Custody of the State (34 page)

“That's good to know,” Will said. “What's the second thing?”

“Flying over open water, out over the ocean—it's no joke. Things whip up fast, weatherwise. So it could get rough, that's all. You can expect a fair amount of, well—”

“‘Bouncy-bouncy'?” Will asked with a grin.

“You're catching on,” Tex said. “About that bandage on your nose—I don't think it will last the trip. Things might get a little sore. There's a whole lot of wind coming at you—you'll think you've gotten the world's toughest facial…”

Then the pilot explained a few final details. He showed Will how to use the headset and mike to communicate with him in the front cockpit. He then gave him a set of earplugs.

“This Pratt & Whitney really screams,” Tex said. “Feel free to use these plugs. If I need to talk to you on the headset I will give you this signal,” and Tex pointed to his right ear.

“What happens if you've got the earplugs in and I want to talk to you?”

“I don't use them.”

“Why not?”

“If the engine stalls, or changes pitch, or starts coughing a little—I want to hear it.”

“Yeah—exactly,” Will responded. “You listen for that stuff!”

Tex smiled and climbed into the plane. He punched the starter button, and a magnificent, bone-shaking roar came from the engine as the prop came up to speed in front of them.

As Tex throttled the plane down the little runway, and the tail began to come up, Will felt a mounting sense of excitement.

The Stearman lifted up into the sky, and Will could see, off in the distance, his houseboat and the water of Eden Lake glittering in the sunlight. Even farther off, there were the church steeples of Delphi and the top of the courthouse. They reminded Will a little of home—of the old buildings and church steeples of Monroeville, Virginia.

Suddenly, he was slightly homesick but also exhilarated. After all, he thought, this little adventure just might turn Mary Sue Fellows' case around and help cure her little boy.

Will felt good as they kept climbing higher—until he looked down at the decal on the panel in front of him.

It read,

GET IN

BUCKLE UP

HANG ON FOR DEAR LIFE

48

I
S THERE ANYTHING ELSE
? You've confessed your sins—are there any more matters on your heart?” Father Godfrey asked.

Otis Tracher sat quietly in the confessional and thought.

“Not exactly a matter of sin, Father.”

“Then what is it? Is something troubling you?”

“Yes—it's not really a personal matter.”

“Something else?”

“It's more like a professional problem, but it is bothering me.”

“Would you like to talk about it?”

“I have an arrest warrant for a woman. I now have a pretty good idea where she is. I think if I act on this right away, I can apprehend her. But there is something about it…something that bothers me.”

“Something about her guilt or innocence?”

“Yes. That would be part of it, but something else…”

“And what is that exactly?”

There was another pause. Tracher shifted uncomfortably in the wooden chair. Suddenly, it was as if he was back in the principal's office at St. Stephen the Martyr Catholic School, having been taken there by his instructor, a young Father Godfrey.

“I'm troubled. My job is not to decide innocence or guilt. We leave that up to the lawyers and the courts and the juries. But I'm uneasy about this. It's as if all of my efforts—doing my job well, which I was taught was a good deed—all of this will be used to do an unnatural harm.”

“This woman—does she have…a lawyer who is protecting her interests?”

“Yes, she has an attorney.”

“Then if the system works—if she has a fair opportunity in court and the judge operates according to the law—you are without moral blame for your actions. You harbor no personal malice against this woman?”

“No. No—far from it.”

“Is this a matter you can discuss with the woman's attorney?”

“Absolutely not. That would be against policy.”

“I see,” Father Godfrey said. “Is this something you can discuss with your superiors—perhaps with the county prosecuting attorney? With the judge?”

“That is something for me to think about.”

After lunch the detective met with Harry Putnam. Putnam was conducting trial preparation—a brainstorming session with Liz Luden from Social Services and Harriet Bender, guardian ad litem for Joshua.

When Tracher arrived, they were already well into their meeting. Tracher sat quiet in the discussion until Putnam addressed him.

“Otis—you've been quiet. What do you have to add? We're talking about the order of witnesses here—what do you think?”

“I have a very definite lead on Mary Sue Fellows. South Dakota. Probably on an Indian reservation up there.”

Putnam was flabbergasted.

“That's incredible news. Let's snatch her—now. And let's get the little boy. I think that's great timing. I'm sure Chambers is now going to ask for an adjournment, but we're going to fight tooth and nail to avoid that.”

Liz Luden was next. “Joshua has got to be a priority in this. We've absolutely got to get physical control of him and get him into this jurisdiction.”

“Assuming he's still alive,” Harriet Bender said. “I'm betting there's more than half a chance that Mary Sue Fellows has got that kid buried somewhere in a shallow grave.”

Putnam turned quickly back to Tracher.

“Pronto, Otis. We need this done now. Get ahold of the South Dakota authorities and—”

The detective broke in. “I've been thinking…”

“That's a dangerous thing to do,” Putnam said with a chuckle.

“No, really, I was just wondering whether—with the trial date so close—we shouldn't plan our apprehension
after
the trial, rather than before.”

“Not smart. Not smart at all,” Putnam responded. “Bad idea.”

“That's just plain nuts,” Bender chimed in.

Tracher explained his thought. “And what if we get the mother—and the child. And the child is perfectly well. And what if you do some tests on him and you find out he hasn't been poisoned at all. And now you've got a mother in the lockup who's been on the run—and a child suspected of being poisoned who is perfectly fine. How is that going to look for Juda County?”

The three others grew thoughtful. Putnam finally broke the silence.

“That's just a chance we're going to have to take. I just want you to remember who's in control here. It's Harry Putnam—not Mary Sue Fellows or her attorney,” the prosecutor said.

The detective nodded, rose, and walked down the hall to his office. He called the local authorities in South Dakota, explained the situation, and told them he would be flying up in the airplane owned by the sheriff's department. No arrests were to be made, he emphasized, until he was there with them. He would leave in an hour.

Tracher hung up the phone. The uneasy feeling was still there, in the hollow of his gut.

That was the part that always gave him the biggest problem. To Otis Tracher, law enforcement had always been a business of concrete actions and easily perceived consequences. Suspects were either apprehended or they weren't. Crimes were either charged or they were not charged. Defendants were found either
guilty, or not guilty. But moral responsibility—that was a problem. To the detective, that issue seemed to be part of an abstract netherworld of maddening ambiguity.

When he arrested Mary Sue Fellows and pulled her little boy from her arms, he knew he would feel that restless gnawing in the hollow of his gut. And he also knew, just as surely, that he would probably choose to ignore it when he placed the handcuffs on her wrists.

49

S
O FAR, THE FLIGHT HAD BEEN
flawless.

As the late-morning sun climbed higher, the Stearman threw its speeding shadow down over little country roads, across the tops of barns, over the red dirt of plowed fields.

Occasionally, Will could see children running along, looking up, and waving.

Tex was taking a logical and careful route—around Augusta, Georgia, and toward the delta plains of the coast.

He slowly turned them east-southeast toward Savannah.

Eventually they took a wide sweep around Savannah and used the eastern seaboard as their bearing toward Jacksonville, Florida.

Will found the ride a refreshing change, though monotonous after a while. From time to time he would glance down at the metal case between his feet.

Continuing south, they flew over the boundaries of the great green cypress-and-water expanses of the Okefenokee Swamp.

As they swung clear of Jacksonville, Tex motioned for Will to take his earplugs out.

“What is it?” Will asked.

“Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“The engine just stalled—for about two seconds.”

“What are you going to do?”

“There's a little airstrip between here and Gainesville,” Tex said. “I'm going to put down there and make sure there's no
problem. I can also double-check our fuel supply before we head out over water.”

Tex seemed unconcerned. But Will was still glad he was going to check out the engine before they left the coast behind.

Although the sky was blue, with billowing white clouds, they started experiencing some turbulence as they neared the little airport. The plane pitched and rolled slightly, then hit a few unexpected jolts that shook Will down to the spine.

Then the airstrip came into view. Tex glided them down effortlessly onto a short blacktop runway with a single, small building for a control tower.

When the plane came to a stop, the pilot hopped out and said he was going to check in at the tower.

Within a few minutes he was back. He mounted a portable stepladder, cranked open the hood, and started looking over the engine. Will said he was going to stretch his legs, and he headed into the only building on the airstrip.

There was an ancient-looking soda machine—Will actually retrieved a drink from it in a bottle, not a can. He gulped it down, then went into the men's room to throw some water on his face.

When he got out, the air controller handed him a two-page fax with some kind of weather configuration on it.

“Give this to your pilot,” he said with a drawl.

As Will walked out to the tarmac, Tex was revving up the engine. He turned slightly, talking more to himself than to his passenger.

“Well, I did a mag check—carb heat was off…maybe I had some plugs flaring out for a few seconds…I'm not positive. But I'm sure not seeing anything combustion-wise…”

Will waited for his diagnosis.

“Well,” Tex said slowly, “I think we're fit for sea duty—let's put it that way.”

“The guy in the tower gave me this—he said you should take a look at it.” Will handed him the fax.

Tex straightened up stiffly and read it. His face was expressionless.

“We got some thunderheads massing, a little off to the west,” he said. “It looks like we can stay ahead of them if we keep our airspeed up. The tops of those clouds are pretty high—there's going to be a big blow, alright. But I think we can miss it if we get out of Dodge right now—and I can keep our speed up to par. It's really up to you—it's your nickel, and your deadline.” He looked at his passenger.

“What do you think?” Will asked him.

“I just told you the odds,” the pilot said. “We can probably miss that storm as long as I can maintain maximum airspeed. But we've got to go now—right now, partner. I mean you've got to decide
right now
.”

“What happens if we wait out the storm?”

“Who knows. Maybe that storm will be out over the ocean and gone in half a day—or a day—who knows…and maybe it will stall out…and you and I will be sitting here in this little garden spot of the universe for a day or two waiting for an opening in the sky. There are no guarantees.”

“I don't have that kind of time—neither does my client—and neither does her little boy.”

Tex walked close up to Will and stopped.

“Counselor, it sounds like you've just made up your mind. Let's crank 'er up.”

Both of them climbed in quickly and buckled up.

Tex taxied them rapidly down the airstrip—but unlike in the first takeoff, he was now accelerating much faster. The plane nosed down momentarily and pitched a bit as they rolled and then straightened up against the mounting crosswind.