Coffee, Tea, or Murder? (24 page)

“Maybe you’ll understand,” he said.

“Understand what?”

“What happened to Wayne Silverton.”

“I’ll certainly try,” I said. “Will you let me come in with you? I promise I’ll be the only one. We can discuss whatever you’d like.”

A female voice came through the phone from the flight deck. “Carl, please,” Betsy Scherer said. “We can work this out. Please!”

The phone went dead. I put it in its cradle. “He hung up,” I announced.

“We’ll just have to wait him out and hope for the best,” Mort said.

“That’s not good enough, Mort,” Jed said.

I was aware that everyone on the flight had come to the front of the cabin and was jammed together, attempting to learn what was transpiring. I said to Christine, “Someone had better pass along some information before we have hysteria.”

She got on the PA. “Ladies and gentlemen, you’re all aware that there’s been an accident on the flight deck. Captain Caine has been injured, but Dr. Hazlitt is taking good care of him. Captain Scherer is in command of the flight now, and we’re proceeding as scheduled to Boston. Please, I ask everyone to return to your seats and fasten your seat belts in the event we should encounter clear-air turbulence.”

Gina Molnari approached the crowd and urged them toward the rear of the aircraft, deflecting their anxious questions in a clear, calm voice. “Everything will be just fine,” she repeated over and over. “Everyone stay calm, and we’ll be in Boston before we know it.”

Jed moved us to one of the galleys. “Look,” he said, “chances are he’s not about to kill himself by crashing the aircraft. We’ll have to do what Mort said, wait him out. But we’d better have a contingency plan in the event we have to physically take control of the plane. You’re armed, Mort. Right?”

Mort patted the weapon in his waistband.

“You?” Jed asked George.

“Afraid not,” George said.

“If my calculations are correct,” Jed said, “we’re about forty-five minutes from Boston.”

“Can you fly this plane?” Mort asked.

“I haven’t flown a 767 before, but it’s not all that different from the 757. Boeing designed the 767 to be flown by 757 pilots with a minimum of training.”

“That’s good to hear,” Jim Shevlin said. He’d come from the rear of the plane and stood in the galley entrance.

“Do you think he’d listen to me?” Christine asked. “You know, as the airline’s owner?”

“Sounds to me like Jess or Jed has the best chance of getting through to him,” said Mort.

“Here’s what we should be prepared to do,” Jed said. “In the event there’s a change in the flight, I suggest we—”

We all stood a little straighter as there was a discernible change in the aircraft’s motion. Jed cocked his head and frowned. “We’re turning,” he said. “He’s off the autopilot. We’re heading back to sea.”

J
ed got on the phone. “Mr. Scherer, this is Jed Richardson. Why have you come off autopilot?”

Scherer said nothing.

“What’s your fuel?” Jed asked.

Again, no response.

Then Scherer said, “I’d like to talk to Mrs. Fletcher.”

“He wants you, Jess,” Jed said, handing me the phone.

“This is Jessica.”

“I want to talk to you, explain things.”

“Of course. What is it you want to say?”

“Come up here.”

“To the flight deck?”

“Yeah.”

I told George and Jed what Scherer wanted.

“Absolutely not,” George said. “He’s already shot one person.”

“We’d better do something,” Jed said, “and fast!”

“I’ll do what he wants,” I said.

“Jessica, I—”

“It’ll be all right, George. Jed is right. We can’t simply stand by and wait for him to run out of fuel and kill us all. I’ll be fine.”

“All right,” George said, “but only ten minutes—and no more.” He turned to Jed: “I know these cockpit doors have been strengthened since Nine Eleven, but surely they can be battered open if enough force is applied.”

“We can try,” Jed said.

“Mrs. F.,” Mort said, “I’ve got an idea. Maybe after you go in you can close the door, but not tight.”

“I can try,” I said.

“Chances are he won’t notice,” Mort added. “Will it stay closed that way, Jed, or will it swing open?”

“It’ll stay where you leave it,” Jed replied.

“Good,” I said. To Gina: “Betsy has the key, can you signal them inside to open the door?”

She nodded, and rapped out a code on the door with her knuckles.

I pushed open the door and saw Betsy Scherer standing behind her husband, her hands on his shoulders.

“He’s asked for me,” I told her.

She replied by walking past me to where the others waited in the passenger cabin.

I took a final look at George before stepping onto the flight deck. I waited a moment, then slowly closed the door behind me, careful not to go so far as to cause it to latch.

Scherer didn’t look back at me.

“Mr. Scherer?” I said. “May I call you Captain Scherer?”

He turned his head slightly. “Call me what you want. Go on, take the left seat.”

“I’m comfortable standing,” I said.

He turned the control yoke to the right, causing the right wing to dip, and the left wing to come up, sending us into a hard right turn and sending me up against a control panel. “Sit down,” he said after he’d leveled off.

I slid into the seat reserved for a flight’s captain and peered into the night through the windshield. My eyes located the compass. It read ninety degrees. Jed was right; we were heading east again, back over the Atlantic.

“You said you wanted to explain what happened to Wayne Silverton,” I said in a soft voice, not wanting to arouse him, but also aware that I was on a ten-minute leash.

“Silverton deserved to die,” he said, his eyes never leaving the console in front of him, his hands gripping the yoke. The handgun he’d used to shoot Bill Caine rested on his lap.

“Why?” I asked.

“Ask his wife.”

“I’m asking you, Captain.”

“The way he treated Betsy. The way he treated everybody.”

“What did he do to Betsy?”

“He treated her like one of his whores.”

What ran through my mind at the moment was not especially kind. Evidently, Betsy had provided Wayne sexual favors in return for something tangible, in this case a job for her and her husband. That’s as good a definition of prostitution as any.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “It must have been hurtful for you to watch that happening to the woman you love. But why did you agree to come to work for Wayne and SilverAir?”

It was the first time he looked directly at me. “Do you know what it’s like to be a junior pilot in the airline business these days, Mrs. Fletcher?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“It stinks. I flew regional jets from one Podunk town to another. Know how much I was paid for putting in fourteen-hour days, making a dozen tough landings and takeoffs every day? Twenty-eight thousand. That was it.”

“But you knew you could eventually advance to bigger and better things.”

“Bigger and better things? In this aviation climate? Pilots with tons more seniority and experience than me are being laid off right and left. Silverton offered me a dream job, right seat in a 767, with the possibility of the left seat pretty soon. I grabbed it, only I figured once Betsy and I were working for him, he’d lay off her. He was a slimeball. He was all over her, always reminding her that he could fire us as fast as he’d hired us.”

He’d been sitting straight while condemning Wayne. Now, as though the air had left him, he slumped back in the seat and began to weep, softly at first, then with more passion.

I eyed the weapon on his lap. Did I dare reach for it? He’d showed me the fuel gauges during my previous trip to the flight deck. I didn’t know exactly what the digital numbers represented, but they appeared to indicate we didn’t have much left.

“We’re not heading for Boston any longer, are we?” I said.

He stared through the windshield at the black void outside.

My ten minutes were ticking away.

“Will you give me the gun, Carl?” I said.

He placed his hand on it, and for a terrible moment I thought he might slip his finger onto the trigger and use it on me. Instead, he handed it across the divide between our seats.

“Thank you,” I said.

I struggled out of the confined seat, went to the door, and pulled it open. George, Mort, Christine, Jed, Jim Shevlin, Gina Molnari, and John Slater stood waiting. I handed the gun to George.

“Better take him out of there, Inspector,” Jed said, “before he decides to do something really crazy.”

There was no need to enter the cockpit and forcibly remove him. He’d put the aircraft on autopilot again, had risen from his seat, and walked into our midst.

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Wayne Silverton,” George said.

“I’ll take him,” Mort said, leading Scherer to a pair of seats not far away, his weapon trained at the pilot’s head. Once there, Mort pulled Scherer’s arms behind him and secured them with duct tape provided by Slater from the aircraft’s supply of emergency repair items.

“I’d better climb in that left seat,” Jed said, “and get this bird headed in the right direction. Come help me out, Jess.”

“Me?”

“Yup. Get in the right seat. I’ll be plenty busy and may need you to lend a hand at times.”

B
efore accompanying Jed to the flight deck, I asked if George could take the jump seat, and Jed agreed.

“Let’s get this sucker back on course,” Jed said once he was settled and had familiarized himself with where everything was located. “Why don’t you two put on your headsets and hear what’s going on.”

He turned the 767 back to a westerly heading, in the direction of Boston, and made radio contact with the appropriate air traffic centers, informing them of our situation, and requesting that an ambulance be there when we arrived, as well as law enforcement officers to take an alleged murderer into custody. The controller assured Jed that we would be given priority landing rights.

“How’s our fuel?” I asked.

“I’d like to have more of a cushion,” he said, “but we should be all right as long as we don’t have delays at Logan.”

As we bore through the night sky toward Boston, it became obvious that my presence wasn’t needed. I suppose Jed wanted company, which I was happy to provide. I looked back often at George, who seemed enthralled at the experience of being on the flight deck of a sophisticated jet airliner. No matter how worldly someone might be, the experience was bound to impress.

After some back-and-forth over the radio between Jed and the air traffic control people in the Boston area, we settled into the approach procedure for Logan International Airport. Jed’s professionalism was obvious. He flew the plane as though he’d been doing it every day of his life. He hadn’t flown commercial jets in a number of years, but I suppose it’s like falling off a bicycle, as the saying goes. He was supremely confident and very much in command.

We eventually entered the traffic pattern and Jed lowered the landing gear. “Uh oh,” he said.

George and I leaned closer to him.

“See that light?” he said, pointing to the console.

“Which one?” I asked.

He touched it with his finger.

“It’s off,” I said.

“Should be on,” he said.

“That’s the light that malfunctioned when we were leaving Boston,” I commented.

“The gear is down,” Jed said, “but that light is supposed to come on to indicate it’s locked in place.”

“Maybe the bulb is burnt-out,” George offered, hopefully.

“And maybe it’s not,” Jed growled. He got back on the radio and reported the problem to Boston Approach Control. The controller asked Jed how much fuel he was carrying.

“We’re light,” Jed responded.

“Want to do a pass for a visual?” asked the controller.

“Roger,” Jed said crisply. “Shall do.”

Jed told us, “I’m going to do a flyby of the tower. They’ll visually confirm whether the gear looks like it’s down all the way.”

“That sounds sensible,” George said.

“Doesn’t mean it’s locked, though,” Jed warned. “If it’s not, it’ll collapse when we land.”

The controller on the ground informed Jed that other traffic had been cleared from airspace surrounding the airport, and we were okay to make the tower pass. The airport and all its lights came into view as we broke through a layer of low clouds. The closer we got to the ground, the faster the aircraft seemed to be flying. Jed kept dropping our altitude until we were headed directly at the control tower. I doubted whether we were more than five hundred feet from the ground. A powerful searchlight on the tower sprung to life, and its operator trained it on our plane. I wondered for a moment whether we were too low and would crash into the tower. But Jed maneuvered the 767 so that it passed a few hundred feet above, and to the south of it.

“Gear is down, Captain,” the controller’s voice barked into our headsets.

“Roger,” Jed replied. “Clear us for landing.”

“You’re cleared, SilverAir.”

We climbed to the right altitude for a straight-in approach to Runway Four-Right, one of Logan’s longest runways. As Jed coaxed the aircraft into the prescribed landing configuration and attitude, he got on the intercom: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got a minor problem with the aircraft. Nothing to worry about, but better safe than sorry. Please see that your seat belts are securely fastened and that any loose objects are stowed. Please remove your glasses, if you wear them. Women should remove shoes with high heels. The flight attendants will show you the proper position to assume for landing.”