The Disappeared Girl

by Martin J. Smith

  ARCHER: Not an option, tower. We’re coming straight—

  “On the recording,” Krug says, “you can hear the four turboprops shutting down one by one. That plane can fly on one motor, and you can hear him doing everything he can to feather the props and funnel his reserve fuel into a single line.”

  ARCHER: Mayday. Mayday. We’re at 3,000 without power approaching the river south of the city. We’ve got to set her down.

  BLACKMAN (BACKGROUND): Strapped in? Do it now. (Unintelligible) We got trouble.

  TWR2: Copy that Mayday, C-130. What options do you see?

  Krug picked up the story. “It’s winter dusk, but they can still see the ground. The hills below are thick with bare trees and steep slopes dotted by houses. There’s nowhere to land. The highway running along the water’s edge is jammed with late afternoon traffic. So are the bridge decks spanning the river. The land around the steel mills is flat but crosshatched by railroad tracks and heavy equipment. His options, landingwise, are very limited. Death everywhere the poor bastard looks. And he’s dead-stick flying at this point. It’s like trying to fly a rhino.”

  ARCHER: The river. We’re at 2,800. We can still make it. Couple bridges on a big bend. Long as I can clear the first. I think I can set down between them.

  TWR2: We’re rolling support, C-130. The first bridge you see is probably Homestead High Level. The far one is probably the Glenwood Rail Bridge. You got maybe a half-mile between. You can do that?

  ARCHER: 1,600, tower. Coming down fast.

  BLACKMAN (BACKGROUND): Clear that first one, Cap, then maybe we got a chance. Just keep the nose up.

  “They’re approaching the Homestead High Level,” Krug said. “The drivers in the cars on the bridge see the plane coming and stop. Traffic snarls. Some people get out of their cars. This Sachs woman freezes, watching the running lights of the plane as it bears down on her.”

  ARCHER: We’re clearing the first bridge, tower. We’ll make the river. Three hundred feet now. Airspeed 160. You’ve rolled support?

  BLACKMAN (BACKGROUND): Skip it like a stone. You drop the nose, we’re gonna cartwheel.

  ARCHER: Two hundred feet.

  TWR2: C-130, how many souls on board?

  ARCHER: One hundred feet.

  TWR2: You copy that, C-130? How many souls?

  BLACKMAN (BACKGROUND): It’s dropping. Pick it up.

  ARCHER: Sorry, Danny—

  Christensen flipped the page, but the transcript ended there. It was shaking in his hand, so he gave it back to Krug. One question rose above the others in his head: How many souls on board? The tower’s question had gone unanswered.

  “And you have no idea why the pilot was so desperate to get to the National Guard base?”

  Krug shook his head. “It was a secure airfield. Beyond that I won’t speculate.”

  “Or who the copilot might have been talking to on the intercom?”

  Krug watched another towboat churn upriver, leaving a white froth behind. The wake was slapping against the Point’s concrete wall before he spoke again.

  “It’s almost completely dark at this point. The plane is in the river. A lot of people have seen it go in, but nobody can really see much now. A river patrol boat gets there fast, but there’s only some debris at the scene. Emergency crews are rolling, but by most accounts they’re at least twenty-two minutes from the scene. The people on the Homestead High Level Bridge can’t do anything but watch, and there’s not much they can see anyway. Like I said, it’s dark, and the river’s carrying the debris downstream, away from them.”

  He pointed to the towboat that had just passed. “The only witness actually in the river that night is a towboat pilot. Name’s Brosky.”

  Christensen sensed another shift. “What’s his story?”

  Krug pulled a map from the file box and unfolded it. In black marker, he’d drawn the crude shape of a boat in the blue ribbon of river just downstream from the Glenwood Bridge. He pointed at the spot, also marked with the initials T.B., and Christensen leaned close.

  “If you believe Trey Brosky—I’ve got his signed statement on the website, for whatever it’s worth—this was his boat’s position when the plane hit the water. It’s maybe a mile downstream, but he’s apparently heading right at the crash site under full power. Probably would have taken him three, maybe four minutes.”

  “Wait,” Christensen said. “Why do you sound so skeptical?”

  Krug cleared his throat. “Because the story Brosky tells is unique.”

  “Meaning?”

  “No other witness I’ve found tells the same story.”

  “So?”

  “So there’s no corroboration. He doesn’t turn up in any of the crash investigation material. The only way I found him was through the towboat company logs. He never came forward back then, so he never gave a statement to the investigators. The guy didn’t want to be found. It’s possible there were questions he didn’t want to answer.”

  Christensen shook his head. “I don’t follow.”

  “Brosky’s a drinker. He was drunk when he told me his story two years ago. He admitted he’d been drinking the night of the crash. So there’s a big fat reliability question—not to mention a liability question for the towboat company—that comes with his little tale.”

  “What tale?”

  Krug reached down and closed the accordion file, twisting the clasp with decisive finality. The giant digital clock on the side of Mount Washington read 11:17. “Brosky claims he pulled four people from the river that night.”

  Christensen did the math. “The two crew members and who else?”

  Krug lifted his Steelers cap and ran a rough hand through his thinning red hair. “Remember, the crew’s bodies turned up way downstream, weeks later. That plane—let’s just say they didn’t make it easy to get out of the cockpit in a bad situation, assuming they even survived a nose-first crash. I’m guessing their bodies stayed with the plane a while, then floated free. These others looked like civilians, or so Brosky says. Probably thrown clear when the thing broke apart. Two men, a woman, and—”

  “A child?” Christensen blurted.

  Behind the aviator glasses, Krug narrowed his eyes. “Maybe four, five years old.”

  “A girl?”

  Krug nodded. “There’s no corroboration, of course. Just the word of an alkie river rat who never said anything to investigators.”

  “Understood,” Christensen said. “He’s still alive?”

  “Far as I know.”

  Christensen fixed Krug with a stare that left no room for dissent. “Then I need to talk to him.”

  Chapter 13

  Melissa had watched the DVD a couple dozen times, at least, but it always made her cry at the end. The window blinds drawn, her pot of decaf tea cold and nearly empty, Melissa pulled her slippered feet beneath her, wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her terrycloth robe, and hit the back button on the remote. Then the phone rang.

  “So you got home OK?” her father said. She could hear his footsteps as he walked with his cell phone.

  “Everything’s fine, Dad. Been home about an hour. Just resting here on the couch.”

  Her father said nothing, waiting, she knew, so she would lead the conversation. The children of psychologists figure out the tricks of the trade early on.

  “Don’t analyze me, Dad, I’m fine.”

  “What?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You just sound worried.”

  “Yes.”

  She waited. He was fun to torture. “But I’m fine.”

  The footsteps stopped. She pictured him standing on a street comer, exasperated, unable to move another step until she offered more information about the morning’s visit to Planned Parenthood.

  “You’re killing me here, ’Lissa.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “I knew that.”

  “I mean, still.”

  In the background, she heard the swelling sound of traffic as it D
opplered past wherever he was standing. “OK,” he said. “What’s the significance of that?”

  “I’m still thinking.”

  “Did they check—I mean, do you know how far along?”

  “Eleven weeks.”

  There. She was a few weeks from the fork in the road where she’d have to decide. She closed her eyes and hoped her father had all the information he needed to understand where she was at the moment. He didn’t respond right away, or ask any more questions. That was a good sign.

  “Anything I can do?” he said at last.

  “Just give me time.” The one thing she knew she didn’t have. “Dad?”

  “Yeah, ’Lis?”

  “How far back do my medical records go?”

  The question apparently caught him off guard, “Well, let’s see … it’s … I’d have to check my files at home, but I’m pretty sure we’ve got stuff going back to when we first got you. If it’s not in my files, I’m sure the pediatrician probably has all that.”

  “But nothing before that?” she said. “We really don’t know anything about my birth parents?”

  “Just what I’ve told you. What your Uncle Michael told me.”

  “Which is nothing.”

  She’d been here before, at the razor-edge of the abyss that was her past. She knew she could walk back only so far before her foot found a vast, yawning void. She’d had a biomom and a biodad. She only knew that because it couldn’t be otherwise. But genetics? She would forever be an unsolved mystery.

  “I wish I could tell you more, ’Lis. But you know what I know.”

  She unfolded her legs and set her feet on the rug. “It’s funny, you know? I’d made my peace with that in the last couple of years. But now, it’s—I never thought much about it, about actually needing to know more. There’s an issue with my genetic test.”

  The phone stayed quiet a long time. “A problem?” her dad finally asked. “Talk to me, Melissa.”

  “Just something to consider,” she said. “Probably nothing, the doctor said. But knowing more would help. Not just to know more about me. To know more about who she’d be.”

  The line was silent except for the noise of passing traffic. She’d revealed more than she intended. Maybe he hadn’t heard?

  “So it’s a girl,” he said.

  A girl, yes. A daughter. She caught a tear as it rolled from her right eye and wiped her finger on the terry sleeve that hid the gauze bandage covering her stitches.

  “You OK?”

  “I’m fine, Dad.”

  “You’re sure? I had one more stop to make, but I can come home now.”

  “Dad—I just have a lot to think about.”

  “Brenna and the kids aren’t home yet?”

  “Stop. Please. Don’t treat me like a ticking bomb, OK? Yes, I’m alone and a little sad. But I’m fine. Really. I’ll be here whenever you get back.”

  “OK.”

  “I love you, Dad. Just don’t drive me nuts.”

  “Will do. Ixnay on the utsnay.”

  After he hung up, Melissa set the phone on the end table beside the couch and picked up the remote. She hit the play button one more time, and the television screen blinked. Then she was back inside her body, swimming once again through a swirling dark blue ocean toward an undeniable and compelling unknown.

  Chapter 14

  Producer Sabrina held up three fingers. Dorsey double-checked the clock on the wall and volleyed a thumbs-up sign through the soundproof studio window. Three minutes until his noon sign-off. Three minutes to wrap up his conversation with the tiresome leftie from Penn Hills. He hit the cough button on his mike to clear his throat, then interrupted the caller’s diatribe against the Attorney General, whose “outrageous suppression of civil rights is unprecedented even in wartime—”

  “Let me recap then,” Dorsey said, shifting in his chair. “You’d rather the US government detain these undocumented people for no more than twenty-four hours, during which time federal investigators will be allowed to politely question them only in the presence of their attorneys. And if these detainees do not confess to some heinous act of depravity during that time, then they should be allowed to go about their business here in the land of the free?”

  “Michael, the Bill of Rights—”

  “The Bill of Rights,” Dorsey broke in, “was written to protect American citizens. Who are these people again? They’re foreign nationals living illegally on American soil. People who snuck in under the radar and chose, clearly, to ignore the rule of law. And you’re saying they have the same rights as the millhunk who came through Ellis Island, who applied for citizenship, who worked overtime so he could buy a hill house within walking distance of the factory gate, who paid taxes all those years, and who flies the Stars and Stripes on his porch 365 days a year because he’s so grateful he had the opportunity to live here?”

  “They’re entitled to basic human rights, Michael. Life, liberty, the pursuit—”

  “We don’t shoot them in the head, for heaven’s sake. We detain them. We ask them a lot of uncomfortable questions about why they’re here, or why they didn’t leave when they were supposed to, and who they hang around with. We check to see if any of the various agencies—INS, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, and so forth—have any paper on them. We run their names or aliases through the Interpol database of people with known connections to terror organizations to see if anything turns up. We—and please stop me if I mention anything that sounds unreasonable—find them a lawyer if they need one. We feed them when they’re hungry, give them a place to sleep at night. Eventually, if nothing unsavory turns up, if the story they’ve been telling is consistent and true, we usually help them get their documents in order so they can stay. Now, tell me again how—”

  “You were a big shot at INS, Michael. You know how it works. The feds pick them up on some technical infraction, and they just disappear into the system for weeks, months, sometimes years. No charges. No trial. Sometimes their families don’t even know—”

  “Those would be the families that also are here illegally?”

  Producer Sabrina held up two fingers. If Dorsey was going to have time for his trademark end-of-show monologue, he needed to get this guy off the line. He checked his computer screen again for the caller’s name even though he’d already disconnected him.

  “I’ll tell you what, James from Penn Hills. You’ll find no more vigorous a proponent of civil rights than Michael Dorsey. Without those rights, this grand experiment we call America has no meaning. No meaning whatsoever. But at the same time, I think we can sometimes be terribly naive.”

  We, not you. James from Penn Hills was not naive, but we Americans could sometimes be naive. Dorsey tried never to personalize these things—not what you say, but how you say it, and all that. He took another breath, ready to segue into his message of the day, when the door leading from the outer studio into the control room popped open. On the other side of the soundproof window, his brother-in-law, Jim, stepped into the cramped space behind Sabrina. Dorsey waved, a reflex, but his train of thought had derailed.

  Had Jim ever come to the studio?

  “I don’t think we can afford—true, I did spend some years as the Eastern Regional Commissioner of the INS. Back in the early 1980s. But those were different times.” Dorsey felt himself free-associating. He struggled to steer himself back on track. Why was Jim here, unannounced, watching from the control room with the intensity of a hawk?

  “Moral relativism!” Dorsey blurted. “That’s what we’re talking about here.”

  Producer Sabrina glared through the soundproof window and held up a single finger. One minute. She also mouthed the words “civil rights,” trying to give him traction, but it was too late. Dorsey had intended to gently steer the conversation toward his chosen end-of-show topic, but he’d already yanked the wheel hard to the right.

  “Some people say the world is too complicated for moral absolutes, but I couldn’t disagree more. It’s times like t
his when we need moral absolutes.” He tried to link back somehow to the previous caller. “The rule of law still means something in this country. You follow the rules, or you suffer the consequences. What better lesson could we teach someone who might someday apply for American citizenship?”

  Forty-five seconds.

  “Am I saying the US government is always right? Oh no. I’m not going there, nosirree. But I am saying—”

  What the hell was he trying to say? Dorsey checked the wall clock. Thirty seconds. Sabrina shook her head and covered her eyes with her hands.

  “As soon as we start blurring that line between right and wrong, as soon as we say to these people, ‘Maybe it’s OK to cheat a little,’ we’ve undercut everything. The rule of law becomes a farce, see? No, I truly believe—and regular listeners already know this about me—I believe there’s right, and there’s wrong. Period. That’s it. End of story.”

  The show was done. He only had time to deliver his sig line and get off the air.

  “Keeping the thought in thought-provoking radio, I’m Michael Dorsey.”

  The on-air light blinked off, and a spot for a local Cadillac dealer filled Dorsey’s headphones. He dialed it down until there was silence. On the other side of the window, Sabrina was looking everywhere but into his eyes. Suddenly her voice hummed through the speaker to his left: “That was fine. Good show.”

  Dorsey pressed the button that patched him through to the control room. “Guess that wrap-up could have been smoother.”

  He was hoping for reassurance, or at least absolution. Instead, Sabrina asked, “What the hell kind of brain fart was that?”

  “That bad?”

  “Nosirree? Nosirree? When does Michael Dorsey ever say, ‘Nosirree’?”

  “I said that?”

  Sabrina nodded, but now she was laughing. “All in all, Michael, it was a very strong show. Don’t worry about it. But if you’re smart, the network guys in New York will never hear this one.”