Pam couldn’t tell him much at this stage. The wreckage had been laid out at a site near somewhere called Oudtshoorn. They had recovered virtually all of it, as the desert scrub was easy to search.
‘Is that where you are now?’
‘Yes.’
Apparently he’d got through to Pam on her cell phone. He grimaced at the thought of the non-claimable bill. ‘So, what’s your initial feeling about the cause?’
‘Oh, we don’t have feelings,’ she laughed, ‘we’re only allowed to have theories.’
Tom smiled to himself. Pam understood. ‘So what’s your gut theory?’
There was a good pause and he imagined her standing somewhere hot and dusty, surrounded by scrub and ostriches and little-boy jockeys. As the silence stretched out, he liked Pam more and more for the weight she was obviously giving his question and her answer.
‘The fuselage came down in two pieces – the break occurring just forward of the wings. Initial inspection shows no evidence of metal fatigue around the break.’
‘So what caused it?’ He tried to keep the impatience out of his voice.
‘At first we thought maybe a bomb, but once we’d assembled the aircraft we could see something had hit it from the outside on the port side. The majority of the damage was caused right there, but there’s also evidence of at least two major breaches elsewhere on the passenger cabin. They weren’t serious enough to cause further complete breaks, but passenger injuries support that scenario.’
‘Yes?’ He was sitting straight up on the bed now, stiff with anticipation.
‘The theory we’re working on is that the number-two fan let go and the blades tore through the fuselage.’
There it was. Tom nodded dumbly, heady with the possibilities raised by a connection between the two incidents.
‘Tom?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Does that help?’
‘You betcha ass it does.’
‘Oh, I would never place a bet that big!’
Tom grinned as she laughed at her own joke. ‘Any idea why it may have come apart?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Birdstrike?’
‘No evidence of it yet.’
‘Hey, Pam, thanks. Anything I get now I’ll share with you.’
‘That would be great.’
‘You want to give me your cell number? Cos I’m sorry, but if saving lives means sitting through “Jive Talking” on the xylophone one more time …’
They exchanged numbers and Tom bounced off the bed, tightly coiled with excitement for which he had no outlet. He wanted someone to share with, someone to throw their arms around him and tell him he’d done good.
But there was no one.
He took a slip of paper off the floor next to the bed. Halo Jackson’s number. He crumpled it and dropped it. What was he thinking?
Then he picked it up, raised the phone and dialled the number, but didn’t hit the call key. After a moment he dropped the slip back onto the carpet, grabbed his jacket and car keys, and left.
*
It took him an hour to drive to Santa Ana only to find that the girl called Lucia wasn’t at the Sawmill. The manager wouldn’t give him her number either, even when he flashed his badge at him and told him it was for official business. The man – tubby, middle-aged, with dyed black hair – chuckled. ‘So that’s what they call it these days, huh?’
Tom sat in the Buick for twenty minutes before he’d swallowed enough of his pride to go back in and ask the manager to give Lucia his cell number. Then he drove half a block to a KFC and got a bargain bucket.
Some celebration.
His phone rang and he fumbled it hurriedly out of his pocket with greasy fingers. ‘Lucia?’
‘It’s Halo.’
‘Shit.’
‘Thanks.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Who’s Lucia?’
‘What do you want?’
‘You hear about John Wayne?’
‘Still dead?’
‘Saab 340 crashed on take-off.’
John Wayne Airport.
Tom felt a knife twist in his heart as he realized he was now hearing about crashes on his doorstep from virtual strangers before getting calls from Pete. He felt his grip on his job loosen a little bit more, as his chicken-greasy fingers scrabbled for purchase.
‘Tom?’
He hung up on Halo without answering, and called Pete at home. He knew he shouldn’t – it was two a.m. in DC – but he couldn’t help himself.
Pete answered groggily.
‘Pete? It’s Tom.’
Pete grunted.
