Murder in Foggy Bottom by Margaret Truman Read Free Book Online

subtle, gentle.”
    “Not me, Gil. Send some breathless intern.”
    “Be here in an hour, Joe.”
    “I’m not asking those questions.”
    “An hour. Better still, a half hour. No point in washing up, the way you dress.” Gardello hung up.
    Roseann, still in a film of nightgown, returned to the piano.
    “I got to go,” Potamos said.
    “On your day off?” she said, still playing. “Sorry.”
    “At least I won’t have to hear you play those apple strudel songs.”
    Her response was to play louder and with greater flourishes. He closed the bathroom door, showered, got dressed in his fashion, and left the apartment to the strains of “Wine, Women and Song.”

6
    That Same Day
New York
     
    Within an hour, hundreds of people had converged on the area where the Dash 8 aircraft had crashed after taking off from Westchester County airport. State and local police, airport and airline personnel, volunteer fire departments, ambulance corps technicians, elected village officials, and Special Agent Frank Lazzara and his three colleagues looked out over what had once been a tranquil wooded area a hundred yards from the reservoir. A police helicopter hovered low overhead, its incessant chopping sound making conversation difficult.
    There was understandable confusion. Lazzara had been alerted that the NTSB contingent would be arriving shortly. Unless there was suspicion that the plane had been brought down by a criminal act, NTSB would control the scene and the ensuing investigation.
    But in the absence of NTSB officials, Lazzara took charge, ordering uniformed police to further secure the area as far up as where the troopers who’d originally answered the call had parked their vehicles, and instructing medical and fire personnel to search for survivors, no matter what. There was always a chance. Those earthquake victims buried under rubble until—
    His cell phone rang.
    “Lazzara.”
    “Frank, it’s Will.” Wilfred Fellows, Lazzara’s second in command at the White Plains office, had been out of the office when the call came to head for the crash scene. “I think you ought to know there’s a third plane down.”
    Lazzara was speechless.
    “California, outside San Francisco. San Jose. A commuter plane like the others. There’s an eyewitness to it. . . . You there, Frank?”
    “Yeah, I’m here. Three. This eyewitness. Credible?”
    “I don’t know. A woman. I just got a call from the San Francisco office.”
    “What’s she say?”
    “She claims she saw something hit the plane after it took off.”
    “Something hit it? Like what? Another plane? An asteroid?”
    “That’s what they told me. Thought you’d want to know.”
    “Yeah, thanks. We’ll need more agents here. It’s thickening up. Call Manhattan, get them to dispatch some.”
    “Shall do.”
    Lazzara pushed the off button and slipped the small phone into his jacket pocket. As far as he was concerned, the question of whether there was criminal involvement was now a no-brainer. Had the Dash 8 been the only plane down that day, he would have been slow to come to that conclusion, and would have taken NTSB’s lead once its officials had made their preliminary evaluation.
    But the Dash 8 hadn’t been the only commuter aircraft to fall from the skies that morning. Two others had. There had to be a connection among the three.
Had to be.
Only a naive fool would even consider the possibility that three well-maintained, professionally piloted commercial aircraft had, within four hours, in good weather (if Westchester was any indication that morning), fallen to earth due to natural causes—mechanical failure, pilot error, air traffic control mistakes, metal fatigue, fuel tank explosion, or other noncriminal causes of aircraft falling from the sky.
    He wasn’t happy with what Fellows had told him about the California eyewitness. He hadn’t worked aircraft accidents before, but having followed every aspect of the TWA 800 accident over Long Island, he was