But she merely smiled, then leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips. Friendship kiss.
Then, without another word, she slipped out of my car and went through the front door into her building.
***
I was heading up to Mt. Washington under a charcoal-black sky when my cell rang. It was nearly three. Wasn’t anyone asleep in this town?
It was Sam Weiss.
“Hey, Danny. Glad I got you. I’m just finishing up here at the Burgoyne.”
“You’re still at the hotel?”
“What can I say, I’m dedicated. I wrote up the story on my laptop here in the service kitchen and emailed it to my editor. No worries, the busboy proofed it. Only one thing missing.”
“What’s that?”
“An exclusive interview with the lunatic who tackled Sinclair’s shooter. You got a minute?”
“Forget it. I’m saving all my sound-bites for CNN. Besides, I have some questions for
you
. But not now. I gotta get some sleep.”
“What kinda questions?”
“About Sinclair being dirty. I need to know what you have on him. Or
think
you have.”
“Hell, I can do better than that. I’ll take you to the guy tomorrow. My source. Says he has proof.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“Yeah. Truth is, I could use your take on him. He’s kinda squirrelly. But I think he’s credible. Meet me at noon sharp, okay?”
I was surprised when he told me where.
We were in a single-engine Cessna, climbing through twenty-five hundred feet, heading east toward Harrisburg. The engine’s roar was more like a rattling whine, high and insistent. The passenger seat vibrated beneath me.
Sitting next to me in the pilot’s seat, so close that our shoulders touched, Sam Weiss was busily punching buttons in the on-board GPS. Humming out of key. We each wore headsets with boom mikes, which beat hell out of shouting to hear each other over the engine noise.
“You sure you’ve done this before?” I said.
“No, but I’ve read the manual. Twice.”
A licensed pilot, Sam had—as promised—met me at noon at the Gold Star Aviation Training facility, a complex of low-roofed buildings and private hangars a few miles south of Pittsburgh International Airport. Though I knew he often rented planes there, either for business or to take his family on vacation, I’d never flown with him before.
The compact green-and-white two-seater he walked us to on an asphalt apron near the tarmac was easily the smallest airplane I’d ever seen.
“Only thing available on such short notice,” he’d explained, as he climbed up on the near wing and then wriggled through the one narrow door. He strapped himself in and patted the leather seat next to him. “You comin’ or what? It’s real comfy.”
I laughed and clambered up after him. Strapped in, put on the headset he offered me, sat back and waited. In less than five minutes he was barking flight info into his mike, exchanging weather and wind conditions with the tower, and revving the engine. Five minutes after that, we taxied out onto the slender ribbon of runway and lifted smoothly into the air. And another blistering mid-summer day.
With the exception of a few interesting pockets of turbulence, it had been a pretty smooth flight. So far.
Below and beyond us, a rolling patchwork of sun-blanched greens and yellows spread under a slight haze to the distant horizon. We’d left Allegheny County some twenty minutes ago, and were flying through a heat-scorched sky over rural Pennsylvania. Small towns and old farms. Brown pastures and abandoned factories. The spreading tendrils of Interstate 76 reaching delicately into furrowed valleys, sparsely-populated residential communities. River and lakeside expanses of forested tuffs and strip-mined hills.
Sam’s voice crackled in my earphones. “We’ll touch down at Harrisburg in less than an hour. I already rented a car.”
“Where are we going?”
“Small backwoods town called Harville, thirty miles west of Harrisburg. Wants to be a dot on the map when it grows up. Nothin’ but dirt, trees, and dying farms.”
He turned the wheel and we dipped our left wing. I held fast to the handle grip above the door as an updraft lifted us. The whole plane shuddered.
“And your guy wants to do this in person?”
“Only way he’ll talk. He also said it was now or never. Like I told you, he sounded funny.”
As we banked, sunlight danced quickly across the windshield. Sudden, blinding. Then, as Sam righted us again, adjusting his course, the light shifted, fled. I heard the wind above the engine’s whine for a brief moment, before it too dopplered away. As though now in our wake.
“You get a real appreciation of the weather up here,” Sam was saying. “How things are always rockin’ and rollin’ at altitude, no matter what it feels like on the ground.”
“Yeah.” I swallowed hard. “Appreciation is exactly the word I was looking for.”
He ignored me, and pointed through his side window, down and to the left. Clusters of houses, grain silos and farms. Huddled together as though for mutual protection in a tractless expanse of forested land, forlorn gray hills.
“Harville’s down there,” Sam announced. “Somewhere.”
I peered down through my own window, as though if I looked hard enough I could distinguish one community from another, one farmhouse from another.
Finally, I sat back in my seat and closed my eyes. Settled in for the brief remaining flight time. And went over in my mind all that I’d learned since waking up that morning, six hours before.
***
After a short, restless couple hours of sleep, I was groggy and listless when I pulled myself out of bed. Two cups of coffee, a sluggish morning’s run up and down Grandview Avenue in the pale dawn sun, and a long, hot shower later, I felt more or less ready to start the day.
At least I was together enough to remember about the joint police-FBI press conference scheduled for seven
AM
. No need. Sprawled on the sofa in shorts and a Pitt t-shirt, freshly-brewed third cup of coffee in hand, I clicked on WTAE-TV just in time to hear that it had been canceled.
According to a statement released by the authorities, the “sensitive nature” of the investigation into the attempt on Leland Sinclair’s life made a press conference at this early juncture inadvisable. The reporter on-scene at the Federal Building promised viewers that WTAE would keep tracking the story, and would share any breaking news as soon as it happened.
I sat forward, balanced my coffee mug on my knee. Sinclair had indeed managed to keep the task force’s investigation off the media grid, at least for the time being. Not that his concerns were unjustified. For a political candidate in a tight race, such an investigation would be a distraction he couldn’t afford. If nothing else, it would veer Sinclair’s candidacy off-message. And would have voters thinking about the upcoming debate with Garrity for all the wrong reasons.
On the other hand, I thought, it might actually boost viewership for the event. Nothing like the possibility of sudden, unexpected violence to pique interest. Hell, it seems to work for hockey and Nascar.
I was about to click off the TV when another report followed, from a different reporter, standing in a different corridor in the Federal Building. Apparently, FBI Special Agent Neal Alcott had called an impromptu press conference of his own, to provide an update on the hunt for the two bank robbers.
The reporter then cut to a video obviously shot just minutes before. Which gave me my first look at Neal Alcott, a tall, fairly young man. Broad-shouldered in his tailored suit. Close-cropped blond hair. Voice clear and assured. Unlike many law enforcement types, he was practiced and relaxed before the array of cameras and mikes.
Though it was hardly a press conference. Reading from a prepared statement, Alcott merely announced that the manhunt for the two killers had gone nationwide. Moreover, though he didn’t want to get into specifics, the Bureau felt confident that they’d identified the second gunman, Wheeler Roarke’s partner in the crime.
This brought a swell of questions from the reporters on-scene, which Alcott answered only with a guarded smile and an upraised palm. Then he folded his prepared statement into two perfect halves and walked briskly out of view.
No question, the guy was good. And, I suspected, unlikely to stay local for very long. Neal Alcott would probably end up in Quantico sooner rather than later.
I threw back the rest of my coffee and rinsed the mug in the sink. I figured I’d pretty much exhausted whatever benefits caffeine was going to provide. I’d had too little sleep. My head still ached from where Roarke slugged me. And my tussle with Jimmy Gordon, though brief, had left me with sore muscles and a painful bruise in my left side.
All of which reminded me that I was no longer a young amateur boxer, but a forty-year-old with a sedentary day job and piss-poor impulse control. Or an ill-advised hero complex. Or
something
.
I smiled to myself. Good issue to take up with my own therapist. If I ever got the time to make an appointment. Which was something
else
to take up with him…
Before dressing and heading out, I checked my voice mail for messages. Again, thankfully, nothing urgent.
Then, just as I was collecting my wallet and car keys, my cell rang. Eleanor Lowrey.
“Are you still at the precinct?” I settled into one of my hard-backed kitchen chairs.
“No, at the police gym.” She sounded winded, but energized. I knew the feeling. “We worked through the night, but I was too wired to go home. So I’ve been lifting weights. Plus some cardio. To clear my head.”
“Good idea.”
“Hey, we oughtta work out together sometime, Danny.
If
you can keep up.”
“I’ll be sure to eat my Wheaties that morning.”
“Better make it two bowls.” Voice light, playful. Fueled by the surge of endorphins, the mood-elevating neurochemical bonus from a solid workout.
I also heard other voices in the background. Plus the clank of weights, the rolling rumble of a treadmill.
“Let me move to where it’s more private,” she said quickly. I waited a full minute. The next time she spoke, what few sounds I heard over the phone were muffled. Some distance away.
“This’ll have to do.” Her breathing more regular, measured. “A stall in the women’s locker room.”
“Is this about Harry? Was he at work when you got there last night?”
“Yeah, thank God. Still, as I guessed, Biegler really chewed him out. Threatened to put him on a desk and ask for an official review.”
“What happened?”
“Harry
apologized
, if you can believe it. He told the lieutenant he had some personal issues which had interfered with the job, but that they were all cleared up now.”
“Did Biegler believe him?”
“Looked like it. And hell, he knows he can’t afford to bench a guy with Harry’s experience right now. Not with everything that’s going on.”
“That’s for damn sure.”
“But that’s not the big news. We have a possible ID on the second bank robber.”
“So I heard. Alcott was on the news, talking about it. But with no details.”
“I’m not surprised. No reason to spook the guy.”
“So who is he?”
“A known associate of Roarke’s. Name is Ronny Baxter. Apparently they worked at Blackwater together. Baxter’s ex-Army. Got bounced from Blackwater soon after Roarke. He’s built up a sweet criminal record since leaving Iraq. All ground level stuff. Assault, B and E.”
“FBI have any idea where he is?”
“Not yet. They hit his last known address a couple hours ago, but he’d cleared out. An apartment in Dayton, Ohio. So the Bureau’s going nationwide with the search. Like with Roarke.”
“Well, at least that’s something. Progress.”
“Tell me. About time we caught a break, too.”
I heard another rush of new voices, much closer. Doors banging open. Laughter.
“Gotta go,” Eleanor said. “Some sisters in blue are crashing the party. I better grab a shower before they use up all the soap and hot water. And you’re welcome.”
“For what?”
“For that image. Have a nice day, Doctor.”
We were about twenty minutes out of Harrisburg, cruising through a cloudless sky. Sam had just finished radioing his position to the airport tower, receiving instructions back as to available runways. Earlier, he’d explained that, for safety and security reasons, private and corporate planes were routed to a special landing area far to the west of the big carriers.
“Gets us in and out faster, too.” Sam scanned the horizon, aviator shades hanging by a cord around his neck. “Which is good, because I want to get back by seven, if possible. Sinclair’s scheduled a press conference to address concerns about the attempt on his life.”
I had to smile. “He got the cops and feds to cancel theirs, only to have one of his own. Probably figures he can control the message a lot better that way.”