Authors: John J. Nance
He was, he realized, sick to death of the words "alleged," "purported,''
and "unconfirmed." It was time to verify for himself whether the pictures on the computer belonging to United States Attorney Rudolph Bostich were, in fact, child pornography.
"I'm going to be off for a while," he told Atlanta. "I'll leave the line open and the receiver here in the seat, but I need to try to get to the cockpit."
He found Annette, relieved that she responded immediately with a nod.
"I heard Agent Bronsky make the offer," she said as she escorted him forward and spoke to Ken on the interphone, motioning him in when the door popped open.
Chris Billings came through cautiously, his hand outstretched to Kat Bronsky, who shook it as Ken looked around and spoke.
"Hello, Mr. Billings."
"Captain. Thank you for letting me come up. Agent Bronsky had told me--"
"I already know, Mr. Billings. I'm happy to have you see what kind of slimy individual Bostich really is. I hope you've been able to broadcast what's going on."
He nodded. "I'll be honest with you, Captain. I've tried to be very balanced, but I'm not sure you'd approve of what I've been saying."
Ken looked at him and smiled slightly before diverting his eyes forward.
"I don't really care what you say about me, Mr. Billings. I very much care what you say about Rudy Bostich, the idiot judge in Connecticut, and about Bradley Lumin, who murdered my daughter."
"You wanted to see these pictures?" Kat interjected before Billings could say more.
He nodded, and she adjusted the computer on her lap and entered a series of keystrokes that brought a list of files to the screen.
"This is the package of smut he apparently purchased and downloaded.
Let me open several of them for you." She looked over her shoulder first at Billings. "You have children, Mr. Billings?"
He shook his head no.
"A younger sister you care about, perhaps?"
"Actually, three older sisters I care about very much, and two little nieces."
She nodded, her expression serious. "Then these will be doubly disturbing."
He leaned over to get a close view of the screen, supporting his weight on the center console. The first picture drew a gasp, the second a more subdued reaction, and the third an affirmative "That's enough."
"No, there's one more you need to see," Kat told him, triggering the picture of Melinda Wolfe, which Ken had specifically asked her to show.
The picture swam into view as Kat explained its significance, and Chris Billings swallowed hard and looked away. "Oh, my God!"
Kat closed the file and turned the computer over. "You see Mr. Bostich's card here?"
He looked back around, studied it, and nodded, then looked her in the eye. "Will you be filing charges?"
"I can't guarantee that, since I'm not the prosecutor, but I guarantee the investigation will be unstoppable." She searched his eyes for a few seconds. "And what about your reports? Does this change things for you as a reporter?"
He nodded. "Being an eyewitness to something always changes a journalist's reports. But it also.., changes the journalist. And I have to fight that."
"You know that Lumin, the suspect, has been arrested, don't you?" Kat asked.
"Yes. They relayed that to me from Atlanta," Chris Billings said with a small laugh. "The police in Colorado apparently arrested him on an outstanding traffic warrant from Connecticut."
Kat saw Ken Wolfe's head snap around, his eyes probing Billings's.
"On a traffic warrant?"
The newsman was nodding, but looking slightly alarmed. "That's.. that's what we have so far."
Ken slammed his fist into the padded edge of the glareshield, his teeth gritted. "Jesus Christ! JESUS?
"What, Ken?" Kat asked, her heart rate accelerating.
Ken gathered up the flight plan from the center console and threw it toward the glareshield.
"DAMN, DAMN, DAMN, DAMN DAMN! They lied to me! I let myself expect some honesty, and they lied to me!"
"Ken, they arrested him. Why does it matter how?"
Chris Billings had backed toward the closed cockpit door as Ken grabbed and threw several aeronautical maps, growling and cursing.
"Ken? Ken, please, tell me what's wrong with that?" Kat leaned over the center console and placed her hand on Ken's shoulder, relieved that he didn't resist.
Ken looked at her, his eyes narrowed with fury, his teeth clenched.
"Lumin murdered my daughter, but they can't arrest him on that.
That isn't enough. They have to use a goddamn traffic warrant to justify arresting the animal. That's INTOLERABLE?
"They probably couldn't get a murder warrant issued in time," Kat said, thoroughly alarmed.
"NO! They didn't want to comply with anything I've demanded, and this was a clever way to institutionally flip their finger at me once again.
GODDAMMIT!"
Chris Billings looked at Kat and back to Ken. "Ah, Captain, I'm sorry to have upset you--"
Ken whirled around to look at him, then pulled the revolver from his map case and pointed the barrel toward the overhead panel.
"They've never had any intention of listening to me!"
Kat shook his shoulder slightly.
"Ken, put the gun down. We're close to a breakthrough with what Roger Matson is working on, what I've discovered, what you've managed to highlight. Lumin's in jail. That's what counts. Don't panic because they used a meaningless warrant rather than the whole charge. The charges will be reinstituted as soon as possible."
"Yeah, when Bostich admits it."
"Or sooner. I think we ought to get that Connecticut judge on the line and--"
"Mr. Billings, please return to your seat," Ken said, running the captain's seat back on its rails and breaking Kat's hold on his shoulder as he punched open the cockpit door.
"Ah, sure, Captain. Thank you for talking to me."
Chris Billings beat a hasty retreat and closed the door behind him.
Kat barely noticed his leaving, watching in alarm as Ken Wolfe took the.44 Magnum from his map case and began climbing out of the seat.
"Ken! What are you doing?"
Wolfe kept going.
"Ken, I'm not a pilot, and we're in flight. You can't leave me up here alone. What are you doing?"
"It's on autopilot, Kat. And what am I doing? I'm going to give Mr. Bostich that precise choice we discussed. Sign a confession or die."
She reached out again and took his sleeve. "Ken. You're panicking and overreacting to this."
"Overreacting?" He scowled at her, but kept the same position, half in, half out of the seat. Kat took it as a hopeful sign.
"Ken, you're a consummate professional captain! You'd never leave your command chair unless there was another qualified pilot aboard!
Look at what you're trying to do!" She gestured to him, half in, half out. "What if something went wrong up here?"
"Something has gone wrong. They've lied to me!"
"Ken, listen to me! They didn't lie! I didn't lie. No one told you Lumin would be arrested on a murder warrant, they just said he'd be arrested.
That's the important point! You aren't a law enforcement officer. You don't know the hell we have to go through to get an arrest warrant.
We'll take the shortest distance between two points to get the job done anytime. Okay? It's not a message. It's not pointed."
"Don't you see the method, Kat? They're not going to comply with a single demand of mine! Remember the C-one-thirty?"
"Ken, listen to me clinically, if nothing else?
Slowly he sat back down. "What, Kat? More platitudes?"
"Focus, Ken! What do you want? What have you done all this for?
To get Lumin off the street and arrested. He has been! Who cares what for? He's off the streets. You wanted Bostich unmasked and confessing.
Well, he sure is unmasked, and I think we're pretty close to a confession.
You wanted a grand jury, and they're meeting, though not even the Attorney General can control what they decide. Ken, you're getting it all done! Don't blow it now, especially since one slip with that gun and we'll never know the full extent of what Bostich did."
The radio came to life with the voice of the Gulfstream's owner.
"Kat, are you there?"
She glanced at the radio head in the console, then back to Ken.
"Don't forget your goal, Ken. It wasn't to dictate how Bradley Lumin was captured and prosecuted, it was just to get him collared and thrown behind bars. Okay? He's there?
"Kat, can you hear me?" Bill North asked.
Ken looked in her eyes, and she tried to smile through the roiling upset inside her and the self-recrimination that she had forgotten how unstable he really was.
Finally he looked down and nodded, as Bill North called her a third time.
"Better answer him," Ken said.
She nodded and turned to punch the button.
"I'm here, Bill."
"Had me worried, Kat. Detective Matson is on the line. Can I relay for you?"
Her eyes remained on Ken as he sat almost sideways, looking at the center console without seeing it, the.44 held loosely in his right hand.
"Kat?" Bill asked again.
Kat's concentration was on the captain. "Ken? You okay?"
He nodded again and inclined his head toward the glareshield. "I guess I forgot you're not a pilot. You're so competent at everything else, Kat.
And I was--" His voice caught, and a tear rolled into view on his cheek as he took a breath and looked up. "I used to look at Melinda, after I lost her mother, and I'd have this image..."
Bill North's voice reached their ears again. "Kat, please respond."
She punched the button without taking her eyes off Ken. "Stand by, Bill.
Tell him to stand by."
She nodded at Ken. "I understand."
"I had this ideal of what she'd be like as a young woman, you know?
Strong, self-assured, beautiful, feminine, and terribly capable."
"I'm sure she would have been, Ken."
He was shaking his head. "No, that wasn't the point. The point was the image. I just realized why you seem so familiar, Kat." He looked up at her, his eyes filled with tears. "You remind me of the Melinda I'll never know."
He turned back toward the yoke and ran his seat forward, carefully replacing the revolver in the map case to his side as Kat fought off a wave of emotion and forced herself to punch the transmit button.
"Go... ah... go ahead now, Bill. Put him on."
"Stand by."
She turned to Ken. "I'm very honored you would say that to me, Ken."
He shook his head and waved her off gently.
"Kat? Roger Matson, over."
"Go ahead, Roger. Any progress?"
We're supposed to have fingerprint results momentarily, but I don't have them yet."
"Okay, Roger. I made the call about the warrants for Bostich's home and office, and supposedly they're in progress. I have not talked to him again since I last talked to you."
Something was scratching at the back of her mind again, a small incongruity, something Roger had said or mentioned before that she hadn't had time to think about because of other distractions. Something that didn't fit. But what was it?
"What's your status up there, Kat?"
"Stand by a second," she said, closing her eyes to capture the gossamer thought.
Her eyes came open suddenly as her finger pressed the button.
"Roger, something's bothering me. Earlier you said something in reference to that picture of Melinda Wolfe we found on both Bostich's computer and Lumin's, the one Lumin took. You said something about trees in the window."
"That's right. I was just referring to the details in the picture."
She shook her head slightly. It still wasn't connecting. "No, I mean, was that a reference to details that I might have added as red herrings?"
Detective Roger Matson's reply carried an equally puzzled tone.
"They wouldn't be very good as red herrings when they're clearly visible. I would think Bostich would remember them."
"Visible where, Roger? I'm confused."
"In the picture. The window in the upper right hand corner with the evergreen trees visible through it. That's why we think she was taken to some cabin in Maine, because of an analysis of the trees, though it's not conclusive."
Kat cocked her head. "Roger, I don't remember..." Kat released the button for a second and looked down at Bostich's computer. "Wait just a second. Stand by."
She flipped open the lid and punched a key to turn on the display.
A few key strokes were needed to call up Melinda's picture again, and within thirty seconds it had reassembled itself on the liquid crystal color display, the haunting, tortured image boring into her soul once more, the wicker chair, the bare walls behind, AND NO TREES!