Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach

was staring at me.
    “I’m not starting a job at NASA tomorrow,” I said. “I don’t even live here. I came to help a friend, and soon I’ll go home.”
    I waited, my hands in my lap, legs dangling over the edge of the make-believe airplane door. I stared at the floor and waited for what he might say or do.
    Finally, he asked, “Where’s home?”
    His voice was quiet. I thought I heard it catch.
    The door to the packing area swung open on our right. Marie charged in.
    “There you are!” I thought she’d come to put Vince back to work. It turned out she was looking for me.
    “I’m putting an eight-way together for the sunset load,” she said. “You in?”
    I looked at Vince and imagined the questions he must have, what he must think of me.
    I nodded to answer Marie’s question and slid off the mock-up. Vince stepped down too.
    “Ready, big guy?” she asked him. “Load ten’s on a thirty minute call.”
    He chucked his empty can into a metal trash barrel and its clang was harsh and angry.
    We followed Marie to the picnic bench outside where the other six jumpers for her eight-way had gathered. Vince walked straight past us, toward the plane.
    ***
    An hour later, I sat with Jeannie on the threadbare sofa in the drop zone’s office and we flipped through Marie’s Yellow Pages. Jeannie wanted to get a motel room near the beach. With the boogie over, Rick and Marie would be locking their doors tonight. If I got caught sleeping at the airport on a weeknight, that would look downright weird. Camping wasn’t an option, and the long drive back to a Houston hotel didn’t make sense.
    I dialed a motel in Freeport. Jeannie wouldn’t agree to a non-smoking room, so I booked a room for each of us. Then I phoned Richard to tell him where I’d be. He had news.
    “My buddy checked out the restaurant where Mattie was recovered,” he said. Richard still had connections in the Austin police department—leftover detective friends from before I more or less got him fired. It hadn’t been long after I’d voiced my suspicions that Richard was out of a job.
    “There’s no employment record for Mark Dalton,” he said. “When you were there, the manager was Mark Townsend. A waitress remembers him,
and
the tattoo you described.”
    “Townsend? But that’s—”
    “The other pilot’s name. I know.”
    Vince.
    Richard went on. “He’s in the personnel list you gave me. Vince Townsend, staff since…” Papers rustled on Richard’s end. “It’ll be three years next month. What do you know about this guy?”
    What did I know? For starters, my cover was blown. Could Vince really be related to the tattooed man from the restaurant? It didn’t seem to fit.
    I forced myself not to think about the sick feeling in my stomach. “Could the name be a coincidence?”
    It seemed impossible that Vince could be involved with Trish and Mark and their black-market babies.
    “No,” Richard said. “I had records faxed over. Walt and Caroline Townsend of Austin, Texas, had two kids—Mark in 1966 and Patricia in 1968. George and Amelia Townsend, also of Austin, had Vincent in1971. Walt and George were brothers, both now deceased.”
    I struggled to get my head around what the new facts meant for the case.
    “Patricia married Jason Dalton in 1996, divorced him in 1999. Social Security records show she kept the name.”
    Jesus. Why hadn’t anyone here mentioned they were cousins? Why hadn’t
Vince
mentioned it?
    “There’s more. Once I had the right name, I ran Mark’s criminal history. His drug problems are the tip of the iceberg. He moves around a lot, usually to big cities. Passes his time in ghettos and slums. Seems he uses cocaine and meth to extort information from junkies.”
    “What information does he want from—” I lowered my voice. “What information does he want from junkies?”
    “They tell him where the babies are.”
    “Excuse me?” Richard’s story was rapidly becoming incomprehensible.
    “San Antonio PD recently had a man in custody willing to trade information about his seller in exchange for a lighter sentence. According to him, Mark’s standing offer in the hood is ‘drugs for names.’ He wants names of users with small kids.”
    “Why?”
    “I have it from Narcotics, these people get pretty messed up when they use. They’ll leave their kids with anyone…strangers…if it means they can leave to get a fix.”
    The connection eluded me.
    “We think Mark Townsend wants babies who