by Tom Hansen
Willy noticed that on a desk in front of each screen was a remote control device with a joy stick. He picked one up and examined it closely. There were two buttons on top, a green one labeled engaged and a red one labeled disengaged. Willy had no idea what that meant.
Out of the corner of his eye, Willy noticed that the vehicle on screen number one had turned and was heading down a service road that was well lit. The vehicle was moving slow enough that he could read the overhead sign. It said, Tampa International Airport in white letters on a blue background. Willy watched, then the vehicle pulled into a parking lot and stopped in front of a white brick building. The sign above the door read National Transportation Safety Board. A few seconds later, a man in a dark blue windbreaker with the letters NTSB stenciled onto the jacket unlocked the front door and went in. Obviously, he was the man who had been driving the car or truck or whatever.
Willy glanced at screen number two where a vehicle was moving rapidly down a four lane freeway in the daylight. Inquisitively, Willy picked up the remote and fiddled with the joystick. Nothing happened on the TV. Then he pushed the green button and words flashed on and off the screen: Warning – System Engaged.
Willy’s curiosity got the best of him and he pushed the joystick to the left. The video feed suddenly darted left, crossed a sunken grass barrier and emerged perpendicular to the road on the other side. Willy knew right then that he had caused the vehicle to go out of control. Quickly trying to compensate, he moved the joystick back to the right, but the turn was too sharp and the video feed tumbled around and around several times. Then Willy saw that the vehicle was momentarily airborne and in a matter of seconds the screen went blank, just like the static on television twelve.
Willy slammed the remote back onto the desk and dropped to his knees, staring dumbfounded at the random dot pixels in front of him. He realized that chances were good that he just killed someone, someone he didn’t know. Tears welled up in his eyes. Willy also now understood that Governor Daughtry controlled more than just the budget for the state of Florida. Literally, lives could be destroyed by the elected top official on a whim.
A few minutes later, Willy tried to get a grip and focus on the situation before him. He was upset that his older brother Tyrus was most likely involved in something bad. Thinking about the scene in the DNR’s parking lot with the boxes and helicopter, and now this, he needed to contact the FBI. As he turned towards the door, a chilling thought came to Willy and he froze. Goosebumps covered his body and he darted back towards the blank screen, then pounded his fists on the desk.
“Oh my God!” uttered Willy out loud. He just remembered that Governor Hank Daughtry was friends with Coach Berry’s neighbor out in Seminole Bend Golf Course Estates, who was also friends with Roy Jackson. Then, a couple of days before he was fired, Willy recalled overhearing coroner Cliff Sutton tell Sheriff Bonty that the person driving the pickup the night the Berry’s were killed could not have been Sheryl. The length of the charred remains of the bone at the scene determined that the body was over six feet tall.
Willy picked up the remote control device with the joystick and stared at it. Thinking aloud, he said, “Could Brett’s truck have been rigged and Daughtry forced whoever was driving it into the ditch with this damn thing? But why?!”
Willy struggled to remember the name of Brett’s very wealthy neighbor. “Harmon. Harper. No, Harfield! That’s it! Oliver Harfield. He’s that rich cat who lives in that mansion out on the fifth hole!” He remembered seeing a news photo of Daughtry, Harfield and Brett hugging each other a while back.
Willy noticed that a yellow light on the videocassette recorder beneath the blank TV screen was blinking. He looked closely and saw that the light indicator was labeled Auto Pause. Could there have been a recording of the accident he just caused? Willy pushed the rewind button for just a few seconds and heard the tape spin. Then he pushed the play button and a picture replaced the snow on the TV. It was definitely a replay of the vehicle that had been on the four lane freeway. Willy held his breath as he watched the car or truck veer ninety degrees to the left and go over the median, then attempt to turn ninety degrees to the right before the camera indicated a series of airborne spins. Once the spins ended, so did the camera feed and the screen went blank.
Willy stopped the recorder and hit rewind again, this time allowing the tape to go all the way back to the beginning. He pushed play. A digital display on the upper right corner of the screen read 00:00. On the upper left corner was a twenty-four-hour clock that showed the local time and date. As the tape started up, the TV screen displayed the words Auto Paused, but that lasted only momentarily and faded out when the camera feed began to move in reverse. It appeared that the vehicle was backing out of a parking spot. Then suddenly the camera revealed forward movement, which lasted for ten minutes until the vehicle came to a stop in a gas station. The TV screen once again displayed Auto Paused and the local time indicator became frozen, but the tape’s playback continued to roll. A split second later the vehicle began to move, but Willy noticed that the clock was now revealing a time that was six minutes ahead of what it had displayed when the vehicle had stopped. The car, truck, van or whatever had filled up with gas in six minutes and was on the move again. Willy realized that the video feed would automatically initiate recording when the vehicle was moving, but would pause when there was no inertia. During playback, the gaps in time simply appeared instantaneously.
Willy guessed that the other screens showing airplanes parked at the gate were not being recorded due to non-motion. Then he looked down at the last television which also had a blank, snowy screen. He wondered what the videotape had recorded. Willy walked to the desk and sat in a rolling chair, then pushed rewind. The tape spun backwards and stopped. The LCD display showed four hours of tape time had been recorded.
Willy pressed the play button and he immediately knew the camera was affixed somewhere in the cockpit of an airplane as he saw the nose of the craft sticking out. On the bottom of the screen, Willy could just make out that the plane was being pushed back from the gate by a low-rise yellow tractor. As soon as the plane turned and began to move down a taxiway, the television flashed a warning: Jam Disengaged ORD. Willy had no idea what that meant. A few minutes later the plane turned onto the runway, then stopped momentarily to wait for ATC clearance as Auto Pause flashed on the screen. Seconds later, the aircraft gained speed, rolled back and thrust skyward.
The plane rose and turned and that’s when Willy could see the Sears Tower and outline of Lake Michigan on the bottom of the TV. He knew the plane had taken off from Chicago. As the plane leveled off, another warning flashed on the screen: Jam Disengaged TPA. Once again, Willy couldn’t understand what that meant. He fast forwarded through two hours of tape time, watching closely for any abnormality of this flight, when another warning flashed on the screen. Willy pushed play and the tape slowed down to real time. The warning read: Jam Engaged TPA.
Willy’s eyes were wide open and glued to the television. A few minutes later, he noticed dark skies with flashes of lightening on the left side of the screen. Then the plane did something extremely bizarre. It turned directly into the storm and Willy could tell it was taking on tremendous turbulence. “Why would the pilot do that?” whispered Willy to himself. The skies were clear on the opposite side of the screen.
Two minutes later, an enormous burst of light illuminated the picture feed for a split second, and then the screen went blank. Willy could tell it was an explosion. He had seen enough of them during his time in Vietnam. With a chill running through his spine, Willy now understood what he had just witnessed: the midair collision of the two passenger jets over Lake Okeechobee.
“Jam Engaged TPA. What does that mean, damn it?!” Willy was speaking aloud to try and talk his way through the disaster. “Tampa, that must be TPA! But what the heck is ORD? The plane took off from Chicago, not Orlando! And jam engaged? Could Daughtry be able to jam airport radars from here?”
Willy glanced over to the other TVs and a terrifying thought raced through his mind. Are those planes locked and loaded, awaiting another catastrophic episode in midair? And was the man who entered the National Transportation Safety Board a target for Governor Daughtry? Willy looked at the shelves stacked with videocassettes and realized the implausible amount of criminal evidence that lay in front of him.
Willy ejected the videocassette of the doomed aircraft and headed for the door. He needed to get to FBI headquarters in Miami fast! He would give them the tape and the metal box he had extracted from Brett Berry’s truck, even though he fully understood that he would be admitting to a felony break-in at the FBI auto impound lot. But he would also be implicating his brother Tyrus in a crime that would no doubt end up with the death penalty. He didn’t care. He had to do what was right.
The deadbolts were not locked from inside the room, so exiting it was simplified. Willy turned all three locks and opened the door. He was greeted by the muzzle of a well-recognized submachine gun pointed directly at his nose. The irate-looking guard had one eye shut and was taking aim from a distance of two feet. Willy had no doubt the nine-millimeter bullets would easily find their mark.
CHAPTER 61
Saturday, March 13, 1982
8:00 a.m.
L ew slept restlessly in the front seat of his rented Trans Am. He was parked at Gregorson General Hospital waiting for visiting hours to begin so he could check on his buddy Phil. It was eight o’clock and the hospital staff was in a tizzy and had been since the midair plane crash. The hospital was allowing rooms to be used as a temporary morgue because the county’s morgue was designed to hold a maximum of eight bodies and it was already beyond capacity. Lew went into the lobby restroom and using just his hands, he rinsed off his stubbly face. His clothes were dirty and he looked disheveled and exhausted. Lew could use a strong cup of coffee.
“I’m here to visit Phil Bennett,” said Lew to the nurse at the receiving desk. “Should I sign in here?”
“Sir, are you a relative of Mr. Bennett’s?” asked the nurse hesitantly.
“No, just a friend. Please, I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“Sir, I have some bad news. Mr. Bennett died in his sleep just a few hours ago.”
Lew staggered backwards, then dropped to the floor and rested his back on the adjacent wall. He covered his eyes with his hands and the tears flowed down his cheeks. The nurse rushed around the reception desk and stooped down to Lew.
“Sir, are you okay?” asked the nurse. “Do you need some assistance? Let me call for someone.”
“No, I’ll be okay,” stuttered Lew. “Please, just give me a minute.”
“Please let me get you to a chair in the lobby.” The nurse helped Lew to his feet, put her arms around him and walked him to the waiting room. The room was packed with visitors, all of them friends and relatives of the passengers on the doomed airplanes waiting for confirmed identifications. A younger man stood up and offered his chair to Lew.
“If you need something, please ask,” said the nurse in a kind tone of voice. “I need to get back to my desk.”
Lew was distraught and was finding it impossible to get his agitated thoughts together. The lack of sleep combined with the loss of his son, daughter-in-law and wife had taken a toll on his sanity, and now the death of his new friend had put him over the edge. After several minutes listening to the demons inside, he was considering giving up and ending his own life when an inner spirit slapped him back into consciousness. Lew had never been a quitter and wasn’t about to start now. Then, a thought hit him and he walked back to the nurse’s station.
“Sorry to bother you again. I just wanted to thank you for helping me.” Lew smiled at the nurse and she returned the visage with a slight nod. “I should have introduced myself. My name is Lew Berry.”
“Are you doing okay now, Mr. Berry? Is there anything I can help you with?” The nurse was remarkably controlled considering the situation. Cries from loved ones echoed throughout the hallways.
“Yes, would you mind if I looked at your visitor’s sign-in sheet? I want to know if any of Phil’s friends or family members had visited him before he passed.” Lew was hoping to comfort a loved one by providing testimony to Phil’s heartfelt compassion for humankind. It was the least he could do for all that his friend had done for him.
“No, certainly I don’t mind. Please, go ahead and look.” The nurse pushed the clipboard towards Lew. The visitor log was full of names from yesterday. More than a couple hundred passengers had to have been on those two planes.
Lew carefully perused the list and found only one visitor for Phil. Pancho had signed in and out several times during the day on Friday. However, strangely he had signed in at nine o’clock last night and never signed out. Visiting hours were over at ten, and nurses were required to check the list to make sure no one was still in the patients’ rooms. Whoever was on duty must have missed it, but considering the deluge of friends and relatives checking on the status of their loved ones, that could have been an easy mistake.
Lew was about to hand the clipboard back to the nurse when he noticed another name. Roy Jackson had signed in at 9:30 p.m. and signed out at 10:00 p.m. Under the column labeled Patient, Jackson wrote Mickey Mouse and room number zero.
Lew paused a moment, then asked the nurse, “Does anyone here ask for identity when a visitor signs in?”
“Yes, Mr. Berry. All visitors must show a driver’s license. Why do you ask?”
“Do you then check to see that the patient’s name and room number are correct on the visitor’s log?”
“Well, we may not check too close because the visitor usually asks what room their friend or relative is in and we assume they write it down correctly. What are you getting at, Mr. Berry?”
“Have you admitted a patient named Mickey Mouse?” asked Lew with a straight face. The nurse looked at him and frowned.
“Please, Mr. Berry, now’s not the time for jokes.”
“I agree,” replied Lew. “Please take a look.” He pushed the clipboard back to the nurse and pointed to the line with Jackson’s name.
“Huh? Now that’s strange. I can’t believe a respectable member of the community, like Mr. Jackson, would do such a thing. And he wrote the room number as zero. There is no room zero in our hospital!”
“Respectable? You’re kidding me, right?” Lew rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Do you have any idea who Jackson was really here to see?” inquired Lew.
“No, I came on duty at six o’clock this morning. The night nurse would have been here. But because Jackson’s on the hospital board of directors, I’m sure she wouldn’t have bothered him for any identification, nor would she have checked to see if he wrote the correct name down on the log.”
Before Lew could ask another question, a middle-aged man wearing a white shirt, black dress pants and a beat up paisley tie underneath a physician’s half unbuttoned coat approached the desk. He handed the nurse a discharge form while interrupting the conversation she was having with Lew.
“Excuse me, please,” said the doctor. “Here is the paperwork for patient Bennett. An ambulance is waiting out back to take him to my office.”
The nurse glanced at Lew who now wondered if this doctor was talking about Phil Bennett.
“Is Phil still here?” Lew asked the nurse. “Why hasn’t he been sent to a funeral home?”
The doctor looked at Lew, then to the nurse, and then back at Lew. “I’m sorry, are you a friend or relative of Phil Bennett’s?” He offered to shake Lew’s hand as an offer of condolence, but Lew didn’t take it.
“As a matter of fact I am. May I ask who you are and why you are taking him to some office?”
“I am the county coroner. My name is Cliff Sutton. I need to run some tests on Phil that I can’t do here, that’s all.” Cliff retracted his handshake offer seeing that Lew had no plans to accept it.
“So, you’re doing an autopsy? Why? My friend Phil almost lost his leg
from debris falling from the sky during the plane accident. I figured he lost too much blood. Was there more to it?”
“I’m sorry sir, I’m not at liberty to give out any information. Do you mind my asking what your name is?”
“Sure, doc. And just so you know, we’ve spoken to each other in the past. Over the phone a few days ago. I’m sure you will remember our conversation.” Lew gave the coroner a hostile stare.
“I’m sorry,” Cliff paused and squinted at Lew. “You are who?”
“Lew Berry. I’m Brett Berry’s father.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee so we can chat?”
“Love one! Thanks!”
CHAPTER 62
Saturday, March 13, 1982
9:30 a.m.
P ancho woke up wearily around mid-morning with a throbbing headache and soreness throughout his body. He opened his eyelids, but had difficulty focusing on anything near or far. He tried to stand up, but fell down. His legs were weak and wobbly. Then he noticed iron bars and realized he was in a jail cell. Sitting on a bench across the cell was the last man he had seen before passing out. It was Sheriff Al Bonty and he was spinning a chain of jail keys around on his finger, presumably waiting for Pancho to awaken.
Now it was starting to come back to Pancho. He had been sitting in the hospital chatting with Phil Bennett when a man with a fancy cowboy hat walked into the room. Just as he turned his head around, Pancho was struck in the temple with the butt of the rancher’s gun. He was dazed, but still able to see what was happening from where his head was lying on the floor.
Although his eyes were out of focus, Pancho remembered watching the man shove a wad of cloth into Phil’s mouth with one hand while reaching for a bottle of nasal spray with the other. While Phil was gagging, the man pushed his head back and sprayed a liquid mist into Phil’s nose. In less than a minute, Phil was unconscious and the man removed the cloth, opened the first floor window and tossed it outside. Then he lifted Pancho off the hospital floor and jostled him headfirst out the window.