Hard Fall Part 11

"What am I hearing?" Daggett asked.

"Listen. WFO is the Office of Origin on Bernard. We're the O.O. on this crash."

"And Dougherty?" Daggett asked. "Where the h.e.l.l does Dougherty fit into this?"

"Bring me something. Okay? You like the Dougherty connection, so do I. Bring me something my squad supervisor can get hard over and we'll take over this crash investigation in one phone call."

"You're helping me?"

"I'll help where I can."

"Why the sudden change of heart?"

Huff took a moment before replying. "I didn't sleep last night. Not because of this crash, but because of Backman. I f.u.c.ked up the Bernard surveillance, Daggett. I admit that. I see that now, okay? I let it get away from me. I let that briefcase get away from me. Where did he make the drop? In the men's room? The coat check? s.h.i.t, I don't know what went wrong, but it went about as wrong as it can go. First Backman; now this. What the f.u.c.k? You reach a certain point, you realize it's time to change your act." He studied his unlit cigarette and then threw it into the mud. "Where are you going, in case I need to reach you?"

Daggett could hardly find the words. Huff apologizing. You reach a certain point, you realize it's time to change your act. The words echoed inside him like the last penny in a piggy bank. They could have come out of his mouth just as easily.

Huff repeated, "Where you going?"

Daggett answered, "To find us some evidence."

The tire tracks outside the home of Kevin Dougherty produced quick results. Measurement of the wheelbase, as defined by the two opposing tire tracks, identified the vehicle as a Chrysler either a Dodge Caravan or a Plymouth Voyager. Betting on a rental, Daggett turned his attention to the local agencies. The killer's rental car in Seattle had given him a credit card to flag and trace; maybe this rental car would be worth something as well.

A phone call placed early Wednesday morning revealed that Chrysler had an exclusive rental agreement for Caravans in the L.A. area with Overland Car Rentals. Overland kept only eight Caravans at its airport agency. Of the eight, two had been returned the day of the crash one a few hours before the crash, and one only minutes after. In a city where forty-five-minute drives were common, Daggett was grateful to be working out of the airport Marriott, which was all of five minutes from LAX and the Overland agency there.

Daggett b.u.mped over the security spikes at the entrance, pa.s.sing the gatehouse on his left. Ahead of him a sea of returned cars awaited cleaning. A Vietnamese boy of about eighteen, leaning awkwardly over two pieces of electronic gear that hung from his belt, approached a returning car and began punching numbers into one of the heavy boxes.

Daggett found the supervisor, Milton b.u.t.ts, in a small office through a door behind the main counter. The room reeked of aftershave, reminding Daggett of Backman. b.u.t.ts was a black man with graying temples, a dead front tooth, and the stump neck of a former wrestler or lineman. He had wide-set brown eyes that flashed between vacancy and annoyance as Daggett made his requests. He wore a company blazer and a shirt that couldn't b.u.t.ton around that thick neck, the knot of the company tie attempting to hide its shortcoming. The left lens of his reading gla.s.ses was thumb printed He had missed a spot below his nose in this morning's shave, leaving a triangle of black stubble on his upper lip.

He typed slowly, but with accuracy. As he read from the screen he said in a deceptively tranquil voice, "Both of them vehicles rented to women, if that matters any."

"But one of them paid cash," Daggett said, feigning confidence Worry written on his face. "Will the computer show that?"

Milton b.u.t.ts reexamined the screen and asked, "Now just how did you know that?"

"A lucky guess." He closed his eyes and thanked whoever was watching over him.

b.u.t.ts puckered his lips, not liking the answer. "Her name is Lyttle, with a y. Maryanne Lyttle. A one-day rental. Reserved it with a card but paid cash. She kept the car for about six hours that's fairly common with our business customers," he added editorially. After studying the screen a moment longer he added, "Nothing out of the ordinary here."

Daggett requested a copy of the agreement, and b.u.t.ts printed one out for both of them.

Daggett read the agreement over.

"Has the van been cleaned?"

"Sure it's clean," b.u.t.ts said angrily. Then adding, "You don't look too pleased about that."

"How clean? Inside, I mean."

"Truthfully? This time of year, as busy as it is, probably not perfect. You seen that parking lot out there. Packed with returns. Every day it's like that," he complained. "And between you and me, our employees are not exactly highly motivated. Know what I mean?"

Daggett placed a phone call and ordered the van be towed to a garage where field office personnel could go over it immediately.

"This got something to do with the crash, don't it?" b.u.t.ts asked when Daggett hung up. "s.h.i.tty thing, that crash. Hurts all of us. You should have seen our cancellations this morning. I wanna tell you, even a G.o.dd.a.m.ned accident hurts business. People is very superst.i.tious when it comes to flying." Then his eyes rolled and he exclaimed, "You telling me it wasn't no accident? That what you doing here?"

Daggett sized him up and answered, "Officially, I can't comment. Unofficially I can use all the help I can get."

"I be G.o.dd.a.m.ned," b.u.t.ts said brightly. "G.o.dd.a.m.n Arabs or what?"

Daggett asked, "What do these letters in the return box refer to, Mr. b.u.t.ts? Can you tell me that?"

b.u.t.ts looked his own copy over and nodded. "We rent and return right from Baggage Claim. The majority of our return business is done out here, off airport where we clean and service the fleet. But our Express customers are handled on-airport. Both pickup and return. That's all that's saying. This van was rented and returned on-airport." In boyish enthusiasm he added, "Say! You know what I bet would interest you?" He checked his watch. "But s.h.i.t, we had better move quick."

Daggett didn't like the sound of we. "What's that?" he asked. "What might interest me, Mr. b.u.t.ts?"

"We had a whole series of holdup problems down there on-airport. Put in a hidden video system not six months ago."

"Video?" Daggett asked, his mind racing ahead to the possibilities.

"Thing of it is," b.u.t.ts said, obviously worried, checking his watch again. "It's a twenty-four-hour loop system. Endless tape, or something. You know. Same as they do in the terminals."

"The terminals?" And now Daggett exploded out of his chair, frantically waving for b.u.t.ts to hurry, for it suddenly occurred to him how to catch this Maryanne Lyttle.

On Thursday morning, August 30, Daggett entered the Los Angeles County Federal Building an innocuous white structure surrounded by suspiciously green gra.s.s. The Feds apparently weren't paying much attention to the drought.

The audio-visual technical services lab of the Los Angeles Field Office of the FBI used a small windowless office on the sixth floor. Daggett knew the video techs here in L.A. were among the best in the country. Not only was L.A. at the heart of such technology, but LAFO saw more than its fair share of practice: the drug squad used video surveillance extensively. Drugs in L.A. were big business and a central focus for the LAFO. The room was crowded with every kind of video and television equipment, some recognizable to Daggett, some not. Daggett b.u.t.toned his sport coat to hold off the added chill, reminded of the computer room at Duhning. He'd left the letter jacket in the hotel room.

Cynthia Ramirez steered her wheelchair over to Daggett and shook his hand strongly. She had fire in her gla.s.sy eyes and a sly little smile. Daggett saw the chair and thought of Duncan. Ramirez was rail thin, wearing a cable-knit sweater with a plaid blanket covering her legs. Her dark hair was held off her bony face by a red plastic clip in the shape of a bow. Her fingers were ice cold and as long and slim as chopsticks. "They call me Fragile," she said, still maintaining the smile.

"Michigan," he said, careful not to crush that hand.

"It suits you. Don't ask me why."

He withheld any similar comment.

"What's this?" she asked, eyeing the cardboard box of videotapes he had brought with him.

"I'm told you're the best we have in video enhancement."

"Compliments will get you everywhere."

"Black and white, endless loops. One tape shot in an airport garage. The other fifteen are on loan from a private firm that runs the video work out at LAX."

She grinned. "That's Bernie Shanks's company. He came out of this office, you know?"

He nodded. "Yes. That is, I found out. It's how I was able to walk right out of there with these things. Without Mr. Shanks I have a feeling it would have taken a few weeks in court."

She reached for the box and pulled it down into her lap, where it landed hard. Enough to break bones that small, if indeed there were any bones under the blanket. It was hard to tell. "Endless loops don't offer very good quality. Oxide wears right off 'em."

"That's why I asked for you. For the enhancement."

Propelling herself over to one of the machines, she glanced back at him. "I'm no miracle worker," she said.

"That's not what I hear."

She caught his eye then and held it. "We could use more around here like you." She smiled. He returned it.

"That top tape .. . it's cued up for you. There's a woman standing at the rental counter. Scarf. Sungla.s.ses. Can barely make her out. If we could enlarge her face, build it back to something we can use .. . I'm hoping she went inside the terminal right after returning the car. I'm hoping we can follow her movements from one video to the next. Each of the other fifteen tapes is from a particular set of camera stations inside the terminal. Each overlaps a piece of the other's territory for the sake of coverage. But picking her out of the crowd ... I don't know. It looked pretty hopeless to me. People's faces aren't very big on those tapes. But if you've ever seen a crash site .. . This woman may be responsible. I figured it was worth a try."

Her face hardened, and she briefly looked like a different woman altogether. Then her features relaxed. "My crash site was on La Cienega. A VW bug and an ambulance, Michigan. I was driving the bug, unfortunately. I didn't hear the ambulance siren. We're still in court over that, and it's been six years. It ran the light and struck me here," she said, rubbing her right side as if she could still feel the pain. "Now why don't you chase us down a couple cups of coffee mine's black. We're gonna need it."

Daggett brought two more cups of coffee over the next two hours and then two plates of fried chicken and mashed potatoes from the cafeteria. Fragile, as she insisted on being called, had transformed a nondescript oval sitting atop a woman's body into a grainy but recognizable digital portrait on a high-resolution computer screen. With each progressive electronic enlargement, the computer redrew the face, compensating for the lack of definition. She then shaded and filled with a wand she referred to as the airbrush. Many enlargements later, the face of Maryanne Lyt-the stared back at them. To Daggett, this was nothing short of a miracle.

Fragile saved her efforts to disk and printed out a hard copy onto paper. While she began searching the airport terminal security tapes, a sketch artist named Willard used the airbrush and the better part of an hour to erase the woman's sungla.s.ses and, using the width of the bridge of the woman's nose as a reference, drew in a pair of eyes, complete with eyebrows and hairline. "It's as close as we'll get," Willard said proudly as he stiffly rose out of his chair.

"No it's not," contradicted Fragile Ramirez. "She took off her gla.s.ses inside the terminal."

Daggett looked over at the screen, his heart jumping from the combined effects of excitement and boiled coffee. Fragile had a white box framed around a small head in a random sea of air travelers. It was much more defined than the earlier image. As Daggett watched, the frame grew increasingly larger, driving the other images off the screen. With each enlargement the computer redrew the face. Fragile waved the wand, making up for where the computer missed. Again the face grew more visible. Again, Daggett's heart jumped. So close now!

Willard grabbed the hard copy of his efforts and held it side by side with the new face on the screen.

"What do you think of that?" he asked loudly, a full-tooth grin opening his face.

The two images were identical.

Daggett came out of his seat and shook the man's hand. He bent down and kissed Fragile on the cheek. "You're magicians, both of you."

"It was the earrings," said an excited Fragile. "That other shot didn't give us any clothes, didn't give us any signature to follow her with." Daggett hadn't noticed the earrings until that moment. They were big black ovals. Easily identified, if you thought to look. Fragile had thought to look. She was blushing from the kiss. She continued, "We'll be able to follow her now, Michigan, one camera to the next. Guaranteed. If she boarded a plane, you'll know where she was headed. If she left the terminal, you'll know by which exit. Those earrings were her downfall. She should have thought twice before wearing those earrings."

"Yes, she should have," said Daggett, realizing suddenly that was just the point: A professional wouldn't make such a mistake. Was he dealing with an amateur?

Willard left the small office. Fragile said, "You look a little white, Michigan. You all right?"

Daggett, staring at the face on the screen, nodded slightly. Doubt had wormed its way into his head. An amateur. Was it possible?

Or, after all this, did he have the wrong woman?

Daggett attended the nine o'clock meeting at the Marriott, amazed both by the smoothness with which it ran and by the huge number of people taking part in the AmAirX-press investigation. Well over a hundred were in attendance, covering both s.e.xes and as wide a variety of races as there were specialties. It reminded him of a political convention, the way delegates group together. Over there was the crew of investigators for General Electric; and there, a team representing the airline pilots' union. With each comment from the dais another series of heads would fall as eyes were cast to the accompanying reports; small inter-group discussions would supersede the present report, and then another group of experts would lower their heads and begin a similar routine. On the dais, Huff sat third from center, next to Lynn Greene. During his report, Huff reemphasized the criminal intent angle, keeping details-vague, and once again encouraged everyone to dig for hard evidence.

When the meeting ended, after nearly ninety minutes, Daggett felt well briefed on the progress at the crash site but depressed and discouraged with the results.

The flight recorder data the DFDR had been sent to the FAA lab in Washington for a.n.a.lysis. The damaged voice recorder the CVR was still being worked on here. Parts of the broken aircraft were already being tagged and transported to a hangar at LAX, where an attempt at reconstruction would be made if any suspicious causes surfaced. To date, none had, and this weighed heavily on Daggett. His only hope to continue his investigation lay in the debris of the crash; both, at the moment, were in pieces.

He had to maintain his optimism, had to maintain a broad base to the investigation to give it every possibility. As tempting a suspect as Maryanne Lyttle seemed, Daggett couldn't allow himself to be obsessed with her. He still believed a male operative, using Dougherty's ident.i.ty card, had gained access to AmAirXpress 64 while on the ground. Maryanne Lyttle, at best, was this man's accomplice. A driver? A scout?

Daggett telephoned his WMFO voice-mail mailbox, where an impersonal woman's voice told him he had six messages. He stepped through the process of retrieving them. Only the last had to do with this case: "We have a blood type and we have a thumb print." The voice belonged to a man who introduced himself as Barge Kolowski, a fingerprint expert at the Washington State Forensic Science Laboratory. "Blood type came off that tooth. The print was developed off the bar of soap. It's a beauty, by the by. He was smart enough to throw away the bar of soap a shower is somewhere you don't often wear gloves but we found his trash because of that tooth, and that's something he didn't plan on. We've forwarded the print to your people here, and I a.s.sume they'll pa.s.s it on to Washington. More of those same cigarettes, as well. We think they're a Russian brand called Sobranie, for what it's worth. If you have any questions, give me a call during office hours or at home." The man left his home number.

Daggett, alone in his hotel room, drink in hand, hung up and shouted, "Yes!" into the empty room. Evidence had a way of doing that to him.

The phone rang. He set the drink down and checked the clock: 11:30. Late. He answered it brightly.

"Washington, B.C.," the tired, frail voice stated.

"Fragile, is that you?" he asked.

"The gate. Your mystery woman, Maryanne Lyttle? I just watched her on videotape as she boarded a flight for Washington, D.C. The gate's destination sign is as clear as day."

"Washington?" His voice cracked. An operative still at large. Kort? An unaccounted-for detonator. Washington, D.C." WMFO's territory. His ticket. He was both excited and afraid.

He breathed into the receiver, saying nothing, stunned by the thought of a second target somewhere in his hometown. He stared at the small ice cubes on the carpet as his gla.s.s rolled under the end table and disappeared. The phone had knocked the drink off the end table.

"Michigan."' she asked. "Did you get that?"

It made sense. Bernard had built the detonators in Los Angeles. Flight 64 had been bombed in Los Angeles. Bernard had then turned up in Washington .

His stockinged toes searched beneath the end table and located the spilled gla.s.s, rolling it back out.

"I got it," he said into the phone.

Carrie watched as the plane from Los Angeles slowed to a stop out on the airfield and the boxlike shuttle vehicle used at Dulles International drew alongside to board the pa.s.sengers and deliver them to the terminal. She hoped for his sake that the vehicle was air-conditioned. She had lived through some unbearably hot, humid summers while growing up outside New Haven, but nothing to compare with this. This heat made her impatient and irritable. She was mad at him before she even got a chance to say h.e.l.lo. This heat was his fault.

She lifted a finger toward her mouth, prepared to nibble at her nail, and then thought better of it. More than anything, she wanted a cigarette.

On the way to the car, she attempted several times to engage him in conversation, but he didn't respond. Nothing new there. He carried his briefcase he never went anywhere without that thing; she carried his hanging bag.

"You're mad about something? Is that it?" he asked, sounding bored with the subject before it began. This infuriated her.

"First, the three of us were supposed to go to the sh.o.r.e last weekend. Then you promised Duncan it would be this weekend. It's Labor Day weekend. It's a holiday. I know you couldn't have gone to either Seattle or L.A. without wanting to, without pulling some strings. So you're making choices, and those choices are pretty clear."

He took a long time before saying, "Rather unusual circ.u.mstances, Carrie. I explained that before I left. Duncan understood." The implication was that she didn't.

She spoke softly. "I need to be more than a pair of legs and a you-know what Cam gave her one of those looks. She could feel him pull away. "We're losing each other."

"We haven't lost anything, Carrie. Misplaced maybe. Not lost." They walked along in silence.

"That's it? That's all you're going to say?"

He glanced at her.

"I hang my heart out on my sleeve and your sole contribution to this discussion is to correct my syntax?"

"Carrie "

"What the h.e.l.l is going on here?" She felt like an idiot. But as he blushed, she understood. She stopped cold and set the hanging bag down. "You saw her, didn't you?" Lynn Greene lay at the core of all her fears. To Carrie, this stranger represented her biggest threat. Cam fantasized about her imagined her better for him; she knew he did, without their ever having discussed it. She wanted security from this relationship. Love? yes. A mate? certainly. But more than anything, she wanted to belong to someone, to have them belong to her. She and Duncan and Cam had quickly formed a team, and the safety she felt as a result of this had become everything to her. On a beach one afternoon, over a year ago now, Lynn Greene had changed all that. Now she lived in the darkened shadows of fear, afraid to look out, afraid to be seen. The hope of permanent companionship grew weaker with every argument.

"She just showed up. Sixty-four the crash is her a.s.signment. It was nothing."

"Did you sleep with her?" Tears threatened. She felt foolish. She took a deliberate step away from him, arms crossed tightly. People were watching now. A stream of dispa.s.sionate humanity parted and poured around them like water around a rock.