Night Flight

by Donna Ball

  The operator: "This is a collect call from Cathy. Will you-"

  Ellen cried, "Yes! I'll accept! Cathy, where are you?"

  And for a moment the relief was so acute—the sound of a familiar voice, of normalcy, of a world that hadn't gone completely mad—that Cathy's throat flooded and her knees went weak and she couldn't say anything else.

  "Cathy! Is that you?"

  Cathy nodded mutely, trying not to sob.

  "Cathy, thank God! Are you all right? Where are you?"

  "Oh, Ellen, it's been so awful, and I'm so scared ..." Cathy's voice was thick and she drew a hand over her wet face. "I can't —I don't know where I am, and I'm almost out of gas, and Jack . . ."

  "Cathy." Ellen's voice was sharp with anxiety. "Cathy, this policeman called here looking for you, a detective. He said you were in some kind of trouble. Cathy, what's wrong?"

  Abruptly, Cathy's tears dried, as though they were sucked into the cold cavity that had suddenly opened up in her chest. "Somebody called—looking for me? Called my home?"

  "A detective, he said. I wrote his name down somewhere. Wait a minute . . ."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "Why ... the truth. That you drove a red car and you were on your way to see Jack, and about the accident, and... I did the right thing, didn't I? You'd want me to do that, wouldn't you?"

  Cathy stared into the darkness, trying to think, trying to make sense of it, trying to plan. "Yes. Yes, of course you did, Ellen . . ."

  "Cathy, you're scaring me. Tell me what's happened. Do you need me to come get you? Where are you?"

  Yes! she wanted to cry. Come get me, take me away from here, do something, help me .. . But twice, not counting the time at the mini-mart, someone had tried to kill her. How could she put Ellen in the same danger? Besides, by the time she got here it might be too late.

  She said, "No. I can't — " She pushed her hair back from her forehead, drawing a breath, trying to think. "I can't tell you about it now. I have to—let me find a better place, and call you back." The police, she thought. Ellen could call the police. . . But when Cathy had called the police the enemy had shown up. Now the police were calling Ellen, and Cathy had done nothing. Nothing. Where was the line now between the good guys and the bad guys?

  She said, "The hospital. Jack. Have you heard anything?"

  "No. I'm going to call them now. Cathy, why don't you stop someplace for the night? Let me meet you there, and we'll drive the rest of the way together in the morning. You don't sound good at all, and I'm worried . . ."

  Cathy heard the distant sound of tires on the road, and every muscle in her body tightened with adrenaline. "No. I can't stop, I can't talk now. Listen Ellen, I—call the hospital, I'll call you back. . . I have to go."

  She hung up the phone without saying goodbye. The sound of tires was closer, now she could hear engine noise. Her heart pounding, she scrambled inside the car and slammed the door shut. She pressed herself flat across the front seat just as the interior was illuminated by the flash of headlights . . . that was gone in an instant as the automobile sped by.

  And still Cathy stayed there, her heartbeat shaking her entire body, while she imagined the car stopping, backing up, coming back to her . . .

  It didn't. And at last Cathy pushed herself into a sitting position, slid across the seat, and took the wheel again.

  *******************

  In 2007, after a heavy rain that followed a long drought, the earthen dam north of town had broken, plunging streets and highways six feet under water in a matter of minutes, leaving hundreds homeless and injuring dozens. Since that time, Dave could not remember the station being as frantic as it was now.

  Except on weekends and holidays, Portersville all but closed down after dark. The chief kept on a skeleton crew from midnight to six a.m.—two patrol cars and the watch commander. Tonight, because it was routine to have backup standing by on a raid or a bust, the complement was somewhat heavier. But after the shooting, it looked as though every officer in Portersville had come in, some in uniform and some in civvies, all of them ready to do what had to be done. One of their own was dead. They couldn't stay at home and pretend this was an ordinary night.

  And neither could Dave.

  He wanted to. He wanted to go home and sit blank-eyed with an open bottle of Jack Daniels and think nothing at all for the rest of the night, well into the morning, and most of the next day. Then, when he was as drunk as he could possibly get and still stay conscious, he would think about it.

  That was what he wanted to do. And because he wanted it so badly, he stayed right where he was. He didn't try to take over the case, he didn't demand an assignment or insist on a chance to avenge his partner, as another man might have done. He sat at his desk and stayed quiet, pretending to work on his report, listening, evaluating, and thinking. What he thought about, mostly, was Cathy Hamilton.

  It was easy to lose yourself in the routine of a place like Portersville, which was why Dave liked it so much. Teenage shoplifting, the occasional burglary, the odd domestic violence or controlled substance violation . . . nothing he couldn't leave behind at the end of the shift, nothing to worry a man over dinner or keep him up after the "Tonight" show. Portersville was not so small that he knew every citizen personally, and not so large that it attracted the big-time nature of gruesome crimes, and Dave liked it like that. There was nothing to tempt a man to get emotionally involved in his work. It had been eight years since Dave had been emotionally involved with anything, and that was another thing he had liked about his life. Until now.

  He knew about the phone call in the night. If it hadn't been for that part of the story he probably could have wiped Cathy Hamilton out of his mind as just another victim. She wasn't part of his case, even if there had been a case. She wasn't going to lead him to the reason his partner had died, she wasn't going to put any bad guys behind bars; she had troubles of her own, and so did Dave. She was just another innocent bystander caught up in the system, and he could have forgotten her—he had trained himself to forget—if it hadn't been for that phone call. The one that drew a line down the center of your life and changed what you were, deep inside, where it counted, forever.

  He glanced down at the legal pad where he had absentmindedly drawn a series of squares around the words "Mercy Hospital," so that now the name was surrounded by a bold black frame. From the frame an arrow pointed to the words "Jack Hamilton." Her brother.

  Midnight, one o'clock in the morning, stumbling out of bed with your heart pounding, stunned, sick . . . She's asking for you. Hurry . . . Plunging out into the night, shaking hands turning the key in the ignition, driving without looking at the road or even recognizing it, just hoping the car would get you there before it was too late. The phone call. He knew it.

  "I thought I told you to go home."

  Dave grunted acknowledgment without glancing up. It was the chief. He dropped his eyes back to the legal pad, where he was beginning to draw the same geometric frame around Jack Hamilton's name. He said thoughtfully, "He wasn't surprised we had the wrong woman."

  Hayforth frowned. "What?"

  "Kreiger. He wasn't surprised when the DMV report came in. And he didn't seem too interested in that woman in the dumpster, did he? If this was your case, and your key witness showed up in a dumpster with her throat cut, don't you think you'd at least be interested?"

  "Laura wasn't his witness, she was ours. He was sent to set up the bust, and to do that he's got to know when and where. The only one who can tell him that is the Hamilton woman. SOP. What are you driving at?"

  Dave still didn't look up. "He could have ordered choppers, roadblocks. The federal budget hasn't been cut that short."

  This time there was a silence before Hayforth answered, and when Dave glanced up it was to see he wasn't the only one who had had that thought. "I've got a call in to Washington," he said. "It might be morning before we get an answer."

  "Meanwhile . . ."

  "Meanwhile,"
replied Hayforth firmly, "it's not our case."

  Dave dropped his eyes back to the pad. He added another square to the frame around Jack's name. Her whole family, Ellen Brian had said. All she had in the world. And now she was alone and terrified on some empty country road somewhere….

  None of your business. Not your case.

  He said, "All right, our case. Who killed Laura? If it was Laura. Have we ID'd her yet?"

  "Working on it."

  "And Clemmons. Who was he, what was he doing there, why did he open fire? Do you buy Kreiger's story?"

  Hayforth looked wary. "You've got a reason not to?"

  "Just one. If he worked for Delcastle, if he was sent to warn Laura off, it stands to reason he would've known what she looked like. Don't you think?"

  Hayforth said quietly, "Yeah, I think. But it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong, or you either, so that doesn't make a working theory. You know the policy here, Dave, or maybe you don't, because it's been a long time since we had to enforce it. As soon as you turn in your report you've got a week's compassionate leave coming, then two weeks' desk duty. There's nothing more for you to do here." His voice gentled as he touched Dave's shoulder awkwardly. "Finish up in the morning."

  And suddenly Dave understood. Hayforth was remembering what had happened after Alice died. He was waiting — everyone was waiting —for him to fall apart.

  All Dave could do was look his boss in the eye and say, "I'm okay, Chief." Even though it was a lie and they both knew it, Dave thought Hayforth wanted to believe it almost as much as he did.

  Hayforth started to turn away, but was stopped by Thompson, an off-duty uniform who had come in without being asked. He said, "Kelsey and Jordan responded to an anonymous tip about an accident at Two Mile Church. They just called in. The victim identified himself as an FBI agent assigned to the Kreiger case. I think you'd better get out there, sir.”

  "Jesus Christ," said Hayforth, but he was already moving toward the door.

  Dave was right behind him, and Hayforth didn’t try to stop him.

  They arrived approximately three minutes after the ambulance. Dave noticed the stunned, taut look on the faces of the EMTs and he knew what they were feeling. Chokings, drownings, traffic accidents—they saw their share of action. But in the past hour or so they had been called to two murders and now a hit and run. That wasn't in the manual, not for a place like Portersville.

  Sorry about that, boys, Dave thought as he followed Hayforth quickly across the rutted drive. That's what happens when you don’t keep your eye on the ball.

  Dave noticed the green sedan in passing. It was parked in the shadows and didn't look damaged. The victim was sitting up in the back of the ambulance, so apparently he wasn't too badly damaged either. Hayforth edged his way around the technicians and identified himself.

  "Special Agent Joe Frazier." The words were uttered tightly through teeth set in pain. He passed Hayforth his badge. "I need to call my superior."

  Dave glanced at the badge over Hayforth's shoulder. "You working alone?"

  Frazier sucked in his breath as one of the paramedics wrapped an inflatable splint around his arm.

  It was broken, and from his posture Dave guessed a couple of ribs were as well. A scrape on the side of his face was matted with blood and his shirt was torn; Dave's guess was that he was out of commission for the duration of this case, anyway.

  He said briefly, "I am now."

  Hayforth returned the badge. "Tell me what you know about the shooting."

  "I don't think you need to know the details of our operation. If you'll just—"

  “I’ll tell you what I need to know!" Hayforth took a swift, furious step toward Frazier. "It's three o'clock in the morning and I'm up to my knees in fucking dead bodies, and what I need to know is what the fuck you're doing in my town fucking up my night's sleep. Have you got that?"

  "Chief," one of the paramedics said tightly as he pressed Frazier back down into his seat, "if you'll just give us a minute."

  But Hayforth didn't back down and Frazier locked eyes with him, stubborn anger tightening the muscle in his jaw that was already knotted with pain.

  Dave said, "Who was your partner?"

  Reluctantly, Frazier moved his eyes away from Hayforth and onto Dave. The coldness Dave saw there startled him. Frazier said, "Deke Clemmons. The man you killed."

  ****************

  Jack was a professor of English literature at Carlton, a small private college twelve miles away from Lynn Haven. He had written his thesis on Yeats and had published two papers on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but when he picked up a book to read it was generally a spy novel or an intricately plotted political thriller, the kind of thing Cathy could never understand but that Jack devoured like cotton candy. He would have liked what was happening now, if it were written into a novel. He would have understood it. If it were a television show he would be pointing at the screen and saying, "See, Cath, what's going to happen now is . . ."

  But Cathy's imagination wouldn't supply the next words. She didn't know what was going to happen now. She didn't understand what had happened so far. Who was that man in the green car? How had the police gotten her home phone number? Why had they called Ellen?

  God, why hadn't she asked Ellen that? Why hadn't she asked what the detective had wanted?

  Maybe she should turn herself in. If the police were looking for her, maybe the safest thing she could do would be to just stop and call them, and . . .

  But she hadn't done anything! The last time she had called the police two men with guns had come, one of whom she had last seen pointing that very gun at her face. Something was wrong here, very wrong, but she couldn't figure it out. Jack would know. But he wasn't here, he was lying in a hospital bed, broken and hurting, waiting for her . . .

  "Oh," Jack," she whispered. "I'm trying. I hope I've done the right things, because I'm trying . . ."

  And then, like an answer to a prayer or a sign from heaven, her headlights picked up the small blue-and-white sign that announced the upcoming interstate. A wave of gratitude went through her that burned her eyes and weakened her muscles.

  "Yes," she whispered, blinking hard to clear her eyes. "Oh, yes."

  She put on her signal indicator and made the turn.

  *************************

  Dave said, "Shit." His head swam and he felt sick inside—not only from what Frazier had said, but from what it implied. And for the longest time, all he could do was stare at the other man.

  Something in his face must have shamed Frazier, though Dave didn't mean to, nor had he any right to, because Frazier eventually shifted his gaze. He said quietly, "Look, I know you were just doing your job. We had no way of knowing locals were tied up in this. By the time I realized—when you identified yourself—my partner was dead and so was yours. All I could do was try to stop the woman."

  "So it was you after Cathy Hamilton." It was all Dave could think of to say.

  "Is that her name?"

  "She's not involved in this, you know. Just a bystander."

  Frazier looked confused. The injection the paramedics had given him was beginning to take effect. "No, I didn't know."

  "Jesus Christ." Hayforth half turned from him, as though looking away were the only way he could control his temper, then turned back again. "Seems to me like there's a good bit you didn't know, isn’t there, Frazier? Do you think the next time you boys decide to sweep down and shoot up a town you could manage to be a little better informed?"

  Dave said, "You said you were assigned to the Kreiger case." His stomach was tight, with premonition or certainty. "Since when does the DEA use the FBI as back up?"

  Frazier closed his eyes briefly and passed a hand over his sweaty face.

  One of the paramedics looked up at Hayforth. "Chief, we're going to have to transport now. You can finish this at the hospital."

  "No." Frazier held up a hand. He looked at Hayforth, then at Dave. He said, "He had you workin
g with him, didn't he? What has he done?"

  Hayforth said cautiously, for the truth was beginning to dawn on him too, "So far, not much. We've got an all-points out for the Hamilton woman, and he's on the road, following her route."

  Frazier nodded tiredly. "Then you'd better hope the state patrol picks her up before he does." His eyes met Dave's, and Dave heard the words almost before they were spoken. "Kreiger's a rogue. We've been watching him set up this deal for months. Everything was going like clockwork until you boys stepped in." There was no accusation in the words, just a statement of fact. "Now he's got us outsmarted and outnumbered, and the only thing that's standing between him and thirty million dollars is that woman in the red Honda."

  Dave said, "Did she do this to you?"

  Frazier nodded groggily. "Caught me off guard. Hell, she didn't look like a bystander . . .”

  Dave and Hayforth watched as he was moved into the ambulance, strapped onto a stretcher. Then, thoughtfully, Dave walked back to the car and picked up the radio mike.

  "Anne. Did you take that anonymous tip about the Two Mile Church accident?"

  "I sure did. It came in at 3:03."

  "Was it from a woman?"

  "Why, yes. It was."

  "Thanks. Out." He replaced the mike and straightened up, leaning against the car door, looking out over the highway. The ambulance's taillights flashed in the distance and disappeared over a hill. The road was deserted.

  Hayforth said, "I'm going to try to get some more out of him. You want me to drop you back at the station?"

  "No. I'll come along for the ride, if you don't mind."

  He half-expected Hayforth to refuse. Instead, the other man followed Dave's thoughtful, disturbed gaze down the road. He said, "We can request that the state patrol notify us if they spot her, but for right now, that's about all. Meanwhile . . ."

  "Meanwhile," Dave finished quietly, "we hope like hell she stays on the back roads. Because if she makes it to the interstate she's going to be a sitting duck."