Passenger 19

TEN

Davis found Marquez in a conference room preparing to go home for the night.

“You are working late tonight?” the colonel asked as Davis eclipsed the doorway.

“I don’t exactly have a family to go home to right now.”

“Did you learn anything useful this afternoon?”

Davis pulled the two passports and dropped them on a table. “One is Jen’s. The other belongs to the girl who was sitting next to her, Kristin Stewart. I found them in the seatback pockets.”

Marquez took both and flipped through the pages. “That is a strange place to leave them.”

“I thought so too. Jen knows better than to put important documents where they might be forgotten. Now, the iPod being there — that doesn’t surprise me. But for both girls to leave their passports in their seatback pockets. That’s not right — there’s a reason.”

Marquez shrugged it off, a man already mystified by the teenagers he kept at home. He put the passports in a cabinet, locked it, and said, “I will keep them for now.”

“What about you?” Davis asked. “Anything new to report?”

“Unfortunately, no. Nothing since we last spoke. Tomorrow morning I am going to the medical examiner’s office. They will have the results of the postmortems on our pilots. Ten o’clock at Al Hospital Occidente de Kennedy. You are welcome to come.”

“I think I might. Is that where all the bodies are being held?”

“Yes, for the present time.”

“Okay. Before you leave tonight can you give me any information you have on the pilots?”

“Of course, we have a file on each man.”

“I’d also like to see the video footage from the boarding area.”

“I will talk to Rafael before I go. I can tell you I’ve watched it four times myself. Our suspect, Señor Umbriz, is only briefly visible as he gives his boarding pass to the agent. Apparently he arrived late — which in itself tells me something.” Marquez looked at him as if expecting a response.

Davis didn’t give one.

“If that is all,” said Marquez, “I will see you tomorrow morning. Try to get a good night’s sleep.”

Rafael set up a monitor in a side room and gave Davis a quick tutorial, then left him alone. The video was black and white, a fish-eye view from a camera mounted near the jetway entrance, looking back across the gate area. Davis cued the video to a point fifty minutes before the flight’s departure.

In the beginning there was little action, and he fast-forwarded liberally. Roughly twenty minutes before the scheduled push-back time passengers began lining up. They stood casually between twin rope-lined stanchions, waiting to board a doomed airliner. Davis imagined there had been a similar scene a century ago, when the passengers of an unsinkable ship boarded at a pier in Southampton, England. As ever, fate traveled as a quiet companion.

He studied the passengers one by one, and in shades of gray saw a mixed clientele, some dressed for business and others less formally. Sales meetings, in-law visits, second honeymoons. Summer internships. There were twenty-one good reasons why people were getting on TAC-Air Flight 223, and not a single person appeared to have reservations about the pending journey, including the pastry chef from Cartagena who boarded near the end and looked the most disinterested of the lot. There was no agitation in his manner. No sweaty brow or fearful, darting eyes.

One passenger, of course, demanded the bulk of his attention. Davis allowed himself that. He held steady as he watched, pushing away the chance that these sterile images might be the last ever captured of his daughter. She was near the back of the line wearing a familiar pair of jeans and a loose khaki shirt covered with pockets. She’d bought the shirt specifically for the trip, and he’d teased her that she looked like Indiana Jones — or at least the female, undergraduate version. She looked happy and vibrant, immersed in her big adventure. He watched Jen exchange a few words with her seatmate, Kristin Stewart, who responded in kind. Davis wasn’t a lip-reader but he didn’t need to be. Where do you live? What’s your major? How long will you be here? The usual.

Again, he was struck by their similar appearance. Roughly the same age, same over-the-shoulder auburn hair and willowy build. He forced his eyes away and tried to pick out the last passenger in Row 7. Davis remembered the name from the seating chart. Thomas Mulligan. Mulligan — like an extra shot in golf. His attention settled on an Anglo at the end of the line, behind the two girls. A man whose busy eyes alternated between the terminal area and his phone. Not nervous. Alert was more like it. Watchful. Perhaps searching for an associate. He seemed to be alone, and by the way he was dressed — casual gray coat and pressed trousers — Davis fixed him as a businessman. A Yankee trader in South America selling drilling equipment or washing machines.

The most interesting frames were near the end of the video. They were all moving toward the gate, and presenting boarding passes to the TAC-Air agent. Almost imperceptibly, Davis saw Kristin Stewart turn and say something to Mulligan over her shoulder.

Davis played it back, and by the third replay he was sure. Aside from Jen, Kristin Stewart had made another acquaintance.

At some point, she had also met Thomas Mulligan.

By eleven that evening Davis’ concentration was ebbing. He’d moved on from the video to study a pair of manila file folders, the background on the pilots. The majority was government information pertaining to airman certificates, security and background checks, and medical licenses, all retrieved from records kept by the Colombian Special Administrative Unit of Civil Aeronautics — the local version of the FAA. The remaining information came from TAC-Air’s corporate personnel files. These files each contained a photograph of the respective pilot standing against a wall, behind them the corporate logo of TAC-Air. That same photo would appear on the corporate ID each wore on a lanyard at work, and was probably on file in a half dozen government ministries.

Davis began with the second in command.

Hugo Moreno, thirty-one, had been the first officer on Flight 223. He’d worked for TAC-Air for four years, accumulating 2500 hours of flight time, including 700 on the ARJ-35. Moreno was a Colombian national and had worked his way through the ranks of aviation the old-fashioned way, flight instructing at a small government-run aviation school, followed by a three-year stint flying night freight over the Andes — a test of airmanship if ever there was one. He was married with two children and lived in a rented apartment on the outskirts of Bogotá.

Captain Blas Reyna, forty-five, was more of an enigma. Fifteen years with TAC-Air, he had 9000 hours of flight time, 4500 spent on the ARJ-35. His previous experience was simply listed as “corporate,” with a half dozen types of business jets flown. He was divorced with no dependents, and his address of record was a postal box in Cali. Neither pilot had anything in their files about disciplinary action, and both appeared to have solid training records.

Before closing Reyna’s file, Davis paused at the cover photo of the captain in uniform, and there struck the same mental stop he had this morning as he’d stood looking at the bodies. The word burbled into his mind once more: unprofessional.

But in what way?

He went back to Moreno’s TAC-Air file and studied the photograph. There was no doubt about it — this was the man he’d seen this morning, the body on top of the stack with three stripes on each shoulder. The identity of Captain Reyna was less definitive due to the head trauma, but a long hard look at that photograph erased any doubts. It was another match. So what bothered him about it? He flicked through Reyna’s file again and found an old background check. It looked like a standard government form, and while there was no photograph, Davis saw a thumbprint and signature at the bottom of a page of Spanish legalese.

The genesis of an idea surfaced. He dug deeper into Reyna’s government records, and at the very back found an old and yellowed page — his original application for an airman medical certificate. He looked at the vital statistics, and finally found the problem. A very big problem. Of course, one mismatched number could be a simple clerical error. But it made no sense at all. Davis went back to the photographs of the two pilots and compared them to one another. Then he checked copilot Moreno’s vital statistics. Together with what he’d seen at the accident site, it all clicked into one very disturbing scenario.

Davis sat for a moment with his hands clasped behind his head, ruminating on how best to deal with it. He considered the next day, his meeting at the hospital with Marquez, and decided it would present an ideal opportunity to sort things out.

He nearly shut the files, but paranoia got the better of him. From the government papers he extracted Reyna’s old airman medical application and the background check form. He looked for a copy machine and found a brand new one in a side room. Better yet, it had paper, toner, and was already powered up. Not for the first time, he saw that Marquez was a good organizer. The man had El Centro running smoothly in little more than a day, not the usual chaos of monitors without cables, cameras with bad lenses, and an unreliable electrical supply. The crash site recovery effort was also gathering steam, and soon would begin the chore of moving wreckage to long-term storage. It would probably be housed in a nearby hangar or warehouse. Davis was sure the colonel had that under control as well.

He replicated the two documents and the photographs of both pilots, then folded all four copies to fit in his pocket. From a supply table he pilfered two cheap ballpoint pens and a pad of Post-it notes. Davis put the files back together just as he’d found them, squaring them neatly on the desk with his fingertips. He was energized by what he’d found, yet at the same time cautious. Fatigue weighed on his body. Part of him wanted to stay all night, digging and sifting, but he knew that at a point it became counterproductive. He needed sleep because he wanted to be sharp tomorrow. He bid a friendly buenos noches to a pair of soldiers manning the night shift, and as he reached the door the thought recurred and began looping in his head.

Marquez was good.

Almost too good.

He walked into the viscous night air and shook the notion away. He smelled the soot from passing cars and the tang of seasoned meat on a grill. The bar across the street was running a lively patio affair. The city glittered yellow in the distance, and above that he saw a bewildered sky, broken clouds reflecting urban light in some quarters, and elsewhere opening up to the stars. A night unresolved, looking for direction.

Davis picked up his pace.

It was midnight on Monday.

He had a great deal to think about.

Davis wrenched off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. The springs creaked under his weight, and a paper-thin pillow did little to cradle the knot on the back of his skull. His third dose of Motrin had done the trick — the headache he’d woken with was gone, as was the soreness from spending a night on a concrete floor. Unfortunately, the biggest ache of all was more acute than ever.

He closed his eyes and, as was his custom in any investigation, made a concise mental scorecard of what he’d accomplished. The results were decidedly more troubling than usual. Escape from prison — check. Visit plane crash from which daughter’s body was missing — check. The day’s findings bounced in his brain like plastic balls in a lotto tumbler. He knew the problem. Every fact and facet, every theory and indicator, was colored by one insurmountable backdrop.

Jen.

His list of advances, such as they were, remained encouraging on one level — he had not yet visited the morgue to identify a body. Most of his findings were little more than negatives, things he’d proved hadn’t happened. For all the effort, Davis was no closer to finding his daughter, or even proving that she was alive. He would give anything for one shred of proof, one phone call from a hospital or a reliable witness who’d caught a glimpse of a survivor. As it was, he was clinging to the same brittle hopefulness he’d arrived with.

On the nightstand he saw his most notable discovery: Jen’s iPod. How many times had he given her that warning on a flight? Don’t put anything valuable in the seatback pocket. You’ll forget it. He was mildly discouraged she hadn’t listened, but it proved she’d been on board. And he was buoyed by the tangible connection to his daughter.

Davis had begun charging the device as soon as he’d reached the room, and now he hit the power button and watched the cheerful little screen spring to life. He scanned his options and touched the music symbol, then scrolled through menus to a playlist called “Jen’s Faves.” He wondered what his daughter was listening to these days. He recalled posters of boy bands on her bedroom wall, but that was a long time ago. He scanned three pages of songs. A few he recognized, but most were a mystery, artless soul that he was. He wished she’d shared them with him. Wished he had taken the time to ask.

The earbuds were still attached to the device, and he unwrapped the wires from the case and stuffed them in his ears. Drowned out were the Bogotá traffic and the rush of an airliner taking off in the distance. The first track that flowed was an instrumental jazz piece by a group called Down to the Bone. It was good.

Davis listened and relaxed, the music sweeping his mind clear like a cool gust of wind. His thoughts drifted as another song began, misty jazz, vocals this time. Since when did she listen to jazz? He closed his eyes and succumbed to stillness.

Davis drifted off in the middle of the fifth song, the time on the clock having lost all meaning. He slept surprisingly well, feeling closer to his daughter than he had in a very long time.