The thought of the agency brought Parkhall back to the present and the problem at hand. If Pace was onto the murders, how long until he identified the cover-up? The engineer’s heart began to race, and he felt dampness on his palms and through the hairs at the back of his neck. He tried to remember how he’d gotten himself mixed up in this scheme anyway, but the chain of events was muddled in the quagmire of his confused mind. At the moment, the most important thing was to reach Davis and tell him about Pace. Parkhall hoped there wouldn’t be another killing. Already he was in way over his head and drowning fast in his own terror.
He let Davis’s phone at the Senate Transportation Committee ring eight times before giving up and trying his home. Davis answered in mid-ring.
Parkhall relayed the report from the muscleman who called himself Sly. As he talked, he realized with some alarm he didn’t know the big man’s last name. If the operation blew up, he wouldn’t know who to finger for the killings. Nobody would believe he was taking orders from a high-ranking Senate aide, the way the executives at Warner Woolcott didn’t believe him when he warned they wouldn’t be able to depend on the man who stole the job that should have been his.
“Calm down, Elliott. There’s nothing for you to worry about.” Davis’s deep voice was smooth and reassuring.
“Whadda you mean?” Parkhall fretted. “The goddamn newspaper people know the two murders are connected and tied to the Sexton somehow.”
“They don’t know anything. They only suspect,” Davis said. “That was evident this morning if you read Pace’s story carefully. Suspecting and proving are two different things, and they aren’t anywhere close to proving. They’re not going to get close, either, unless somebody loses his cool. Understand?”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“Then we’ll handle it. We’ll handle Pace. I’ll make some calls. But it’s not your affair. You’ve reported. Your responsibility is covered. Your most important job is in Hangar Three. Keep at it and you’ll be fine. I’ve got it covered, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” Parkhall said. But he didn’t believe it.
David hung up gingerly, as though to do otherwise could upset the delicate balance of Parkhall’s psyche. Pace was getting to be a pain in the ass, there was no question about it. But Davis didn’t want to deal with the problem this night. He was still trying to dope out the results of his afternoon meeting with Vernon Lund. It definitely didn’t start well. Lund made it clear he resented the implications of George Ridley’s visit the previous week. Davis made excuses for it, saying Ridley and Marshall didn’t get along, and Ridley could have been trying to make the Ohio senator look bad. Or maybe George didn’t understand the message the senator wanted to convey.
There had been no intention, at least not on the senator’s part, to imply that the investigation should be skewed in any way. Harold Marshall would be the last man to suggest the probe stop short of the real cause of the accident. But Lund could understand, couldn’t he, that Senator Marshall was deeply concerned about Converse? The nation should be very concerned, too. After all, the aviation industry was one of the few in which the United States still led the world, and the future of all components of that industry was vitally important to the country. So if there was any doubt at all about the cause of the crash, it would be terrible to finger Converse simply to have a scapegoat. Lund could understand that, couldn’t he?
Lund appeared skeptical, but if doubts about Marshall remained in his mind, they didn’t come through in his words.
“Tell the senator we understand his concern,” Lund had said. “Tell him we will not point a finger unless there is absolute certainty. The NTSB has never done otherwise.”
Davis broached the idea of a final press briefing to nail down the bird strike as the cause of the accident and put to rest fulminating theories about imaginary conspiracies.
He was amazed when Lund responded positively to the idea. “I hate what the Chronicle is trying to do,” Lund said. “Let me think about it.”
The Dulles situation, like Elliott Parkhall’s psyche, was in delicate balance. Davis knew he couldn’t afford a mistake. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by Pace’s bar talk. And that’s pretty much what it was, he decided, just bar talk. He believed what he’d told Parkhall. Suspecting and proving are two different things.
He would worry about Steven Pace later.
19
While Chapman Davis spent the evening wrestling with the specter of Vernon Lund, Steve Pace wrestled with the specter of himself.
He entered his apartment angry and confused, frustrated as much by his own behavior as by the mystery of Flight 1117. It wasn’t like him to lose control, even over a shock like Mike McGill’s death. People died senselessly every day. Pace’s own parents and younger brother had died while flying home with a friend in the friend’s private airplane from an Indiana University basketball game. The accident was as senseless as they come. The pilot had a commercial license, an instrument rating, more than 2,000 hours of experience, and a normally level head. But he’d allowed himself a drink or two after the game. For that reason, or for others perhaps, he became disoriented while trying to land at the little airport outside Pace’s hometown. Instead of flying his Beechcraft onto the 3,000-foot airstrip, he’d flown it into the side of a barn.
Pace had been devastated by the accident, but it hadn’t thrown him the way Mike’s death had. He’d managed to face his life then; he was making a muck of it now. Compared with the strength Kathy was showing in the face of the loss of her brother, he was making an ass of himself.
Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe I’m tearing myself apart because I know I’m the one who pulled Mike into this.
He pushed the thought aside and let himself into his apartment.
Kathy arrived a few minutes later, carrying a sack of groceries. She set them on the kitchen counter. When she turned around, he was standing in front of her.
“Hi,” he said.
She smiled a little. “Hi, yourself.”
“You doing okay?”
“As well as can be expected,” she said, dropping her eyes to the floor. “It comes back at me at the strangest times, and I start to cry for no reason.”
He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face. “Nobody cries for no reason,” he said. “I think you have a pretty good reason.”
“So do you. Did I tell you how sorry I am about Mike?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I remember you talked about him so often. I wish I’d had a chance to meet him.”
“So do I,” he said, and then laughed. “On the other hand, he probably would have swept you off your feet and taken you away from me.”
“I thought you let me go.”
He nodded seriously. “I did, once,” he acknowledged. “If I ever have the chance to make the decision again, it won’t be the same.”
Suddenly they were in each other’s arms, their bodies pressed tightly. Their kiss started gently, sensually, and built quickly to passionate urgency. Their tongues embraced. He held her head in his hands and caressed her hair. She put her hands on his buttocks and drew him to her.