by Glenn Roug
meeting, but Nat never did. At one thirty I put a cap on and grabbed my newly acquired backpack and went to the address on the note. It was a mechanic's shop. Doc Minus Two came there to pick up his Jeep. It was a WWII Willys Jeep, olive drab and open and partially covered with mud. It was very noisy even as it idled. "Hop in," Doc Minus Two ordered me. The transmission screeched horribly as he put it in gear.
"I don't see you in this car," I said. "At least get a Vietnam era Jeep."
"You can only be nostalgic for a war you didn't take part in."
"Where are we going?" I yelled over the sound of the wind and the engine as we headed down the road. The Jeep did not as much as have a windshield. Even the pivot arms to hold a windshield in place were missing. Doc Minus Two did not want anything to come between him and the elements. I did not understand why someone who liked his vehicle that open did not just go and get himself a bike.
"I went over the passenger list you gave me," Doc Minus Two replied. "The widow of one of the victims lives right around the corner in Nashville. He was shot by a sniper a year ago when he left his house. Same house we're heading for now."
"Another passenger. That's a good start."
"Better. He was the pilot."
We cut through the woods time and again, staying longer off road than on any paved surface. I don't think it was necessary as the light traffic in the area did not justify any shortcuts. But Doc Minus Two seemed to have a need for going off road. He was only one step further into civilization than Nat, still unsure where he belonged. He seemed disappointed when we hit the highway and had to stay there for lack of available shortcuts. When we were at the outskirts of Nashville — 'around the corner' turned out to be four hours away — he stopped the Jeep by the side of the road and turned to me. "Now listen carefully; I'm gonna tell you what I need from you."
"I'm all ears."
"We can't just knock on the door and tell her that all the passengers on that flight besides you were done away with. She might go to the press with that and the whole thing will blow up and someone will read about this and figure out that you're here."
"I understand."
"We're going to pass ourselves up as agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms."
"Why the ATF?"
"Because that's the only badge I've got." He pulled out a golden shield with two horizontal blue stripes and showed it to me.
"A fake badge."
"Not fake, just not mine."
"That's illegal."
"Do you want me to save your sorry ass or do you want to sit here and play lawyer?"
I nodded my head. "Gotcha. I was just making an observation. I'll let you do the talking when we get there. I'll just stand there lending moral support."
He put a half a cigar in his mouth. "No, kid, you'll be doing the talking."
I thought I misheard. "I what?"
"You'll be questioning her." He lit the cigar. "Look, I don't really care what she has to say, else I'd have done it myself. Anything she's going to tell us she already told the police, and if she knew what happened on that flight the perps would have killed her, too. That they didn't kill her evidences that she knows nothing of importance. That's why you'll be doing the talking. Get it?"
He took the wind out of my sails. I almost saw myself as having an important role in the investigation. I did not hide my disappointment. "So why go there at all?" It also bothered me that he had already made up his mind that the widow knew nothing before he talked to her. Was that a quality I was looking for in a detective?
"Because I need you to distract her when I check the house and the perimeter — alone. I want to see what they used for surveillance. I want to see what I can learn about their M.O. that the police, not suspecting an operation of this scale, missed."
We drove for a few minutes more and stopped five blocks away from the house. Doc Minus Two took out his cigar and parked it in one of the grooves in the spare tire's tread, and then we walked the rest of the way, as he said ATF agents do not typically arrive in a vintage WWII Willys Jeep. It was a nice ranch house with blue sidings and a white door that was held open by a rubber wedge. It seemed well kept. A truck was parked in the driveway and three young men were loading furniture from the house into it. Doc Minus Two ignored them and went straight through the open door. I followed right behind him. Inside, a lanky blonde with a thin, pointed nose was sitting on a folding chair in an otherwise empty room. She gazed at us briefly, then went back to staring blankly at the wall.
Doc Minus Two approached her. "Mrs. Rossi?"
She did not look at him. "Yes?"
He flashed his badge. "I'm agent McAlister; this is agent Boris. We're with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives."
"Oh." She got up. "Sorry, I thought you were with them."
"The movers?"
"They're no movers. They're repo men."
"I see."
She felt the need to apologize for her condition now that she thought she was talking to the authorities. "My late husband had some debt. His life insurance didn't cover all of it."
"That so?" Doc Minus Two said. He exited the house and walked over to a man who sat inside the cab of the truck. The man seemed older than the rest of the crew. Doc showed him his badge.
"What can I do for you?" the man said.
"I want you to stop what you're doing and put the stuff back in the house that you already took out. It's all evidence in a murder investigation."
The man did not seem disappointed or alarmed. He was paid by the hour. He just said, "I have to get approval from my boss." Doc Minus Two nodded for him to proceed and the man called the main office, where they told him not to get in trouble with the law and that they were going to check on their end. The crew returned the furniture inside the living room and left. When they were gone the widow turned to us and said, "You didn't do me any favor by having them do that. I was about to move anyway, to a much smaller place. Now how am going to get rid of all this useless crap? Will you take it off my hands?"
"We're not here to do favors," Doc Minus Two said curtly. "This is a serious investigation."
"I already told the police everything I know a year ago. Didn't you talk to them?"
"Of course we did. But we're the ATF. We need to look at it from a different angle."
She nodded her head in exasperation. I felt sorry for her. Her life must have been hell for over a year now and all she got from the authorities were more intrusive questions that would not help her. I did not know if Doc Minus Two also felt sorry for her, but if he did it did not make him change his authoritative tone of voice. "Agent Boris will question you while I take a look around the house if you don’t mind."
"I'll show you around," she said in defeated tone.
"Ma'am," I dissuaded her in the most confident tone I could muster. "If you don't mind I have some questions for you. We don't want to waste time."
She sat down on the sofa we had the repo men bring back, and I on a smaller one across from her. Doc Minus Two disappeared down the hallway. I did not come prepared with any questions, but thought that I should try to prove Doc Minus Two wrong and get useful information out of her after all. "Would you have any theories yourself on why your husband was murdered?"
She shrugged. "None. All I know is he owed money all over town. He had a gambling problem. Maybe he borrowed from the wrong people."
"Anyone in particular that you have in mind?"
"I didn't know any of them. The first time I heard about him owing money was from the cops, after he died."
"Did he ever get into trouble on a flight, or at work in general?"
"What kind of trouble?"
"With passengers, with the handling of the plane, other crew members, anything."
"None that he ever told me. He was a competent pilot."
"I don't doubt it for a moment, but did he ever come home saying that something went wrong with a flight? I don't mean something that was his own fault necessa
rily."
"No, except sometimes there were flight delays that got under his skin."
"Think back two years ago. Anything unusual?"
"No. Do you suspect something?"
"Just eliminating all possibilities. Did he ever receive any threats?"
"No. None that I know of. He was an easy-going guy. Mellow. I don't think he quarreled too much with people."
"Anything different he said or done on the day he died?"
She shook her head. "No, no. I was asked about it a thousand times. He woke up and went to the bathroom and then talked to me like he does every morning — like he did every morning I mean — and ate the same breakfast he ate every morning, and he was in the same cranky but polite mood he was in every morning, and then he got dressed and left and I heard a thud against the door and opened it and his body just fell back into the hallway with a hole in his forehead. It was then that I realized that this was not going to be a morning like any other morning. Only then." She covered her eyes with one arm now. I thought she would burst into tears but she held herself together, and just rocked from side to side.
"I'm sorry," I said. Then I drew a blank. Just five minutes with her, and I ran out of questions to ask. Doc Minus Two was right. She knew nothing. None of the relatives of the victims would know anything otherwise they would be dead, too. But I still had to stall her so she did not go and disturb what Doc Minus Two was doing in her house. I began to ask trivial questions about her, about what she was doing for a living, why the couple did not have any children, where she was moving to, what her