The Last Hostage

by Nance, John J. ;

  “Roger, is there a file on that list, a fifty-first file, with the following name and numbers?”

  She read him the details of the last picture file she had opened.

  “There are no extra files other than the fifty you mentioned, but I recognize that filename. It was on Lumin’s computer.”

  Kat felt a strange buzz move through her, a combination of excitement and dread and where this was going, coupled with the knowledge that Ken Wolfe was listening to every word.

  “Have you ever looked at it?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. Kat, you may not know, but as part of the evidence, this was the lynchpin—the one piece of evidence only the killer would have possessed. I’m almost shaking here. Where did you get that filename?”

  “Roger, you know Ken Wolfe is listening in on this conversation, don’t you?”

  “I assumed he was. Captain Wolfe, I’m … very sorry you’ve put yourself in this position, sir. I wish I could have helped you so it wouldn’t have come to this.”

  Ken switched his transmit function and pushed the button on the yoke.

  “You are helping, Detective. You’re helping a lot.”

  Kat raised her hand to silence Ken. “Roger? You asked where I got the filename?”

  “Yes! I’m baffled, except for one possibility, which would be staggering.”

  “It’s on Bostich’s computer.”

  Nearly thirty seconds went by before Roger Matson’s voice returned, subdued, intense, and shaken.

  “You … found that on Bostich’s computer?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And you recognized … the subject?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “I’ve seen the face in another picture, but I didn’t expect to find it here, in this file.”

  “Kat, do you understand what finding that on Bostich’s computer means?”

  Kat was shaking her head as she answered. “I’m not sure I do, other than the worry that maybe what I’ve found is an old evidence file that you didn’t know Bostich had downloaded.”

  “No. Trust me, Kat. Bostich never received, or could have received, a copy of this through any channel after Lumin’s arrest. It had to be transmitted from Lumin’s computer to some other destination before he was picked up, because … because of the, ah, special nature of it. You follow what I’m saying? Whoever received this, let’s call him Mr. X, would have probably known precisely what he was getting. Therefore, the presence on Bostich’s computer of the same picture means Bostich deals with the same person, Mr. X, and Mr. X had to have some additional purpose for giving this to Rudolph Bostich.”

  “This file isn’t something that could have been spread around out of control?”

  “You mean the picture?”

  “Yeah. Like on an Internet bulletin board or something.”

  “No way! I know this … this shot. I’ve seen just about everything out there on the Internet. It’s not there.”

  Both of them paused until Kat spoke again.

  “So, who is this Mr. X? Could it be Bostich?”

  “I doubt it,” Matson replied. “Someone had to give Bostich the tip about Lumin, so I would think that if there is a Mr. X, that’s the one who tipped Bostich that Lumin was the murderer. My Lord, that does makes sense! I’ve always been certain Bostich had a source for that tip. Even the night he called, I remember thinking it must have been unusual for him to have some underworld slug actually tell him something useful. But I never had a clue who his tipster might have been. A Mr. X—someone Bostich bought smut from personally—could well be the explanation.”

  “Can you check on this ‘SHRDLU2’ address for me? See if the owner is our Mr. X?”

  “Sure can. Just in case, let me start by searching Lumin’s file. Hold on.”

  In two minutes he was back.

  “Kat!” Roger Matson’s excited voice filled their ears.

  “Yes?”

  “Kat, the ‘SHRDLU2’ address is on Lumin’s database, too! I just ran a search. E-mail messages were sent back and forth, though I haven’t read them. I never caught this before! But then, I wouldn’t have recognized that address anyway, and there was no apparent reason to look for anyone else since we were sure we already had the killer. I mean, the photographic evidence on Lumin’s computer said it all.”

  “Can we trace where it goes, who owns that screen name?”

  “I know we can,” Matson answered. “I warn you, it’ll lead to what seems like a dead end, because Mr. X will have used cash and a fake identity to set it up. Many people do that just to protect their real identity, especially when they’re doing something illegal. That’s why the Internet is such a wild frontier. You never know who you’re really dealing with.”

  “There’s got to be some track to whoever was using that address, though.”

  “Yeah. We could get lucky, I suppose. Let me look and I’ll call you right back.”

  “How long? We’re in flight, and the captain’s holding the trigger to a bomb in the forward cargo compartment. We’ve got to hurry.”

  “I will. Twenty minutes, tops. I’ve done this before. I know who to call, but let me get on it. My Lord in heaven, the chance to nail Bostich to the wall for screwing the case up is reason enough to get excited, but I know you’re in desperate straits up there. Ah, Captain Wolfe? Can I talk to you?”

  Ken punched his transmit button. “I’m here, Roger.”

  “Look, Captain, the sooner you can let those people out and end this, the … the better it’s going to go for you. You’re in pretty deep trouble. You know that, right?”

  “I know that, Roger. I had no choice.”

  “Well, look, you know I’ll do my best, regardless. I hear you demanded they federally indict Lumin, but Captain, unless the judge reinstates that warrant, that’ll do no good. All the evidence was obtained with that warrant.”

  “I know that,” Ken said.

  “Then why demand a federal grand jury?”

  “I have my reasons, Roger.”

  There was a pause. “Look, Ken, you’re committing air piracy. You need to end this as soon as possible. I don’t want them executing the wrong man, okay?”

  “Doesn’t matter what happens to me as long as Lumin is permanently removed from this world.”

  They disconnected and Kat sat in deep thought for a few seconds before glancing back at Ken, whose eyes were focused out the forward windscreen, but whose jaw was tightening and untightening constantly, obviously in reaction to the conversation.

  Ken returned the glance, locking eyes with her, and she noted the hollow look on his face.

  “That fifty-first picture, Kat …” Ken said softly.

  “Yes?” she replied, her stomach knotting, knowing what was coming.

  “That was the picture of Melinda being tortured, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded, biting her lip. “I’m so sorry, Ken.”

  He shook his head as he made an adjustment on the forward panel.

  “It’s okay. I know the picture. I made Matson show me all those files from Lumin’s computer, and the one picture.”

  He looked over at Kat, his face neutral. “They could never find the print itself, just a cheap Polaroid camera abandoned in his trailer. He probably discarded the shot after he scanned the picture into his computer. I have every pixel of that photo memorized.” He shook his head. “And that picture of Melinda is on Bostich’s computer, too?”

  “It’s one of the ones you restored.”

  Ken reached forward and calmly punched a flurry of keystrokes into the flight management computer, executed the command, and sat back, letting the autopilot bank the 737 left to a new heading.

  “Where are we going?” Kat asked.

  Ken sighed loudly. “Phoenix. I was going to head for Denver or Colorado Springs, but there’s heavy thunderstorm activity moving into that area, so we’re headed southwest. That was where we were supposed to go this morning anyway.”

  She felt a sudden surge of
hope. “That’s a good move, Ken. Let these folks out at their destination at last.”

  He nodded without looking at her.

  She waited, then continued. “You are planning to wrap it up there, right? I mean, Lumin’s arrest is imminent, we’ve got Bostich all but hung, and even if you land at Aspen and ended things there right now, I think that judge would have enough to reverse himself and reinstate the warrant.”

  “Phoenix is a good place to end things, Kat, regardless of what happens.” He raised the trigger into view again. “Thanks to you, I’m a little bit closer to deactivating this thing, but I’m not stopping short of my demands. Bostich must confess. Regardless of anything else, he must confess, and the confession has to be fully admissible.”

  “Ken?” Kat’s voice had taken on a different tone, he realized, and he looked at her, startled to see her eyes boring into his.

  “It must have been quite a shock this morning to find Bostich on your aircraft, right?”

  The answer was out of his mouth before he could recall it.

  “Yes, it was. A horrible—”

  “Which means,” she continued, “that unless you’re in the habit of toting a bomb around with you on every flight, which I somehow doubt, there is no bomb on this aircraft.”

  “That’s not true, Kat, I—”

  “Cut it out, Ken! I’ve been looking at your trigger. That’s a car alarm remote, isn’t it?”

  He looked over at her in silence, then he raised the trigger into view and transferred it to his right hand, being careful to keep the button depressed. “It’s highly modified.”

  “You’ve put on an impressive show, Ken, but it’s a fraud. Hey! You’re the only pilot up here anyway. I’m hardly going to shoot you and kill all of us.”

  “The bomb is real, Kat.” He began fumbling to his left, in his map kit, fishing something out of his map case that he tossed onto her lap.

  Kat looked down at the rectangular object which resembled a small block of plastic inside an open package. She reached for it, picked it up and sniffed it, trying to recall the basics of explosives training at the FBI Academy.

  “What is this?”

  “The rest of the block of plastic explosives I put in my bag in the belly.”

  She looked down again. “Plastic explosives?”

  “That’s right.”

  Kat looked up at him and shook her head.

  “Ken, as I’m sure you know, this isn’t C-four or Semtex. This is cheese!”

  He looked at her for several seconds in silence, his face a blank. Suddenly he nodded and smiled thinly.

  “Tillamook cheese, to be precise, from Oregon. It’s a good brand, but it doesn’t explode worth a damn.”

  She stared at him, shaking her head and chuckling. “And the trigger goes to your car?”

  He held it up and let go of the button.

  “Yes. And the handheld I carried in Telluride is a Radio Shack scanner.”

  “And all of us have been terrified for nothing?”

  He nodded. “Even if I had known Bostich would be aboard today, I could never truly imperil my passengers, even if I knew how to obtain C-four, which I don’t.”

  She was nodding. “I guess deep inside I suspected that back in Telluride.”

  “Your colleagues would have blown my head off in a second if they had figured it out.”

  “Not without confirmation, Ken. You know that. As you already pointed out, you know all our moves.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Aboard AirBridge Flight 90. 4:20 P.M.

  Ken heard Kat Bronsky’s seatbelt unsnap before he saw the movement from the right seat. He tensed and looked to his right, preparing for some sort of attack, but she was sliding the copilot’s seat back on its rails and carefully closing Bostich’s computer. She looked up and handed Ken the cellular phone.

  “When Roger Matson calls back, I’d like you to page me.”

  He searched her eyes for a second, calculating whether to assert control, then simply nodded.

  “Where are you going?”

  She swung her leg over the center console and stood in the space behind with her left hand on the back of his seat.

  “I’m going to go accomplish what I came aboard to do. Interrogate Rudolph Bostich.”

  He reached over and punched the unlock button for the cockpit door.

  “When you want back in, knock six times. Three, pause, and three more.”

  She nodded. “And you’re headed to Phoenix at a reasonable altitude for a change?”

  Ken turned partially to see her expression, relieved to find the shadow of a smile there.

  “Very reasonable,” he said. “Like six miles high.”

  The cabin of AirBridge 90 seemed surreal to Kat, as if she’d just stepped from the forward bathroom on any commercial airline flight. Other than the somewhat haunted, wondering looks on the faces of the passengers in the coach cabin who were watching her carefully, nothing seemed unusual.

  Annette Baxter was kneeling by one of the rows in coach, talking to a young man with a telephone in his hand. Kat touched her on the shoulder, causing her to jump.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Kat said, as she caught the eyes of the man in the window seat.

  “No problem,” Annette said as she stood and gestured to the man. “This is Chris Billings of CNN.”

  Kat nodded.

  “And you’re the FBI agent?” he asked. She saw his eyes glance to a notebook full of scribbled entries, then back at her. “Ms. Bronsky?”

  “Kat Bronsky. Yes. Are you broadcasting?”

  He looked at the phone. “Not right this second. They’re taking a ten-minute break, then I’ll go back live. As she said, I’m Chris.” He extended his hand and she shook it. “Ah, Agent Bronsky, could I ask you a few questions?”

  “Briefly.”

  “Okay. When you were talking on the P.A. about the porno picture you found on Bostich’s computer I got the feeling you agree with the captain about Rudy Bostich. But I went back and talked to Mr. Bostich a while ago, before a mob started threatening to throw him out of the emergency hatch, and he swore there were no pornographic pictures on his computer when he came aboard, and if you found anything there, it was only because the captain planted it to discredit him. He said the same thing to the captain in that bizarre ‘dueling P.A.’ episode.”

  Kat looked at Annette, then back at Chris Billings. “Truth is, there was no time for the captain to plant anything on that computer, Chris.” She explained the sequence of events and the fact she’d been in the cockpit from the first moment Ken Wolfe had brought the computer forward.

  “And those pictures are … that bad?” he asked.

  She looked at him in silence for a few seconds, until it was obvious he was becoming uncomfortable.

  “Chris, have you ever seen a pornographic photo involving a female child? I mean, hardcore, everything’s visible? Illegal stuff?”

  He shook his head rapidly. “No. I mean, I’m certainly not interested in—”

  She raised her hand to stop him. “I’m not saying you are, but in your reporting career, you’ve never seen such garbage?”

  “Never.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Just so you’ll know, when I go back up front in a little while, if Wolfe okays it, I’ll bring you forward to look at the evidence. It will sicken you, I promise.”

  She straightened up and moved aft in Annette’s direction, finding a sullen Bostich in the same window seat looking out the window.

  “Mr. Bostich?”

  He looked up suspiciously. “Yes?”

  “We need to continue our discussion, sir. I’m Agent Katherine Bronsky of the FBI. We talked over the radio an hour or so ago.”

  He glared at her without moving, his left hand under his chin, his index finger massaging the edge of his mouth as she stood in the aisle and looked at him.

  “What do you want?”

  “Please stand up, sir. We’re going forward.”

>   He shook his head. “I’m not going back to the cockpit with that maniac.”

  “No sir, I want you to accompany me back to your seat in first class where we can talk in private.” She looked around at the number of passengers who had turned and raised up in their seats to hear the exchange. “Or, maybe you’d rather we talk back here where everyone can participate?”

  Bostich exhaled and reluctantly pulled himself from the seat with a dark scowl. He followed her through a gauntlet of boos, hisses, and worse to the first class cabin, where she motioned him into seat 1A again and asked Louise Richardson in seat 1C across the aisle to relocate to a seat several rows away.

  Bostich assumed the same sullen, defiant position and looked up at her.

  “All right, what do you want?”

  She sat sideways on the armrest of seat 1B and looked at him. “The question, Mr. Bostich, is what do you want? You’re in quite a pickle here. Oh, wait a minute. I almost forgot to read you your rights.”

  He snorted. “I’ve done nothing wrong! I don’t need Mirandizing.”

  “Nevertheless, this is a formal interrogation, Mr. Bostich. You are suspected of possession of illegal pornographic materials. First, you have the right to remain silent.” Kat repeated the entire litany of the Miranda warning as Bostich looked away with a sneer on his face. When she’d finished he looked back at her.

  “Are you about done?”

  “No, sir, I’m just getting started.”

  “Yeah? Well, let me fill you in on reality, babe. You’re way out of your league! That fool in the cockpit is going to end up on a table in Leavenworth with a needle in his arm, but you—when I get through with you, Miss Bronsky—you’ll be lucky to find a position as a crossing guard somewhere.”

  She smiled and nodded. “I always liked crossing guards, and I’ve always liked children. And, judging from those pictures on your computer, you apparently like children, too, Mr. Bostich. Female children. Preferably nude and spread-eagled.”