“You’ll be very interested in this,” I told him. “And I’d appreciate your advice.”
“Advice? Hell, Doc, I stopped giving advice a long damn time ago. I noticed I was nearly always wrong, but even when I was right—especially when I was right—people ended up getting pissed off at me.”
I laughed. “I promise not to get pissed off.”
“I’ll hold you to it, Doc. So to paraphrase the 911 dispatchers, what’s the nature of your advice emergency?”
“So, remember when we talked a few weeks ago? When you said there was a way to bail out of a Citation—out of that Citation—in flight?”
“Sure,” he said. “I don’t surprise that easy anymore, old as I am, but I gotta admit, you coulda knocked me over with a feather when I found out about those belly doors.”
“Well, get ready for another surprise. I found where the guy landed.”
“Come again?”
“I found where he landed. The guy that bailed out.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Seriously, Doc, what’s on your mind?”
“No kidding. Hand-on-the-Bible serious. I came back to San Diego, and I found the place, Pat. Not where you thought, though—it’s about a mile south of that airstrip.” I described the scene—the dead-end road, the pile of cigarette butts, the giant + sign formed by flares. “In the middle of the night, right under the flight path, no other lights around? That signal would’ve stood out like a searchlight.”
“Maybe,” he said. “If that’s what it was. And if that’s when it was.”
“How do you mean?”
“Coulda just been kids, out there some other night. Drinking, smoking dope, playing with fire. You know—kids.”
“I’ve got a good feeling about this, Pat. Those flares, arranged in that pattern? That wasn’t made by stoned kids messing around. I’m telling you, Pat, that was a signal. I think maybe I should call Prescott, let his evidence guys see what they can find.”
“Special Agent Prescott? I thought you were number one on his shit list.”
“Well, yeah,” I conceded. “That’s why I called you. To see what you think. You’re a fed, Pat. Would Prescott actually listen to what I have to say? Or would he just dismiss it, since he thinks I’m full of crap?”
“Hmm. Interesting question, Doc. Tricky.” He paused to think. “Here’s an idea. I’m just thinking out loud here. I’m not on Prescott’s shit list. What if I came down and took a quick look? If it’s all you say it is, maybe I could make the call to Prescott—soften him up a bit—and then hand the phone over to you. Might help him listen with an open mind if I ran a little interference for you.”
“I see your point,” I said, “and I appreciate it. But I’m nervous about just leaving it for a day or two, or whenever you can get away and get down here.”
“And you think Prescott and Company are gonna rush right over there? Not bloody likely.” Maddox chuckled. “You’ve never ridden with me, have you, Doc?”
“Well, no. Why?”
“Because if you had, you’d know it’s like ridin’ in a low-flying plane. I can be there in two hours. That soon enough for you?”
I checked my watch. “Really? Three o’clock? Today?”
“Three-thirty, tops, if there’s not a wreck on the 405. Can you wait that long? You could run back to town and grab lunch, if you haven’t already eaten.”
“Nah, I’ve got snacks in the car. Besides, I’ve got something else I want to do out this way. I’ll plan on meeting you at three, or as soon after that as you can get here.”
“Where? Can you tell me how to find this place?” I gave him directions, and as I finished, he said, “I see it on the map, and I’m printing it out right now. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”
“Drive safe, Pat.”
He chuckled again. “Clearly you’ve never ridden with me, Doc.”
DONOVAN STATE PRISON OCCUPIED THE ENTIRE TOP of a low, oblong mesa. The terrain was dry and dun colored, and the few bits of scrubby vegetation that hadn’t been bulldozed looked as brown and desiccated as the rocks and dirt. A road encircled the complex, skirting the base of three parallel chain-link fences, fifteen feet high and ten feet apart. Out of curiosity, I circumnavigated the complex on the perimeter road, keeping count of the cellblocks and guard towers. If my count was correct, there were twenty cellblocks and a dozen guard towers, each tower thirty or forty feet high.
I’d seen forbidding penitentiaries before. Tennessee’s Brushy Mountain State Prison—whose hard-core convicts had once included James Earl Ray, the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—was a forbidding stone fortress, complete with crenellations that looked transplanted from a medieval castle. Donovan State Prison, by contrast, had nothing even grimly ornamental about it. It was almost as if Donovan’s designers and builders had carefully, purposefully excluded any scraps of ornament or history or humanity. Donovan had the bare-bones, bleached-bones look of a bottom-rung industrial complex: a slaughterhouse of the human spirit, as efficient and utilitarian as any meatpacking plant where cows were conveyor-belted to their deaths.
The one exception to the grimness was the administration building, set outside the triple fencing amid grass, shrubbery, and even a few palm trees. After my brief sightseeing circuit, I parked in front and entered the glass doors. A receptionist behind glass asked if she could help me. “I hope so,” I said, introducing myself and flashing my TBI consultant’s badge—an official-looking brass shield, especially impressive if the word “CONSULTANT” was masked by a strategically placed knuckle.
“Tennessee,” she said. “You’re a long way from home.”
“I sure am,” I said, smiling. “The FBI asked me to help with a case out here. I’m hoping I could talk to the watch commander—if that’s the right term—who was supervising the guard-tower staff during the graveyard shift on a night back in June.”
“Well, the night-shift watch commander wouldn’t be on duty now,” she said. “But he reports to the assistant warden for security, who is here. Could he help you with this?”
“Well, it’s worth a try,” I said.
“WALTER JESSUP,” SAID THE ASSISTANT WARDEN ten minutes later, extending his hand across a desk. “I understand you’re interested in events the night of June eighteenth, early morning of June nineteenth?”
“Yes, sir. I’m wondering if any of the watchtower guards saw something unusual, around one in the morning.”
“Any of them? All of them. Have to be blind to miss that fire on the mountain.”
I smiled. “Yeah, and I reckon you don’t put a lot of blind men up in those guard towers. Actually, though, I’m hoping somebody saw something before the fire. Before the plane hit.”
“You mean the parachute?”
I blinked. I stared. I blinked again. “Are you serious? Somebody really saw a ’chute?”
“Yep. Tompkins. Minute or so after the plane flew over. Minute or so before it hit. A little south of the usual spot, though.”
“Excuse me?”
“Not quite the same place the ’chutes usually come down.”
“Let me make sure I’m following you,” I said slowly. “Are you telling me this happens regularly? Nighttime parachute jumps over wilderness?”
“Not regularly. More like irregularly. Occasionally. Three, four times a year, maybe. But usually, like I say, usually they’re a little farther north—right over that little airstrip by the lake. And usually they’re before the plane lands, not after it takes off. Propeller plane, in the past. Not a jet. So this time was same thing, only different.”
I didn’t like the sound of this. “How long has this been going on?”
He shrugged. “Five years, plus or minus a year. If it’s important, we could ask some of the guards if they can pin it down closer than that.”
“Ever reported it to anybody?”
“You bet. Plane comes in at night from south of the border, drops something at a private airstrip a few miles from town before
landing at a port of entry? Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out they’re running contraband.”
I felt my heart sinking and my anger rising. “Who’d you report it to?”
“DEA. I talked to the guy myself, face-to-face. Big fat redheaded fella, sitting right there where you’re sitting now, wheezing like he had asthma or emphysema or something. He said he’d look into it, but I never heard back from him. And those parachutes kept on coming down.”