Authors: Rachel Brady
Final Approach (12 page)
It was a wild ride.
My freefall was clumsy because of my awkward body position protecting the duffel bag. After my third or fourth flip, I reached for the pilot chute and tugged it from its pouch on the bottom of Kurt’s rig.
The wind grabbed it, extending the bridle, and an instant later the closing pin was out. It was the point in the opening sequence when I’d normally reach for my risers to lessen the opening shock. But this time, I only had one arm to use. My left hand was clenched around my right shoulder strap, locking the duffel in the crook of my arm. Grabbing the right riser alone wasn’t enough. When the parachute snapped open, I thought I heard every bone in my back crack. It felt like I’d been jerked halfway back to the plane.
At least the chute had opened.
With the parachute flying level, I released my left hand and raised it overhead. The bag slid to my shoulder. Two-handed again, I reached up and unstowed the toggles, the handles to my steering lines. A quick steering check verified the canopy was good.
The quickest way down would be a hard, continuous turn to one side that would spiral the canopy toward the ground and bleed off altitude. I spotted a reasonable landing place, and when I was approximately over it, I buried my right toggle near my hip and spun toward Earth, round and round toward what looked like a rock quarry. When I got dizzy, I brought the toggle up again and let the canopy fly straight for a while, then spiraled again. Enormous mounds of stone were brightly lit beneath me. Nearby spotlights illuminated a giant American flag that I checked for wind direction. I focused on a wide patch of gravel bordering several mountains of various grades of stones. It would have to do; I turned into the wind and prepared to land.
When my feet touched, I skidded a little on the gravel but didn’t fall. The parachute fell behind me with a soft
whoosh
, and the first thing I did was look to see if anyone was around.
The quarry was empty. It was almost three in the morning.
I unfastened my chest strap and loosened the leg straps enough to step out of the gear. Taking off the rig was a physical relief. Under the quarry’s bright field lights, I was finally able to get a good look at my leg.
My calf was stained from the back of my knee all the way to my foot. Even the heel of my sneaker was dark red. I removed the belt I’d knotted there and adjusted my pant leg. How did such a small cut produce that much blood? The knife must have gone in deep. I squeezed the sides of the wound together and applied pressure, wondering for a moment whether I could find medical attention. How would explain myself if I did?
The sensible thing would be to call the police. I eased myself to the ground, reapplied my makeshift tourniquet, and considered how to tell them my story.
Kurt’s duffel bag started ringing.
I turned and stared at it. It rang again and I pulled it to me.
When I opened the zipper, I found myself staring down into blocks of cash. Thick stacks of hundred dollar bills—more money than I’d ever seen.
Another ring chirped, and I plunged a hand into the sack and shoved them aside, feeling for a phone. My hand closed over it. I pulled it out and flipped it open. Engine noise droned in my ear.
She came straight to the point.
“Where are you, Emily?”
I listened, waited.
“You have something that belongs to me. I’ll send someone.”
“Did you kill my husband, Trish? My daughter?”
She breathed into the phone, the kind of disgusted sigh that proved my heartache was only a fleeting nuisance to her.
“Make this easy on yourself,” she said.
I snapped the phone closed.
Almost instantly, it rang again. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.
She asked again where I was.
“You’re starting to sound like a broken record, Trish. Get over yourself. You’re not getting this money back.”
“Why don’t you call your little friend? Ask her what she thinks you should do.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
This time, she hung up on me.
I immediately dialed the motel. When the desk clerk forwarded my call, I closed my eyes and muttered “please-please-please-please” under my breath while I waited for Jeannie to pick up.
Instead, a man answered. My eyes opened.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was trying to reach room one-fourteen?”
“You have the right room,” the speaker said. “Blondie’s room. When we get our money, you’ll get your friend.”
I was speechless.
“Thing is,” he continued. “You don’t have a lot of time.”
“Look—”
“Bring the money to this room by eight this morning. The key’ll be under the parking block in front. Put the bag on the bed and leave. If the money’s all there, your friend’ll be back here by nine.”
“But how will I—”
“One more thing,” he said. “Not a word to the police or Richard Cole.”
Christ. Who were these people?
“Cole’s son, Tim?” the man said, “Has his swim team practice in a few hours, before school. Be a shame if something nasty happened on his way there.”
“At least let me talk to her,” I said. “How do I know you haven’t already done something?”
His voice faded as he muttered to someone else, “Bring her here.”
There was rustling, and Jeannie said, “Em?”
Her voice was strong.
“Jeannie, are you—”
“Edward Kosh,” she said plainly, “I saw it on a receipt.”
I heard a whack and a moan, followed by more rustling. Something bumped the receiver on other end.
From some distance away, I heard Jeannie shout, “K-O-S—”
Bumping and scuffling came next, then the original voice.
“Eight a.m.” he said, and the line went dead.
I dropped Kurt’s phone into his bag. My hands were shaking when I zipped it. Just when I’d thought things couldn’t get worse.
I’d nearly been killed. Clement was shot and left for dead. The people responsible were the ones who’d murdered Jack and Annette. I didn’t feel smart or strong enough to tackle Trish and her gang of lowlifes alone, despite their instructions. Outnumbered and overpowered, I felt as small and insignificant as the little stones piled all around me.
Police would have more questions than answers. So using my own phone, I dialed Richard. My call ended in his voice mailbox again. I summarized everything I knew. Then I sorted the few facts I had.
When Trish had called, she’d addressed me by name, even though she’d never seen me in the plane. Kurt had seen me, but he had no idea who I was.
Then there was Jeannie. I’d only had the sack of cash for fifteen minutes, twenty tops. It wasn’t enough time to pull off a kidnapping and arrange a trade.
They must have been watching us. Maybe Scud or Trish got suspicious and sent a goon to follow me. I thought of the beachfront bar Jeannie and I had drinks at earlier and wondered if one of Trish’s henchmen were there spying. Was it someone who’d sat with Jeannie at the bar? Bought her a drink? Maybe when I’d left Jeannie, I wasn’t alone on the beach like I’d thought. Or, maybe I’d walked past someone hiding in a car in the motel lot.
However they’d done it, it still didn’t explain how Trish knew I was on the plane. I chewed on various scenarios and kept returning to the simplest explanation: Scud.
The men who’d loaded the plane would have found him after we left. If he were still alive—and I cursed my naïve, amateur self for not checking—he’d tell them I shot him. Trish would call to explain what happened to the money. They’d realize I was their stowaway, and I’d puzzle over the predicament in a gravel pit in God-knows-where at three o’clock in the morning with a battle-scarred body and so much cash I could spare a few bills for toilet paper.
I palmed a fist of gravel and hurled it into the night.
Scud.
Headlights approached. I wasn’t keen on hitching a ride, but I had no idea where I was, and couldn’t exactly call a Yellow Cab. I grabbed the duffel, abandoned the parachute, and struggled up a mild embankment to the roadside, where a beat-up El Camino stopped along side me, exhaust rumbling. I was relieved to see a woman behind the wheel.
Inez, a nineteen-year-old Latina with a disturbing eyebrow piercing, drove us through a series of poorly marked farm roads. We commiserated about her go-nowhere bartending job and the fictitious low-life who’d abandoned me roadside because I wouldn’t put out on our second date. Four cigarettes and a king-sized Snickers later, she agreed to sell me her cousin’s dumpy, piece-of-crap car for twice its worth. I paid her with Trish’s money, and her only reaction to the large stack of bills I counted was a smile wiser than her years. We’d each have explaining to do, but no one could argue either of us got a bad deal.
At the curb in front of her house, she got out of the car and patted its roof as I slid behind her sticky steering wheel. I tried not to stare at her garage door, which was so run down its panels sagged on one side. I offered another hundred-dollar bill for whatever money she had on her, and she dug in her purse and thrust forty-seven bucks through the driver’s side window. I took note of her address as I pulled away. If I didn’t end up dead or incarcerated, Inez could have the car back later and keep Trish’s filthy money.
A few miles up the road, I parked the El Camino in front of a pump at a twenty-four hour gas station where I topped off and found a map. Turned out I was two hundred miles away from Houston, outside Corpus Christi. A flight path from the Houston area over Corpus Christi suggested Trish might have been heading to Mexico. I bit my lip and thought it over while I filled the largest size coffee cup I could find. I took the coffee black, paid with Inez’s small bills, and got back in the car to head for Jeannie.
By quarter after five, highway traffic was picking up, but there was still no hint of sunrise. I glanced at drivers I passed, and at those who passed me, and felt like a social outsider. They were listening to morning talk shows on their way to respectable office jobs.
Finally, Richard called me back.
“Clement’s alive,” he said. “The shooting’s all over the news.”
A car coming up behind me blinked its headlights and I moved out of its way.
“Thank goodness,” I said. “Does the FBI know where Casey is?”
“I don’t know what they know. What about you? Are you okay?”
I brought him up to speed.
“I’m staying home til one of my buddies gets off duty. He’ll keep an eye on my family,” he said. “Then you and I have a date.”
“Where?”
He read a street address. “Edward Kosh turned up in the drop zone files you gave me. Don’t know about you, but I’d like to stop by and say hello.”
Kosh’s beachfront paradise was a mere thirty minutes from the drop zone, and ten minutes from my motel, a coincidence that didn’t sit well. It wasn’t clear whether Jeannie had shouted his name because she thought he could help us or because he was involved, but I assumed the worst.
Richard should have been there waiting for me, but his car was no where in sight, so instead of parking, I slowed the junky El Camino and studied the home of a man I’d never met.
Judging by his house, Edward Kosh didn’t do half bad. His home was elevated on stilts, with the living space directly over a carport and outdoor shower stall. Beyond the house, waves lolled on a private beach and morning sun glinted off the sea. Like its neighbors, the home had been built facing the ocean. From my spot on the street, I was actually looking at its back. A couple of newspapers lay forgotten in the driveway and his carport was empty except for a few sea gulls scavenging near the trash cans. Apparently Kosh was already gone for the day, off earning his nice living.
I was partly tempted to climb the steps and peek through his windows, but doing it alone and unarmed with no real assurance the place was actually empty seemed foolish. So a block ahead, I parked and called Richard. When he didn’t answer at any of his numbers, I tried to convince myself that he was an ex-cop and could take care of himself. Still, I worried. It wasn’t like Richard to be late or unresponsive, and I doubted any amount of training or experience could adequately prepare a person for a situation like ours.
Unsure what to do without him, I used the waiting time as an opportunity to clean myself up. Otherwise, I knew my tussled hair and bloodstained clothes would eventually draw attention. At a nearby super center, I grabbed the first suitable items in my size with no regard for fashion—a pair of lemon yellow Capri pants, long enough to cover my wound, a peach camisole, and a pale green cardigan. I draped them over an arm and headed toward the pharmacy, thinking the whole time that the gash in my leg must be splitting even wider. On my way, I swiped a backpack off its display hook. Next I found the antibiotic ointment, gauze, and medical tape that I needed most, and finally enough basic toiletries to make myself passable.
After I paid, I used the restroom to clean and bandage my leg and change clothes. I washed my face, made it up, and pulled my hair into a tight bun, the only presentable hairstyle I could manage with a rubber band and a travel-size can of hairspray. When I left the restroom, I was a regular person again. At least, on the outside.
By 7:20, I was back in Kosh’s neighborhood, but there was still no word from Richard and no sign of him. One of Kosh’s neighbors, a prim woman in a sleek jogging suit, retrieved her empty garbage can from the curb. She followed me with her eyes as I passed.
Again, I parked a block away and tried calling all of Richard’s numbers. He didn’t answer anywhere and I was coming up on a decision point. The men who had Jeannie expected their money in less than an hour. I’d either have to explore the Edward Kosh angle by myself or return to the hotel to make the exchange for Jeannie. The choice should have been obvious, but I kept going back to our phone call.
Jeannie had wanted me to know something about Edward Kosh badly enough to take a beating for it. Whatever that was, it seemed I owed it to her to visit his house, to at least do
something
. I thought about his nosey neighbor and worried about being seen.
Then I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, thinking about that neighbor’s trash.
She’d been hauling in her garbage can, but I remembered the gulls in Kosh’s carport. He hadn’t set his own cans out. Then there were the newspapers in his drive—two of them. I grew hopeful. Certainly Kosh knew that Jeannie had leaked his name. Maybe that was the reason his house was empty.
Feeling better about the odds, I decided to give it a shot. I moved both cell phones, mine and Kurt’s, and all Trish’s cash into my roomy new backpack. A crumpled paper was wedged among the bills. I unfolded it and read what looked like somebody’s fast addition problem—a series of four numbers down the left side of the page and corresponding values down the right. Numbers in the first column looked like dates with no slashes to separate the day, month, and year. The second column had three numbers—89, 75, 84—summed at the bottom. The fourth spot was blank; someone had drawn a question mark there.
That’s what my whole week was beginning to feel like—a big question mark.
I shoved the paper into my bag and walked to the house, trying not to limp. At the top of the steps, on Kosh’s upstairs landing, I deliberately dropped my keys. As I bent to get them, I surveyed his street. No one was watching.
His front door had several panes of ornamental glass. If I could break one, I could reach inside and unlock the door. Nobody would see. The only view of the door was from the deserted beach behind me. I decided to use my sweater to help me shatter a piece of glass without cutting myself, the way I’d seen it done on TV.
Then I stopped. What if there were an alarm?
I cupped my hands over my eyes and pressed my forehead toward the glass. On the other side, about ten feet away, a questioning face looked back at me. A matronly Hispanic woman, holding a squirt bottle of Tilex, came forward and opened the door. She had what looked like a cleaning-products-holster around her broad hips.
I improvised. “May I see Mr. Kosh?”
“He’s not here, so sorry.” She began to pull the door closed.
I frowned. “That’s strange. We’re supposed to meet for breakfast.”
She shrugged. “Not home.”
“If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’ll wait out here. Hopefully he’ll be back soon.” I leaned against the porch’s wooden banister and turned toward the surf. The wind was picking up.
Behind me, she said, “You want to sit?”
I turned. When she nodded to a kitchen barstool, I smiled my thanks and followed her inside. She closed the door behind us, and I surveyed the front rooms. The living room, to the right, was bright with natural light and furnished with white leather and maple pieces. Enormous windows offered a spectacular view of the sea. The kitchen, where I sat, was small and tidy and smelled like citrus cleanser. The only items on the granite countertops, still damp from having been wiped, were a cutlery set and an espresso machine. Ahead, a hallway led to the part of the house that overlooked the street.
I turned around and looked at the door. No alarm system keypad.
“The house looks great,” I said. “Mr. Kosh says nice things about you. Ana, right?”
“Teresa.”
“Of course, I’m sorry.”
She nodded and disappeared into a bathroom down the hall. I heard the shower curtain being pulled back and water running in the tub. It gave me an idea.
I wandered toward the bathroom and found her bent over the tub, the fabric of her slacks stretched tightly around her extended rear end.
“Is there another restroom I could use?”
She pointed to the right without looking up from her scrubbing.
“Thanks,” I said, turning toward Kosh’s master bedroom. I stepped inside and made a hasty search. The hanging space in the closet was filled with expensive women’s clothes. A small portion of one rack had men’s suits.
Nothing was under the elaborate king-size sleigh bed, but a jewelry box on the dresser protected an impressive collection of gemstone earrings and pendants. I ran a tentative finger over what must have been thousands of dollars in necklaces, bracelets, and rings. I ducked inside the master bath and flushed the toilet.
On the way back to my designated kitchen stool, I paused. “How long to clean a house this size, Teresa?”
Kosh’s home office was straight ahead.
“This house, two hours.” She grunted as she stood. “Other houses…not so neat.”
Kosh had two computers, a desktop and a laptop, side by side on his desk. I looked from one to the other and wondered which would boot up faster.
“Place looks perfect,” I said. “You must have been here two hours already.”
She raised the toilet seat and squirted cleanser under the rim. “Almost done. Finish here, sweep floors. Then, next house.”
I returned to the kitchen. When a vacuum cleaner started in the master bedroom, I unlocked a living room window. I wanted to come back when Teresa was gone and search Kosh’s computers.
I could only hope that the fact I’d seen no sign of an alarm meant there wasn’t one installed.
You’re an idiot, Emily. Let’s just hope you’re a lucky one.