Unidentified Flying Suspect (Illegal Alien Book 2) Read online

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the leftmost guard. His glare didn’t relax. So much for my intelligent plan to set them at ease. “You can head on in.”

  “Thanks. How long have you all been on duty? I don’t want to bother you with questions if you’re the new shift. That would be annoying and useless to boot.”

  The rightmost guard allowed a fraction of a smile to slip out before he plastered his glare back into its proper position.

  “We’re the reinforcements, ma’am,” he said. “At the time the device was discovered, airport security was manning the gates. You’ll find those personnel in hangar five, I think, along with the mechanics who discovered the device.”

  He pointed out a row of buildings to me, far in the distance. Although the airport was on the smaller side, the grounds still sprawled, leaving plenty of room for the planes to maneuver between the hangars.

  “I thank you,” I said, starting in that direction. “My feet really thank you. I wasn’t relishing the idea of walking around the airfield in circles, trying to figure out where I was supposed to be.”

  “We could radio for a golf cart,” offered one of them. I couldn’t tell which one without seeing their faces. Their voices fell into the same interchangeable monotone. “They’ll come get you and drive you out there.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want to miss something because I’m speeding by it at, oh, five whole miles per hour. Oh, and before I go, I’m expecting a lab tech to follow me out here shortly. She’s easy to spot; she looks like a mummy minus the bandages. Can you point her in my direction when she gets here?”

  One of them grunted out what might have been a laugh.

  “Can do,” said Lefty. “And we won’t tell her about the mummy crack, either.”

  “Oh, what’s the fun in that?” I asked.

  I grinned as the two guards cracked up. Then I started toward hangar five. The conversation might have taken a minute or two longer than necessary, but I liked knowing I’d left friendly folks at my back. Now, they’d remember me with enough positive feeling that they’d seek me out if they saw or remembered something that might be useful. Whereas if I’d blown through them like Grand Prince Hardwicke, they wouldn’t have bothered to waste the energy. It might not pan out, but ultimately, I considered it a worthwhile use of my time.

  A few minutes into my walk, I concluded that refusing the golf cart had been a poor choice on my part. The airfield was widely spread out over a huge amount of space, and I was just coming up on hangar ten. Five looked like it was all the way on the end, with nothing between me and it but empty expanses of concrete edged by clusters of crab grass and the occasional piece of blowing trash. I looked at each one just in case but found nothing more interesting than a few Kroger’s grocery bags and a half-eaten burger.

  By the time I made it to hangar five, I’d gotten nice and sweaty from marinating out there in the heat and sun. My cheeks had always gone red at the drop of a hat—even though I was in damned good shape for an old broad—so I looked more overheated than I truly was. Still, the blast of cold air that hit me when I opened the door felt great, and when I stepped inside and saw the tray of cold water in paper cups sitting on a table, I helped myself to one without asking.

  As I sipped the cool liquid, I took a moment to look around. The hangar was empty of planes, although a cluster of airport luggage trucks and boarding ramps sat along the far end. In the middle of the empty space sat a bunch of guys on folding chairs, talking in small groups. Every one of them stared at me. I couldn’t see another woman in the room at all.

  But I’d gotten used to having the only pair of tits in the place, and I wasn’t about to let myself be intimidated by a bunch of guys in neon orange jumpsuits. They might have been a rough-looking bunch in different clothes, with their sturdy builds, rough faces, and more than a few crooked, previously-broken noses, but those bright jumpsuits stole away any menace they might have been able to drum up under different conditions. Besides, I’d faced much more intimidating crowds before. So I took my time, finishing my drink and crumpling up the cup before I walked over.

  “Detective Vorkink,” I said, by way of introduction. “I think you fellows are waiting for me.”

  “Don’t you have a partner?” asked one of them, a swarthy gent with one of his front teeth knocked out. A gold earring dangled from his left lobe, giving him a vaguely piratical look at odds with his neon garb. “Seems dangerous, letting a pretty lady like you walk around unaccompanied.”

  I smiled at him and kept that smile on my face while I talked. “Well, it might be, except that I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot your balls off if you tried to lay a finger on me.”

  I’d been in situations like this before, and the trick was to keep the line just threatening enough. If it was too silly, they’d laugh it off and not take me seriously. But if it was too severe, they’d feel threatened enough to confront me. Sometimes I struggled to judge where that line sat, but I seemed to have hit it smack on the balls this time. After a moment’s pause, they all broke out into uproarious laughter, and none as loud as the guy with the missing tooth.

  “You’re okay,” he said when he’d gotten control of himself. He gave me an approving nod. “So what do we need to do? I shoulda clocked out a half hour ago and gotten home to the missus. I’d like to get this shit over and done with, if you’ll pardon my French.”

  “I cuss like a fucking sailor’s wife, so it’s no problem to me. And sorry about the delay. I would have been here sooner if the higher ups hadn’t needed to give us an inspirational speech before they’d let us do their jobs.”

  Nods all around. These guys lived in the same space I did. They just wanted to do their work without all the political yip-yapping. Now that we’d gotten over the fact that I had lady parts, we were practically besties.

  “I hear you on that,” said the guy to the left of One-tooth, scratching at his chin. “Seems like every day we have to have a meeting.”

  “Sometimes we got meetings about needing to have meetings,” said another.

  “Well, the paper pushers have to justify their jobs somehow, don’t they?” I asked, and we all grinned. Now that I had them all nice and relaxed, I moved on. “So I’ll do my best to get you all home soon. I know it’s a headache to wait, but you might have seen something important without even realizing it, and I need you to help me find the jackwads who left that device on the grounds and put them away in a deep dark hole for a long time.”

  More nods. These guys realized the danger. If we didn’t find the people who’d done this, they might drop another explosive that we didn’t find in time. And then no one would be going home to the missus.

  “Okay, so here’s how it’s going to go. I’m going to pull you over to the bar there, one by one.” I pointed to the water table. “Sadly, they don’t serve beer right now, but we’ll have to make do. I’m going to run you through your day, ask a few questions. Everybody stays until we’re all done, because somebody might have seen something that’ll lead me back around to talk to some people twice to help clarify things. I’ve got help coming, but right now I’m only one person, so I’m going to promise to go as fast as I can, but I won’t phone it in and let those fuckers get away. Okay?”

  “We got you,” said One-tooth, looking around the group of guys as if daring them to disagree. No one did. Either they agreed wholeheartedly, or they were scared shitless of One-tooth. I wasn’t sure and didn’t really care so long as it got the job done. “We want to get him too. I’ll go first, if you want.”

  “Fine by me,” I said, gesturing toward the table. “We should bring some chairs over.”

  One-tooth refused to let me carry my own chair, proving to me once again that I should never rely on first impressions. I wouldn’t have called him chivalrous at first glance, but once I’d proven my mettle, he’d been nothing but polite. Once we were both situated with cups of water in hand, I jumped right in. That was the one good thing about establishing rapport with the
group; now I didn’t need to do it individually. It would save time in the long run.

  Maybe that line of thought made me sound jaded, like I had only been nice to them to get what I wanted. But really, I was only looking out for them. These guys had already been stuck in this hangar, twiddling their thumbs for hours, and I wanted to get them out as quickly as I could. So what seemed like callousness on my part was really caring in the end. I’d put them through the wringer as fast as I could and get them home, unless their stories didn’t line up, in which case we were in for a long haul. I hoped none of these guys turned out to be suspects, because I found myself liking them despite myself.

  “Okay,” I said, taking out my mini notebook and pen. Over the years, I’d developed a shorthand system that worked for me. I wrote down just enough to help me remember the salient details—particularly dates, times, and names—but overall, I preferred to listen intently rather than scribbling madly when one of my witnesses talked. I absorbed more that way. “Your full name?”

  “Genaro Martinez,” he said. “With a G.”

  “Got it.” I scribbled it down. “How long have you worked here, Genaro?”

  He sipped thoughtfully. “Oh, about six or seven years. I’m the maintenance supervisor.”

  So I’d been right about his leadership position after all. I made another note.

  “I imagine your job gets a little busier around the air show, doesn’t it? I’ve worked it a few times, and it seems pretty hectic during the show.”

  “You have no idea. All these jockeys flying in and out with their own crews, and we’re trying to keep up with our usual traffic on top of that. It’s like trying to herd cats.”

  I snickered. “I know exactly what you mean. Okay, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to run through your entire day. From when you woke up to when I walked in the door. No detail is too small. I might stop and interrupt you with questions as you go. Okay?”

  “From the moment I woke up?” He actually blushed then, and I could imagine why. From the embarrassed look on his face, I figured Genaro had probably enjoyed some quality naked time with the missus this morning. “Everything?”

  “Why don’t we start from the moment you got dressed?”

  He flashed me a grateful look.

  “Sure. It’s pretty boring, though. I had coffee and eggs for breakfast. The missus makes some mean eggs. After breakfast, I took my truck through the wash and filled it up. I go to this little place right off Detroit and Monroe. They have a self-serve bay so I can do it myself. Nothing else is open that early.”

  “That sounds like quite a commute, if you’re coming from over that part of town.”

  “No kidding. But my shift starts at five, so I usually miss the worst of the traffic. It’s a bitch in the winter, though. The plows don’t usually come through until after I’m already here, and even if the airport is closed, I got to come in. It’s a bitch and a half for sure.”

  “Who’s here when you arrive in the morning?”

  “Ground security. They drive around in their little car and try to look like cops, but I don’t think they’re fooling nobody.” He shrugged. “I’m usually the first one in from my shift, but not always. We don’t run flights throughout the entire night like your hub airports do.”

  “Okay, and who was here this morning when you arrived? Were you on time?”

  “I rolled in just in time, yeah. A couple of the guys beat me, but they were just clocking in when I showed.”

  “Which ones?”

  He pointed each one out to me and gave me their names, and I made dutiful notes on all of it. When we were done, he said, “That’s it. Oh, and Rickroll was here too.”

  “Rickroll? What kind of name is that?”

  “His real name is Murray, but everyone calls him Rickroll on account that he sings this song over and over again. Like a broken record. And the song’s horrible, man. It gets in your head and won’t leave.”

  I snickered a bit, thinking this was all a joke, but something in Genaro’s eyes made me stop. He was worried about something, and I could tell that he was trying to decide whether or not to confide in me. If he felt like that, it could be an important bit of info, and I needed to find out what it was.

  “And where is Rickroll, Genaro? Is he here?” I asked gently.

  After a long pause, he replied. “He’s in the bathroom. I told him he could stay there.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Rickroll is… he’s a good kid. We took him on as part of a work program for his home. He cleans up around here, fetches coffee, that kind of thing. He got awful scared, what with all the chaos over the bomb, or whatever that thing is. I mean, we thought it might explode or something when we first found it, and that’s scary as shit, let me tell you. Anyway, I told him he could stay in there by himself if he wanted.”

  I frowned. I’d wanted to have all my witnesses in one place just so I could keep track of them. Leaving one in a bathroom meant he could have gone all kinds of places while no one else was looking. To plant another bomb, if he was so inclined. I didn’t like that one bit, but something else nagged at me too. After a moment, I pinpointed it.

  “Wait,” I said. “What kind of home?”

  Again, Genaro seemed uncomfortable. “It’s a home for retards, but I don’t like that word, and I won’t stand to have it used on Rickroll, neither.”

  I nodded. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Would you take me to him? I need to talk to him too, but I think he might be more comfortable with that if you were present.”

  “Yeah, I think so too.”

  Genaro stood and gestured toward the back of the room. I followed, keeping my hands loose and my mind calm. Perhaps breaking this case would be easier than I’d expected. It felt good to have a solvable case in my hands. It kept my mind off all the things I still couldn’t explain and the questions I feared the answers to.

  CHAPTER 9

  On first glance, the bathroom held no surprises when Genaro led me to its location at the back of the hangar, tucked behind a towering stack of air filter boxes. From the outside, it looked like the kind of place that most women refused to sit in because squatting and peeing down your leg seemed like a better choice than making contact with whatever germs lived on the surface of the toilet. I was no clean freak, but on first glance this appeared to be below even my standards. The dingy wooden door sat crooked on its hinges, and the age-spotted doorknob hung visibly loose in its socket.

  Genaro knocked on the door, the kind of quiet knock that tries to alert without frightening.

  “Who is it?”

  The voice from inside sounded young and afraid despite the gentleness of the knock. Genaro soothed its owner in low, soothing tones. His whole body language changed, and once again, I was taken aback at how someone so tough looking on the outside could be such a teddy bear on the inside. Of course I knew that appearances were deceiving—anyone who spent more than five minutes in my profession learned that right quick—but sometimes it still struck me. This time, I was quite happy to be proven wrong, and once again, I found myself hoping that this man and this kid would be okay. That they weren’t somehow responsible for what had happened. That I would be able to help find whoever had violated their workspace and bring them to justice.

  I must have made some small noise as I thought of this, because Genaro gave me a questioning look. I nodded at him in reassurance, gesturing for him to continue. He turned back to the door, resting the thick fingertips of one hand on its grimy surface.

  “It’s Genaro, buddy. I’ve come to check on you.”

  “Oh.” There was a long pause. “Okay.”

  Genaro stood back as the knob began to rattle. When the door opened, it revealed a young man standing in the unsurprisingly dirty bathroom beyond. But I was more interested in the kid than the state of the plumbing, and I gave him a quick once-over. Rickroll was much taller than I’d expected, maybe 6’2” or 6’3”, and about as big around as my right thigh. He
looked like a good stiff wind might carry him away, although perhaps that impression was bolstered by the poor fit of his neon work overalls. His wrists and ankles stuck out in a bad way. His hair was cut short over protruding ears that gave him an almost cartoonish appearance. All of this was topped off by the bluest eyes I’d ever seen.

  He took one look at me and shrunk away.

  “Who are you? Who is the lady, Genaro? Why is the lady here?” he asked, clenching his fists. It felt less like a threatening gesture and more like he was trying to keep from shaking into pieces. Instead of brandishing those fists at me and sporting for a fight, he pulled them into his body in automatic defensiveness. Then he began to rock back and forth, squeezing his hands together. The poor kid was terrified, and I couldn’t decide if this was normal behavior on his part, or if he’d seen something to be terrified of. Genaro seemed concerned but not surprised, so I did nothing for the moment but remained on high alert.

  “This lady is a police woman,” said Genaro. I noticed he’d completely dropped the pretty-lady-needs-a-partner shtick, although I’d begun to wonder if it had all been an act to begin with. His employees had needed a laugh, and he’d provided it. A smart man, this Genaro. I really hoped he wasn’t secretly a terrorist bomber, because that would really bum me out.

  Rickroll frowned. “She doesn’t have a uniform. Or a badge. Policemen have uniforms and badges.”

  “I do have a badge,” I said, not unkindly. “Would you like to see it? Here.”

  I took out my badge and my ID. Now that I’d seen him, I was beginning to suspect that Rickroll sat somewhere on the autism spectrum. He didn’t make eye contact, and the rocking and squeezing behaviors continued as he looked at my credentials. I didn’t know a whole lot about autism, but I thought I recognized the self-soothing behaviors. I’d once tracked down a missing kid with autism, and some of Rickroll’s mannerisms brought that kid to mind. But I didn’t know much more. Too bad I hadn’t attended more of Dr. Boudina’s lunchtime lectures, because she talked a lot about the kinds of mental illness you might run into in the field, and I bet she would have given me more to work with.