeared with blood. My head was pounding, about to explode. The longer I stood there, the harder it was going to be.

  … and I detest all of my sins because of thy just punishment…

  I put my hand on the edge of the drop cloth. It felt cold and gritty.

  … but most of all because I have offended Thee, my God…

  I moved it aside slowly. My eyes focused on the scene in front of me and I had to turn away. And then I started to cry.

  … who art all-good and deserving of all my love.

  It wasn’t Dan.

  I covered my eyes with both hands and wept. It wasn’t him. Crying made my head hurt more and sobbing made it harder to breathe and I was boiling in that giant coat so I unzipped and let it slide down to the floor like the weight that had just slipped off my shoulders. The cool air that brushed against my damp skin felt like—tasted like—relief and I tried to pull it in in long, deep breaths. It wasn’t him.

  It was someone in a Majestic uniform. When the spasms stopped, I turned back to the gruesome sight. He was stomach down on the bag belt with his arms draped over either side. His left hand was in front of me, twisted back against the ground, palm up, and I felt some of the weight return because this man had long, slender lingers, fingers that I remembered from the coffee shop, ones that I had held in my own hand just a few hours ago. It was Angelo. I looked for his face, and when I saw it, bile came up the back of my throat, my stomach lurched in a dry heave, and I had to look away again. No wonder there was so much blood. His head was crushed, smashed between the belt and defective safety door that had dropped like a guillotine and cracked open his skull.

  I felt it before I heard it. The pressure in the room shifted. The tarps snapped around me. The door slammed shut. By the time the hollow boom had finished caroming off the bare walls, I was on my knees, crouched, listening. The sound of the storm was gone. The tarps were still. It was perfectly quiet, and if I was really lucky, the door had slammed shut all by itself.

  I crouched lower, trying to listen with my whole body. And then I heard him coming, not by the sound of his footsteps, but by the sound of his fingers sliding along the tarps. I tried not to panic even though I could barely move. Better to look around for a way out.

  There was a door, the door to the terminal, and it wasn’t that far away. If I moved now, I could get there before he cleared the last drop cloth. But I had to go … now. I lunged out of the crouch, covering the distance to the door faster than I would have thought possible. I slammed my shoulder into the door—and it didn’t move. It had to open. This door was not supposed to lock from this side. It was fire code. I pushed again and then again, but it was solid. I was trapped.

  The sound of brushing fingers had stopped. He’d heard me. I imagined his head cocked just like mine, the two of us mirror images reacting to each other. Maybe I could make it to my radio and call for help. Maybe I should hide. Maybe—

  “Goddammit, who the hell is in here?”

  If the door hadn’t been there to catch me, I would have sunk all the way to the floor. My legs turned wobbly and all my bones seemed to dissolve as the tension flowed out. I closed my eyes and called out. “Dan?”

  “Boss?”

  I pushed toward him, and when I saw him I couldn’t keep from wrapping my arms around his neck. Even though he was wet from the storm and ice covered his jacket, all I felt was his warm, living, breathing, completely intact body. He held me until I was ready to let go; then I stepped back so I could see his face. He looked so bewildered it made me laugh. “I thought you were dead.”

  “I’m not dead.”

  “Clearly. Where have you been?”

  “Out looking for you. I found Angie and, Jesus, I nearly puked all over the place, and then I put my radio down somewhere and I couldn’t remember where I’d left it—”

  “We have to get out of here.” I pushed him toward the door.

  “Why?”

  “Because the door to the terminal is jammed and I think Little Pete did it and there’s no other way out. Come on, come on, let’s go.”

  He didn’t budge. “Dan …”

  “You can’t go out there like that. Don’t you have a coat?”

  He was right. I went back for the coat, trying not to look at the body as I slipped it on. When we were both bundled up, we stood at the door preparing to go back out to the ramp and meet the storm’s fury.

  “Ready?” His voice was muted by the thick muffler twisted around his neck.

  I pushed in close behind him and gave him a nudge. He leaned into the door, and the second it was open, the wind seemed to catch it and pull it out of his hands. The blast of air that hit me was so cold, it burned my eyes shut and I was blind. I heard a loud crack, my head snapped back, and I fell backward, landing hard on my tailbone. Something landed on my chest and stayed there, something heavy enough to crush the air out of my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. The bag room was spinning. I tried to throw off the weight.

  “Jesus fucking Christ. Jesus Christ—”

  The weight on my chest was Dan. He was on top of me trying to get up, and I was trying to get out from under him. My forehead was throbbing, the coat felt like a straitjacket, and I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t think at all. The door slammed and it was quiet. Dan rolled off and I sat up. When my vision finally cleared, my brain unscrambled, and the fog lifted, I was staring up, way up, into the face of Little Pete Dwyer.

  “You people,” he said, shaking his head, “you goddamned people. You just couldn’t leave it alone.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  Dan made it to his feet before I did, then reached down and offered his hand to help me up. If he’d been a few inches shorter, he would have broken my nose when our heads collided. As it was, he’d cracked me pretty good in the forehead. I reached up and touched the throbbing, tender welt that was forming there.

  Little Pete was like a mountain in front of the door. Dan was a foot and a half shorter and gave up at least fifty pounds to the guy, but that didn’t faze him. “Get the fuck out of the way,” he demanded.

  The bigger man glanced down. “What are you gonna do if I don’t? Write me up? Put a letter in my personnel file?”

  He sounded calm, bemused even, but the scar above his eye was fresh and angry. He’d just come in from a raging storm, and I found it very disturbing that he wasn’t wearing a coat. All he had on was his winter uniform over a T-shirt. The long sleeves were rolled up, the better to display those club-like forearms. He wasn’t shivering. I didn’t see any goose bumps. Whatever was burning inside him tonight seemed to be keeping him plenty warm—but it was making me shiver.

  Dan made a sudden move toward the door. Little Pete raised one arm, putting his fingers on Dan’s chest and stopping him cold. “Take a step back,” he warned with a quiet resolve that I would have expected from his father but not from him. “Take a step back,” he said, more slowly this time, “and give me your radio.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Junior.”

  I felt a warning tremor inside as Little Pete moved out of the doorway, pushing Dan in front of him. As he did, he turned slightly and my tremors escalated to a full-blown temblor. He had a gun. It was black and flat and stuffed down into the back of his pants. The handle was smooth, and though it looked very large to me, the weapon seemed like a toy against the broad expanse of his back.

  “He doesn’t have a radio,” I said quickly, shifting to auto-rational. “Take mine.” I fumbled the heavy unit from my pocket and offered it to him.

  Little Pete was still staring at Dan. “I know he had a radio. I heard him using it.”

  “It’s lost in here somewhere. We don’t know where it is.” I pushed my radio toward him again. “Here’s mine.”

  When he turned to face me squarely, I saw the dark stains on the front of his shirt—dark and wet. While I was staring at the blood, Angelo’s blood, he took the radio from my hand and, with what seemed like a casual flick of the wrist, sent it rock
eting across the room and exploding against the only cement wall that wasn’t blocked by plastic. I stared at the ruined pieces on the ground, and then I was staring at the red stains on my own shoes. We both had Angelo’s blood on us.

  Dan’s taunting broke the silence. “Big fucking man you are, you jerkoff. You killed a radio. Old men, women, and radios. What’s next? Puppies and kittens?”

  I watched one of Little Pete’s big hands curl into a fist and flex. Curl and flex. I’d heard all about this guy’s towering temper, and I wondered how it showed itself. Did he do a long, slow boil and then explode? Or did it come in a blinding flash, an uncontrollable, indiscriminate blast that leveled everything in its path? I wished I knew what to expect from him.

  “Cell phone,” he said to me, still flexing and curling.

  “What?”

  He moved in close and leaned over me, close enough that I could smell his sweat, that I could feel his whispered breath like lighter fluid on my skin; it was worse than if he had touched me. “Don’t make me say everything twice,” he said, “I hate that.”

  I wanted to put both hands on his chest and shove him away. But I could feel something from him that was as strong as the stench of blood, tobacco, and alcohol. I looked again at the stains drying on his shirt. I looked into his eyes and saw the same dead-calm resolve that I had heard in his voice. This was a man who had nothing more to lose—and knew it.

  I did what he asked.

  “Good girl,” he said as I handed over my flip phone. He admired the small device. “That’s a nice one.” Slipping it into his back pocket, he turned his attention to Dan. “Take off your jacket.”

  Dan, of course, didn’t move, didn’t even blink. Pete reached his hand up, and Dan slapped it away. I could feel drops of perspiration rolling down the underside of my arm as I watched the two men size each other up like a couple of junkyard dogs. Pete reached up again, quicker this time, and came away with one end of the muffler that was wrapped around Dan’s neck.