by Rachel Lee
“Okey-dokey,” Matt said as he disconnected. “Let's get our asses back to Tampa and see if we can hunt down this damn plane.”
Dominic paused by Brendan's office door and knocked.
“Come in.”
He entered the small room, and took the only other available chair. “How are you doing?” he asked.
Brendan shrugged. “All right. My keepers assure me I’ll be free as of this evening. I hope they're not wrong.”
“It's been driving you nuts, hasn't it, being confined this way?”
Brendan leaned back in his chair. It creaked as it tipped. “It's not easy.”
“No.” Dominic folded his hands and sighed. “I have to make a confession.”
Brendan nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Monsignor Crowell sent me down here to spy on you.”
Brendan arched a brow, then chuckled. “Man, he must be disappointed. How can I get into any trouble when I’m not even allowed out the front door?”
Dominic returned a smile, but it wasn't a happy one. “I wanted you to know that. I also want you to know I told him he was all wrong about you. I haven't spoken to him since.”
“I’m sorry. You just made a powerful enemy on my behalf.”
“No, I did it on my own behalf. I told the truth and did the right thing. And I’m not sorry.”
Brendan's smile became almost sad. “I guess you won't be going back to your office at the chancery.”
Dominic shrugged. “Maybe not. Actually, I hope not. I’m beginning to love it here.”
“And the parish is beginning to love you.”
“So anyway, I wanted to ask your forgiveness and absolution.”
“Well, there's really nothing to forgive, Dom. Nothing at all. You didn't do anything wrong. The chancery sent you on a mission, and you came down here to perform it faithfully. And it seems to me that you've done exactly that.”
“I still feel guilty. I wasn't honest with you.”
Brendan leaned forward and gave Dom a quick squeeze on his forearm. “Read any Bible lately?”
Dominic looked confused. “All the time.”
“Then maybe you can refresh my memory about where it says that we have to tell everyone everything.”
Dominic cracked a smile. “It was still devious.”
“No, Crowell is the devious one. You, on the other hand, were performing a legitimate task. What if you'd gotten down here and found out I was some kind of pedophile? Would you have felt guilty for not telling me your mission then?”
“No.” Dominic nodded. “So okay. But I still feel guilty.”
“That's a waste of emotional energy. You confessed, I absolve you — although you don't need absolution — now give it a rest. Remember that saying? Once you confess, God throws your sins into the deepest part of the pond and puts up a no fishing sign.”
Dominic laughed. “Of course I remember.”
Brendan gave him a crooked smile. “I use it all the time in confession. The thing is, Dom, guilt is only useful insofar as it makes us aware that we need to do things differently. After that, it's a waste. The parish would benefit far more if you saved the energy for something else.”
Dominic nodded. “Thanks, Brendan. I hope they let me stay here.”
“Me too. Do you know how hard it is to find another priest to comfortably share a rectory with? I hear horror stories all the time.”
“I’ve heard them, too. Well, I won't take any more of your time. Just know you can trust me now.”
Brendan smiled. “I knew I could trust you all along.”
But just as Dominic reached the door, Brendan stopped him.
“Dom? I don't know why, but I’m feeling uneasy. Could you hear my confession?”
Dominic turned to face him, concern creasing his brow. “What's wrong?”
“I don't know. Just a feeling. So if you wouldn't mind …”
“It would be my honor” Then he hesitated. “Brendan?”
“Yes?”
“Maybe, given the things that have been happening lately … maybe I ought to give you the anointing.”
Brendan lifted a brow. “I’m not sick.”
“But …” Dominic stepped closer. “But you might be near death.”
Brendan looked down at his hands, hiding whatever emotions flitted across his face. When he looked up, his face was serene.
“Thanks, Dom. I’d like that.”
Chapter 22
Matt dropped Chloe off at home. She wanted to shower and change, and he promised to let her know when they located the plane. She had a bad feeling about this, a really bad feeling. Of course, since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, it was easy to feel concern when somebody who didn't exist rented an airplane.
It was probably innocent, she told herself. After all, the guy had been traveling on government orders. Even if he was some kind of spook, he was dead. So how could he do anything deadly with that plane?
But, like Matt, she couldn't forget the coded message. It might not have been intended for Lance Brucon, whoever he was. It might have been intended for someone else.
And there was that sketchy, garbled story Brendan had heard from Tom Humboldt about a conspiracy of some kind.
No, she wasn't going to assume it was innocuous.
But she was equally worried about Brendan. Maybe more so. That date and time might also be a deadline directed at him. Someone out there might even now be stalking him, prepared to kill him before the witching hour.
Frustration and fatigue combined to make her scrub herself ruthlessly with a loofah, until her skin glowed red. She didn't want the fatigue to overwhelm her, but she needed a rest. She'd be useless to anyone if she couldn't think clearly.
Wrapped in a towel, she padded into her bedroom and glanced at the clock. Amazing. It was already four-thirty. She called the rectory to make sure that Brendan was planning to behave himself.
“I promised,” he said, when Lucy put her through. “I’m sitting here like a good boy.”
“Good. Answer your phone tonight, will you? I’ll be over later, but in the meantime, I want to be able to check up on you. And I want to keep you posted if Matt learns anything.”
“Okay,” he said, agreeably enough. “But this is the last night.”
Sighing, Chloe hung up, then collapsed on her bed for a couple of hours of sleep. She had to sleep, or she wasn't going to be any good to anyone.
Matt was sitting at his desk, restlessly shaking one leg, trying to be sure that nothing had been overlooked. Not that it was his case anymore. The feebs, of course, had thrown him a bone and allowed his team to keep hunting for the tail number, but they were in on little else. How many calls had he made just since returning to the office an hour ago? He'd lost count. And he'd gotten tired of hearing from every airport, “Yeah, we got the alert. We've got an eye out.”
Apparently the FBI had gotten the FAA to put the plane on an alert watch list, and apparently the notice had gone out to all airports by midafternoon.
So he was nothing but a fifth wheel. That hadn't kept him from calling local airports personally, though. This was his town and his case. And pardon him, but he just didn't trust the FBI to care as much about the Tampa Bay area as he did.
But nobody local had seen the plane. So, what the hell. He'd probably made a huge mountain out of a molehill … even if the FBI had practically shit their pants when they heard the message had been sent by stegnography. It seemed the Al Qaeda had used stegnography to communicate.
Interesting. So how did someone on government travel orders fit in with Al Qaeda? A new twist?
Phelan came up and dropped a fax on his desk. “Take a look at that.”
It was from NCIC, in response to the Lance Brucon fingerprints. The message was pointedly brief.
This information is classified. Cease inquiries immediately.
Phelan dropped into the chair beside him. “Case closed,” he said. “Bing, bang, boom. No lookie, no talkie. Wha
t do you think? CIA? NSA?”
“Black ops of some kind.”
“Yeah, that's my read. So this guy is linked to that plane, which no one has found yet, and the government says butt out. I love it. I guess I’ll go home and spend the evening with my family for a change. I wonder if they still recognize me.”
“I’m sure they do.”
Phelan rose. “You might as well get out of here, too. The feds aren't going to tell you anything, even if they find that damn plane.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
Phelan laughed bitterly. “We probably stumbled into some covert operation trying to locate a terrorist cell. You know they were all over us after nine-eleven.”
Tampa had a large Islamic community, which had made the feds poke around quite a bit. But that was a long time ago. Things had quieted since then. Maybe.
“Go home,” Phelan said again. “You look dead beat.”
“Yeah. In a bit.” He watched Phelan walk away. Matt's phone rang, and he picked it up. “Diel.”
“Detective, this is Special Agent Bruster, FBI.”
“Yeah, hi. What's up?”
“Well, we got a call from a small airport outside Miami. The plane we're looking for flew out of there around three-thirty, headed for Jacksonville.”
“Oh? You find it?”
“That's the problem. The plane got caught in a thunderstorm just north of Miami. The pilot radioed in that he'd been hit by lightning and lost his avionics. His transponder even went out. Then he dropped off radar and never reappeared. We've been checking, but it seems he went down in the water.”
“Thanks for letting me know. Keep me updated?”
“Of course. We're not through investigating. We've got a good description of the pilot. Maybe we can find out more about him.”
“I hope so.”
“I do, too, Detective. I do, too.”
Bruster sounded like he really meant it, but as he hung up the phone, Matt found himself wondering whether the FBI was in on this “classified” thing, too, or whether they were as blind as he.
Down in the water. How very fucking convenient. He tipped his chair back and closed his eyes, and waited. Because as sure as he was sitting here, this wasn't over.
The plane landed at Albert Whitted Airport in St. Petersburg at six that evening. The alert had been canceled by the FAA at five, so the tower didn't even bother checking the alert against the tail number. The lack of a transponder didn't bother them either. Lots of private pilots didn't have one, or if they did, didn't bother to check it out to make sure it was working as often as they should. The tower called to a mechanic to have him go tell the pilot if he had a transponder, it wasn't working.
The pilot set the Cessna down gently and taxied over to refuel. He climbed out and spoke to the mechanic, laughing when the guy told him his transponder was out.
“Sorry,” he said. “Maybe something's loose.”
“Want me to check it out for you?” the mechanic offered.
“Nah, I’ll check the wiring first. If I can't figure out what's wrong, I’ll ask you for some help.”
“Sure.” The mechanic was accustomed to pilots who didn't want to pay for help with their planes if they could do the work themselves. “Nice plane,” the mechanic said, patting the side of the Cessna.
“Yeah, I like it. I rented it.”
Which explained why the guy didn't want to pay to have the transponder fixed.
“Thinking about buying one?” the mechanic asked.
“I wish. No, I’m just puddle-jumping on vacation.”
“You gonna be here long?”
“Nah. A couple of hours. I’ve gotta get to Jacksonville tonight.”
The mechanic nodded and walked away. As he did so, he glanced at the tail number and wondered why it looked so familiar.
Back in his office, he put his feet up, thinking about the dinner that Judy was going to have waiting for him when he got home. She'd promised him roast turkey and all the trimmings for his birthday dinner, and he could hardly wait.
But amid his visions of stuffing and gravy, the tail number of that Cessna kept floating. Finally, he pulled out the alert that had come earlier and felt his heart jump when he saw that the numbers were the same. He reached at once for his phone and called the tower.
“The alert was canceled at five P.M.,” the tower told him.
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” The mechanic went back to daydreaming about cranberry sauce and heaping mounds of breast meat.
But the controller supervisor who had answered his call was troubled. He looked out at the Cessna on the tarmac getting refueled. Why would they put out an alert like that, then cancel it?
And he remembered that detective from Tampa had called him and seemed quite concerned. He hesitated, then picked up the phone and dialed the number the detective had left. It couldn't hurt anything to pass the information along. If someone had made a mistake of some kind, they'd just tell him so.
Down below, the pilot of the Cessna was filing a flight plan for Jacksonville, departure time 8:15 P.M.
The sound of the ringing phone jerked Matt out of his doze so suddenly that he nearly tipped back his chair. Funny, he thought groggily. Phones must have been ringing all around him while he dozed, but only his own had disturbed him.
The squad room was nearly empty, though. And quiet. It was dinner hour, and even detectives ate. And went home to families. Unless, of course, they were called out on something fresh.
Rubbing his eyes, he reached for the phone. “Diel.”
“Detective Diel? This is Carl Kessler over at Albert Whitted Airport. You called earlier about a Cessna with a particular tail number.”
“That's right.”
“I see the alert's been canceled. Was it a mistake?”
“No. It appears that the plane crashed into the Atlantic north of Miami.”
“Well,” said Kessler, “that can't be, because I think it's sitting on our apron right now.”
Matt's hand tightened on the phone. “Are you sure?”
“Well, I can't exactly see the number from here, but one of the mechanics out here said it was the same.”
“Thanks, Mr. Kessler. I’m on my way over.”
As soon as he hung up. Matt started to call the local FBI field office. But before he had punched in more than a couple of numbers, he stopped and hung up the phone.
It was possible Whitted had made a mistake about the tail number. After all, according to the feds, Miami said the plane had gone down in the ocean.
On the other hand … He stopped the thought, not wanting to have it at all. But it finished anyway. What if the feds had lied to him?
He rubbed his eyes again, impatiently, then decided what he'd do. He'd go over to Whitted and check it out. If it was the same plane, he'd alert everybody from the FBI to the National Guard. But until he knew for sure that plane was on the apron at Whitted, he had nothing to tell anyone.
Chloe pried one eye open and looked at the digital clock on her night table. Seven-ten. Morning or night? Then panic hit her like a tsunami. What if she'd slept all night?
She sat up immediately, looking around in confusion. The little light was illuminated on the clock. That meant it was P.M. Didn't it?
Yes, yes it did. Relieved, she picked up the phone to call Brendan, and make sure he was still behaving himself.
There was no answer. His voice mail, provided by the phone company, picked up after four rings, a sure indicator that he wasn't on the phone, that he simply hadn't answered it.
She waited five minutes, in case he was in the bathroom or something, and called again. No answer.
She jumped up and started dressing.
There were times when Matt was absolutely convinced that the area was nothing but one great conglomeration of parking lots passing for roads. 1-275, which ran directly to St. Petersburg across the bay, was choked on the Howard Frankland Bridge. Traffic was moving, but not nearly fast enough to suit him.
Drumming his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel, he wondered what the hell he was doing. After all, if this was all tied up in some classified operation that the entire federal government was determined to hide from him, what the hell good would it do him to find that airplane at Whitted?
If he tried to prevent it from taking off, they'd merely remove him. The pilot wouldn't tell him a damn thing. He might even find himself without a job.
On the other hand, Lance Brucon had had something to do with the death of an innocent young man, and someone was linking that death — and an earlier death — to Brendan, and by God, Matt had had enough. Whatever was going on, he was getting to the bottom of it, even if it did cost him his job.
Dominic went out just before seven to pay some home visits. He said he should be back by eleven. Brendan, who'd done as much paperwork as he could stand for the day, decided to settle in front of the television in the back parlor, the one the public never saw, and watch some mind-numbing sitcoms, or maybe some animal shows on one of the cable channels.
Animals, he decided. There was a show on about wolves, and he punched in the channel. He liked animals. People might think they didn't have souls, but he felt quite differently. He hadn't the least doubt that he was going to get to heaven and find all kinds of animals, particularly dogs. Cats he wasn't so sure about.
But the thought held amusement, born of the time he'd had a cat named Bandy, because its legs were so bowed. Bandy had been the most independent cuss ever to walk the planet, and simply trying to pet her would get him clawed until he bled.
Bandy had come and gone as she pleased, until one day she had never come home again.
Brendan's mother had told him that cats were like that: they up and moved whenever the whim took them. Bandy, she said, had probably moved a few blocks away to another family.
The explanation had been a happier one for a seven-year-old than the likely truth, which was that Bandy had probably been hit by a car. But ever since, he had not quite trusted cats.
He wondered if Dom would have a problem with getting a dog for the rectory. After all, he was the pastor at St. Simeon's, which meant he was pretty much settled here as long as he wanted to be.