Final Approach

by John J. Nance

  “Ron has always loved sports, and he’s always been very good at them—better than Dick ever was.”

  She painted a complex picture then of a man progressively eclipsed and alarmed by the superior abilities of his own son, who could shoot more baskets, run faster, catch a baseball better than most—abilities that deeply threatened the father.

  “About five years ago, when he was fourteen, Ron won a dirt motorbike in a contest. He became good at riding it, even started coming home with … with … trophies for rallies and …”

  “Motocross?”

  She nodded and studied her hands, which were gripping each other.

  “Dick stayed out of it. He was always busy anyway, so he paid no attention, until one Saturday I made a terrible mistake. I asked Dick to pick up Ron from a race in a hilly area north of here.” She had been looking beyond Mark, but now she looked him in the eye for a moment. “He couldn’t drive the bike on city streets, you see.”

  She looked away again and continued. “Anyway … I knew better, but I … I was selfish, and busy, and I thought, just this once, maybe they won’t get in an argument. He went and he found Ron, watched him ride for awhile, and then ordered him to hand over the bike so he could demonstrate to Ron how it should be done.”

  “Had he ever—?”

  “No!” Her reply was sharp, and she studied her hands briefly before looking at the wall again, struggling constantly for control. “Dick had never ridden a motorcycle. Ron tried to give him his helmet, but he refused. He took off across the dirt course jumping the bike over every hill, and Ron saw him crest three of them, but not the fourth.”

  “He fell?”

  “Headfirst at high speed into a pile of large rocks. He was unconscious for a half hour. Ron was scared to death, and the bike was badly beaten up. Ron ran to his father and found him unconscious and bleeding. There were others there offering help and someone called an ambulance, which took a half hour to arrive—they were out quite a ways from town. Dick finally came around, and when he regained his bearings on where he was, he refused the ambulance, got to his feet, and insisted on driving Ron home. He even picked up Ron’s bike.

  “They didn’t go to an emergency room?”

  “My husband, Dr. Weiss, is impervious to physical injury or illness or any incapacity … or so he thinks. But he was bleeding badly, and he looked horrible when the two of them walked in. The thing was, within ten minutes he blacked out, for the first time, staying unconscious for two, maybe three minutes.”

  “For the first time. It happened again?”

  She nodded. “I’ve had some first-aid training. Dick thinks I’m too stupid to tell him anything, but I knew he must have a concussion, and I knew the blackout—blackouts—meant he needed medical attention fast. But he yelled at me and screamed and threatened every time I tried to get him to the hospital that evening and Sunday. Yet …” Her voice caught and she closed her eyes momentarily, the memories vivid, the feelings fully recalled. “Yet he was blacking out every hour or so.”

  Louise Timson turned to Mark suddenly, her eyes boring into his. “You must understand, Doctor, he was terrified that if he sought medical help, the FAA would suspend his medical license and not reinstate it. He wouldn’t be able to fly again. He … he kept raging at me that if a pilot ever once checked the ‘yes’ block where the medical form asks if you’ve ever blacked out or been unconscious, you were a marked man forever.”

  She broke eye contact and looked down again, the silence so hollow that Mark had to fill it. “What happened, then? Did he go finally?”

  “The headaches were blinding. Hot packs, cold packs, aspirin, we tried everything. He was in agony. Finally … finally after he’d thought it out, he agreed to let me take him in, but he had specific instructions. First he took out all of his identification from his pockets. I was to drive him to Parkland Hospital and admit him as Joseph Thompson, and never, ever tell anyone his, or my, real name. I gave them a false Social Security number and paid a cash deposit, because of course we couldn’t use his normal insurance under a false name. That was sufficient, since Parkland is a public hospital. The next day I withdrew several thousand dollars and paid it in advance on his account, so no one would start asking questions. I hated sneaking around, but Dick was terrified the company would find out he was having problems, so I also had to call his boss at North America and say he was going in for a series of routine tests and needed two weeks off.”

  “And this folder?”

  “The medical records from that hospital stay … two weeks. As Thompson, plus copies of the prescription.”

  “What was the diagnosis? Louise, how does this relate to the crash? You kept saying when I visited you before—”

  “Give me time. I need for you to understand this fully. It’s very important to me that you understand why—as well as how—this is not Dick’s fault. It was mine.” She had approved his use of the tape recorder, and she pointed to it now. “You’re sure that’s on.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Dick came out of the hospital two weeks later and spent two more weeks at home before returning to his office, and returning to flying. He was, after all, chief pilot, and he took great pride in being able to fly on the line even though he was in management. When he got back, he knew his medical clearance certificate had expired. You may know a captain’s is only good for six months at a time?”

  “Yes. I’m a private pilot.”

  “Okay. Well, there is a company doctor Dick used to joke about, Dr. McIntyre. Dick got McIntyre to recertify him without an examination. I remember because he came home and told me with great glee how he’d manipulated the man to where all Dick had to do was send him the paperwork, and the license would come back. He never had to show the doctor the hospital records, and the doctor never knew about the accident, and Dick’s boss, John Walters, never asked him any questions. I guess no one there really cared.”

  Mark was puzzled. Where was this going? Had he flown fifteen hundred miles just to hear the woman’s overwrought story compelled by misplaced guilt over her husband’s illicit manipulation of the medical licensing procedure? Was that all?

  “What no one knew, Dr. Weiss, was that Dick had not fully recovered. The blackouts—the tiny seizures, I suppose you could call them—continued even after he left Parkland, and the doctor—‘Joe Thompson’s’ doctor—finally got them under control with phenobarbital. Dick was in a panic until he found the drug would keep the blackouts from happening. That’s why he stayed home two more weeks. He found if he took three a day, he never had trouble. But if he failed to take one just once …”

  “They would occur again.”

  “Yes. Without fail.”

  “So … so this continued to the present day? When he crashed, he was on that drug? It wasn’t found in his system, according to the toxicology reports. I studied them carefully.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She raised a hand, pleading for patience. “All these years, Dr. Weiss, all these years Dick has kept it under control and never had a problem because he takes his medicine with religious precision. You see, he found out … phenobarbital pills are very recognizable as prescription medicine, but there is another drug called Mysoline the doctor told him about that worked even better, and that had a great advantage: it looks like an aspirin. It is still a prescription, though, and in our case the prescription was for Joseph Thompson, so it was my job …” Her voice caught and she looked down, wrestling with herself again before continuing. “It was my job … to always keep the prescription filled. I bought it from a pharmacy near Parkland. I always drove over there every second Thursday afternoon of the month to get a fresh bottle. I always paid cash—because of the name, you see.”

  “He didn’t carry that bottle with him, did he?”

  “Oh no! As I say, they look like aspirin, taste like aspirin … exactly like little white aspirin tablets. Dick figured out that if he carried them in a sm
all aspirin bottle in his briefcase, no one would ever find out. He’d take one before leaving in the morning, one at two P.M., and one at eight P.M., religiously.”

  “I think I see where you’re going with this. He failed to take his tablets when he went on that flight?”

  “No! No, he would never do that. He was very, very responsible, don’t you see? He understood that he absolutely had to take them on schedule, and that if he did, he was just as medically sound as anyone else. So, that was the price he paid to stay certified. It might not have been technically legal, but as he explained it, you see, it was his responsibility to take his medicine, and as long as he fulfilled that responsibility, he was entitled to be treated like any fully healthy pilot.”

  “Louise, I—”

  “Let me finish. You don’t understand yet. The Thursday before the crash I got way behind, and by the time I got to the pharmacy, it had closed. I couldn’t get the prescription, and there was only one tablet left in Dick’s bottle. I was panicked! I couldn’t tell Dick, he would have been furious with me! But I knew I had one left, so I figured a way around the problem. I decided I would give him the remaining tablet in the morning, and put a substitute bottle of real aspirin in his briefcase. It was my responsibility to make sure that bottle was full and in his briefcase. As soon as he left for work, I would run down and get the prescription, put it in the bottle, and while he was at lunch, I’d replace the other bottle in his briefcase at his office. He never took the second daily pill until two P.M.”

  “It didn’t work?”

  She looked at Mark with a pleading expression, tears glistening at the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t know he was going to fly a trip. I … I got there with the replacement bottle, and he was gone! I nearly fell apart. I tried to find out which gate he was leaving from, but he was already in the air. I didn’t know what to do! I decided to leave messages for him to call me, and his secretary didn’t understand, but she finally helped. I left messages at every station, but he didn’t call. He was like that. If I wanted him to do something, he felt I was trying to control him. He … he didn’t call. I waited in agony all day. I figured he’d … he’d keel over somewhere for a few seconds, realize something was wrong, and get off the flight.”

  Louise Timson looked down at her hands, now visibly shaking. “I got the call from the Kansas City hospital about midnight. I had already heard the news on the radio.” She looked at Mark suddenly, her voice strong. “Do you understand now? I’m the one who caused that crash. I’m the responsible party who failed. Not Dick. He did everything right. But he had no way of knowing that wasn’t his prescription in that bottle. I know he blacked out during that approach. I know it. That was only aspirin. I killed them, Dr. Weiss. I killed them all!”

  She broke then, his attempts to limit her guilt totally ineffective.

  Mark looked at her long and thoughtfully. “Louise, does he know?”

  “That you’re here, that I’m telling you this?”

  “No. Does your husband know what was in the briefcase bottle?”

  She didn’t answer. She merely thanked him for coming, reverting to the part of perfect hostess, the smile, the gestures, and the practiced movement to the door telling the tale.

  Mark didn’t argue. He promised to call the following day, to take her on as a patient if necessary, knowing how much she needed professional help.

  Having the key to the accident was all that had mattered at the moment. Having it and getting it back to Washington with it. Regardless of the hour, he had resolved to call Joe Wallingford from the airport, and Senator Martinson’s people as well.

  Yet, there were disturbing thoughts tugging at his professional conscience, nagging mental alarms that he had refused to acknowledge as he shoved them all into the background and raced to the airport. There had been one element of confirmation looming ever larger in his mind as he thought of how to summarize things for Wallingford. As he had told Mrs. Timson, he had studied the toxicology report carefully. There was only one foreign substance found in her husband’s blood at the hospital. Salicylic acid. Plain aspirin.

  Mark’s focus returned, the familiar image of the Senate hearing room where it was all coming to a head filled his eyes once again. Dick Timson’s back was still before him at the witness table, and Mark watched as he sat up straight and took a deep breath, reacting finally to the last question.

  “Captain, I ask you again,” Kell was saying evenly, “do you know anyone by the name of Joseph Thompson?”

  Dick Timson nodded slowly, and in a controlled tone of voice began relating the story of his injury, his hospitalization, and his careful taking of the drug Mysoline. Kell let him confess in detail, Timson’s voice the only one heard for nearly ten minutes in the excessively quiet hearing room as he built his case: he knew what it took to be a whole pilot medically, and he had complied with that. The fact that he had violated the rules was, essentially, immaterial.

  David Bayne looked at Ron Putnam and knew by his expression that he had withheld information, permitting his boss and his airline to be ambushed. Putnam was in complete confusion. He had known nothing of the Thompson-Timson subterfuge, or of Timson’s head injury, but he knew only too well why McIntyre’s records on Timson were so pristine, and he knew David Bayne. When it all came out it would add up to the same thing: Ron Putnam was as good as fired. And in Dallas, John Walters simply turned the TV off and sat staring at the wall, his worst fears confirmed.

  When Dick Timson finally fell silent, Kell leaned forward. “Captain, is it possible that the crash of North America Flight 255 in Kansas City on the night of October twelfth was caused because the captain—you—were suddenly rendered unconscious?”

  “No!”

  “It’s not possible that the same malady you’d been fighting for years, the same one for which you took three Mysoline tablets per day at careful intervals to prevent—there’s no possibility that could have occurred on final approach?”

  “Absolutely not! That had nothing to do with this.” Timson’s voice was loud and angry, but the tone was warbling, the tension and fear modulating it clearly.

  “Captain Timson, do you in fact really have a memory of those last few seconds? Or were you unconscious?”

  “Yes I have a memory, and no I wasn’t unconscious. And I’ll tell you why, Senator. For five full years I never had any variation to this truth: if I took my pills, I never—and I repeat, never—blacked out! On the day of the crash, I carefully took my pill at eight A.M. before leaving for the office, a second one at two P.M. while in flight, and the third promptly at eight P.M. Dallas time while on the ground in Washington. Since I had the proper medication, I could not possibly have blacked out.”

  “Captain, you kept your medication in an aspirin bottle, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your wife was responsible for keeping it filled?”

  His eyes widened, the connection made: Louise had betrayed him! It was she who had spilled all of this, ruining him, ruining herself. He’d kill her … he’d … he’d leave her! Goddamn that bitch!

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “Captain, look at the hospital lab report we handed you, at the green circle. Read what it says.”

  He read out loud the confirmation that only aspirin had been found in his bloodstream, his hand waving it off. “They probably missed the Mysoline, that’s not a common drug.”

  “They didn’t miss it Captain, because it wasn’t there,” Kell told him, seeing the puzzled expression showing through the feigned defiance on Timson’s face.

  Suddenly his hand closed into a fist as Timson came halfway out of his chair, his face purple, banging on the table for emphasis with each word. “I … TOOK … MY … PILLS! I told you that!”

  “Yes sir, you did,” Kell replied calmly, determined not to acknowledge the ferocity of the outburst. “But you had run out of them that morning. The eight A.M. pill was the last of the bunch, and your wife had forgotten to pick up t
he new bottle the night before. She was terrified you’d find out about her failure and be furious with her, so after you had taken the last of the real Mysoline tablets at breakfast the next day, she substituted regular aspirin in your briefcase, intending to come to your office and secretly replace the bottle while you were at lunch. But you left on a flight instead. What you took later in the day, Captain, as verified by the lab report from the hospital, was aspirin. Nothing more. At the time of the crash, you had virtually no operable levels of Mysoline in your bloodstream.”

  Never had Kell Martinson seen such a look. Timson’s face went through an indescribable range of emotions betraying his total internal upheaval as the man slowly realized what must have happened and that Kell’s version was correct. The memory of those messages from Louise at every station, and his sneering comment to Don Leyhe, “Let her stew, whatever it is … I call no woman before I’m ready” now rang like a death knell in his head. The senator was asking him something again, but he hardly heard it, and when he asked for the question to be repeated, he could barely recognize his own voice.

  “I said, Captain, I’d like to ask you to rethink your answer now to my question of whether you have a clear memory of the last few seconds of Flight 255. Do you really remember, or did you construct a memory?”

  “I … I don’t …”

  Kell saw the man was thoroughly broken, and he softened his tone. “Captain, just answer yes or no. Is it possible that you fell unconscious on that final approach, and that your hand may have pressed forward on the controls, causing the airplane to dive? Is that possible?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t to this day really have a memory of those last few seconds, do you?”

  There was a long, interminable pause before sound emerged from Timson’s bone-dry throat. There was no sound from the spellbound audience, and only the whirr of videotape recorders as the vibrations finally reached their ears.