Fly by Wire

Chapter FOUR

The flight from Dulles was on time, but Houston's traffic was a mess. Davis pulled in front of the house at three o'clock that afternoon.

Captain Earl Moore's widow lived in a relatively new two-story tract house in the suburb of Spring. Davis parked in the street and looked things over. The lawn was tightly trimmed, the bushes sculpted, and the street clean. Tidy. A shiny new BMW sat parked along the curb in front of his rental Hyundai. Davis walked up a neat paver-brick path to the front portico. There were more bricks here, Styrofoam racks of faux stone stuck to the side of the house with glue to give a timeless appearance. Like the place had been built a hundred years ago. Or like it might still be standing in another hundred.

Davis felt uneasy. The woman inside had certainly known about her husband's death for a full day now. Still, it seemed like he was bringing death to her door. He'd done two notifications during his time in the Air Force. It was lousy duty — pull up in a blue steely wearing your service dress uniform, shoulder to shoulder with the base chaplain. With a picture like that you didn't need to say much. The wives knew what it meant. Just like he had known two years ago when the highway patrolman with the dour face had come to his door — Diane was late, not answering her phone. You just knew.

He rang the bell and a bespectacled middle-aged man answered. He wore a suit and was well groomed. Fair hair, thin build, and pale. Very pale. The word that came to Davis' mind was "milquetoast." The fellow was putting some effort into his expression, trying for serious and skeptical. Davis still thought, "milquetoast." The BMW guy, he decided. A gatekeeper, but not family. A brother would have parked in the driveway.

"Yes?"

"Hello, sir. My names Davis." He flashed his creds. "I'm with the NTSB, and I'd like to ask Karen Moore a few questions."

The guy took a long look at the ID, which was unusual. Most people only glanced. "She's had a pretty rough time. Can't it wait?"

"I'm afraid not. But it won't take long."

He hesitated.

Davis said, "And you are —?"

"I'm Jason Lavender, her attorney."

Lavender, Davis thought. Like the color of a flower. He said, "Nice to meet you."

The guy deliberated, waffled, then said, "Just a minute." He disappeared into the house.

A lawyer wasn't what Davis needed right now. He'd always had a knack for sifting through data and debris, finding the secrets of what brought airplanes down. But delicate conversations with grieving widows, fencing with attorneys — not his game. That required tact and finesse. Soft words and gentle smiles. Like you might get from a crisis counselor or a parish priest. Jammer Davis had the god-given finesse of a wrecking ball. Which wasn't always a bad thing. Wrecking balls got results. Maybe not what you were after, but something always came down.

A woman came to the door. She was fortyish and looked a lot like the house — well-tended. She was fit, probably worked out a lot. Her short brown hair was nicely cut and styled with blonde highlights. Davis noticed her eyes, a cool blue with subtle makeup — makeup one day after her nearly ex-husband had died in a terrible crash. He also saw what wasn't there. No redness, no puffy bags. No crumpled tissue in her hand.

"Hello, miss. I'm Jammer Davis, an investigator with the NTSB."

He pushed out his ID again. Karen Moore didn't even look. "I realize this might not be a great time, but there are a few important questions I need to ask."

"No, it's not a good time." Her voice was winter.

"Eventually we'll want to talk more, once you're up to it, but there are a few things we need to get straight right away. Just basic stuff."

She nodded. "All right. Come in, Mr. Davis."

She led him to the living room. The lawyer was nowhere in sight, but had to be lurking within earshot. Right away, Davis spotted the I-love-me wall. All pilots had them, and former military guys had the biggest ones. Pictures of airplanes they'd flown, plaques of appreciation and commendation, maybe a chromed twenty-millimeter bullet they'd won in a strafing competition. In ten seconds, Davis' first five questions were answered — Earl Moore was a former Navy guy, flew F-18s in the fleet followed by a stint in training command. He put in maybe eight years, made lieutenant, then jumped to the airlines. These were the kinds of things Sparky should have told him — not just that the guy was a divorcing alcoholic.

"I was Air Force, myself," Davis said, meandering along the wall while Mrs. Moore took a seat on the couch. He saw an eight-by-ten picture of Earl Moore dancing on a stage in a Hawaiian shirt, clearly drunk, with a beer in one hand, a cigar in the other, and a no-kidding monkey on his shoulders. Davis smiled inwardly and thought, My kind of guy.

"I really never cared for those pictures," she said.

Davis nodded. "Yeah, my wife was never a big fan of mine either." He went to sit down, vaguely remembering some psychobabble crap he'd been taught about where to sit in relation to a distraught witness. Was it next to her? Or across? He couldn't remember. The couch looked more comfortable so that's where he parked.

She asked, "Can you tell me anything more about what happened?"

"No, sorry. I've only seen what's on the news."

She nodded. "I've just begun to make — arrangements. I've never done anything like this before."

"Do you have anyone helping?"

"Yes. His mother is still alive, and a brother is coming down from Chicago. Tell me, Mr. Davis, will there be an autopsy?"

"Yes." The real answer wasn't quite so easy, but Davis wasn't going to bring the condition of the body into play. "I'm here to do what we call a seventy-two-hour history. I need to know as much as possible about what your husband did in the days before the accident. Had he been eating right, taking any medications, getting his sleep?"

"Getting his sleep? He was a cargo pilot."

"Right," Davis said. He thought, Widow-1, Jammer-0. Of all the world's vampire shifts, none were worse than the one worked by cargo pilots. Go to work when everyone else was climbing into bed. Fly across a few time zones and land. Sit next to a coffeepot for an hour or two while packages are sorted, then fly again. More time zones. When you get to your layover city, take a shuttle to a hotel room while the horizon starts to glow in the east — reveille for the rest of civilization. Bacon and eggs for dinner, easy on the coffee. Then try to get some sleep so you can do it all again the next night. Just try.

Karen Moore said, "Look, Mr. Davis. I don't know if you're aware, but my husband and I had recently separated."

"Actually, yeah, I knew that. But not much more. Where was he living?"

"He had an apartment a few miles from here." She gave the address. Davis wrote it down. Then she pointed to the wall and said, "He never did get all his stuff out of here."

"I see. So was he living by himself?"

"No." A long pause, then, "Well, sometimes — I don't know."

"You mean there was a woman?"

The ice turned to venom. "I'd call her something else. She was there sometimes when I'd go to pick up Luke."

"Luke?"

"We have a son. He's twelve." She put on her battle tone, "And he's trying to deal with the death of his father. I don't want him involved in any of this, Mr. Davis."

"No, no need for that."

"So what else can I tell you? I saw Earl the day before he left for France. I picked up Luke at the apartment. They'd gone to a ballgame, I think."

"Just the two of them?"

"I didn't stalk him," she snipped.

"Okay." There was a long silence, and Davis sat uneasily on his next question. "Your husband was out on medical leave last year— alcohol. Had he been drinking lately?"

"How would I know?"

"You were married to him. I think you'd know."

She glared and fell silent. Then Karen Moore began to fidget, began to lightly wring her hands together. Davis heard papers shuffling in the next room — the lawyer in the kitchen. Still no answer. Instead, she said, "Excuse me, Mr. Davis. I'll be back in a moment." She stood, reflexively smoothing the front of her slacks, and walked more quickly than she should have into the kitchen.

Dammit. He had pushed too hard. It wasn't the first time. Davis had a knack for balling up interviews. He stood up, didn't smooth his Dockers. He'd never had these kinds of problems when he'd just flown airplanes for a living. Maybe when this investigation was done he could look around for a flying job. A cushy corporate gig might be nice. Fly a Learjet down to the Caymans, hang out with some Fortune 500 execs for a nice long weekend. It sounded good.

He heard Karen Moore talking in hushed tones to Lavender, heard more papers being shuffled. Davis strolled back to the wall and found another picture of Earl Moore — a team lineup, rowing crew in college. He was built for it, tall and beefy. Might have made a good rugby player — second row forward, Davis figured. Finally, Karen Moore came back. She returned to the couch, but this time her attorney stood behind her, hovering like a mortician at a funeral service that had overstayed its time slot.

"Yes," she said.

Davis was lost. "Yes what?"

"Yes, Earl had been drinking lately."

"Oh — I see." Davis didn't. "So you were with him at the time?"

"No, but like you said, I'd know. He was unhappy. That's always when he drank, when he was unhappy."

Davis was unhappy right now. He could really go for a beer. He didn't ask for one. "Unhappy? How?"

"He just seemed depressed. It could have been girlfriend trouble. Or perhaps he felt guilty about not seeing Luke very much."

"How much was that?"

The mouthpiece jumped in. "Earl Moore had been granted visitation one weekend a month and one week each summer."

Davis tried to imagine how he would react if a judge — or anyone— tried to tell him that he could only see Jenny a few days each month. Depressed? Unhappy? Homicidal was more like it. He knew what he had to ask next. "Mrs. Moore, why had the two of you split up?"

She said nothing, and her attorney filled the void again. "The grounds for divorce were irreconcilable differences. It was uncontested, nearly complete."

Davis ignored him, kept his eyes fixed on the widow. "That's not what I asked."

Silence from above and below. The interview was going south fast.

Lavender said, "I think we're done, Mr. Davis."

"Yeah, I guess so." He stood and meandered toward the door, then paused. He hoped they really wanted to get rid of him. "Oh, there is one thing," he said, his eyes on the widow.

"What?" she asked.

"Do you have a key to his apartment?" Strictly speaking, Davis doubted it was legal for him to search the place, but he didn't have time for any screwy court warrants.

"I think Luke might have a key," she said, turning to her attorney.

"Why don't you go check his room," Lavender suggested.

Davis thought, Lousy lawyer, He said, "Thanks."

With the widow Moore upstairs and Lavender guarding the couch, Davis strolled back to the wall. He stared at the picture of Earl Moore on stage. A drink, a cigar, and a monkey on his back. Loving life.