Murder in Foggy Bottom (5 page)

5

That Same Day
Washington, DC

Potamos was in that indeterminate stage between sleep and wakefulness. He wondered what he was doing in a powdered wig, dancing in Austria. Roseann had taken Jumper for her morning walk and now sat at the piano in the living room struggling through Viennese waltzes to play at a cocktail party that evening at the Austrian embassy. Ordinarily, Potamos enjoyed hearing her play, but not when he was trying to sleep, and not waltzes by Strauss. Billy Joel, maybe.

He’d been up late the night before, which wasn’t unusual. Potamos was a night person, which was fortunate considering that Roseann was a musician who usually worked at night. If he wasn’t out on an assignment, he stayed up late anyway watching old movies on TV, or indulging his recent passion of surfing the Internet, the small screen beginning to win out over the tube.

This was a scheduled day off. Late yesterday, he’d filed a longer story on the body found in the park after gathering information about the deceased, digging into sources more giving than the cops. The murdered man’s name was Jeremy Wilcox, age forty-seven, attached to the Canadian embassy in its trade and commerce office. A diplomat. No suspects. Wilcox’s father had come from Toronto to claim the body but had been told it would have to remain in Washington until further forensic tests had been conducted. Jeremy Wilcox was single—forty-seven years old and never married. Gay? Not a very enlightened reaction, Potamos knew, but one that came to mind.

Potamos himself had been married twice. Ungay and unhappy.

Wife number one was Patty Kelly, an Irish Catholic (“Don’t tell me,” Potamos had said when they met) with fair skin, blazing green eyes, and a field of freckles splashed across her pretty cheeks. Potamos had just graduated from New York University with a degree in journalism, a proud moment in the Potamos family. His father owned a quintessentially Greek diner in Queens and routinely told customers that his son, Joseph, was about to win a Pulitzer Prize even though he hadn’t landed his first job.

When he brought Patty Kelly home to meet the folks, his father awarded him no prizes. He took him out in the yard and said, “If you marry someone who is not Greek, you are no longer my son.” He maintained that posture through two grandchildren, although Potamos’s mother and two sisters kept in touch.

Joe and Patty tried marriage counseling before officially calling it quits. The sessions with the female therapist, six in all, found each of the warring parties expressing opinions about why the marriage wasn’t working. For Patty, it was Joe’s love of his job to the exclusion of her and the children, his family’s dislike of her, even his disinterest in dressing better. Joe’s take on the failing marriage was Patty’s lack of interest in sex, her hatred of his family, her choice of friends, and her harping on how he dressed. By the sixth session, the therapist came to the conclusion that they’d be better off separating and divorcing, although she refrained from suggesting it. Just another case of two people who shouldn’t have married each other in the first place.

Patty became a Unitarian-Universalist before the divorce, which salved her Catholic guilt. Joe’s father softened when they divorced, although it became Potamos’s mother’s turn to be anguished when Patty moved to Boston and visits with the grandchildren became less frequent.

Things settled down in Potamos’s life until he fell in love with Linda, a bright, vibrant, intense, occasionally hysterical Jewish woman who worked as a secretary at the CIA. That marriage lasted four months after he discovered she was cheating on him. That her lover was another secretary at the agency named Gertrude gave Potamos a certain comfort; at least he hadn’t lost out to another guy. The divorce was routine and quick, without kids to complicate things as there had been in marriage number one.

When his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and told he had no more than six months to live, he summoned Joe to New York and handed him a check for $100,000: “Take it now. It makes no sense to wait until I’m dead.”

Potamos used the money to buy his one-bedroom Rosslyn condo. On the day he closed on it, he made a silent pledge: He’d never marry again. So far, so good, although there were times with Roseann when his resolve threatened to wilt. She was good-looking—but weren’t they all?—slender and small breasted, with long, strong fingers, a pianist’s hands. She wore her blue-black hair short and swept back at the sides, exposing the graceful line of a lovely neck. Her makeup was applied with a deft hand, just enough to add the proper touch of color to her naturally pale face. Well, maybe someday . . . maybe not.

Although he’d buried his head beneath the pillow to muffle the incessant one-two-three rhythm of the waltzes, he heard the phone ring. Roseann entered the bedroom. “It’s for you, Joe. Gil Gardello.” Gardello was Potamos’s editor at the
Post.

Potamos moaned as he kicked Jumper off his legs, dragged himself from bed, and went to the phone in the kitchen.

“Yeah?”

“Joe, you hear about the plane that went down in New York?”

“No.”

“Was DC bound. Locals on board. No survivors.”

“Gee, I’m really sorry to hear that. What the hell does it have to do with me?”

“As soon as we get a passenger list, I want you to contact family members, get their reactions.”

“Jesus! What’s this—TV time? You want me to ask some wife how she feels about her old man dying in a plane wreck?”

“Be subtle, gentle.”

“Not me, Gil. Send some breathless intern.”

“Be here in an hour, Joe.”

“I’m not asking those questions.”

“An hour. Better still, a half hour. No point in washing up, the way you dress.” Gardello hung up.

Roseann, still in a film of nightgown, returned to the piano.

“I got to go,” Potamos said.

“On your day off?” she said, still playing. “Sorry.”

“At least I won’t have to hear you play those apple strudel songs.”

Her response was to play louder and with greater flourishes. He closed the bathroom door, showered, got dressed in his fashion, and left the apartment to the strains of “Wine, Women and Song.”

6

That Same Day
New York

Within an hour, hundreds of people had converged on the area where the Dash 8 aircraft had crashed after taking off from Westchester County airport. State and local police, airport and airline personnel, volunteer fire departments, ambulance corps technicians, elected village officials, and Special Agent Frank Lazzara and his three colleagues looked out over what had once been a tranquil wooded area a hundred yards from the reservoir. A police helicopter hovered low overhead, its incessant chopping sound making conversation difficult.

There was understandable confusion. Lazzara had been alerted that the NTSB contingent would be arriving shortly. Unless there was suspicion that the plane had been brought down by a criminal act, NTSB would control the scene and the ensuing investigation.

But in the absence of NTSB officials, Lazzara took charge, ordering uniformed police to further secure the area as far up as where the troopers who’d originally answered the call had parked their vehicles, and instructing medical and fire personnel to search for survivors, no matter what. There was always a chance. Those earthquake victims buried under rubble until—

His cell phone rang.

“Lazzara.”

“Frank, it’s Will.” Wilfred Fellows, Lazzara’s second in command at the White Plains office, had been out of the office when the call came to head for the crash scene. “I think you ought to know there’s a third plane down.”

Lazzara was speechless.

“California, outside San Francisco. San Jose. A commuter plane like the others. There’s an eyewitness to it. . . . You there, Frank?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Three. This eyewitness. Credible?”

“I don’t know. A woman. I just got a call from the San Francisco office.”

“What’s she say?”

“She claims she saw something hit the plane after it took off.”

“Something hit it? Like what? Another plane? An asteroid?”

“That’s what they told me. Thought you’d want to know.”

“Yeah, thanks. We’ll need more agents here. It’s thickening up. Call Manhattan, get them to dispatch some.”

“Shall do.”

Lazzara pushed the off button and slipped the small phone into his jacket pocket. As far as he was concerned, the question of whether there was criminal involvement was now a no-brainer. Had the Dash 8 been the only plane down that day, he would have been slow to come to that conclusion, and would have taken NTSB’s lead once its officials had made their preliminary evaluation.

But the Dash 8 hadn’t been the only commuter aircraft to fall from the skies that morning. Two others had. There had to be a connection among the three.
Had to be.
Only a naive fool would even consider the possibility that three well-maintained, professionally piloted commercial aircraft had, within four hours, in good weather (if Westchester was any indication that morning), fallen to earth due to natural causes—mechanical failure, pilot error, air traffic control mistakes, metal fatigue, fuel tank explosion, or other noncriminal causes of aircraft falling from the sky.

He wasn’t happy with what Fellows had told him about the California eyewitness. He hadn’t worked aircraft accidents before, but having followed every aspect of the TWA 800 accident over Long Island, he was well aware that the missile theorists, for example, were less than credible—a generous lay psychological evaluation.

A young volunteer fireman came up to him. “There’s nobody alive,” he said.

“What’s that?” Lazzara asked, referring to something the firefighter held.

“A necklace. Found it over there.” He pointed. “Must have belonged to a passenger.” He handed it to Lazzara, who fingered the four-leaf clover.

“A good luck charm,” Lazzara said grimly. “Some luck.” He handed it back to the firefighter—“Give this to the NTSB people”—and turned as several men arrived. They wore blue windbreakers with NTSB emblazoned in yellow on the back.

“Frank Lazzara, FBI,” the special agent said, extending his hand to the leader.

“O’Connell, NTSB, Parsippany. Any survivors?”

“Negative so far. I’m afraid it’ll be negative forever.”

O’Connell looked back up the trail he and his people had used to reach the scene. “We’ll need a bulldozer to widen that out, get a road down here.”

The mayor of a nearby village overheard the comment and said, “I’ll arrange it right away.”

Lazzara took O’Connell aside. “You’ll be heading the investigation?” he asked.

“No. Pete Mullin from Washington should be here any minute.”

“You’ve heard about the other two,” Lazzara said.

“Yeah.”

“There’s got to be a link.”

O’Connell shrugged. “To be determined.”

“Got to be,” Lazzara repeated. “What were the other planes?”

“Another Dash 8 in Boise, a Saab 34 in San Jose.”

“Saab? Like the car?”

“Yeah. A commuter plane operated by a regional carrier.”

“Survivors?”

“None reported.”

Lazzara pondered whether to mention the eyewitness report. O’Connell spared him that decision. “An eyewitness in California says she saw something hit the Saab shortly after takeoff.”

“I heard that. Play for you?”

Another shrug.

Peter Mullin and his experts came down the narrow hiking trail, followed by volunteers from the Westchester Red Cross office. Mullin had been glad to see them. Having investigated dozens of aircraft accident scenes, his respect for the Red Cross and its support was unbridled. Sometimes, it was only the coffee and encouraging good cheer dispensed by the dedicated volunteers that kept him and his people going through the night.

Mullin was greeted by O’Connell, who introduced Lazzara to the lead investigator.

“Any witnesses?” Mullin asked.

“Not that I know of,” Lazzara said. “We have more agents coming from the city. I told the local police to start canvassing houses in the area.”

“Good.”

The combined NTSB teams from Parsippany and Washington fanned out to examine those areas of the wreckage of particular interest to them, taking pictures as they went. EMS personnel brought the first empty body bags down the hiking trail, and a pastor from a local church arrived on the scene. Mullin thanked the clergyman for coming, but told him he’d have to bestow any blessings from a distance. No one not directly involved in the investigation was allowed beyond the perimeter established by uniformed officers.

Lazzara trailed after Mullin as he slowly, cautiously walked among the twisted, charred wreckage and bodies and body parts, which seemed to Lazzara the product of the bizarre and warped imagination of a macabre performance artist—meant to shock rather than inspire. They stood side by side and looked down at a teddy bear spotted with blood.

“Kids are the worst,” Mullin said.

“Yeah. I have one. A year old.”

Mullin turned at the sound of his name. Two state troopers new to the scene stood at the foot of the trail. Between them was a fisherman wearing a tan fishing vest with multiple pockets over a tan shirt with still more pockets.

“Who’s this?” Mullin asked a trooper.

“He says he saw the accident.”

“You did, sir?” Mullin asked.

“Yes, I did,” Al Lester said. His round face was flushed with excitement and anxiety, and he spoke rapidly. “I saw it happen. I was out in my boat—”

“Maybe we should go someplace else to hear what the gentleman has to say,” Lazzara suggested.

Mullin nodded, and he and Lazzara led Lester up the trail to a small break in the trees.

“Now, sir,” Mullin said, “tell us what you saw.”

Lester looked back and forth between the two men and frowned.

“I’m Peter Mullin, from the National Transportation Safety Board,” Mullin said, realizing that an introduction was needed. “This is FBI Agent Lazzara.”

Lazzara extended his hand to Lester. “Frank Lazzara, special agent in charge of the White Plains office.” Lester took it, did the same with Mullin’s.

“I was out in my boat. I fish most every day, bass mostly, sometimes trout—depends on what lure I use, things like that.”

“I do some fishing myself,” Mullin said. “You saw what happened to the plane?”

“Yes, I did. Oh, yes, I certainly did.”

Lazzara and Mullin waited for him to continue.

“It blew up right where the wing joins with the body. What do you call it, the fuselage?”

“Yes,” Mullin said.

“Plane took off right over my boat. It’s a canoe, actually, an old aluminum one. Grumman canoe. They don’t make them anymore.”

“And?”

“I watched the plane all the way. I guess I always watch ’em taking off ’cause I don’t like the noise. I watched him all the way until . . . until it blew up.”

“You say it blew up,” Mullin said. “What side of the plane?”

Lester maneuvered his body to come up with the proper angle. “It was—let’s see, it was the left side of the plane. He was making a left turn, it looked like to me. Yes, it was the left side.”

“There was an explosion?” Lazzara asked.

“Yes, sir, right where the wing fits into the fuselage.”

“How large an explosion?”

“Pretty big. Well, not so big, maybe, but pretty big, big enough to knock the wing off.”

“What color was the explosion?” Mullin asked.

“Red, yellow. I told the troopers about the missile I saw.”

Lazzara and Mullin looked at each other.

“I know,” said Lester, “I probably sound like some nut who doesn’t know what he saw. Well, I don’t see things, and my eyesight is pretty damn good. It was a missile or something like a missile that went up and hit the plane.”

“Did you see where it came from?” Lazzara asked.

“Not really; from the woods somewhere.”

“You’re absolutely positive that you saw a missile come from the woods and hit the plane?” Mullin said.

“Yes, sir. That’s what I saw.”

Lazzara said, “Mr. Lester, who else have you told about this?”

“Nobody, not even my wife. I was going to call her but I saw the troopers after I came up from the water and told them. They brought me right here.”

“So you told the troopers about the missile?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And no one else.”

“No, just you two gentlemen.”

Lazzara glanced at Mullin before saying, “Mr. Lester, I’m going to arrange for you to be taken to a . . . to a command post where we can discuss this further.” To Mullin he said, “Has a command post been established?”

“The airport, a vacant hangar.”

“We’ll take you there, Mr. Lester. We can talk better. That okay with you?”

“I’d better call Nancy.”

“Your wife?”

“Yes.”

“You can do that, but you can’t tell her what you saw this morning.”

“Why not?”

“Just procedure, sir. You can tell her tonight after we’ve gotten your official statement.”

“I suppose I don’t have any choice.”

Lazzara didn’t reply.

They escorted Lester to where two of Lazzara’s colleagues stood. Lazzara instructed them to take the witness to the airport and stay with him in the hangar that was being used as a command post. Before they left, he said, “Mr. Lester will want to call his wife. That’s fine, but he knows he’s not to tell her anything about what he saw.” He turned to Lester. “Why not just tell your wife that you witnessed the plane accident, are giving a statement to the police, and that you’ll be home later in the day?” The agents nodded; they understood that what Lazzara said was, in fact, an order.

Mullin and Lazzara watched them leave.

“Two eyewitnesses, in two different accidents, claim missiles brought down the planes,” Lazzara said.

“Doesn’t mean it’s true,” Mullin said. “We had hundreds of witnesses who claimed they saw a missile hit TWA 800. They were all wrong.”

“That was one plane. This involves two, on two coasts. You aren’t ruling out the criminal element, are you?”

“It’s on the table along with every other probable cause, but until there’s some confirmation, I’d prefer it not be bandied about in the press.”

“No argument from me, but that’s wishful thinking. How do you want to handle the interview with our fisherman friend?”

“Do it jointly, get it down officially.”

“Okay. Ready?”

“No. Hold him for a few hours. I can’t leave here yet.”

Lazzara walked away. Mullin started back to where his team was examining wreckage, and where EMS was removing the first of the bodies. His expert on metals was on his knees looking closely at a shaft of metal three feet in length and a few inches wide.

“What’s that?” Mullin asked.

“Not sure, Pete, but it’s not part of the plane. There’s a smaller, similar piece over there.”

“No idea what it is, where it came from?”

“Could be a piece of a weapon of some sort.”

“Weapon?”

“Yeah.”

“A missile?”

The metals expert looked up at Mullin and winced. “I’m no missile expert, Pete. But I’d say it’s a possibility.”