She glanced up. Noble was ushering Malcolm into the backseat of his cruiser, and as she watched, the red lights whirled atop the other police car and Kevin and Duane were off, headed toward town. She looked at Russ as he opened his door.
“He says his aunt didn’t drive away, because he had her car.” He got in, pinching the bridge of his nose. “He doesn’t know where she’s gone. The only people he knows she might get in touch with are his mother or her other sister. Both of whom live more than halfway across the state. She must have called a friend to come pick her up.”
He crawled in behind the wheel and leaned back against the headrest. “We’ve got an APB out on her, but it’s not going to do us a damn bit of good if we don’t know what the hell car she’s in. ’Scuse my French.”
“Could she have rented a car?”
“That was my first thought. The nearest car-rental place is at the Fort Henry Ford dealership. I sent Duane and Kevin off to check it out.”
Officer Entwhistle’s car came to life. He pulled away from the side of the road and headed toward town, waving through the window at Russ.
“We need to get someone to secure that Volvo,” Russ said, sounding weary. “We’re so damned overextended at this point that I’m going to have to call the staties in. God, I hate that.” He reached for his keys and started the truck. “We’d better get back to the house and start calling names in Peggy’s Rolodex. Maybe we’ll find a girlfriend who just happened to have plans to drive out of town today.”
Clare’s mind returned to the party the night before. Sitting in the window seat of the Landry house while the guests swirled around her. The expression of disbelief on Hugh Parteger’s face. The smell of black currants and Thai chicken. Peggy saying, “John Opperman’s flying to Baltimore tomorrow afternoon, and he won’t be back until Tuesday.”
“I know where she is.”
He looked at her.
“No, really. I know where she is. John Opperman’s supposed to fly out of town this afternoon. I bet she called him and asked to come along. I bet he’d pick her up, no questions asked.”
He shoved his hand into his hair, spiking his sweat-stiff locks in every direction. “He would, wouldn’t he? A little freebie business trip.” He slammed the heel of his hand into his steering wheel. “Damn, that woman thinks fast on her feet. We’re not going to find her with an APB because she’s not going to be on the road. Or buying a ticket anywhere.” He threw the truck into gear and pulled onto the road. “Do you know when Opperman’s supposed to leave?”
“She just said he was leaving this afternoon. And that he was headed for Baltimore.”
He heeled the truck hard to the left and stomped on the gas pedal. “If I take the back roads, I can be at the Glens Falls Airport in twenty minutes.” He glanced at her for a split second. “I don’t suppose you have your cell phone with you?”
“In my car. Sorry.”
“Never mind. If they’re still there, we can stop them before he takes off. And if they’ve left, they would have had to tell the airport-control people where they’re going, right?”
“He would have to have filed a flight plan, yeah. And if he’s flying on instruments, he’ll be passed from one flight-control center to another. You’ll be able to call ahead and have someone waiting for her at their destination.” She grabbed the door handle as he took another hard turn onto an unmarked road. They jounced in and out of potholes as they flew through thickets of sumac and ancient overgrown apple orchards. “You know, I like to speed, but isn’t this—”
“Hang on.” He turned onto a one-lane bridge. Steel plates ca-chunk-ca-chunk-ca-chunked beneath the tires.
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
He grinned at her. “Do you trust me?”
She groaned.
At one point, she was sure they’d passed under the Northway, but other than that, she had no bearing on where they were until they emerged from a tree-shaded road and saw the airport in front of them, its four runways stretched like a top-heavy X past a handful of hangars and a tiny tower. They drove through a gate marked EMPIRE EAST AVIATION.
“Where do you think he’d be?” Russ asked.
She glanced around as he slowed the truck to a crawl. There were twenty or twenty-five small planes at tie-downs and another two on the tarmac. As she watched, a Beech King took off from runway 12.
“Could that have been it?”
“No,” she said, still scanning the area. “That’s a single-engine. If he’s actually using it for long-range transport, he’s got to have a double-prop, maybe a jet, and I don’t see any around here. Head for—whoa! There! Pull over, pull over.”
She was scrambling out of her door before he turned the engine off. In front of the next hangar, past the tie-down area and ready to roll onto runway 1, was a Piper Cheyenne II, twin turboprop, six seats—the biggest plane she had seen so far. A skinny young man in greasy overalls was rolling back a fuel hose. Whoever was in the plane was in a big hurry—finishing the refueling only minutes before getting the go-ahead. She could hear Russ behind her, yelling, “Millers Kill PD. Stop that plane!”
Clare skidded to a halt in front of the fuel attendant’s tubing spool. “Who owns this?” she said. He gawped at them. “Who owns this turboprop?” she demanded.
“Uh…uh…”
She snatched an order pad from the front pocket of his overalls.
“Hey!”
“Is this the order?” she asked, pointing to the top sheet.
“Yeah, but—”
She had already read the owner’s name beneath the grimy fingerprints. She waved the pad at Russ. “It says BWI!”
She heard the engine turn over, the plane purr to life. Russ flashed his badge at the fuel attendant. “Police! There’s a murder suspect on board that plane! Go tell whoever’s in charge to shut it down!”
The kid’s eyes bulged out of his bony face. He turned and fled toward the tower.
Russ sprinted the rest of the way to the plane and banged on the tail. “Stop! Stop!”
She caught at Russ’s arm and dragged him away. “You idiot! If that plane turns, those props will slice you into julienned fries! Don’t ever, ever get next to a plane with its props running!”
“There’s no way the tower can stop him if he wants to take off, can it?”
She shook her head.
“Then I have to do it.” He ran wide around the Cheyenne’s wing, drawing his gun. The plane slowly pivoted toward the runway. She saw the flaps moving as the pilot adjusted them before running up his engines.
Russ skidded to a halt a dozen feet from the Cheyenne’s nose. He leveled his gun toward the cockpit. The self-sacrificing stupidity of it took her breath away. She didn’t think one bullet, or even a full clip, would ground that plane, unless he could hit the pilot. And she knew he would never shoot Opperman just to stop Peggy Landry from escaping.
The plane’s twin engines whined and it began to roll forward. Evidently, whoever was inside had realized the same thing Clare had. The plane changed its angle slightly, so that instead of the nose facing Russ, it was the right wing prop. Russ jogged sideways until he was dead-on the nose again, but this was a duel he couldn’t win.
Stop the plane, stop the plane—Possibilities flipped through her mind as the Cheyenne rolled forward and Russ backed away ahead of it. He was shouting something about being under arrest, but she couldn’t pay attention to his words as she cast about for something, anything to—Then she spotted the wheel chocks. Long wooden and rubber triangles, each hanging from a length of rope, flight equipment unchanged since Orville and Wilbur Wright flew at Kitty Hawk. There were two pairs resting next to an empty tie-down cleat on the tarmac.
She grabbed three by their rope handles and sprinted toward the back of the plane. She ducked low and scurried under the right wing. The plane was moving at a brisk pace now, and the trick was going to be to get the chock in front of the wheel without walking straight into the propeller, which was whirring five feet in front of her. She twirled the handle and tossed one, wishing fervently that she had spent more time playing horseshoes with her brothers. The chock hit the tarmac, bounced, and came to rest at a slant.