Mid-West Campaign
Session Twenty-Two

Monday, 4 December 2000 (continued)

Meanwhile back in Wichita and with only one month to go before Apache Joe kills again, Jane decides the time has come to speak to Walter Crondheim. It's a risk because Crondheim might report Jane's activity to Vitrano and Lavin. But, she needs to know about Vitrano's contact, and Crondheim might be able to answer these questions. Jane goes to ask permission from Joshua only to see him being wheeled into the back of ambulance and rushed to hospital with more gastro-intestinal problems. Jane takes Josh's screams of pain an an endorsement for this mission and takes Nathan Harlow (aka Michael Hunt) with her to catch Air America Flight FB104 to Fairbanks, Alaska.

The plane runs into extremely bad weather over Alaska and is initially refused permission to land. It begins circling the airport. Suddenly, Harlow begins to hear Carmina Burana by Karl Orff. Jane cannot hear this, and Harlow instinctively knows that the Joker has returned to get him. Harlow panics. He can feel all the wounds inflicted by the Joker back in New Orleans re-opening. It is as though he is being tortured and killed all over again. However, there is no physical evidence of these wounds that Jane can see (except for a couple of drops of blood on Harlow's shirt that could have been there anyway). Jane tries to calm Harlow, telling him that it is all in his mind.

Jane notices that the wings on the plane are icing up very badly, and tells the stewardess, Amy-Anne, of the problem. She says she will inform the captain. Amy-Anne and the other passengers are concerned about Harlow's continuing exclamations of pain. Jane, claiming that she is Harlow's doctor, sedates him for an hour so everyone can get some peace.

After an hour Harlow wakes. He is convinced that time has stopped outside the plane just as it did in New Orleans. Jane believes that it is dark outside because it's night time, but Harlow doesn't believe it. He is convinced that a woman in a red dress sitting down the aisle is really the joker. The woman does look out of place (she isn't dressed for Alaska) but more suspicious is her companion who looks exactly like Alfred Brickman!

Jane and Harlow speak to the pair. The woman, Lilian Winter, is a lawyer and has no desire to talk to the pair. The man, Al Brickman, says he is in the oil industry out in Juno, Alaska, and is going to Fairbanks for a conference. He has heard of Richard Faber (Kirsty's brother) who works in Oman. Eventually the agents return to their seats.

Things start getting much worse for Harlow. He gives his gun to Jane, and in the process it nearly goes off and depressurises the plane. It is as though some force is actively working against them. Jane believes that the Joker is here, but doesn't really know what she can do about it. She tells the stewardess that Harlow is very ill and might be a danger to the plane, in an effort to get the pilot to land.

After about two and a half hours of delay, Harlow starts to convulse in his seat as if he is being beaten. The word "JANE" appears in blood on his arm. Suddenly lesions open up on Harlow's face, his leg and arm breaks and his face becomes badly bruised as if he has been struck. This time Jane sees everything. This is not in Harlow's subconscious, this is really happening. Jane collapses into unconsciousness. Harlow looks up. The air hostess, Amy-Anne, is watching the proceedings. She looks absolutely terrified. Suddenly a fireball engulfs her and she melts before Harlow's eyes. That is the last thing he remembers.

Saturday, 9 December 2000

Jane Munroe comes around in hospital in Fairbanks, after dreaming of a memorial service for her flight. The doctors inform her that the plane did crash, and that everyone was killed apart from her, Harlow and a woman called Jessica Davies (who is in a critical condition). Apart from a blow to the head, Jane is completely uninjured. Harlow is in the bed next to her. The only injuries he has sustained at the ones inflicted by the Joker before the flight crashed.

Jane and Harlow discuss what happened. Four hundred people died on that flight. Why did the Joker do it? And why are they still alive? It is obvious to Jane that they are only alive because the Joker wanted it that way. This does not comfort Harlow. Jane telephones Wichita and leaves a message that she and Harlow are fine. The doctors say that they had informed the FBI when they worked out who Jane and Nathan were. Jane fears that this means Vitrano could now know she is in Alaska.

Sunday, 10 December 2000

Jessica Davies dies in surgery during the night leaving Jane and Nathan the only two survivors of the plane crash. Jane checks herself out of the hospital, but before going to see Crondheim she is interviewed by the flight investigation team from the FAA: Wilhelm Robert and Royston Jeffries.

They ask her to describe the accident which Jane does (leaving out any mention of the supernatural, of course). Jane was sitting in seat 12 and Harlow in seat 13. The other survivor, Jessica Davies, was in seat 29. Jane realises that seat 29 was actually the seat that Lillian Winter was sitting in. But there was no Lillian Winter or Al Brickman on the passenger manifest. Jessica Davies was a middle-aged frumpy housewife not a dress-wearing legal sex-kitten, and she was sitting next to her equally unremarkable husband, James, not Brickman. So who were these two? Also the plane crashed with three hours fuel remaining. If they had been in the air as long as Jane and Nathan remembered then there would have been only thirty minutes of fuel left. Nathan was right. The Joker had stopped time.

In Alaska, Jane takes a 4-by-4 and makes the treacherous journey to Crondheim's log cabin five miles outside Fairbanks. Crondheim has heard about the crash and is expecting Jane. He got a call from Vitrano, forbidding him to talk with Jane, but Crondheim doesn't like Vitrano. He doesn't trust him. The question is, can he trust Jane?

Crondheim says that he remained on the Apache Joe case for five years because he had the political contacts to keep him on the case. He was finally taken off when he ran out of favours. He spent his last four years at the FBI behind a desk in Washington working on their computers. He evidently built himself a back-door because he has access to FBI files and knows a great deal about Jane and evidence response.

Crondheim says that he was extremely close to breaking case S73 when he was taken off it. He had worked out the Texas Ranger connection and gave all the information to Vitrano and Lavin. They have had five years with that information and made no progress. Evidence response had five weeks with it and almost has it cracked. Either Vitrano and Lavin are stupid, or they are not really trying. And if they are not really trying then why aren't they trying? Are they complicit in the case, or are they working on something else as using S73 as a cover?

Monday, 11 December 2000

Jane proves to Crondheim that she can be trusted by not revealing information about the source that let her crack the S73 case. She asks Crondheim about Vitrano's contact. Cronheim says that he never had a contact in the case, but the first payment was made to Vitrano's contact just two months after the pair started working the case in 1995.

Every time the contact gives the team a tip off, an amount of money (between $2000 and $10,000) is paid into an anonymous bank account. That money is then withdrawn in cash. Cronheim can tell Jane that the withdrawals were all made from the same ATM at the military base in Fort Worth, Texas that is home to the Rangers, once the Texas Rangers. This is the base were the museum to the Texas Rangers can be found. Obviously Crondheim doesn't know who withdraws the money because he doesn't have the ATM under surveillance.

The information about the contact might be in the team's computers but Crondheim can't get into them. They are very heavily encrypted and if he attempted to download the files he reckons agents would be on his doorstep in two minutes. Jane remembers that when the spirit of Harlow tried to access the files of the Apache Joe team on 6 November a couple of MiBs arrived almost immediately.

But those MiBs were armed with laser guns that affected Harlow's spirit. Jane can't believe they haven't realised this before. Those men were in league with Vitrano's team. What is Vitrano and Lavin working on that necessitates that kind of protection? It can't just be S73. Crondheim is right. S73 must be a cover. Crondheim thinks it is very suspicious that Vitrano's group has remained together for so long. They are definitely all in on something big. That must be why Todd O'Connell is regarded as such an outsider. He is not complicit with what the team is really working on.

Jane is stunned. Vitrano and Lavin are only going through the motions of working this case. There are two questions here: What is that team (minus Todd) actually working on and, more importantly, who is the contact at the military base. Is the contact Apache Joe himself? Where do they go from here?

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