Midas

2

“We’ve got plenty of witnesses,” Mike Haversham was saying. “A few people at the airport saw a lot of it. Bunch of people saw the crash. Drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians. I’m sure a couple of people in their homes.”

Judging by the crowd that was rapidly gathering, Justin was sure that Haversham was right. Witnesses would not be a problem. “What the hell happened? Give me the short version first.”

“The guy took off from the runway. Everything seemed okay. He was only up in the air a few minutes and seemed to lose control. He kind of circled around for a while and then. .” The young cop exhaled a deep whistle and made a diving motion with his hand. “Looks like he tried to land on the road here, and just couldn’t do it.”

“Tried to land right in the middle of fucking town?”

“Hey, who knows what was goin’ through his mind? The guy thought he was going to die.”

“Yeah, well, he was right about that, wasn’t he?” Justin stared again in disbelief at the wreck, something he’d already been doing for a good two minutes now. He walked up to the small private plane, which had crash-landed maybe thirty yards from the busiest intersection in East End Harbor. It had come down in the middle of the road that led in and out of town, missing by ten feet the concrete bridge that spanned the bay. The brand-new concrete bridge, Justin thought. The town council would have had a shit fit. The bridge had taken six months longer than it was supposed to take to be built. It had just opened two weeks earlier. Ten more feet. He almost smiled at the thought. Ten more little feet. .

The plane was at a forty-five-degree angle and looked to be compressed to about two-thirds its normal size. The nose and most of the front half were crumpled after colliding with the road.

Beneath the pilot’s-side wing, a man’s body was sprawled on the ground. His neck was clearly broken. Next to the man’s body was a small puddle of vomit.

“I got sick,” Mike Haversham said quietly. “I never saw anything like this before. I knew I had to get the guy out, see if he was still alive. But when I got the door open. .”

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Justin told him. “It happens.” When Mike nodded quickly, gratefully, Justin went on. “So you pulled him out of the plane?”

“With that guy’s help.” Mike pointed to a man who was standing about twenty feet away next to a Lexus SUV.

“Who is he?”

“Just some guy who was passing by. There were a few other cars but he’s the only one who stopped. You might think about hiring him. At least he didn’t puke his guts out.”

“And who’s that?” Justin now waved his hand toward a second man who wore jeans and a light gray sport coat over a long-sleeved white shirt and gray-and-blue tie. He was pacing off to the side and quite upset. Curiously, Justin thought he didn’t look upset about the crash, more like he was angry about something else. Maybe it was the man’s comb-over. It wasn’t pretty.

“He’s pissed because I wouldn’t let him leave,” Haversham said.

“Why not? He see something?”

“I don’t know. But he was in the plane, you know, and then he wouldn’t talk to me, so-”

“What do you mean, he was in the plane? A passenger?”

Haversham shook his head. “No. After the crash.”

“What the hell was he doing?” Justin asked.

“I don’t know. He’s whaddyacallit, you know, the agency that deals with planes and shit.”

“FAA?”

“Yeah, I think that’s what he said.”

“How’d he get here so fast?”

“I think he was already here. You know, doin’ some business at the airport or somethin’. I figured you’d want to talk to him so I told him to stick around.”

“So what’s his problem?”

“I don’t know, but he didn’t like that. He wanted to beat it. So I told him if he tried to leave, I’d arrest his ass.”

Justin stared over at the man, who was still pacing angrily.

“Should I have let him go?” Mike Haversham asked.

“No,” Justin told the young cop. “You did the right thing.”

“You wanna talk to him?”

“Yeah. But first talk to me about two more minutes, act like we’re having a real serious conversation. Then go tell him I’d like to see him.”

“Why wait? He’s only gonna get more pissed off.”

“Yeah,” Justin said. “I know.”

The crowd was growing now. Not just the people who’d seen the plane go down. These were the gawkers. The ones who can’t resist a peek at disaster. The same people who slow down and rubberneck on the highway, desperate for a clear sight of a crumpled fender or a lifeless body. Justin never understood the attraction. His instinct was, whenever possible, to run like hell from anything even resembling tragedy. Disgusted, he waved them all back, kept Haversham by his side for more than the agreed-upon two minutes because the ambulance arrived. It wasn’t from Southampton. Justin didn’t recognize either of the two EMWs. One of them explained that they’d come from mid-Island.

“After the nightmare at the restaurant,” he said, “you’re lucky they sent anyone. We’ve been a little overworked. Carrying bodies all over the fucking place. No disrespect intended.”

Justin told him that none was taken, nodded his sympathy, and watched as they put the pilot on a stretcher and made the expected comments-the one who’d already spoken just said, “Holy shit!” when he saw the damage, the other muttered something about how lucky it was that no one else was hurt-then they carried the stretcher into the back of the ambulance and drove off. As soon as they were gone, Justin sent Haversham to get the FAA agent. The man in the jacket and tie and bad hairstyle immediately strode up to Justin, pumping his arms back and forth as if that would help him get there quicker.

“Officer,” he began, “I’m sure you and your buddy there think you’re doing your job. But-”

“You have any ID?” Justin said.

“What?”

“You have anything identifying you as working for the FAA? That’s what you told the other officer, isn’t it? And just for the record, he is an officer, not my buddy. This isn’t exactly a social occasion.”

The man closed his mouth and stared at Justin for several seconds. Then he reached into his back right pocket and pulled out his wallet. He fished for a card, slipped it out of its plastic sleeve, and handed it over.

Justin saw the man’s name, Martin Heffernan, and made a show out of reading the rest of the information very carefully. He took so long to squint at the small print on the card, the man in the sport jacket couldn’t restrain himself any longer. “Look, it’s right there in black and white and it’s pretty clear. I’m FSDO out of New York.” He pronounced it as “fizzdough.”

Justin looked away from the card. “FSDO? Sounds like a cute government acronym.” He looked at the card again. “Flight Standards District Office?”

“That’s right. Local FAA office in New York.”

“The city?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I was making a routine ramp check. Airport safety. We do it all the time. The whole tri-state area.”

“So it’s just a coincidence, you being here and this accident.”

“That’s right,” Heffernan said. “I saw the plane going down and drove here as fast as I could.”

“And as long as you were on the spot, you thought you’d jump right in, see what was what.”

The man rolled his eyes, exasperated. “I work for an agency that oversees any and all air traffic. When there’s an accident, we investigate. We make reports. And that’s what I’d like to do now. Leave, so I can make my report.”

“Which is going to say what?”

“Excuse me?”

“You hopped in the plane, you checked things out. What are you going to say in your report?”

“I don’t have to tell you that. The FAA has jurisdiction over local law enforcement when it comes to things like this.”

Justin chewed on his lip for a moment. “I don’t know the legal details about this kind of jurisdictional dispute, Mr. Heffernan, but I’ll tell you what-I think you’re full of shit. For the moment, however, let’s say I take your word for it. Maybe you don’t have to tell me what you found. But I’ll tell you that only a big-time asshole would worry about jurisdiction at a time like this. A man’s been killed here, and all you can think about is who’s in charge? That sucks.”

The man let some anger fade from his face.

“I just want to know what happened,” Justin continued. “So why don’t you tell me? Before you rush back to your shitty little one-

bedroom apartment in the city and make yourself a martini and watch a video or whatever the hell you have to do that’s so important. Or you commute from Jersey?”

The FSDO agent exhaled a long breath, then quietly said, “I can’t. I mean I can’t tell you exactly what happened because we’ll have to do a further investigation. But just from my quick look around, I’d say it was a simple case of pilot error. The plane looks to be in good shape. .”

“Other than the fact that it’s smashed to pieces.”

The man almost smiled. But not quite. “Yes. Other than that. I don’t see anything out of order. But, again, all I did was give things a quick once-over. We’ll have a mechanic check things out thoroughly. I’ve already called over to the airport to get the thing towed there for a proper inspection. If you want my guess, though, it’s what we see all the time: another guy who thought it’d be fun to fly and doesn’t bother to learn how to do things properly. Now, can I rush back to my shitty little one-bedroom apartment? In the city.”

“After you give your name and contact information to my buddy over there, yeah.”

Justin turned away. He didn’t like this guy and didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of any further eye contact. He didn’t glance in his direction again until Heffernan was in his car and driving away. By that time, the media had arrived: a young reporter from the local East End paper was making his way through the crowd jotting down comments from eyewitnesses, and a cameraman from a network affiliate was already set up. An on-air reporter in jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket was finishing a quick summation of the accident. When he was done talking, he waved over in Justin’s direction. Justin didn’t see any way around this, so he nodded and gave his name and title to the guy in the jacket and, as the camera swung over to film him, began answering the reporter’s questions.

“Officer Westwood, are you in charge of this investigation?”

“It’s not much of an investigation yet, since it happened just a few minutes ago, but yes, for the moment I’m in charge.”

“The obvious question,” the reporter said earnestly, “is whether or not this is connected to the recent terrorist bombing at Harper’s.”

“It’s an obvious question but there’s no obvious answer yet. All indications are that there is no connection. An agent for the FAA has already been on the scene and his initial instinct is that this is nothing more than pilot error. Although we will be investigating and doing a thorough examination of the aircraft.”

“So you believe there’s no connection to the tragedy?”

“It’s pretty tragic for the pilot,” Justin said, “but as I said, there’s no indication that this is connected to what happened at Harper’s.”

“Do you know the identity of the pilot yet?”

“We’re not releasing any information. We’ve barely had time to gather any, so there’s nothing to be released. Besides, we haven’t even had a chance to inform the man’s family. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”

The reporter threw out a few more questions, but Justin shook his head and walked away, over to Mike Haversham. The reporter finished his stand-up. Justin heard the words “small-town policeman” and “certain the FBI will soon be making an appearance,” shook his head again, and said to Haversham, “Okay. Now for the fun part.” He sighed. “I’ve got to notify the next of kin. Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does his ID say?”

Haversham looked like he was going to cry. “I don’t have his ID.”

Justin decided to hold his temper. Mike was just a kid. He’d never done anything remotely like this before.

“Call the hospital immediately, tell them we have to get the wallet back. Mike, the first thing you do, always, once you know you can’t save the guy, is check for ID.”

“I know. I checked.”

“And?”

“He didn’t have any. No wallet, no ID.”

“You checked on his person?”

Haversham nodded.

“And in the plane?”

The young cop nodded again. “I looked everywhere I could.”

Justin Westwood looked off down the road, in the direction Martin Heffernan’s car had just disappeared.

“Don’t let anyone else near this plane,” he said to Mike. “Especially inside. Anyone I don’t say is okay tries to get in, you have my permission to shoot him. You got that?”

“I don’t have a gun.”

“Then beat him to death with your cell phone, okay?”

When the cop nodded for a third time, Justin headed back to the station. It was no more than a five-minute walk. When he got there, he immediately went to his desk and picked up the phone. He called the Southampton force, got their fingerprint guy, and told him what had to be done. Jimmy Leggett’s funeral was over by now and two young cops filed back in. Everyone seemed to assume that Justin was in charge, so he decided to go with the assumption. He told the two cops to get to the site of the crash. He explained to them how to deal with the traffic problem that would definitely ensue. Then he inhaled a deep breath. He didn’t feel as if he exhaled until nearly three hours later. By that time, he’d spoken to the fingerprint expert, who’d told him that, other than Mike Haversham’s, not one print had come up, that the entire inside of the plane had been wiped clean. Justin had also spoken to an administrator at Southampton Hospital, who told him that no ambulance had been dispatched to any plane crash site, not from them, not from mid-Island, not from anywhere. Nor had any crash victim been picked up. And he’d spoken to Morgan Davidson, a local doctor who also served as the ME when needed. Davidson told him that no body had been delivered to him-and that there had been no alert that a body was expected. When Justin heard that, he hung up and said, “Goddammit.”

Gary Jenkins glanced up at that point, caught Justin’s eye, and said, “Problem?”

That’s when Justin felt himself exhale. And that’s when he answered Gary. “Yeah,” was his answer. “We’ve definitely got a problem.”