Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach

squashed. The scenario Richard described—an intruder slipping unnoticed into a protected home and targeting its most vulnerable occupant—was personal. I’d lived it, and Richard knew that. I resented him for pulling me back into an emotional viper pit, and when I looked at him this time I could feel my face was flushed, and it wasn’t from the heat in the cabin.
    His eyes leveled on mine. A confrontation was brewing, but neither of us would initiate it. I avoided it because it was too painful. I figured Richard avoided it because he was a coward.
    A flight attendant’s call bell sounded, and Richard jumped. His fingers fumbled across his lap until he found his seatbelt buckle, then he pulled the belt tighter. He took a slow breath.
    He added, “No prints were lifted from the home. The family hasn’t been contacted. No ransom demands, threats…nothing. HPD canvassed the neighbors and are looking for Eric’s vehicle. But the Lyonses think police are barking up the wrong tree. They’re worried sick about their son and grandson.”
    I remembered Keith and Nora Shelton, my friends from Cleveland, and the extra investigators they’d hired when Mattie disappeared.
    “Why do you suspect a skydiver?”
    “Couple things,” he said, tugging at his folder again. He opened it and searched its papers until he found a 5”x7” color print of a paper chit. Its ink had run and the text was partly smudged, but I recognized it.
    “A jump ticket,” I said.
    I’d used my share of jump tickets, but that was the first time I’d seen one photographed and enlarged, looking like evidence. It was weird.
    Richard said, “This was in Karen’s landscaping. Police bagged it, but don’t think it’s related. It could have come from anywhere, maybe blown across the neighborhood from someone else’s trash. It could have been stuck in the mulch for days or weeks. Karen didn’t recognize it, and neither did her neighbors.”
    The plane lurched and Richard reached to turn the overhead knob for more air conditioning.
    “Getting warmer in here,” he mumbled.
    “What else do you have?”
    He shrugged. “A gut feeling. Someone gave me the slip at that drop zone yesterday. I interviewed the owners, staff…a few regular jumpers. Friendly people mostly, but a tight-lipped bunch. One employee agreed to talk to me, but left before I got to him. That seemed odd.”
    I thought about the tight-lipped part and believed it. Skydivers are a tight group, period. Protective of each other, and probably chattier with new jumpers they’ve just met than with the non-jumping postmen they see every day. “Okay. What else?”
    “That’s it.”
    “You came to Cleveland, got me on a plane to Texas, put me in deep water with my boss…because of a gut feeling and a ticket in this lady’s shrubs?”
    We lurched again and Richard hesitated. “Emily, sometimes whole cases are broken because of one tip, one clue. Nobody’s following up on this one. What if it’s important?”
    I didn’t answer.
    Doctor Hess, my graduate student advisor, came to mind. He popped into my brain the way Cinderella’s fairy godmother popped into her garden the night of the ball. I remembered advice he’d offered in a lecture years before: “When you’re problem solving with a team and somebody has an idea,” Hess had said, “separate the idea from the person talking, because once in a while a jackass might come up with something useful.”
    I thought, Hess, this one’s for you.
    “It’s not trash,” I said. “If you aren’t going to use tickets, you cash them back in. Did the police visit the drop zone?”
    “I’m sure they did, but I’m not privy to that investigation. I asked about the ticket when I was there yesterday, but they can’t trace who bought it. It’s not marked with a date or number or anything.”
    “They can’t trace the buyer specifically, but they could have helped you narrow it down. Jumpers sign waivers. If the ticket isn’t older than a year, when waivers expire, the owner’s name is in the drop zone files somewhere. Granted, you’d turn up the names of all the jumpers who’ve gone through there in the last year…probably a long list.”
    Richard didn’t answer, but a purposeful tilt of his chin told me he was digesting the information.
    I continued. “Also, only licensed skydivers buy tickets. Students don’t use them, so that eliminates some of the clientele.”
    I considered the context of the ticket and added,