Since today is Christmas, it seemed an appropriate time to give my stakeout team the day off. They’ve uncovered absolutely no activity of any kind at the airport, and there’s no reason to think that any nefarious activity would suddenly spring up on Christmas Day.
I tell Laurie about the suspension of the stakeout, since she is the officer in charge at the precinct today. Laurie has voluntarily agreed to work on the holiday so as to give Parsons and others under her a chance to be with their families.
The net result of her generosity to her staff is that Tara and I are left alone. I turn down a bunch of invitations to spend Christmas at various friends of Laurie’s, preferring to indulge my bad mood by staying home and watching a college bowl game and two NBA games.
I call in a bet on the bowl game, since why else would anyone in their right mind want to watch Toledo play Hawaii in the Aloha Bowl? I take Toledo and four points, and I realize I’m in trouble before the opening kickoff. The coaches for Toledo are wearing ridiculous flowered Hawaiian shirts, not the kind of outfits that will motivate their players to fight their hardest for dear old Toledo U.
Sure enough, Hawaii is ahead 31-3 at halftime, and unless the flower-shirted coaches are going to convince their team to blossom for the Gipper, my bet is history.
This leaves me more time to think, a pastime I haven’t found to be terribly enjoyable lately. It is burning a hole in my gut that cold-blooded murderers are out there, getting away with what they’ve done and probably pointing and laughing at me in the process.
“You feel like going on a stakeout?” I ask Tara.
She doesn’t get excited and start wagging her tail, but nor does she growl or cover her head with her paws. Tara has led a fairly sheltered life, and it’s just possible she’s never been on a stakeout before and therefore doesn’t know what to expect.
“We sit in the car, with the heat on, and eat potato chips and dog biscuits,” I say by way of explanation. Her tail starts to wag, but I think it’s the word “biscuits” that does it.
“Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, biscuits,” I say, and get the same wag. I think I’m detecting a pattern.
In a few minutes I’ve stocked the car with stakeout supplies and we’re driving out toward the Center City airstrip. I’m aware it’s a ridiculous, unproductive thing to do, but the possibility that something will happen on the one day we’re not watching is gnawing at me.
We’re at the airstrip in twenty minutes, and we take up the same position that Larson has been occupying. It only takes a quick look to see that today is no different than every other day; the place is totally quiet, with no one to be seen anywhere.
Within thirty seconds I’m bored out of my mind and Tara is asleep on the backseat. I know that it’s very unlikely that anything will come of this, but just in case, I need to remain alert.
When I wake up, the clock in the car tells me that I’ve been asleep for almost an hour. Tara continues to sleep on the backseat; she has many wonderful qualities, but ability as a stakeout dog is not one of them.
Within moments I realize that I didn’t just happen to wake up, that an increasingly loud noise did the trick. I look around, trying to find the source of the noise, which seems to be coming from up in the air. Maybe ten seconds later I see it, coming from the other side of the airstrip. It’s a small cargo plane, already quite low and obviously coming in for a landing.
My heart starts pounding in my chest, and a bunch of things quickly run through my mind. One is that I have no idea what to do. Another is that I’m sorry I brought Tara; the idea of exposing her to any possible danger is simply unacceptable. Even dumber than bringing Tara was forgetting my cell phone, which leaves me with no possible way to call for help.
It’s warm in the car, but I’m frozen in place, watching the scene unfold before me. The cargo plane lands and taxis toward the hangar. The large hangar door opens, revealing the presence of someone inside. I can’t come close to seeing who it is from this distance, and I don’t know if that person has been there the whole time, or arrived during my nap.
The plane enters the hangar, and the door comes down behind it. Once again the airport takes on that desolate, abandoned look, but this time I know better. I know that there are humans in that hangar; what I don’t know is what the hell they are doing.
I briefly debate whether to leave my car and sneak across the airfield to the hangar, so as to learn what is going on. The reason the debate is brief is that the idea of it is stupid: I would be completely exposed to anyone who bothered to look outside.
So all I can do is wait, and I do so, for an hour and twenty-one minutes. That’s when the door opens, but instead of the plane coming back out, a truck rolls out. It looks like any one of the trucks that carry goods out of Center City. It’s hard to make out the name from this distance, but my best guess is “R amp;W Dairies.”
The truck rolls out onto the road, heading in my direction. I’m set off from the road, and there’s no way the driver will be able to see me. The unfortunate flip side of that is that there is no way I will be able to see him.
I get out of the car, leaving it running so that Tara will remain warm. I move quickly toward the road, just reaching it as the truck goes past. The side of the truck does say “R amp;W Dairies,” and there are two people in the front seat. From my vantage point I can’t see who the passenger is, but I definitely recognize the driver.
Alan Drummond.
I go back to the car and get in. I slam the door shut, which wakes up my stakeout mate in the backseat. She looks around as if to say, “What did I miss?” but I don’t give her the satisfaction of telling her.
My strong desire is to go toward the airstrip and check out what might still be inside the hangar. That desire collides head-on with my self-preservation instinct, and I decide against it. I have no idea whether there are any people still in there, but if there are, I’d be a sitting duck.
I drive back to Findlay, annoyed that all this took place without me learning anything from it, but somehow rejuvenated by the process.
• • • • •
LET’S GO” are the first words out of Laurie’s mouth when she hears my story. I dropped Tara off and came here to her office, and within three minutes Laurie and I are back out and in the car.
“We’re going out to the airstrip?” I ask.
“That’s right. We’re going to check it out.”
Ever the lawyer, I point out, “You don’t have a search warrant.”
“I’ve got something better than that,” she says. “I’ve got a citizen who reported seeing a possible crime taking place.”
“That would be me?”
She nods. “It would.”
Laurie drives right up to the airstrip with no apparent hesitation, but makes a rather obvious concession to the possible danger by taking out her handgun as she gets out of the car.
We walk to the smaller door, the one that lets in people but not planes, and Laurie rings the bell. We hear it sounding loudly through the building, so if anyone is in there, they could not help but hear it as well. Laurie holds her gun at her side, concealed but ready.
There is no answer, so she tries twice more. Still no response.
“Can you kick it in?” she asks.
“Excuse me?” I ask, though we both know I heard her quite clearly.
She takes out a small device, which looks a little like a can opener, and calmly pops the lock. The door swings open.
I shake my head, showing my disapproval. “Illegal entry, said the defense attorney to the judge.”