“Two antennas about one o’clock.” I show her on the map. “Five hundred and thirty feet above sea level. Shouldn’t be a factor, but don’t see them yet.”
“I’m looking,” she says.
The antennas will be well below horizon, meaning they aren’t a danger even if we get close. But I have a special pho- bia of obstructions, and there are more of them going up all the time in this world of constant communication. Richmond air traffic control comes over the air, telling us radar service is terminated and we can squawk VFR. I change the frequency to twelve hundred on the transponder as I barely make out the antennas several miles ahead. They don’t have high-intensity strobes and are nothing more than ghostly, straight pencil lines in thick, gray haze. I point them out.
“Got ’em,” Lucy replies. “Hate those things.” She pressures the cyclic right, curving well to the north of them, wanting nothing personal with antenna guy wires, for the heavy steel cables are the snipers. They will get you first.
“The governor going to be pissed at you if he finds out you’re doing this?” Lucy’s question sounds inside my headset.
“He told me to take a vacation from the office,” I reply. “I’m out of the office.”
“So you’ll come to New York with me,” she says. “You can stay in my apartment. I’m really glad you’re leaving the job, giving up being chief, striking out on your own. Maybe you’ll end up in New York working with Teun and me?”
I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I don’t tell her I am not glad. I want to be here. I want to be in my home and working my job as usual, and that will never be possible. I feel like a fugitive, I tell my niece, whose attention is outside the cockpit, eyes never straying from what she is doing. Talking to someone who is piloting a helicopter is like being on the phone. The person really doesn’t see you. There is no gesturing or touching. The sun is getting brighter, the haze thinning the farther east we fly. Below us, creeks glisten like entrails of the earth, and the James River shines white like snow. We get lower and slower, passing over the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery, the full-size replicas of the ships that carried one hundred and four men and boys to Virginia in 1607. In the distance, I make out the obelisk peeking up through the trees of Jamestown Island, where archaeologists are raising the first English settlement in America from the dead. A ferry slowly carries cars across the water toward Surry.
“I see a green silo at nine o’clock,” Lucy observes. “Think that’s it?”
I follow her eyes to a small farm that backs up to a creek. On the other side of the narrow, muddy lick of water, rooftops and old campers peeking out of thick pines become The Fort James Motel and Camp Ground. Lucy circles the farm at five hundred feet, making sure there are no hazards such as power lines. She sizes up the area and seems satisfied as she lowers the collective and reins us back to sixty knots. We begin our approach to a clearing between woods and the small brick house where Benny White spent his twelve short years. Dead grass storms as Lucy gently sets us down, subtly feeling for the ground, making sure it is level. Mrs. White comes out of the house. She stares at us, a hand shielding her eyes from the sun, and then a tall man in a suit joins her. They stay on the porch while we go through the two-minute shutdown. As we climb out and walk toward the house, I realize that Benny’s parents have dressed up for us. They look as if they have just come from church.
“Never thought something like that would land on my farm.” Mr. White gazes off at the helicopter, a heavy expression on his face.
“Do come in,” Mrs. White says. “Can 1 get you some coffee or something?”
We chat about our flight, make small talk, anxiety thick. The Whites know I am here because I must be entertaining ominous scenarios about what really happened to their son. They seem to assume Lucy is part of the investigation and address both of us whenever they speak. The house is very neat and pleasantly furnished with big comfortable chairs, braided rugs and brass lamps. The floor is wide heart of pine, and wooden walls are whitewashed and hung with watercolors of Civil War scenes. By the fireplace in the living room are shelves that are full of cannonballs, minie balls, a mess kit, old bottles and all sort of artifacts that probably are from the Civil War. When Mr. White notices my interest, he explains that he is a collector. He is a treasure hunter and scours the area with a metal detector when he is not busy at the office.