Final Approach (3 page)

When I finally got back to the hotel, sweaty and spent, my GPS watch reported a distance of 4.2 miles. That warranted overpriced cookies from the mini-bar. I headed upstairs to claim my reward.

Chapter Five

Tuesday morning, the only indication I was in the right place was a faded wooden sign nailed to a post that said “Gulf Coast Skydiving. Howdy, Y’all!”

With an impressive lack of verbiage, Richard had pushed a Houston area map and a set of car keys across the breakfast table at my hotel. The car was his teenaged son’s. It was my loaner. The map led to the drop zone, about seventy miles south of Houston, six miles from the Gulf of Mexico.

I eased onto the dirt road and watched a plume of dust rise behind me in the rearview mirror. Ahead, down a half-mile stretch of pitted dirt road, a compound of small airport hangars was clustered in a field. I grew anxious thinking about what and who I would find.

Private planes were tied down between hangars, but the place looked otherwise deserted. I figured the owners of the little planes must be weekend hobbyists, busy today at work.

Then a Cessna came into view, making a final approach to a grass runway. It dropped out of sight behind hangars at the end of the drive. I checked the sky. Four parachutes swirled overhead.

The road dead-ended in a grass lot next to the largest hangar. Enormous sliding doors, large enough to pull a plane through, were wide open on both sides. I looked straight through the building to the landing field behind it, where orange windsocks flared sideways, then flopped beside their posts. The Cessna was taxiing back.

I parked next to a dusty Mustang with a license plate that said SKYD1VR and got out of the car.

It felt good to stretch. I pulled my gear bag from the backseat and was about to head for the hangar when I had a shameful thought. My chances of befriending jumpers, at least the men, might improve if I took off my wedding rings. I slipped them off and shoved them deep into the pocket of my jean shorts. The naked sensation on my finger felt dishonest, and I longed for Jack. I imagined he’d understand; maybe even scold me for not doing it sooner.

Inside the hangar I found an office, where a friendly looking hippie in his mid-forties was going over student rates with a caller on the phone. He wore a Dave Matthews Band concert shirt, cutoff jeans, and Teva sandals. A skinny ponytail snaked down his back. He winked at me and gestured he’d be a minute, then flipped through some paperwork stacked behind the counter.

I set my gear down and inspected pictures hanging on the office’s scuffed walls. One showed silhouettes of a beautiful round formation at sunset. I estimated it as a forty-way. Several photos captured the exaggerated smiles of tandem students in freefall, their instructors giving two thumbs up behind them. A collage showed various jumpers with pie smeared on their faces. I remembered my own hundredth jump from back in the Stone Ages, it seemed. My friends had gotten me with six key-limes, a vanilla crème, and a cheesecake. I smiled, remembering Jack. Later that night, when we’d gone to bed, he’d gotten me with a chocolate pie.

I scanned one photograph to the next. Who in those pictures knew something about Casey?

The man behind the desk hung up. “Thanks for waiting. What can I do ya for, hon’?” His smile was warm; it reminded me of my dad’s.

I explained I was new in town and needed a re-pack. Unlike the main canopy, which we pack ourselves, reserves have to be packed by a certified rigger every ninety days.

He shook my hand. “Rick Hanes. My wife and I own this shack. What brings you from out of town?”

“Work.” I’d hatched a cover story during my lonely night in the hotel and felt a little self-congratulatory because my burst of foresight was about to pay off.

He leaned on the countertop between us, resting on his elbows.

“What line of work?”

I’d once heard it’s best to stick with what you know. “Chemistry.”

An eerily silent tabby cat sprung onto the countertop to investigate me. I started petting it.

“That’s Otter,” Rick said. “Showed up one day and never left.” He stroked her under the chin, then turned toward the window. “Who you working for?”

Cat hair began to stick to the palm of my hand.

“NASA.”

It seemed easier to function inside a huge, open-ended lie than small, specific one, so I’d selected a fake employer accordingly. For good measure, I’d even Googled the surrounding area and decided on a pretend waterfront apartment on Clear Lake. “I found a cute little place in Kemah, not too far from some great seafood restaurants.”

“Excellent!” Rick said. “We have several space nuts here. I’ll introduce you.”

He tapped a stack of flyers on the counter and explained that a boogie—jumper lingo for a major skydiving event—was planned for the weekend. He was bringing in a couple hot air balloons and a Twin Otter from Tulsa for some special jumps.

In addition to regular weekenders, boogies often attract other regional jumpers. If a skydiver in southeast Texas was responsible for Casey’s kidnapping, I thought there was a good chance he’d be at the boogie.

“Let me introduce you to the gang,” Rick said, “Then we’ll take care of your rig and waiver.”

He held open the office door and followed me outside into the expansive hangar, where I met a love-struck young couple lounging on carpet remnants covering the cement floor. They could hardly look away from each other long enough to meet me.

Rick leaned close to me and whispered, “Hot pants,” as we walked outside.

I laughed, and it felt good. Good to laugh, and good to be at a drop zone, where a person can walk into a crowd of total strangers and almost any of them will make room for a newcomer on their dive.

Outside, in alarmingly quick succession, I met three women and four men. I realized immediately my problem linking names and faces would be a severe handicap in my new role as Richard’s operative.

Two names stuck.

The first was Marie, Rick’s wife. She dog-eared a page in a paperback when Rick brought me over. Petite and athletic, she was in her forties like Rick and had a gorgeous tan. She smiled from her perch on a picnic bench and extended a hand toward me.

In the first Texas accent I’d heard on the trip, she said, “Welcome. We need more girls around here.”

Another woman nodded in agreement but was unable to speak because her mouth was full of Fritos. She gave an embarrassed chew-smile and held out her bag to offer some chips, which I accepted. The third woman tossed a cigarette to the ground and smashed it under the toe of her Nike. Marie’s friends were younger than she, but all had bronzed skin, a definite perk to life in the south as far as I was concerned.

Standing next to them were four men, still in jumpsuits.

“I saw you guys when I was coming up the road,” I said.

Rick told me their names, but as soon as the final handshake was complete, the entire list was wiped from memory, save one.

“Scud” had a face that should be in magazines. He used his grip on my hand to pull me into a swift hug, as if he’d known me all his life. I’d met the resident flirt, and couldn’t help but ask about his name.

“It’s because of the way he flies that damn Batwing,” Marie snickered, referring to his high performance parachute, which handled like a sports car in the automotive world. She said “flies” like “flas.” “Crazy fool whizzes through here like a missile.”

“Don’t believe a word of it, sweetheart.” Scud lifted my hand and kissed it. Marie rolled her eyes.

The skydivers carried their gear into the hangar. I followed Marie’s gaze and watched Scud trudge away with a slight limp.

“When you gonna fix that knee, tough guy?” she called.

“No sense doing it before the boogie, woman.”

She shook her head and opened her book again. “Man’s got the sense of a tin can.”

I dropped some quarters into a vending machine beside the door and popped open an A&W, eavesdropping while the jumpers went over their dive. They spaced themselves throughout the hangar, laid out their lines across mismatched swatches of old carpeting, and started packing.

I noticed a guitar case in the corner and asked the closest jumper if it were his.

“Nope, that’s Vince’s. You play?”

I swallowed a sip of root beer. “A little.”

“Well, he sure can’t,” he said, and the others laughed. “Help yourself. He’s a good guy. No worries.”

I set down my can and unfastened the case’s latches. I was surprised to find a Martin inside.

“For somebody who can’t play, he sure has a Cadillac in here.”

“Whatcha gonna play, sweetheart?” Scud called from across the room, where he was folding the Batwing’s cells.

His flirting was relentless, but it went a long way toward breaking the ice and I needed the help. He was also nice to look at, so all the better. I decided I could keep up with him, even though I was years out of practice. There’s a certain level of courage gained by pretending to be someone you’re not.

“Whatcha wanna hear, sweetheart?” I lifted the guitar and took a seat in a nearby folding chair.

“‘American Pie’?” He laid belly-down on the floor and straddled his folded nylon parachute cells. He pressed as much air out of the fabric as he could and began to compress the canopy into an S-pattern.

I played, and Scud sang along badly. We finished while he muscled his canopy into its D-bag and stowed the lines. When the song ended, he shouted across the room, “When are we getting married?” I felt myself blush.

The woman with the Fritos said she was having a mellow day and asked for a ballad. I chose Marty Robbins’ “Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me” and sang that moody, soulful old song while I watched the group finish packing. It was hard to believe any of them could have something to do with Casey’s disappearance, but that was a hunch based on intuition alone. As far as facts went, I realized, the only thing I knew with moderate certainty was that nobody so far worked for NASA. I didn’t imagine Richard would find that very useful.

Part-way through the song, I glanced out the front doors of the hangar and watched a modern day cowboy approach from the parking area with a sack of fast food in hand. His plain white tee showed off a strong chest and well developed arms, and Jeannie would have said his jeans fit “mighty fine.” He walked into the hangar in a pair of dusty, brown boots. A black Stetson hid his eyes.

Jeannie would never believe my luck, meeting two men that good looking in the same day.

The song was over fast; the old ones always are. I kneeled to put the Martin back in its case, and when I stood again I was face to face with the sexy cowboy.

His eyes, still in the shadow of his hat, were cast to the floor. You don’t find too many shy people at drop zones.

He spoke with a light accent, softly enough not to be overheard. “Damn, girl,” he said. “You made your first million yet?”

I laughed. “Hardly, but thanks.” I offered my hand. “I’m Emily.”

When he took my hand, the contact was electric. I mean, it was literally electric—we both got shocked. I looked at the carpet beneath us and felt my smile get bigger. When I raised my eyes again, I got my first look at his smile and it was beautiful.

“You have an amazing voice, Emily, and a good way with a guitar too. Name’s Vince.”

I glanced at his guitar case. “Caught with my hand in the cookie jar.”

“My guitar never sounded so good. Was beginning to think something was wrong with it.”

I forced my eyes away from his chest, finding irony that such efforts usually go the other way around.

He started to speak again, but Rick brought someone over. It was Billy, the rigger, and I brightened at the prospect of being in the air again soon. I excused myself from Vince, and followed Billy to the office. When we passed through the door, I tried to sneak a final look over my shoulder, but I got caught. Vince tipped his cowboy hat at me and grinned, and then the door snapped closed between us, leaving his image sharply focused in my mind.

Chapter Six

Billy was in no hurry. I followed him into the rigger’s loft, a glorified walk-in closet that opened off the drop zone office. When I handed him my rig, he put it beside five others and sat down to enjoy a pinch of Skoal. “Sometime this afternoon,” is all he would promise. Even his voice was a slow drawl. His easy smile told me any attempt to hurry him would only make him take longer.

I felt stymied about what to do next. Without gear, I’d have to go back to the hotel or invent a reason to keep hanging around the drop zone. Going back to the hotel wouldn’t help find Casey, but making up an excuse to stay seemed dangerous, considering my ineptitude at lying.

A third option was to rent student gear. It wouldn’t be pretty—student rigs are like your dad’s station wagon—but at least it would keep me at the drop zone for the rest of the day. I paid Rick his thirty-dollar per jump rental fee and he handed me a 170 square-foot Manta in return. I’d be falling from the sky under enough fabric to cover the old Astrodome. I heaved the giant rig over my shoulder and toted it out of the office like a pack mule.

I couldn’t find Marie, but managed to line up a jump with her friends. Their names were Linda and Beth. Linda seemed too young and exuberant to be mixed up with anything dark and sinister like kidnapping. Her attentive eyes and infectious laugh gave the impression she was a people-pleaser. She smoothed a wayward ringlet into her ponytail and told us she’d find our fourth. The Cessna wouldn’t go anywhere without a full load of four. Otherwise, Rick and Marie wouldn’t make money.

While we waited, Beth lit a cigarette, then tossed her lighter onto the picnic table where it landed next to an open issue of
Blue Skies Magazine
. The magazine’s pages lifted in the slight breeze, and I was about to pick it up and read the latest news when Linda returned with Scud shuffling behind her.

“Sweetheart!” I said.

Beth took a drag off her Newport and turned her head to exhale.

Scud’s legs were still in his jumpsuit, which was now only partially zipped. He’d taken his arms out of the suit and tied its sleeves around his waist like a jacket. He wore a faded No Fear shirt underneath.

“Wouldn’t miss this,” he said, ogling the three of us in turn.

“We’re on a twenty minute call,” Linda said. “Let’s dirt dive.”

We practiced the dive on the ground, rehearsing maneuvers we’d try in the air. Each time I took someone’s arm or leg gripper, I had the uneasy feeling I might be hanging on to somebody involved with the abduction. And each time one of them joked or smiled, I switched to feeling like a nitwit for suspecting decent people. How did the pros tell good guys from bad?

I spotted two men I didn’t recognize near the Coke machine. They watched us line up at the Cessna. One was a heavyset red-haired man who wore a Harley-Davidson bandana and held a camera helmet under an arm. The other popped the lid on a can of Mountain Dew. His face was wide at the top and narrow near his chin, and his too-thin mustache reminded me of rodent whiskers. Both were in their late twenties.

I smiled at them. The cameraman nodded back. Rat Man didn’t acknowledge me.

I climbed into the plane and Scud followed close behind. He gave two hard slaps on the back of my container and said, “That’s gonna weigh the whole plane down.”

“Shut up.”

“I love it,” he said. “She already sounds like a wife.”

***

We got eight points, or made eight separate formations, on that dive before breaking off at twenty-five hundred feet. Considering Scud was on the dive and none of us women had weight vests, I thought we did a decent job matching fall rates. At break-off, Scud held onto my wrist a beat longer than he should have. He snuck a kiss pass. Before turning and flying away to open his parachute, he kissed me. If the girls noticed, I thought we might get flack for it on the ground. Then I realized any girl who jumped with that clown got kissed.

My ride under the Manta was pathetic. A lightweight jumper like me was nothing under its huge surface area. I buried my right toggle, pulling it fully down to my hip, even wrapping some steering line around my hand to get more pull—a maneuver that would have put me into an aggressive spiral under my Sabre—but the Manta only responded with a slow, flat turn to the right. I gazed toward the Gulf of Mexico only a few miles away, and remembered my student jumps under a Manta. Huge parachutes didn’t bother me then. I was too excited about skydiving to notice how slow they were.

Back then, I was in college. My boyfriend broke up with me because I spent more weekends at the DZ than I spent with him. I figured it was better in the end; any man who understood me would take the whole package, parachute and all. The summer I graduated, Jack signed for the whole package.

When Annette came along, I quit. It was bad enough missing time with her while I was working. I wouldn’t miss our weekends too. That was five years ago. Last year, I finally started jumping again. Missing my husband and daughter, I’d returned to my surrogate family at the drop zone.

A gust pushed me forward and snapped me back to what I was doing—setting up to land. The Manta was docile when I turned into the wind. Once there, I got almost no forward penetration. Slowly, I sank toward the grassy landing field. I missed the higher speed, swooping landings I got with my own gear. When I touched down, I scooped what seemed like acres of canopy nylon into a bundle and made my way toward the hangar.

The cameraman I’d seen earlier loafed at the picnic table with his buddy, smoking. They held their cigarettes away from my gear when I got closer.

“Rick says you’re another space geek,” the cameraman said.

I smiled. “Small world.” I gave my name and new-in-town story, none of which seemed news to him.

“I’m Hank, but around here they call me Big Red. You a contractor or civil servant?”

It certainly hadn’t taken long for the NASA lie to bite me in the ass.

If I answered contractor I feared he would ask which one, so I told him I was a civil servant and tried not to sound edgy.

“On-site, then. Which building?”

I’d clicked past a map of the center on-line, with its myriad of buildings and roads, but I hadn’t thought to study it.

“I was only there once, for my interview. Can’t even remember the building.” I gave him a puzzled look, not entirely fabricated, and tried to remember the pictures I’d seen. “It was kind of impersonal and bland…with hardly any windows.”

Big Red laughed. “That’s half the buildings at the center. The place is huge.”

I imagined so.

Big Red’s rat-like friend watched our exchange, expressionless. I wondered if a personality waited, dormant, beneath his flesh-like exoskeleton.

“Well, my last name’s Powell. Hank Powell. When you get settled, look me up on the Global and maybe we can meet for lunch. I’m in Building Fifteen.”

I promised I would, and continued into the hangar, wondering what a Global was.

***

Later, I made two more jumps with the same group. When Beth went home, I jumped a three-way with Scud and Linda. We paid for Big Red’s slot so he’d videotape it. Afterward, Scud left, and we didn’t have enough people to make a load. Big Red dubbed copies of our dive onto DVDs for Linda and me. It had our dirt dive on it too. I figured Karen Lyons could at least get a look at Linda and Scud.

On the monotonous drive back to Houston, I tried Jeannie from my cell phone, but only got her answering machine. No such luck when I tried Richard.

He picked up on the first ring. “Got anything?”

“I didn’t meet anybody with Kidnapper or Pedophile written on his forehead, no.”

I ran through the names of everyone I’d met and waited while Richard scribbled his notes.

“Where are you now?” he asked.

“I just passed Lake Jackson.” I glanced in the rearview mirror at the single car way behind me. No one was in front. “This feels like Siberia.”

“Sorry for the long drive.”

“I have an idea about that, actually. They’re having a boogie this weekend, like a festival for skydivers. The place’ll be packed. I’m going to get a tent and camp at the DZ like everybody else.”

It’s not uncommon. Camping’s free and saves a long morning drive. Jumpers can drink all they want when the beer light goes on because nobody has to drive home.

“It’ll be a great excuse to plant myself here.”

He mumbled that it would be okay.

I hadn’t been asking for permission, but I let it go.

“Where can I find a sporting goods store? I need a sleeping bag and a tent.” I hesitated. “At your expense, of course.”

He told me the exit to use and I thought putting seventy miles between Richard and me for the rest of the trip was a fine idea.

“What about you?” I knew from our breakfast meeting he’d planned to talk to Karen Lyons’ neighbors.

“Only a small lead,” he said. “An old-timer two doors down says the street’s been quiet since Eric left. Apparently, Eric drives a diesel pick-up. Truck used to wake the guy when Eric left for work every morning. Neighbor says he hasn’t heard the truck for a week. That’s consistent with the last time Eric visited Casey. This fellow didn’t wake up Saturday night. I don’t think Eric was anywhere near the place.”

“If it was Eric, surely he’d use a different car.”

“Of course.” Richard paused. “I said it was a small thing.”

I remembered Richard wanted pictures so I mentioned the video Big Red had made. I said I’d leave it at the desk at the hotel. That brilliant plan of avoidance was the best idea I’d had all day.

“I’ll pick up a disposable camera tonight when I’m out getting supplies,” I added. “Tomorrow I’ll set up camp. I’ll call with any news.”

After we hung up, I imagined Karen hunched over a cup of cold coffee at her kitchen table, willing the phone to ring. And I wondered if the person who stole her son did it for money or revenge, or maybe to explore a sick, twisted fantasy. I worried Casey might already be dead. Then I shuddered, realizing we might never know.

***

I fell asleep that night with a
People
magazine draped over my chest, and I never knew it until the bedside phone in my hotel room clanged the following morning and scared me out of my wits. I scrambled upright under my covers and the phone rang again before I remembered where I was. It rang a third time before I found it in the pitch-black room.

“Hello?” I groaned, squinting at the digital clock.

It was Richard.

“Guess whose body turned up in the San Jacinto River.”

I leaned closer to the clock. 6:20 a.m.

Then Richard’s words registered. And they resonated in my skull so violently I thought the room was shaking.