A woman with bright green hair passed Rotem’s office. She wore a black cape and had pointy ears. He thought she must be part of the secretary pool, but the lime green hair threw him. Do they have Goths working here now? He hoped like hell she wasn’t one of his deputies.
Reminded then of yet another Beltway Halloween he felt burdened by his responsibilities as a father, restricted by the twenty-minute drive to a safe neighborhood where they’d trick-or-treat with friends, the fathers drinking a little too much as the mothers went door to door with the kids. He felt the day slipping away from him, the quitting hour quickly approaching, even though it was barely after lunch. He slid the well-marked legal pad in front of him and reconsidered his list of priorities. He drew a few arrows and then pushed the pad away, feeling helpless. The discovery of a mole in their midst, and the ongoing investigation into damage done, had crushed morale within Fugitive Apprehension. Rotem’s mood wasn’t much better.
He’d had a latte and some biscotti for lunch and was already beginning to feel hungry again. With four meetings scheduled this afternoon, he had his work cut out for him.
Wegner entered his office without knocking. A redheaded man so thin he couldn’t find shirts to fit, Wegner’s boyish face belied nearly a decade of experience in the department. His deodorant failed to mask his body odor. A desk jock devoted to intelligence gathering, he approached his job with the eagerness of a field operative.
“May have something.” When overly excited, one of Wegner’s most annoying habits was his tendency to either truncate his sentences, leaving the recipient to decode them, or talk so quickly you couldn’t understand a word. Or both.
Rotem had not heard from Larson. Nor had he tried to make contact. He had two dead officers-murdered-and a safe house that was no longer safe. Larson would find cover and check in. He’d recalled Hampton and Stubblefield, who’d both been pursuing Markowitz leads. With Rotem’s department in disarray, Wegner’s enthusiasm seemed surreal.
The man placed a printout in front of Rotem, gave him about an eighth of a second to examine it, and then began talking at a furious rate. Rotem slipped on a pair of reading glasses.
“ATC. General aviation aircraft. Flight plans, into the greater St. Louis metropolitan area. Last thirty hours. Current as of one-zero hundred… a little over an hour ago.”
Rotem had reported the missing child to the FBI’s St. Louis field office, requesting they make it a priority. He’d not told them who Penny was, nor how she connected to WITSEC or FATF, nor that Laena was missing. Train stations, rental-car agencies, bus stations, truckers, truck stops, and state troopers were all on the alert, as were the general aviation airports and St. Louis International.
Rotem didn’t recall requesting that one of his guys work with Air Traffic Control’s computerized flight plans. He hadn’t asked anyone to filter general aviation for first-time visits to the area, but he wasn’t complaining.
“Give me the short form,” he told Wegner. “And slow down.”
“Homeland Security requires ATC to track every bird in the sky for variations from their regularly filed flight plans. Since the abduction of the Stevenson girl, ATC has recorded a half dozen first-time single-engine aircraft into the St. Louis area, and we’ve accounted for the pilot and the reason for the visit in each case. Eleven twins, most of which simply landed and refueled. Employees at FBOs are encouraged to keep track of passenger pickups and drop-offs, something initiated by Homeland. All FBOs have been advised of the little girl. Intel gathered an hour ago from ATC concerns”-he leaned over Rotem and turned the page, directing him to a line about halfway down-“a fractionally owned private jet. In and of itself, it’s not too remarkable; in the past day we’ve logged seven privately owned jets landing there for the first time. But in each case, the paper trail made sense-that is, the fractional owner was a corporation, or at least a known entity, and the passengers listed on the manifest checked out. This one,” he said, tapping his finger strongly on the open page, “is the exception. We’ve been on the horn with Sure-Flyte, the corporation that sells and maintains the fractional ownership fleet, and we’ve also run a background on the fractional owner-a corporation out of Delaware -and it’s murky, to say the least. Past flights, and there haven’t been many, have been Seattle to Providence, round trip. Seattle to here, Washington, D.C. Seattle to Reno a half dozen times. Always originating with a passenger in Seattle. The passenger names listed on the manifests are for people who certainly exist-of course they do-but I’m betting ten to one they’re recent victims of identity theft. You look at their incomes, these people did not ride a private jet around the country.”
“Is Homeland involved?”
“They’ll be all over this once they hear about the aliases.”
“Let’s delay that for now,” Rotem said. “Where’s it scheduled to land?”
“That’s what caught our attention. The pickup is Washington, Missouri. It’s a small strip west of St. Louis, just big enough to handle a jet like this. And get this: no tower, no FBO. No witnesses. Sure-Flyte has never, let me repeat that, never, landed one of their jets at the Washington strip.”
“A private jet of dubious ownership,” Rotem repeated, “landing for the first time at a strip just out of town where no one is likely to see who gets on or gets off.”
“And the first time a passenger flight for this company did not originate in Seattle. Which is why I brought it up here in person rather than put it into the paper mill.”
Wegner lived in an office cubicle where the only light came from fluorescent tubes and the only smells from his armpits or the coffee machine. For a reward, Rotem felt tempted to bring him as a field-side spectator for the day-to see his efforts in action-but decided he needed him on the front line of paperwork.
“You may have saved a life, Wegner.” Rotem watched as the man grew a few inches taller. “Maybe more than that. Maybe many more.”
Wegner lingered a little too long.
“Now get back to it,” Rotem said, already growing impatient with him.