16 Souls

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Present Day — September 10

Police Department, Denver International Airport

Being summoned away from the courtroom at the height of a murder trial was both a relief and a worry; an uneasy balance between the targets of his curiosity.

Scott Bogosian glanced at his watch, which proclaimed him ten minutes early for the appointment that the chief of police of Denver International Airport had requested. Scott sat back and let his thoughts slalom freely around the last two days of Marty Mitchell’s trial, noting that his dislike of Grant Richardson had increased markedly. Maybe it was disgust that a pilot was being forced to fight for his freedom for doing his job imperfectly, a perception that triggered a feeling Scott did not want: a sense of common cause with the pilot. Or perhaps it was the smarmy intensity of the practiced litigator and the constant feeling that Richardson was sneering at anyone who did not believe Mitchell should be drawn and quartered without further ceremony.

Those, of course, were not the words Richardson had unleashed at the jury. His opening statement had been full of righteous indignation about a paid servant of a company with smarter people at the helm who had issued the gospel according to Regal Airlines, and the unbelievable, unforgivable act of the renegade captain to reject that wisdom. It was, Richardson said, open and shut, and the jury would find it very easy to dispense with the case by voting quickly for a guilty verdict. The rest, he warned, would be smoke and mirror verbiage from the defense solely designed to pull the jury off target. After all, he told them, the defense has no defense.

“It’s terribly simple, folks,” Richardson had said, as if talking to a tight team of intellectual equals about to be egregiously bored by morons, “…the law… The Law… okay? The law says, with crystal clarity, that when someone in this state knowingly causes the death of another, that person is guilty of second degree murder. ‘Knowingly’ means that you are informed that if you do a particular thing, it will cause a death, but you do it anyway, and, indeed, a death occurs. You’re then a murderer. No if’s, and’s, or but’s. No qualification. And that is precisely what the state will show: that pilot in command Martin Mitchell did something he was informed in no uncertain terms would, in fact, cause the death of at least one other human. He rejected that wisdom and did what he was told not to do, and sure enough, people died. End of case. Guilty is your only possible verdict.”

“Mr. Bogosian?” a uniformed officer was leaning over him.

“Oh! Yes. Sorry.”

“The chief wants to know if you can wait about fifteen minutes while he deals with a routine emergency?”

“Sure,” Scott replied, wondering exactly what emergencies could be considered routine at a major airport.

He settled back in the waiting room chair, recalling the look and the smell of the huge tire he had been inspecting so carefully in the nearby warehouse days before. Whatever had gouged the extremely tough rubber had gone from front to back along the left side of the tread. It was no more than a quarter of an inch deep, but the question that was bothering him most was whether the tire had touched something prior to the launching of Flight 12, or something moments before the crash.

Scott had leaned in to get as close a look as his eyes would allow and by playing the flashlight around the cut, began to realize what he was staring at: a small amount of colored substance along and embedded inside the cut. It looked for all the world like flecks of yellow paint, but just a small track of it.

Scott had glanced around furtively, verifying that the NTSB investigator who had been his willing host was elsewhere for the moment. He pulled an envelope from the inside of his jacket… another overdue bill, but the envelope would do. Using a penknife, he scraped as much of the yellow substance as he could into the envelope and quickly stowed it and the penknife before standing.

“Really fascinating,” Scott said, his voice causing his host to turn around some thirty feet away where he’d been inspecting a part of the broken fuselage.

“I’d like to see the top of the right wing over there, if I could,” Scott added.

“Sure,” the investigator replied, turning and waving him into motion. “It’s an incredible sight, how that Beech fuselage rammed itself into the wing structure without taking out the wing spar and collapsing the wing. There’s no way they should have stayed attached with them flying for over a half hour at such a speed. In fact, there’s no way anyone should have survived such a midair collision to begin with.”

Twenty minutes later, emerging into bright daylight, Scott had thanked the man profusely before lofting a final question.

“There’s no yellow paint used on the runways here, right? No surface signage?”

“Not that I know of. That’s a rather odd question.”

“Just curious. I get these little dangling facts sometime that don’t fit the mosaic.”

To Scott’s relief, the investigator considered the remark too far out to pursue. He decided to let it go, probably wondering if anyone could explain how reporters think.

Scott remembered not a moment of the drive back to town, but he recalled clearly obsessing over the incongruities. He knew the airport and its equipment well. No yellow paint was used on the snowplows, or the airport supervisory trucks. Yellow was used on all the fire trucks and fire command cars, but according to Josh Simmons, absolutely all of the fire and rescue equipment had been well accounted for as Regal 12 flew over.

So, where was the source of the gouge and the yellow paint? What could that tire have grazed? Maybe this, too, was nothing — but the loose-end aspect of it wouldn’t leave him alone, especially since he’d read at least five times the transcript of the NTSB’s interview with the captain:

Scott’s assumption that he could pull a very big favor from the head of the Colorado State Patrol’s crime lab had almost been proven wrong, but an impassioned plea won the day. It was obvious, however, that there would be no future concessions. He’d dropped the yellow scrapings off at the lab and hoped for a call back that hadn’t come for six days. But at last, with the trial of Captain Marty Mitchell in its fifth day, Scott’s phone rang withthe lab director on the other end.

“Scott, your substance is automotive paint, used only on Chevrolets manufactured between the years of 2004 and 2006. Called Wheatland Yellow. Does that help?”

“Immensely. Thank you!”

“I can’t send you a formal report, but I can send the basics to you via email, and I’ll preserve the sample that’s left.”

Just as the trial had adjourned for the day, a quick call to the Denver Airport Police had snagged the chief on his way out of the door. Scott had met the veteran cop months before and dutifully followed his habit of taking business cards or asking for phone numbers.

“May I ask you a question… partially a legal question?”

“Sure.”

“All of this is off the record, if that’s okay with you.”

There was a chuckle from the chief. “Wait, aren’t I supposed to ask that?”

“Works both ways, sir. Okay, here’s the question. If an airport worker drove his appropriately tagged private vehicle onto a closed runway during the January blizzard, without authorization or clearance, about the time of the Regal crash, would that be a police matter?”

There was a calculating hesitation on the other end.

“Well, that would definitely be a disciplinary matter but… yes, we would want to know about it.”

“Chief, there is a small streak of yellow paint confirmed to be from a Chevrolet product manufactured between 2004 and 2006 found in a lateral gouge on the bottom of the right rear tire on the right main gear of Regal 12. The captain maintained to the NTSB that a pair of headlights suddenly came on in front of him that night on final approach and directly influenced his actions, but there has been no proof, and essentially, the story has been discounted. Now, there are no official yellow Chevrolet cars or trucks as far as I can tell in the airport inventory. Additionally, of the fire and rescue equipment on the field — all of which is painted a different, almost greenish shade of yellow — none is made by General Motors. So, would it be possible for you to run a check of all the private vehicles which have permits to be on the air side of the airport to see which ones might be yellow Chevy products manufactured between those years?”

“We have the ability to do that, of course. Probably dozens of cars would fit that bill, if you’re talking about personal cars which can be driven into the appropriate parking areas.”

“Yes. Exactly. If we did a search like that, we could then cross-check that list against whoever might have been working on the airfield that night, to see if we could narrow it down to one person and one car, and then see if there has been any disturbance to the paint on that car.”

“You’re using the word ‘we’ rather liberally, Mr. Bogosian.”

“Yes, Chief, I know. But I’m just a curious journalist trying to nail down an explanation for something really bothersome, and I figured it would be bothersome to you, too.”

“Spell it out for me.”

Scott described in greater detail the captain’s claim and how it could easily be a key to his last second manipulations of the 757’s controls.

“Hold on. Are you ignoring the reality that no wrecked car was found on that runway that night or later?”

“What if the car was merely grazed, and not wrecked? What if the driver had driven it off the airfield afterwards?”

“Okay… possible, I suppose. And this, I assume, would be material to the investigation?’

Scott had decided to throw a wild card.

“Chief, it might answer a very important question, and it may even be a definitive piece of evidence in the murder trial of the pilot. I have no dog in that fight, but I’m thinking of writing a book on the crash, and I’ve been attending the trial every day.”

“Did someone reputable do the formal forensics on that paint?”

Scott debriefed the information from the state lab.

“And where did the sample come from?”

“Me, and the tire itself. I took the sample. The chain of custody is protected.”

“Did you have the authority to do that?”

“I was accompanied by an NTSB investigator,” he replied, sidestepping the question’s real import.

There was a thoughtful sigh audible from the chief’s end. “You know, Mr. Bogosian, you’re thinking like a cop.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, Chief.”

“It is. Most of the time. Okay, give me your number and I’ll get back to you… maybe. I appreciate the information, but I may not deem it appropriate to tell you the results.”

“Yes, sir. Understood.”

“That would be pretty bizarre, someone on a runway in their own car in the worst blizzard in ten years. I don’t think that’s a viable possibility. But… I have to admit, I’ve seen crazier behavior.”

As have I, Scott thought.

Scott came back to the present and looked around, refocusing on the fact he was in the police chief’s waiting room. The assistant was standing in front of him again.

“The chief is ready if you are, Mr. Bogosian.”

It was noteworthy, Scott thought as he sat down, that the chief requested his door be closed before coming around the modest desk to sit opposite a utilitarian couch.

“Well,” he began, holding a file of papers, “it turns out there are two Chevrolet products with permits to be on the airside of the field, but one of them was in a shop in Aurora for maintenance the night of the crash, with the wheels off.”

“And the other?”

“The other, Scott, belongs to a gentleman who works for the airport authority. In their command center.”

“And… was he here that night?”

The chief nodded, a guarded smile on his face as he watched the reporter.

“Have you interviewed him?”

“Tell me what we should ask him?”

“Well… I guess the first thing is, could we see your car?”

“And then, if he says yes and there’s no damage?”

“Did you have it in the shop at any point between then and now?”

“Keep going.”

“And, the big one, I suppose, was this car anywhere near the runways the night of the Regal crash?”

The chief nodded and stood up. “I agree. And we’ve got the gentleman waiting in an office down the hall. This is not a by-the-book procedure to bring in a civilian to observe a police interrogation, but I’m making an exception because we would have had no suspicions without your input.”

“You haven’t asked him anything yet?”

“No, other than to bring his car with him. It’s a 2005 Chevy Tahoe.”

“Yellow, right?”

“Oh, yeah. Wheatland yellow. You want to look at the truck first?”

“Absolutely!”

He followed the chief to the parking lot just outside and several stalls down to the unmistakable shade of yellow. The SUV seemed well kept and clean, and devoid of a roof rack. Scott stepped up on the running board and peered over the edge, taking in the roof.

“See anything, Scott?” the chief asked, clearly leading him.

“There’s a square patch in the middle without paint, like something’s been taken off.”

“That’s right. Something like this,” the chief added, triggering a picture on his smartphone and handing it to Scott. In the image, a small antenna with a square base was presented as a factory replacement part for the Chevy Tahoe. Scott worked the screen for a moment, looking for specifications that included dimensions.

“One and a half inches tall by a base of two inches by four.”

This chief nodded. “So, you saw the cut on the tire, Scott. Could that cut have been made by an antenna like this?”

Scott looked at the police chief as he handed back the phone.

“With embedded pieces of the same paint in the grove it cut as a piece of rubber impacted it at two hundred thirty knots, yes. I mean, I’m not an engineer, but this could be exactly what caused that mark.”

“Then let’s go talk to the boy.”