Grass Roots (49 page)

Will couldn’t believe it. Quickly, he ran through the procedure for a restart, while pulling the nose of the aircraft up to establish its best glide speed of eighty knots.

The engine did not restart.

“Will, what’s wrong?” Kitty asked, panic in her voice.

Tom woke up.

“What’s going on?”

“Engine failure,” Will said, trying to keep his voice calm.

“Both of you tighten your seat belts and be quiet.

I’ll talk to you when I have time. Right now, I’ve got to find a place to set this thing down.”

Will fought his memory for what to do next. Fly the airplane; airspeed eighty knots. He looked at the altimeter: 2,700 feet MSL, 1,700 feet above the ground. The airplane had a glide range of about two miles for every thousand feet of altitude; that meant he could fly for only three miles or so before he met the earth. He glanced at the distance-measuring equipment: five and a half miles to the airport. He tried to remember where the wind was:

from the northwest at four knots. His direction was good to get the best out of the wind, but there wasn’t much of it. He began looking desperately at the ground.

The airplane was descending at a rate of five hundred feet per minute over a densely packed suburban neighborhood of houses, shopping strips, and office parks. To make matters worse, the area was, like most of Greater Atlanta, thickly forested. He saw the northeast expressway pass under him; rush-hour traffic was heavy—no landing on the highway.

The meridian, he thought, but then they were already past it, and there were too many bridges across it anyway. He continued straight ahead, in the direction of the airport.

His mind, past the first panic, began to work better. He pressed the push-to-talk button on the yoke.

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” he said, “Cessna One Two Three Tango has engine failure four and a half miles southeast of Peach tree Airport.

Restart has failed; I’m going in.”

“Roger, One Two Three Tango,” the tower replied.

“I have you in sight; I’ll follow your progress and alert emergency services.”

“Can you suggest a landing place?” Will asked.

“Negative,” the controller replied.

“You are over a heavily populated area; you’ll just have to do the best you can. Watch out for WSB radio tower, eleven o’clock and two miles.”

Will found the flashing lights of the tower. He saw a high school football field, but rejected it; it was only a little over three hundred feet long, and there was what appeared to be a marching band practicing on it. He needed a thousand feet of space to land—seven hundred and fifty was the absolute minimum. He kept looking. He was down to seven hundred feet. He had to commit.

To his right, he saw a long, low building with a white roof, and immediately next to it, a large parking lot. The parking lot was his only chance; he turned toward it and began to think about when to put the landing gear down and whether to use flaps. He judged himself a little high and fast for the approach, but if he put the gear down, that would alter his glide path radically. Instead, he put in ten degrees of flaps. Immediately, the airplane began to rise and slow, and he adjusted trim to compensate. The lot was getting closer now, and he would clear the tall pine trees at its edge, he felt sure. Then he could see the lot better, and his heart sank. It was rapidly filling with cars, streaming in from the street, going in unpredictable directions.

There were people walking from their cars to work in the building. He could not land there without killing himself and his passengers and people on the ground, too. With no engine, they would never hear him coming.

Suddenly, he realized the roof of the building was flat.

How long was it? No time to figure it out. He turned left twenty degrees and pointed at the building. It was his only hope. He pulled the mixture knob all the way out, and switched off the ignition and the master switch. He didn’t want the engine coming to life while he was landing.

He was no more than two hundred yards out and a hundred feet high when he lowered the gear and flicked in a full forty degrees of flaps. The nose came up a bit, and his airspeed dropped under sixty knots, too slow. He pushed the nose down, picked up five knots and aimed at a point ten yards before the edge of the roof, knowing from experience that the high-winged aircraft had a tendency to float.

“Brace yourselves!” he said to Tom and Kitty.

For a moment he seemed to be below the edge of the roof. Realizing his error, he yanked back on the yoke and the airplane came up a few feet, then settled quickly. Then there was a thump, and the nose dropped, and the airplane was on the roof. Gravel from the roof spewed up from the wheels and drummed against the bottom of the fuselage, and the opposite end of the long roof seemed to race toward the airplane. Will reached over and nipped up the flap switch.

The airplane sank more and slowed. Will hit the brakes as hard as he could.

The Cessna came to a halt. Will put his face in his hands and breathed as deeply as he could; he was shaking violently, and he felt as if he might throw up. With a trembling hand, he undid his seat belt, opened the door, and got out of the airplane; he took a few steps, then sank into a sitting position. The gravel under him was six or eight inches deep; that was what had stopped them so quickly. He looked at the airplane; the wheels were sunk in the gravel almost to the hubs.

“Is everybody okay in there?” he shouted weakly.

“I think so,” Tom said.

“Kitty looks all right, but she won’t say anything.”

“Go to hell, both of you!” Kitty suddenly shouted, then she hopped out of the airplane on Will’s side.

“Are you crazy?” she demanded.

“Why did you do that?”

Will didn’t feel that he could stand up yet.

“Kitty, I didn’t do it on purpose. The engine failed.”

“Oh,” she said. She was breathing rapidly.

Tom got out of the airplane and joined them.

“What a hell of a way to wake up in the morning!”

From a distance, ambulances and police cars could be heard approaching.

Then a panel in the building’s roof opened and a man stuck his head up.

“Jesus Christ!” he blurted.

“Are you people okay? Do you need any help?”

Will looked at his wristwatch: eight-twenty.

“Do you think you could call us a taxi?” he asked.

“We have to be in Lawrenceville by nine o’clock.”

” bane was back at the apartment complex in Marietta at eight sharp, determined to wait out his -man, no matter how long it took. The Toyota was not in its usual place; Suzy’s Beretta was.

Shit, Keane thought. The guy wasn’t even back yet. He settled in for the wait. Suzy usually left for work at eight-thirty sharp, but at eight-fifty, she had not appeared. Just after nine o’clock, a van appeared bearing the name of the complex, and the driver, carrying a toolbox, went to the front door of the apartment and rang. When no one appeared, he rang again, then opened the door with his passkey, closing it behind him. Less than a minute later, he burst out of the apartment and headed for the main gate at a dead run, ignoring his van.

Keane, alarmed, got out of his car and, using a single crutch, hobbled toward the apartment. The door was still open, and he walked straight in. The living room was very neat; so was the kitchen. He started toward the bedroom, then stopped at the bathroom door. Suzy Adams’s brains were spread all over a mirror that had many cracks radiating from a single bullet hole. Suzy was on the floor, face up—what little was left of her face.

Keane looked at his watch. He had, maybe, two minutes before the cops arrived. He went to the bedroom and began methodically searching it.

One of the two closets was empty, also one of the two chests of drawers. He went over the room as well as he could without disturbing anything, then did the same to the living room.

“Freeze!” somebody shouted, and Keane looked into the barrel of a uniformed policeman’s pistol.

“I’ve got ID, okay?” Keane said, moving his hand slowly to his pocket.

The patrolman relaxed a little at the sight of the badge, then he was brushed aside by a detective.

“Who the hell are you?” the detective demanded of Keane.

Keane showed his ID and explained what he was doing there.

“The guard at the gate can confirm my story,” he said.

“This guy, Ross, must have shot her last night. Either that, or he came back late and left early. My guess is last night.”

“Okay, thanks for your theory,” the detective said, making a note of Keane’s address and phone number.

“Now get off my crime scene.”

Mickey left, and as he was about to get into his car, a brown sedan pulled up behind him. He recognized the FBI agent who had visited him in the hospital.

“I should have known you’d be here,” the agent said.

“Yeah? Well, you can chalk up another killing for the FBI—a nurse called Suzy Adams. How many more you going to let him knock off before you pull him?”

The agent reddened.

“Adams was ours; we’ve had her on a string for a year. I swear to God we didn’t know she had helped Ferkerson set you up until after it was over.

She didn’t know herself exactly what was going on until he told her, later.”

“If you say so,” Keane replied. He believed the agent really felt bad about it.

“She went a long way toward breaking this thing,” the agent said.

“Breaking what thing?” Keane asked.

“You’ll hear about it soon enough. We’re just tracking down loose ends now.”

“Well,” Keane said, “go take a look in the bathroom of that apartment; one of your loose ends is lying in there with no face. Now move the fucking car so I can get out of here.”

The agent looked at him for a moment without saying anything.

“Hang on a minute.” He rummaged on the front seat of the car and came up with a photograph.

“This was taken last week. It may be too little, too late, but maybe it’ll help. I owe you one, I guess.”

Keane looked at the photograph; Ferkerson was wearing his usual dark glasses, but finally Keane had a face to look for.

“I know it’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment.

We lost him last night, and the Cobb County Sheriff’s Department found the Toyota in the Chattahoochee River this morning. I don’t believe for a minute Ferkerson was in it.”

“Neither do I,” Keane said.

“Thanks for the picture, anyway.”

“You didn’t get it from me,” the agent said, then drove away.

Keane sat in his car and memorized the photograph.

What would Ferkerson look like without the mustache and dark glasses?

Now he had a complete picture of the man in his mind—size, gait, the way he held himself, a face.

What should be his next move?

A moment’s reflection told him what he had to do if he was to live with himself.

Keane found a pay phone and called Dave Haynes at Atlanta PD Homicide.

“Dave? I’ve got a new picture of my man.”

“Yeah? How’d you get that?”

“Never mind, but it’s the real thing. He’s had his face rearranged. I want an APB on him right now.”

“Where are you?”

Keane told him.

“Then drive down here right away with your picture, and I’ll take it to the captain.”

“Will he do it?”

“I don’t know.”

three hours later, Keane sat in his old captain’s office.

“Where’d you get this, Mickey?” the captain said, looking at the photograph.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Well, I’ve no way of knowing if it’s the real thing, do I?” The captain seemed to be making an effort to look concerned.

“You’re not going to order the APB, then?” Keane asked.

“I don’t see how I can, under the circumstances.”

Keane struggled to his feet and got the crutch under his arm.

“In that case. Captain,” he said, “everybody in Atlanta’s going to be looking for Ferkerson except Atlanta PD.”

“What do you mean by that?” the captain asked, his features darkening.

“I mean that before I came here, I stopped at a photo shop and had a whole lot of copies made of that picture.

Then I delivered them to the newspapers, the TV stations, and the network news bureaus. So, you just turn on the six-o’clock news, and you’ll see a Mickey Keane APB in action.”

will got back to campaign headquarters at noon, after a mid-morning stop at a shopping mall.

There was a message from the Federal Aviation Administration waiting for him. Will dialed the number;

the man’s name was Barran.

“This is Will Lee, returning your call.”

“Glad to hear from you, Mr. Lee,” Barran said.

“I’m talking on a transportable phone from the site of your, er, incident this morning. You’ve got at least half a gallon of water in each fuel tank.”

“That’s impossible,” Will said. He explained how he had checked for water in the fuel that morning.

“I’m surprised you don’t know there’s an airworthiness directive out on the rubber fuel bladders in Cessnas. They tend to wrinkle when they’re old, and water collects in the wrinkles. I’m going to have to cite you for improper preflight procedure.”

“Hang on, Mr. Barran,” Will said.

“I’m perfectly aware of the wrinkling problem; that’s why I installed new bladders last year. They couldn’t possibly have wrinkled in this short a time.” He didn’t want to be cited this close to the election, and he wanted to know what was going on.

“I’ll send a mechanic out there right now to pull the wings off the airplane and get to the bladders. I think you ought to inspect them before you go citing me.”

“Fair enough,” Barran replied.

“You’ll have to take the wings off to transport the airplane to the airport, anyway.

And you might as well order a crane, while you’re at it. Check back with me this afternoon. I’ll be at this number.”

late in the afternoon, on the way to a campaign appearance, Will stopped by the building where he had landed.

There was a crane being set up, and he could see half a dozen people on the roof, milling around the airplane, which was now without wings.