The Hollow Ones(6)
After a brief rise in altitude over East Orange, the airplane banked west and dipped below radar yet again. The aircraft’s left wing clipped a treetop over Nishuane Park, but the pilot leveled out the plane and flew on. Observers theorized that the pilot was looking for a place to land, or perhaps a familiar landmark to use for navigation.
Minutes later, the airplane dropped completely out of sight.
The first report of a plane crash came from west of Orange. Police and rescue vehicles from surrounding towns were dispatched to the area, awaiting the precise location. But after much searching and radio back-and-forth, the report was debunked as false.
The Beechcraft twin engine had set down on the first hole of the Second Nine course of the Montclair Golf Club: a straightaway, downhill par five. The plane bounced twice on its wheels, the left wing slicing a deep divot in the fairway, turning the aircraft sharply left where its wheel sank into a sand trap, and finally stopping nose-down on the edge of the trees.
Later, an eyewitness would report what he had seen. He had pulled into the golf course parking lot in order to continue an emotional telephone call with his roommate, and was standing outside of his vehicle, pacing and talking, when he saw a man exit the nearby wooded area, walking fast. He reported that the man appeared to be unaware that he was bleeding on the right side of his forehead, looking at the eyewitness with what he described as “dead eyes.” He thought at the time that the man was in shock, and called to him, ignoring his telephone conversation. But the bleeding man did not respond, instead striding toward the eyewitness’s still-running Jeep Trailhawk and climbing inside. With the eyewitness chasing after him, the man drove out of the golf course parking lot at high speed, not closing the driver’s-side door until the Jeep was almost out of sight.
The Impala’s flashing lights helped Odessa pass other cars, but traffic was jammed up everywhere. Leppo worked his phone navigation, calling out direction changes, taking them on side roads to Peters’s wife’s home in Upper Montclair.
They had already decided not to call it in to local PD. “This is a hunch,” said Leppo. “Besides, they’re busy enough. Last thing we want to do is draw away resources on a bad call.”
Odessa said, “You don’t think the plane is terror?”
“If so, it will be over soon. The fighter jets will see to that. If not…then it’s a guy at the end of his rope. Someone who’s got three kids and a restraining order and no way back to the life he once enjoyed.”
Odessa went back and forth in her mind about this. It was a long shot—never mind a huge coincidence—that this could be Cary Peters. Chances were slim.
Then again, the airplane was owned by the storage company tied up in his scandal. That alone was a major link.
“Divorce makes you crazy,” said Leppo. “I don’t think I ever told you this, but I was married before Debonair.”
Leppo’s wife of nearly twenty years was named Deb, but he called her “Debonair.” She was a tiny woman with red Medusa hair who drove a massive red Chevy Tahoe SUV. Odessa had met her exactly twice, the first time just a few weeks after her partnering with Leppo, which was very much a sniffing-out session, Odessa presenting herself in as nonthreatening a manner as possible. Debonair had been sweet to her, outgoing and friendly, but beneath it all was a strength that Odessa responded to, and admired. The second time had been at a weekend thing for agents, a cookout, where Odessa met Leppo’s kids and Debonair got to meet Linus, Odessa’s boyfriend, and from that moment forward everything was good.
Leppo said, “I was young, we both were. It didn’t last a year, but it took me another two years after that to recover. And thank God there weren’t any kids involved. Peters, it’s hard to tell, but he doesn’t seem like the type to go over a cliff like this. Take it from me, though. You never truly know who you are until you get really, deeply hurt.”
Odessa nodded. Sometimes the work lessons spilled over into life lessons.
“You know where you are now?” he said.
She took a hard left in the upscale neighborhood. “Almost there,” she said.
The streets were empty, a bedroom community if ever there was one. Odessa zoomed past well-tended lawns and brightly lit houses, which reassured her: Nothing very terrible could happen here.
“Oh shit,” said Leppo.
He saw it before she did: a Jeep parked up on the curb, its driver’s-side door open. The lights were on, the engine still running.
She pulled right up on the rear bumper of the Jeep to block it and prevent it from backing out. Leppo was calling in the address. They were going in.
Odessa jumped out, her hand on her holstered duty pistol, hurrying wide around the open door. The interior lights showed the Jeep to be empty. The vehicle had come to a stop on top of a street sign it had impacted and knocked down: one designating the NO PARKING zone.
She turned to the house. It was a two-story Tudor Revival with steeply pitched roofs jettied over the first floor. Lights shone inside, downstairs and up. The front door was closed. The driveway, to her left, rose to a half wall made of stone, leading to a side entrance that was unlit.
She was turning back to look for Leppo when she heard the gunshot. Startled, she whirled around just in time to hear the second shot inside the house, and see a burst of flame light in the dormer window of an upstairs bedroom.
“Leppo!” she called, pulling her Glock.