When Ghosts Come Home(7)

“Looks empty to me,” Glenn said.

“We’re still going to have to clear it,” Winston said.



Guns raised, the two men made their way toward the plane. They stopped at the open cargo doors in the middle of the fuselage, and Glenn knocked on the exterior with his flashlight. There was an echo as if he had banged on the bottom of an enormous, upturned metal canoe. The nose of the airplane, propped up by the wheels beneath either wing, loomed above Winston on his right, but the fuselage narrowed greatly toward the end where it rested on its tail, the rear landing gear having completely collapsed.

The aircraft seemed simultaneously powerful and frail, and Winston could not believe that something so large could take to the sky nor that something so powerful could be grounded so easily. He reached out and placed his open hand on the airplane’s body, nearly expecting to feel the rise of its breathing. He smacked it twice as if patting the belly of a horse before climbing into the saddle. “Hello,” he called out. “Brunswick County Sheriff’s Department.” He nodded at Glenn, who raised his pistol, pointed his flashlight into the darkness of the aircraft’s interior, and stepped up inside. Winston, his pistol also raised, stood by the door and listened to the creaking of the airplane’s body as Glenn’s footsteps shuffled around inside.

“It’s empty,” Glenn called out.

Winston holstered his pistol and stepped through the door.

The seats had all been removed inside the plane, and Winston stood in the middle of the fuselage and took in the scene: the pilots’ chairs in the front; the long empty expanse as the floor stretched back toward him; the faint moonlight dusting the windows.

“It’s empty now,” Winston said, “but I’d be willing to bet it wasn’t when it touched down.” He moved his flashlight around the inside of the plane, its beam passing over every surface.

“What do you want to do?” Glenn asked.

“Get back in the bed and go to sleep.”

Glenn laughed. “Me too.”

“Let’s go ahead and fingerprint everything up in the cockpit,” Winston said. “And the doors inside and outside too. And then we’ll call the morgue.”

“You got it,” Glenn said.

Winston stayed inside the aircraft and sent Glenn back to his patrol car for an extra flashlight and one of the crime scene kits they all kept in their trunks. While he was gone, Winston stood in the plane’s open cargo doors and stared out at Rodney Bellamy’s body. It was rarely the case, but everything that had happened that night had surprised Winston.

Once Glenn returned to the plane, he handed over the evidence kit, and Winston made his way toward the cockpit, moving uphill against the backward tilt of the plane. He dusted the cockpit controls carefully, paying special attention to the spots on the yokes where he knew thumbs and fingers would have been clenched tight as the plane came in over the trees not long ago. He moved to the instrument panel. Glenn held the flashlight while Winston worked. When he finished, he unspooled the tape and placed it over the spots where he believed good prints were most likely, but when he lifted the strips of tape and held them to Glenn’s light, not a single fingerprint was revealed. He tried again, but there was nothing to see.

“Maybe a damn ghost flew it,” Glenn said.

“Or they wore gloves and wiped everything down,” Winston said. “But there’s got be a fingerprint somewhere in this airplane.”

If they found prints, Winston’s office had no way of running them. He’d have to send them off to Wilmington, if not Raleigh. Even when the FBI stepped in—which Winston knew would happen no matter how long he put off calling them—it would be days before the fingerprints revealed anything. News of the airplane’s appearance and Bellamy’s murder would spread quickly, and Winston knew that everyone in the county would watch how the sheriff’s office handled it, and then they would vote. Election day was just a week away, and Winston’s chances to influence the opinion of his constituents were running out. But, for now, he had all the time he needed out here on the runway in the middle of the night, Glenn and him inside an airplane that was empty but for the sounds of their footsteps echoing against the metal walls. They worked slowly. There was no reason to rush. No one knew what had happened but them. The airplane had already landed, and whoever had landed it had disappeared. The only person who might have seen them was Rodney Bellamy, and he wasn’t talking.





Chapter 2




She had not set the alarm clock because it was not hers; the alarm clock belonged to Scott, and it was already set for 5:00 a.m. Waking at that hour left him plenty of time to eat something at home, hit the gym at the health club he’d joined as soon as they’d moved to Dallas, shower, and make it to the courthouse by 7:00 a.m., which, he’d confided to Colleen, was almost half an hour earlier than any of the other first-year assistant attorneys were willing to arrive.

That morning, she’d been able to slip from bed at 3:00 a.m. with only a muttered “You okay?” from Scott where he lay, his back turned toward her. “Yes,” she’d said. “I just can’t sleep,” but he had already tumbled back into a deep slumber.

They had not built the house they lived in, which was something she had dreamed of their doing together, but it was only twenty years old and new enough so that the oak floors did not squeak and the doors opened and closed securely and quietly, which was a far cry from the house she’d grown up in on the waterway in Oak Island, with its paper-thin walls, worn carpets, crooked staircase, and linoleum floors. She had been near silent as she walked across her and Scott’s bedroom, opened the door, stepped into the hallway, and closed the door behind her.