Breaking Point

by Dana Haynes

  Renee let a little laugh escape. She smiled at the intense man with wispy blond hair, whom she’d known for fifteen years. Eight in the morning on a Saturday and Antal Borsa’s idea of dressing down was to put a cashmere turtleneck under his double-breasted suit coat.

  Renee had thrown on a burgundy sweater, jeans, JP Todd moccasins. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She’d aged twenty years since yesterday. “I am serious about Halcyon/Detweiler,” she said. “Andrew was wrong. I’ve already informed them. You stay here. You have work to do.”

  She climbed off the table, wiped her nose with the wadded cloth, walked to the door.

  Terri said, “Renee? Andrew didn’t want—”

  “Yes. I know.”

  She walked out.

  HELENA

  Friday morning, Ray Calabrese drove his rental to Big Sky Community Hospital to find Tommy and Kiki.

  He located them in Tommy’s room. Tommy was in bed wearing hospital PJs and propped up by pillows. Kiki wore powder-blue operating-room scrubs and slippers someone on the staff had dug up for her. These were obviously from the neonatal or pediatrics unit and were adorned with cute patches of teddy bears and giraffes. A metal cane rested against the bed stand.

  Kiki’s face lit up. “Ray?” She hopped up, weight on her good leg, to take the proffered hug. A half second into it she said, “Broken rib! Broken rib!”

  “Damn! Sorry!”

  She laughed, and winced when even that hurt.

  Tommy looked pale and gaunt, unshaved, with purple bags under his eyes and a large, square bandage adhered to his skull over his right ear. Ray put out a hand to shake.

  Tommy said, “How you doing, New York?”

  They shook hands. “Docs tell me that thick skull of yours finally paid off.” He gripped Kiki’s hand in his left and said, “Hey. Isaiah. I am just so damn sorry.”

  Kiki hugged him again, then perched on the side of Tommy’s bed. “Thank you. I haven’t processed it yet. I keep wanting to ask him what to do.”

  Tommy sipped water through a straw. “Is there a proper Go-Team on site?” His voice was as rough as sandpaper.

  “Yeah. I met the team. Ah, Peter Kim is IIC.”

  The two crashers exchanged glances. Tommy drawled, “Well, shit,” but then shook his head. “No. Petey’s smart. Smart and determined. He’s a dick, but that’s okay. He’ll do good.”

  Ray produced his ubiquitous notebook and went through the names of the Go-Team members. Some Tommy had worked with. Some Kiki had. For some, neither. There wasn’t a bad review for any of them.

  Kiki said, “Sounds like Peter has a good team. I can’t vouch for Beth Mancini. She’s pretty new. But Susan says she has potential.”

  The hospital-room telephone rang. Kiki leaned over to grab it. “Hello?… Susan!” To the boys she said, “It’s Susan Tanaka!” Then into the phone: “My God!… Thank you … I know, us, too. Hang on: here’s Tommy.”

  She handed him the receiver. She saw her boyfriend paste a smile onto his face, knowing that Susan would be able to tell otherwise. “Hey.”

  Ray made an I-should-go gesture. Kiki stood, retrieved her metal cane. “Walk you out.”

  Tommy lay down as they exited, the phone to his ear.

  In the corridor, Kiki said, “Can you pull some strings here? I want to hear the CVR.”

  Ray said, “Sure. But you’re in a lot of pain.”

  She winced. “Yeah. I’m laying off the painkillers. I want to be sharp. I want to help.”

  “Their cockpit-voice-recorder guy, Hector Villareal? He seems pretty competent.”

  She placed her long-fingered, pianist’s hand, palm forward, on Ray’s chest. “I know. I want to help.”

  They hugged again, only very softly this time. “I’m on it.”

  “Thanks.” As they separated, Kiki said, “Hey—how’s Daria?”

  Ray’s eyes traveled around the hospital corridor, his brain mulling his options. “She’s … busy.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” She straightened Ray’s tie.

  He gave her a rueful, crooked grin that was robbed of any humor. “Half a year ago, ATF was working with her in L.A., breaking about a dozen law-enforcement-entrapment rules. I blew the whistle. Federal judge threw out a few convictions. Top ATF people took early retirement. I’m not on ATF’s Christmas card list and I … Daria is in Mexico. Doing God knows what.”

  Kiki let the moment linger. “Well, I’m sorry.”

  He winked. “Hey, let me do what I can on the cockpit recording. Stay off that leg.”

  * * *

  In her hotel room, Beth Mancini began filling out a preliminary report on the first day of the investigation. She sat cross-legged on her bed with a can of Diet Coke on the bedside table, her MP3 player locked on Ani DiFranco.

  She entered her ten-digit alphanumerical NTSB identification and the date of the crash. Under “Most Critical Injury” she typed: “Fatal.”

  She added the nearest city/place, Twin Pines, along with the state, zip code, and local time of the accident.

  Under “Aircraft Information” she typed the registration number, followed by “Claremont VLE,” plus the model serial numbers.

  Under “Injury Summary,” she typed “18 dead; 8 survivors.”

  Under “Narrative,” she typed: “On August 4, about 2315 mountain standard time, a Polestar Airlines Claremont VLE, d.b.a. Polestar Flight 78, crashed during its descent to runway 5-23 of Helena Regional Airport (HLN). The crash site was approximately 7 nautical miles west of the airport. Four flight crew and 24 passengers were fatally injured and the aircraft was destroyed by impact forces. There were 8 surviving passengers and no ground fatalities. Night visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The flight was a Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 121 scheduled passenger flight from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) to HLN. Updated on Saturday, August 6.

  * * *

  Beth saved her work, made a pdf of it, and immediately e-mailed a copy to the NTSB mainframe, to Delevan Wildman in Washington, to Peter Kim in Helena, and to her own MobileMe Web-cloud account.

  ANNAPOLIS

  Renee Malatesta called the airport shuttle service and asked for a ride to Reagan National. She dragged out her matching russet-red suitcase and carry-on satchel. She packed underthings. Three unopened packages of tights, her riding boots, khaki boot-cut trousers, three tops, and a warm jacket. She hadn’t checked the weather in Montana, so she walked to the entryway closet and grabbed a small, retractable umbrella. She returned to the bedroom and gave a little shriek.

  The nickel-plated Colt .25 sat atop the pile of clothes in her suitcase.

  Renee turned to the closet. The step stool sat there; not in the kitchen, where it lived.

  Renee’s knees buckled and she eased herself onto the bed. She let her fingertips touch the iron, making sure it was real. It wasn’t as cold this time—her own hand must have warmed it up, retrieving it. She had no memory of having done so.

  Renee sat and stared at the gun, as her eyes brimmed with tears, spilling out, running down her cheeks, the underside of her chin, pooling in her clavicle.

  She fell to her knees on the floor and sobbed.

  VARENNA, ITALY

  Susan and Kirk sat on a bench by the cobblestone pathway that encircled the village. She was reading The New Yorker on her iPad. He was up to sitting thirty minutes at a time without aggravating his back injury. He was reading something by Lee Child that he was realizing, just now, was beginning to be uncomfortably familiar. “Crap. I think I’ve read this,” he grumbled.

  His wife reached over to rub his thigh through thin, Irish-cotton trousers. “That almost always happens, babe,” she said without looking up. The man had many great qualities but he absolutely could not remember any plots.

  Kirk popped a Vicodin and stared at the sleeping ducks and the rocking sailboats for a while. The ferry from Menaggio approached the dock. Life went on around them but
not quickly. Things took their time in Varenna.

  Susan’s computer tablet pinged: incoming e-mail. She glanced at the server, frowned. “It’s Del Wildman.”

  “Open it.”

  Susan turned to him. “We’re on vacation, babe. I shouldn’t be reading e-mails.”

  Kirk Tanaka said, “Shut up, dummy.” He kissed her bare shoulder. “Ever since you heard about Isaiah, Tommy, and Kiki, you’ve been tight as a steel drum. It’s driving you crazy, not helping. Check Del’s e-mail. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Susan leaned over and kissed her husband on the mouth. He tasted like citrus. “I love you.”

  “You have remarkable taste in men.”

  Susan opened the e-mail. A little, vertical frown line formed on her forehead. “It’s the day-one prelim from the Montana crash. From Beth Mancini. Del’s asking if I could take a look at it.”

  “Why not? You told me you were worried about Beth catching a complicated crash. I don’t mind. Here.” He stood, wincing, hand bracing the small of his back. “I’ll go grab us some coffee. I need to stretch my back.”

  As he limped toward the nearest little taverna, Susan began scanning the preliminary report.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  One shift per week, Amy Dreyfus worked as a line editor on the night Metro desk at the Post. She was in training to be an editor. Which meant she left work after the top of the eleven o’clock news on Friday and after scanning the wire services one last time. She was the PIC, or Person In Charge, but, upon grabbing her coat, that duty fell to the copy-desk chief.

  The second-day follow-up of the Polestar Flight 78 crash in Montana had taken up fourteen column inches on page 7A, the last page that night dedicated to national news. Only one copyeditor had read the story, plus the slot editor. On the Metro desk, Beth mostly read local stories the paper’s own reporters had written, although she did scan the wires to see what was moving. She had opened the Polestar story but never got past the second paragraph.

  She’d gotten home around 11:45, had a glass of good pinot grigio, read three chapters of a Robert Crais thriller, then climbed into bed next to Ezra Dreyfus at 12:30 Saturday morning.

  A patent lawyer who ran his business out of their spare bedroom, Ezra always got up first on Saturdays. He made pancakes for their eight-year-old son Levi who was glued to Saturday morning cartoons. He let his wife sleep in until noon.

  Usually.

  It was only 10:30 when Ezra sat on her side of the bed and shook her shoulder. She wore a Where’s Waldo T and a pair of his boxers. “Hmm?”

  “Kidlet? Hey.”

  She opened her eyes, blinked. “You’re a good-looking man,” she slurred.

  When he didn’t smile, she got up on one elbow. “Ezra?”

  He showed her page 7A of the Post. She got to Andrew Malatesta’s name in the eighth paragraph and threw her hand over her mouth.

  HELENA

  A transcript of the Polestar Flight 78 flight data recorder was uploaded to the NTSB high-security server. Teresa Santiago used her pass code to access it, then curled up on the bed in her hotel room with a legal pad, a pen, and a sweetened chai tea. She went through it line by line.

  * * *

  The team leaders met at ten in Beth’s suite. She had arranged for coffee, orange juice, apple juice, bottled water, and baked goods. Teresa handed out her one-page summary. She’d kicked off her sandals as soon as she’d entered; one of those people more comfortable barefoot than shod.

  Ray Calabrese joined the crashers today. Beth had argued that keeping him out made no sense, since Ray was a trained investigator and had a keen eye for detail. Peter Kim eventually agreed.

  Gene Whitney looked pallid and rumpled and had mottled bruising around his lip.

  Beth said, “Are you okay?”

  He just nodded.

  Peter, with his degree in electrical engineering, read the one sheet and got the gist of it first. “Short circuit, second bus panel?”

  Teresa nodded. “Yes. Took out the altimeter and their comms. Leveque Aéronautics of Quebec made the system.”

  Hector said, “Anyone else remember a crash, couple of years ago in Germany? Leveque avionics package shut down by a short circuit?”

  Jack Goodspeed sat forward. “Düsseldorf. It was a KLM flight, like, three years ago, yeah.”

  Reuben Chaykin pushed out his lower lip and nodded. “We maybe got a pattern. Got to love patterns.”

  Peter’s smile tightened. “Good. All right. Jack, did you pull the panel out of the flight deck?”

  “No. We’ll get that today.”

  “Thank you. Dr. Jain, did you get tox back?”

  The laconic pathologist nodded to her palm-top. “Just now. No poisons, no drugs. Both had a beer the night before with steaks and french fries.”

  “Thank you. Gene?”

  The big man shrugged and leaned forward, holding a coffee in both of his large hands, eyes on the hotel room’s carpet. “Pilots had great reputations. I’ve asked around. Navy fliers. Experienced.”

  “Fine. And everything was okay with the ground crew in D.C.?”

  Gene sipped from his lidded coffee. “Yeah.”

  Peter made a check mark next to Gene’s name.

  Most of them had heard the cockpit voice recorder the night before, so he skipped Hector Villareal’s name. “Jack?”

  “County sheriff’s office is giving us off-duty deputies to keep the lookie-loos away from the site. If we don’t have to rebuild, and I’m thinking we don’t, I want to do a chop-and-haul.”

  For some crashes, the only way to solve the mystery is to pick up each piece of the downed airliner and rebuild it. But if the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder offer up a culprit—say, a short circuit on the flight deck—then the costly process of rebuilding the craft can be bypassed in favor of a chop-and-haul—separating the plane into sections, loading them on flatbeds, and driving them to a hangar, just to hold on to them until the investigation is over.

  Peter said, “I’ll take that under advisement. Reuben?”

  Reuben Chaykin sighed theatrically. “The damage, the fire, I got debris spread everywhere. It’ll take a month, tops, to get all of the pieces to a proper engineering facility, confirm what happened.”

  “With luck,” Peter said, “that won’t be necessary. We have—”

  “Yes, it will.”

  “What?”

  “It’ll take a month at least but we’ll do it. I know we have a likely culprit, a binary malfunction. But…” He gave the room a broad shrug. “I can’t confirm till we do this right.”

  Peter nodded. It was a good, by-the-book answer and he appreciated it. “Then we’ll do it right. Thank you. And if Jack’s team isn’t going to have to do a rebuild, we could divert some of his people to Powerplant.”

  Jack gave Reuben the thumbs-up. “Sure thing!” Peter noted that the big, handsome man’s bonhomie no longer annoyed him quite so much.

  “All right.” Peter made his last check mark. “Anything else for the good of the order?”

  Beth Mancini put a pen and a condolence card down in front of Peter. “It’s for LaToya Grey. I got her flowers, too.”

  Peter scribbled his name and passed the card and pen to his left. “Anything else?”

  Ray Calabrese raised his hand.

  “Yes, ah…?”

  “Ray. I talked to Kiki. She wants to help. She’d like to hear the cockpit voice recording.”

  Peter and Hector spoke simultaneously. Peter going with, “That would be against regulations, no.” And Hector going with, “Sure. I’ll get her…”

  They turned to each other. Peter made a tsk noise. “Ah, no. We’re following procedure on this one.”

  Gene had been sitting quietly, leaning forward, elbows on knees and not making eye contact with anyone. “You shitting me?” He looked up at Peter with bloodshot eyes. “You’ve seen what Duvall can do with audio. She’s the goddamn Sonar Witch.”

  Hector no
dded. “She has that reputation. No, I’d appreciate her ears. Tell her I’ll get it to her right away.”

  Peter frowned. “Was I unclear? Did my words confuse anyone?”

  Beth Mancini, thinking, Oh, God. Here we go.

  Teresa Santiago said, “I worked with Kiki on one other crash. She’s amazing. I vote yes.”

  Peter turned to her, slowly. “I’m sorry. Did you say vote?”

  Lakshmi Jain was next. “I don’t care, one way or another. But it would be outside standard procedures.”

  Reuben Chaykin shrugged. “She’s not a civilian. She’s not media. She won’t talk out of school. And if she’s that good…”

  The tide in the room quickly turned against Peter, who capped his expensive gold pen and stood, buttoning his suit coat. “Folks?” When they stopped talking, he went on. “This discussion lasted about a minute, which is fifty-five seconds too long. I think we’re done here.”

  He stepped toward the door but stopped when he was in front of Teresa. “Vote?” He shook his head, walked out.

  Everyone sat quietly, uncomfortable. Gene said, “Well, shit, that went well.”

  Dr. Jain stood. “He’s the Investigator in Charge.”

  Gene sipped coffee. “He’s also a jackass.”

  Beth jumped in. “Okay. Meeting adjourned. Thanks, everyone. Good work here.”

  Her cheery smile fooled no one.

  CRASH SITE

  Calendar lay on his stomach, binoculars to his eyes, and watched the remains of the Claremont VLE. Things couldn’t have been much worse.

  First, a sheriff’s deputy walked the perimeter of the crash site. Calendar had the skills and the weapons to take out the man. But that course of action would alert everyone that the crash had not been an accident.

  Second, fire crews were on scene, keeping an eye on the blaze about a mile away. It had died down a bit during the night, during a windless evening. But they were close enough to see the fuselage, further limiting Calendar’s offerings.

  Finally, a tall, painfully thin woman with jet-black hair in an NTSB windbreaker and ball cap showed up around eleven and started ordering people around.