There was a click, a whine of feedback, and then another click that cut off the feedback. Helen's voice, sounding weak and timid said, "Hi, Jake."
"Helen, are you okay?" he asked.
"I'm not hurt," she said softly.
"I'm sorry I wasn't home. I was out taking care of some business at Matt's house. Apparently Elsa called there but... well... Matt didn't answer the phone. What happened? She told me that freak tried to attack you."
"She didn't get a chance to try anything," Helen said. "The sheriff's department caught her before she could." She took a few deep breaths. "Jesus, Jake, that alarm system you made me install probably just saved my... just... just kept her from attacking me."
"What happened?" he asked. "Did she try to break into your house?"
"I was at the airport teaching a class," Helen said. "You know, the Introduction to the Principles of Flight class? I just got a load of new students last week and... and... anyway, I was teaching the class just like normal when our secretary came into the room and told me I had an important phone call. It was the alarm company that monitors my property. They told me that several of the motion sensors on the perimeter of the house had been tripped and wanted to know if anyone was home." The motion sensors in question were the best commercially available. They could be turned on and off by remote control from a quarter mile away and were capable of detecting anything weighing more than eighty pounds within a fifty foot radius around the house. A wrought iron fence that Jake had also had installed kept deer or large stray dogs from causing accidental activations.
"She was creeping around on your property?" Jake asked, feeling a shiver at the thought.
"Yeah," she answered. "But that's not all. I told the alarm company that nobody was supposed to be there and they told me they would send the sheriff's department over to investigate. A couple of deputies got to my house about ten minutes later and... and... Jesus." She took a few deep breaths again. "They found her — that Johansen bitch — hiding in the thick bushes right next to my garage door, right where I come out of the garage to walk to the house after I park my car."
"Fuck me," Jake whispered.
"Yeah," Helen grunted. "She was wearing camouflage fatigues and had camouflage make-up on her face. And she had a gun."
"A gun?" Jake said, feeling physically ill now.
"A thirty-eight revolver," Helen said. "And that's not all she had."
"It's not? What else?"
"She had a canvas bag with her," Helen said, her voice breaking on every word now. "Inside of it they found... they found..." She couldn't seem to go on.
"What did they find?" Jake asked gently.
He heard her swallow, heard her choke back a few tears. "She had... had... a pair of handcuffs in there along with a roll of duct tape, four butcher knives, and... and... a portable blow torch."
Jake's legs would no longer hold him up. He slumped down into the nearest chair and, for the first time in his life, had to put his head between his legs to keep from fainting.
Chapter 16a
Above Kern County, California
August 13, 1989
Jake sat alone in the cockpit of the 1982 Cessna 414 as it headed southeast high above the southern tip of the San Joaquin Valley. His hands rested lightly on the controls, making minute adjustments every now and then when the high-altitude winds pushed him off course to the Taft VOR transmitter he was navigating to. The avionics package of the plane included one of the most sophisticated autopilot systems available for a private aircraft — an autopilot capable of being programmed to fly the entire trip from shortly after take-off until shortly before landing — but Jake had it turned off at the moment. He was still enjoying the novelty of flying his own plane.
He made a quick scan of his instruments. His navigation needle was pegged dead center toward the VOR transmitter and the distance measuring equipment, or DME was showing him twenty-three nautical miles out from it. His altitude was seventeen thousand feet above sea level. Compass heading was 154 degrees. His airspeed was holding steady at one hundred and seventy two knots — just a hair above two hundred miles per hour. Each of his fuel tanks was well over half full. Cabin pressure was at the standard for eight thousand feet of altitude, comfortable enough to breathe but not enough to actually stress the airframe.
Satisfied that all was copasetic on the instrument panel, he looked outside, scanning in all directions, looking for other aircraft mostly, but also for weather phenomenon and landmarks. To the left he could see the western edge of the city of Bakersfield sprawled out on the valley floor like a relief map. Forward, he could see the mountains that made up the Los Padres National Forest, which he would soon be flying over, and beyond that, the brown haze of smog that marked the Los Angeles basin. To the right he could see the peaks of the Sierra Madres Mountain range and, beyond them, the sparkling blue Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon. Though he had spent thirteen of the last forty-eight hours in the air and had now logged more than eight hundred hours of total flight time, he still never tired of looking at the view from high in the air.
The Cessna 414 was Jake's latest acquisition. He had purchased it from a partner in a prestigious Chicago law firm. Since the partner in question was upgrading to a one third share of a Cessna Citation business jet and needed to free up some capital in order to make this purchase, he had been willing to let the 414 go to Jake for $185,000, about $50,000 less than the plane's actual resale value. Though Jill, his accountant, had pleaded with him to reconsider such an extravagant purchase (as well as the other extravagant purchase that was in the works), Jake had been unable to resist. After the quickest possible escrow period, the papers were signed, the official transfer of ownership was made, and Jake was now on the final leg of his flight to bring his new toy home to Brannigan Airport in Ventura County.
He had left the exclusive Chicago suburb of Winnetka at sunrise the previous day and had spent the better part of twelve hours hopping his way southwestward across the country to Winnemucca, Nevada, where he stayed the night in what passed for a four-star hotel. Early this morning took off from Winnemucca's small airport and flew to Westfield Executive Airport in the suburbs of Heritage County. In Heritage, he stayed awhile, visiting his parents for a few hours and then dropping off the final financial paperwork regarding the plane at Jill's office.
"Are you ready for next week?" he'd asked her after listening to her obligatory lecture on cutting down on his spending.
"As ready as I'll ever be," she told him. "I'll ask you one more time, Jake. Are you sure you won't reconsider? In light of the... you know... problems you're having with your bandmates, is it really wise to commit to something like this?"
"Probably not," Jake said with a shrug. "But I'm going to do it anyway."
Jill shook her head. "That's kind of what I thought you'd say."
Jake had lifted off from Westfield Exec — as it was known in Heritage — at 2:55 PM and climbed to his present altitude of seventeen thousand feet. He'd flown south and then southeast, navigating from VOR station to VOR station, roughly following the course of Interstate 5. And now, at 4:28 PM, he reached the Taft VOR station and watched as the second navigation radio went into action, locking onto the next and final station of his flight: the Brannigan VOR. The guidance needle swung slowly to the right, indicating that he should turn that way in order to head directly at the signal. The DME lit up with the calculated distance to fly: forty-three nautical miles. Jake banked the plane to the right until the VOR needle was centered. This put him on a compass heading of 182 — almost due south. Once on the correct course, he contacted air traffic control to request permission to start his descent. Permission was granted. He reduced power to the engines and pushed slightly forward on the control stick. The nose dipped toward the earth and the altimeter began to wind downward. The long flight was almost over.