The Last Hostage

by Nance, John J. ;

  With one large hand intertwined in Bostich’s collar, Clark pulled him forward and slammed him back against the bulkhead again.

  “You open your arrogant mouth one more time, Bostich, it’d better be to confess you set up my friend Matson and lied in that hearing.”

  “Or … what?” Bostich asked, struggling to get the words out.

  The retired detective looked around, aware several other passengers had been gathering behind him. There were at least six men, he realized, and one of them had a ready answer, a furious expression on his face.

  “Let’s dump this bag of garbage out the door. I don’t want to share air in here with anyone who likes kiddie porn.”

  Another echoed the same idea, and two other passengers, one male, one female, stood in nearby rows nodding agreement as Bostich’s eyes began to grow wide with fright.

  “That dumping idea sounds good,” another passenger suggested, a dead serious expression on his face.

  Clark read Bostich’s reaction.

  “Well, well, well. You’re scared of heights, aren’t you, Counselor?”

  Bostich’s left hand began clawing for the back of the seat while his right tried unsuccessfully to drag Clark’s hand from his throat; but he was no match for the muscular detective.

  With utter contempt, Mike Clark propelled Bostich back toward the window seat, letting him fall sideways painfully on the arm rest.

  “I’m going forward now to suggest to Captain Wolfe he consider that idea … depressurizing and tossing you overboard if you don’t talk.” He looked around, as if calculating the distance to the nearest exit, then smiled a gleeful smile at the thoroughly panicked Bostich. “And as the man says, I know just which one of these hatches to open.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Bostich stammered. “You … can’t do that! You’d be committing murder!”

  Mike Clark raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Really? You mean when a hijacker with a bomb orders me to do something or get blown up, that’s murder? I don’t think so.” He turned to the others. “You folks think I’d have a choice?”

  A chorus of “No’s” reached Bostich’s ears.

  “They say no, Mr. Kiddie Porn. So do I.”

  Clark stood and turned to move forward. Annette had been watching the faces of the others in alarm, wondering if the detective knew he was inciting a lynch mob. There were no smiles, only fury—all of it directed at Bostich.

  She caught Clark’s eye and raised her hand. “Look, we all want this over, but—”

  “We’re going to give him a chance to admit what he did before we shove him out, ma’am,” the detective said in a loud voice Bostich could hear. “But he’s not getting away with this.”

  Clark walked to Annette, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Don’t worry, I’m not starting a riot. I’m just trying to shake him up.”

  She studied his face for a second before nodding and looking at the others crowding the aisle.

  “You … talked to these people in advance?”

  He nodded.

  “I just don’t see how assaulting the man is going to extract a confession from him that would be usable anywhere.”

  “It won’t directly,” Clark told her. “But I’ve dealt with this type of arrogant garbage for decades, ma’am, and they have to be terrified before their little shell cracks. Don’t do anything to make him think we won’t throw him out, okay?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t participate—”

  He raised an index finger and smiled. “Trust an old Irish cop, will you? Just don’t damage the illusion.”

  She nodded at last and he smiled at her. “I’m going to walk to first class now and disappear like I was talking to the Captain. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Annette replied.

  Bostich had retreated back into his corner, his eyes out the window as he rubbed his neck. A well-dressed member of the fear-of-flying group leaned over the aisle seat toward Bostich, causing him to look up. “You did recognize that fellow, didn’t you?” the man asked, smiling.

  Bostich said nothing for several seconds, then shook his head no.

  “Interesting, and you a prosecutor.” The man glanced forward as if checking to make sure Clark was gone, then looked Bostich in the eye. “On the Providence force he was known as Mad Mike. The mob hated him, but respected him enough to try to hire him as an enforcer after he retired last year. Mad Mike’s wiggled out of more police brutality charges than anyone can count, because he always got a confession, and it always held up, though it’s true that there were a lot of suicides after his interrogations. Very odd, that. Criminals just seemed to jump off ledges or drown themselves in toilets in his presence.” He straightened up. “Think about it, Bostich. We’re all tired of you. Mad Mike will encounter no resistance from this group, whatever he decides to do.”

  The man moved forward up the aisle as Annette caught his arm.

  “That was part of the ruse, right? You’re not serious about Detective Clark being a rogue?”

  The man turned and regarded her with a smile. “Who?”

  “Detective Clark. You called him ‘Mad Mike’ and I—” His reaction finally sank in, and she rolled her eyes and smiled. “Okay, I understand.”

  He dropped his voice. “Never heard of him before in my life.”

  Aboard Gulfstream N5LL. 3:52 P.M.

  The heart-stopping sight of the AirBridge 737 lumbering down the abbreviated runway and barely clearing the rise at the far end had left Dane Bailey, Jeff Jayson, and Bill North stunned.

  The lack of an immediate column of smoke from the same direction had given little hope.

  Dane was the first to snatch up a cell phone and punch in 911 to relay what had happened, and what they all suspected. But the sheriff’s dispatcher had received no other citizen calls, and no reports of a crash down the valley.

  When they’d recovered enough from the shock to wonder if Flight 90 might have survived, Dane Bailey began cranking the Gulfstream’s engines for a rapid departure to the west—the same direction the AirBridge flight had gone.

  They were airborne within three minutes, climbing west, Jeff spotting the 737 in the distance at last as it climbed rapidly.

  All three men exhaled with relief.

  Bill North was kneeling where Kat had been between the pilot’s seats. He gestured to the 737 ahead. “Do you suppose they’re monitoring the same frequencies?”

  Dane and Jeff both nodded and Bill reached for a headset.

  “Kat, you still there? This is Bill North.”

  Several moments elapsed before the sound of her voice filled their ears.

  “I’m here, Bill.”

  “Look, we’re, ah, we’re back here chasing you at a distance again, because I figured you’d need our help in relaying your calls.”

  “Thank you, Bill! You’re absolutely right. I know we’re going to run out of range of the cellulars at some point.”

  “Anything we can check for you now? Does the captain need the weather for anywhere?”

  “I’ll let you know. Wait, he’s motioning to me.” She was off the radio but came back on almost immediately. “Okay, we need weather for Denver … and Colorado Springs.”

  “I’ll get back to you, Kat.”

  Bill North glanced up at Jeff Jayson, the copilot, who was already dialing in a special frequency for weather information.

  Aboard AirBridge Flight 90. 4:01 P.M.

  With word relayed from N5LL that heavy thunderstorms were bearing down on Denver, Ken Wolfe turned the 737 back toward the southwest as he talked to Denver’s Air Traffic Control Center and climbed to thirty-five thousand feet, the aircraft’s radar transponder now on and displaying their position to the controller.

  Kat had buried herself in Bostich’s computer, unleashing repeated search requests as she verified Ken’s conclusions that there were precisely fifty-one downloaded pornographic picture files that Bostich, or someone barely capable of using a computer, had tried to get rid of,
not realizing there was a program in the same computer for putting erased files back together.

  All the original names of the picture files had been lost, but they bore the same markings and characteristics, and Kat opened a dozen of them to make sure, trying to distance herself each time from the sick perversions that flashed on the liquid crystal color screen time after time.

  One of the filenames had survived in fragments, but it was an indecipherable jumble of letters beginning with W. Promising herself it would be the last disgusting image she looked at, Kat gave the computer the command to display the picture.

  There had been no warning voice in her head, no particular intuitive caution to insulate her from what appeared next. The picture of a naked little girl began to assemble itself on the screen, and from the first, she saw it was different. There were no artificial, leering smiles of a victimizer with a child, and no male face in the shot—though a male was obscenely present. The little girl was prepubescent, but there was no sick pretense of fun. She was tied to a chair, her hair matted, burns and cuts on her torso, her face contorted by pain.

  There were other things in the picture as well, depraved, disgusting things, and Kat looked away, fighting a wave a nausea as she realized she had seen the little eleven-year-old’s face less than an hour before on the center pedestal.

  It was Melinda Wolfe.

  Kat quickly hit the escape key and removed the picture from the screen before Ken could glance over. Her mind was racing through the possibilities.

  She checked the computer’s directory again, verifying that the picture bore codes showing it had come through an Internet connection.

  It can’t be an old evidence file. You don’t send evidence files through the Internet.

  It was possible the fifty-one shots were some bizarre research project, but not probable. Undoubtedly he would claim all the pictures were either an erased evidence file, or that they had been on the computer before he bought it, but it would be easy enough to check the computer’s purchase date and chain of possession.

  The presence of a doubt, however, meant Bostich might be able to avoid prison.

  If we had the time, she reminded herself. But there was no time to map out a careful investigatory campaign. There was no time for background research.

  But why was Melinda’s tortured image on his hard drive?

  Stay focused! she told herself. Priority number one is to prove Bostich lied to that judge about the tip to Matson. But how do we do that before Wolfe loses patience? How can I give him what he wants so we can end this before his finger slips on that button?

  Kat looked down at the screen, which was now displaying long lists of programs. There was an Internet access program she hadn’t noticed before and she opened it.

  The program contained a history file of sorts—an archive—that might still contain a list of the Web sites and e-mail addresses the computer had contacted.

  Kat glanced over at Ken, who was absorbed in flying. He knew she was trying to find something, trying to help. There would be at least a few minutes to work.

  She probed more deeply into the program, trying to remember the particular commands for the archive file, hoping that a computer user like Bostich, who didn’t know about the ability of his machine to reconstruct “erased” files, might also have left a clear record of which Internet and Web sites he’d visited.

  She triggered the archive file which opened up suddenly, cascading e-mail addresses and sites on the World Wide Web in dizzying detail.

  Kat’s fingers danced over the keyboard, extracting the dates and times of the picture downloads from the jumble of information, then matching them to the list of addresses until the one she was looking for stood highlighted on the screen.

  SHRDLU2.

  Somehow it had a familiar ring, but why? The e-mail address was accessed through a major provider of Internet service, but it could belong to anyone with a portable computer and the few dollars a month needed to buy such an address.

  Did he rent his own private, clandestine little e-mail address?

  A more worrisome reality crossed her mind. A man like Bostich might not know computers very well, but he’d know better than to buy illegal pornography with a credit card. He would use untraceable cash, which meant that either personal contact or use of the mail would be required to transfer the cash for each purchase of porn. Either method would be difficult to trace. She might be able to prove that Bostich had contacted whatever smut merchant lurked behind SHRDLU2, but fail to prove he’d actually paid money for their “product.”

  Who is SHKDLU2? Where is SHRDLU2? If we can find the answer to that, we may find how Bostich is really connected to Lumin.

  “Making any progress, Kat?” Ken’s voice caused her to jump. She looked up surprised at how deep in thought she’d been. She related her findings, omitting the discovery of Melinda’s image. She reported the e-mail address, disappointed that he shook his head when she asked if it sounded familiar.

  “What’s that ringing, Kat?” Ken asked. She looked to her right and realized the sound was coming from the small cellular phone she’d been using earlier. She fumbled for it, flipping open the cover.

  “Hello?”

  “Ah, is this Agent Bronsky?”

  “Yes … yes it is. Who’s this?”

  “Detective Roger Matson,” he replied, his voice calm and even. “Agent Frank Bothell in Salt Lake called me and gave me this number, and explained where you were, and that you knew who I was. I can’t believe Wolfe is doing this!”

  “He is, Detective, and I need your help to resolve it.”

  She detailed what she’d found, and what she needed to prove.

  “My God. Hardcore pictures?”

  “That’s right. Fifty of them in what seems to be some sort of package, and one more that was a separate matter.”

  “I’m staggered! I knew he was a scum of a liar, but I would never have suspected Bostich of being a fan of kiddie porn. That’s … disgusting in the extreme.”

  Kat passed him the e-mail address she’d found.

  “I’m writing it down, Agent Bronsky.”

  “Call me Kat.”

  “Okay … I’m writing it down, Kat, and I’m Roger. You said SHRDLU2, and then the communications address, is that right?”

  “That’s right. Do you recognize it?”

  He paused. “Well, I think SHRDLU2 is an obsolete newspaper word from the old Linotype machines. You know, the gigantic machines that used to set lead type for newspaper copy before offset printing?”

  “Okay, that’s why it’s familiar. I’ve heard about that. The typographers would set some sort of signature line with that word, right?”

  “They’d run a finger across the top line of the typewriter-like keyboard, and the letters came out as ‘SHRDLU.’ It became a kind of signature.”

  “I’m not sure how that helps us here, unless Lumin was somehow associated with newspapers.”

  “No, he wasn’t. Didn’t even finish high school, but somehow became very good with computers, and worked as a programmer in the eighties. Computer keyboards are typewriter keyboards, but not the same layout as Linotype.”

  “Roger, did you know Rudolph Bostich before the Wolfe case?”

  “I’m just blown away by this! Yes, I knew Rudy. I always thought he was a straight shooter until then. That’s why I didn’t have to ask who it was when he called that night. It was obvious. I’d know his voice anywhere.”

  “Do you have any idea why he’d lie?”

  “Until this moment, no. I assumed he had some witness protection program source to protect, but now … to find out he’s got a smut habit … that may change things. Maybe he lied to protect himself.”

  “That’s what I think,” Kat replied. “If he was afraid a deeper probe by that Connecticut judge into where he got the information on Lumin might reveal a connection, either directly or indirectly, that might have been motivation enough.”

  There was a brief sile
nce on the other end. Kat could hear Matson breathing into the phone.

  “Wait a damn minute!”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Let me—give me a minute to get my computer. I’ve got the entire file from Lumin’s computer downloaded on mine. I haven’t stopped studying this case, but before I say anything, I need to look at something.”

  “Go ahead. But in case we get disconnected, give me your number.”

  He passed his home phone number and put the phone down. In two minutes he was back, audibly excited.

  “Kat! I want you to get back to that list of picture files and read me a particular number.” He explained the precise number he wanted from each file.

  She keyed the computer and began reading the information until, on the eighth file, he told her to stop.

  “Now, Kat, open up the first three pictures, and—I’m sorry, but I need this—describe them in detail.”

  She swallowed hard and complied, nausea almost overwhelming her.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Roger Matson said at last.

  “And?”

  “Kat, assuming the rest are as I think they are, Lumin had the exact same files on his computer when he was arrested for Melinda Wolfe’s murder. They were in a different area, obviously purchased and downloaded from some source on the World Wide Web.”

  Kat could feel Ken’s eyes on her. For a moment she had forgotten he was listening. She glanced at him now, seeing his eyebrows raised in extreme surprise.

  Kat turned back to the phone. “Can we assume, then, that Lumin purchased a package of this smut from the same source that Bostich patronized, or could it be that Bostich simply had the same downloaded file you have?”

  “He doesn’t, Kat. I’m the only one who ever downloaded Lumin’s computer. I know that for a fact, and I had to do that in secret to keep working on the case. Lumin’s computer was sealed by the court, at my request, and the internal memory system—the hard drive—was deactivated for safekeeping and removed to a separate property facility. I made the only copy before that ruling. Only the judge knew about it and approved it. Bostich would have needed a court order to obtain another one, and I would have heard instantly.”