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Sixty miles away, Sasha and Connelly were traveling north on Interstate 70. They’d just passed the exit for the Antietam Battlefield. In a few minutes they’d be through Hagerstown and would be crossing over the Mason-Dixon Line from Maryland into Pennsylvania.
“Did you know the Mason-Dixon had nothing to do with slavery?” Connelly said. “It was laid to settle a property dispute between the Calvert family of Maryland and the Penn family of Pennsylvania.”
Sasha glanced at him in the rental car’s rearview mirror. It was the first time he’d spoken since the car had been delivered to the hotel. He’d tried to convince her that Peterson wouldn’t be any less dead if they waited and took the first flight out in the morning, but she finally got him to understand she was driving back with or without him. He’d blustered and threatened to arrest her, but, in the end, he’d yanked open the rear passenger door and flung himself and his bag across the seat.
She hadn’t much cared whether he’d been sleeping back there or just sulking. The silence had been welcome.
Now, she met Connelly’s eye in the mirror and said, “Is that so?”
“Mmm-hmm. American history major.”
Several minutes later, the road changed from smooth blacktop to bumpy and cracked. Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation crews had taken over road maintenance several hundred feet before the official sign welcoming hapless travelers to the Commonwealth and it showed.
“Welcome to Pennsylvania,” she told him as they were jostled along.
Connelly forced a laugh. They drove in silence for a spell. Then he said, “You don’t think it was an accident, do you?”
He meant Peterson. After she’d hung up, Sasha had told him what Naya had told her. Peterson’s car was found wrapped around a tree a few blocks from his home. He’d apparently hit it at a high rate of speed and was declared dead on the scene. Everyone was assuming he’d been driving under the influence. Naya had added that the Prescott power brokers were hard at work trying to convince the coroner’s office not to run a blood alcohol test. Sasha hadn’t seen a reason to share that piece of information with the air marshal.
Now, in answer to his question she said, “No. I don’t.”
He waited.
She kept her eyes on the bands of luminescent paint stretching out ahead of her. “Noah was a heavy drinker. But he’d been drinking hard since before either of us was born. He was an accomplished drunk. I’ve seen him have a four-martini lunch and then cross-examine an expert witness and just shred the guy. He Irished up his coffee every morning for his commute to the office. But, he never, ever slurred his speech, let alone wrecked his car. He used to brag about threading the needle.”
“What’s that?”
“When he lived in the South Hills, he had to drive through the Fort Pitt tunnel every night. You know it?”
The tunnel was the handiwork of a city planner who’d been born to design carnival rides. Southbound, it was a bi-level bridge, with two lanes of traffic shooting into the two levels, while ramps from major highways fed into it from east and west. It was nerve wracking to navigate while sober, let alone after having had a few.
“Sure.”
“Peterson could speed through that approach and the tunnel after shutting down a bar. No problem.”
Connelly seemed to accept this navigational feat as evidence of the dead lawyer’s drunk-driving prowess.
“You think Irwin had your alcoholic boss killed?”
“I don’t know. The timing’s pretty convenient.”
“Did he know you talked to Warner?”
“Not sure. Like I told you, I was supposed to go see Mrs. Calvaruso. It felt too, I don’t know, sleazy to pump a widow for information the same day she learns her husband’s died. So, I left Noah a message saying I was going to call Patriotech instead. I don’t know whether he got it.”
“Let’s assume he was murdered. It’s hard to believe Irwin would have the reach to find him and have him killed from D.C. So, odds are he has a local partner. Any candidates spring to mind?”
Connelly sounded uninterested, almost bored, like he knew the answer would be no, but he was asking anyway because that’s what a good investigator did.
“Mickey Collins.” The name clicked into place like the last tumbler of a combination lock. “It’s gotta be.”
“The plaintiff’s attorney?”
“Right,” she said, shot through with excitement now. She wasn’t sure which was racing faster—her heart or her mind. “It explains everything. Why he didn’t name Calvaruso as his class rep, why he flipped out when his associate mentioned Irwin’s name. He’s in on it.”
“In on what exactly?”
In on the RAGS link application. But, she couldn’t tell Connelly about that. Sasha caught herself before she pounded her fist on the steering wheel.
“It’s a long story.”
The Starbucks mermaid flashed by on a sign advertising their approach to Breezewood, the self-proclaimed “Town of Motels.” It was an ugly, neon commercial stretch of fast food joints, gas stations, and, as promised, ample cheap hotels offering free cable and clean rooms on their magnetic-lettered signs.
The stretch was an anomaly that resulted when I-70 was built in the 1960s. Apparently, the then-prevailing rules made it prohibitively expensive to connect I-70 directly to I-76, the Pennsylvania Turnpike. So, the little strip, less than a mile long, served to feed traffic from one interstate to the other.
As Sasha had learned at a mind-numbing transportation law continuing legal education seminar, the rules had long since been loosened. But the commercial enterprises that relied on the travelers forced to drive through the junction had lobbied hard and successfully to prevent re-routing. That left Breezewood as one of only two numbered interstate roads in the United States to have a traffic light. She forgot where the other one was located.
Sasha wondered if she should share the town’s tale with the American history major in the backseat. If she did, it would be the first time she had put her transportation law knowledge to use. For some reason, her continuing education requirement snuck up on her every year and she ended up at seminars like transportation law or elder rights—things that had no relevance to her practice.
She opted to skip the history of Breezewood and said, “I need a coffee.”
She didn’t give him a chance to respond. Just jerked the car into the left lane and sped toward the green and white coffee shack. She could buy some time. And caffeine.
He waited in the car while she used the restroom and bought a Venti vanilla latte. She preferred black coffee, but Starbucks’ brew always tasted burnt to her. The sugar would give her an energy boost, anyway.
She tossed an overpriced, square bottle of water into the back seat for Connelly and slid the coffee into the center console cup holder before she burned the skin off her hand. That was going to need to cool down before she attempted to drink it at 70 miles an hour.
As she eased out into the meager traffic and entered the tollbooth plaza, she returned to his question.
“Here’s what I can tell you ethically. I have reason to believe the crash wasn’t an accident and that Mr. Calvaruso may have been involved in causing it. If I’m right, I think Mickey Collins and Irwin are behind it together.”
“How good is your information?” He sat up straight, wide awake now.
That was the question she’d asked herself while the half-asleep barista stumbled through the milk-steaming process at the coffee stand. If she knew for a fact that Calvaruso had used the RAGS link to crash the plane, she could arguably tell Connelly everything. The potential to stop another crash could trump her duty to keep the information confidential. Maybe.
The problem was that she didn’t know. She suspected. Her suspicions were growing stronger as dead bodies were piling up, but she couldn’t violate her ethical obligations to Hemisphere Air because she had a hunch.
She stretched her arm as
far as she could out the window in an effort to reach the ticket hanging from the automatic machine. Almost got it. She put the car in park, popped off the shoulder harness, opened the car door halfway, and snagged the ticket. Then she reversed the sequence and pulled out.
“It’s pretty good. I hope I can confirm it when I get Calvaruso’s file. I think that’s why Warner was killed. Irwin knows there’s info in that file that ties him to the crash.”
She brought the car back up to speed and they bumped along the toll road, which somehow managed to be in even worse repair than Interstate 70.
Connelly worked his jaw in the backseat. She watched in the rearview mirror as he tried to decide whether to ream her out for meddling in his investigation or to pump her for what she knew. She figured his curiosity would win out.
She picked up the still-steaming coffee cup and blew across the opening of the lid. As she juggled the hot cup and the steering wheel, Connelly’s feet and then his legs appeared in her peripheral vision. He was scissoring himself over the center console. She swept the cup out of his path. His torso followed his legs and he sprawled into the passenger seat beside her.
“I would have pulled off.”
He pulled his shirt down and smoothed it straight. “No need. The early crash investigation results are pretty clear. There was no altercation during the flight, no terrorism attack. The cause was a mechanical failure.”
She nodded.
“Okay, Calvaruso’s a retired laborer. What’s the theory? He somehow sabotaged the mechanical system and then, what, got on a plane he knew was going to crash? No way.”
“Maybe he sabotaged it mid-flight,” she hinted.
Connelly shook his head. “You don’t understand. The onboard computer suddenly locked in with the wrong coordinates and couldn’t be manually changed. He couldn’t have accessed those systems during the flight.”
She’d given him the opening. If he’d known RAGS had been installed on the plane, he would have walked through it. Metz was right. The feds didn’t know.
He cranked back the passenger seat and closed his eyes. She figured he was catching a nap, which was smart. Sleep was a weapon. In her case, though, it always seemed to be in short supply.
One of her nephews had become obsessed with fish after she’d taken him to see Finding Nemo and bought him a clownfish. Liam had spouted fish facts at her for months afterward before he’d moved onto a fascination with the planets. According to Liam, fish didn’t really sleep. They had periods of restfulness, but they were still alert during those times.
She focused on the ribbon of road and her sweet coffee drink and tried to think of herself as a restful fish.
Apparently, her passenger was also part fish. With his eyes still closed, he asked, “Were you and Peterson involved?”
She kept her eyes on the road and her voice even. “No. Why?”
“I need to know if your emotions are going to be a problem here.”
“Noah was a colleague and a friend. We were never intimate—that would have broken two of my dating rules. No married men and no lawyers. Of course, I’m upset that he’s dead, especially if he was murdered. But, I’ll be honest, I’m also concerned about what it’ll mean for my career. Noah had a lot of juice and he was backing me for partner. Now, who knows if I’ll make it?”
She surprised herself by how cold she sounded. Connelly just grunted, like he expected nothing less.
She drove on, eating up the miles as fast as she could. It was not quite four in the morning when they reached the Pittsburgh exit. Connelly opened his eyes as they went through the toll plaza.
“Where do you want me to drop you?” She asked.
Depending on how far out of the way he was, she could be home within the half hour. She’d have time for a nap and a shower before she headed into work.
He blinked and cleared his throat a few times. “I think I should keep you in my sights.”
“I can take care of myself, Agent Connelly.”
He gave her a half-smile, “That’s obvious. But, if Collins or Irwin or both killed your boss, you may be a target. I can’t jeopardize my investigation by leaving you vulnerable.”
She just stared at the road ahead, too tired to argue with him.