Heaven's keep

TWENTY-SIX

Becca Bodine had called ahead, and when Cork arrived at the Rice Lake Regional Airport, he was expected. He showed ID at the contact counter for the airport’s fixed base operator, or FBO, the primary charter company, clearly a much larger enterprise than Bodine’s one-man operation. He was given the key code to get the Navigator through the security gate and into the hangar area. From the outside, the hangar was unimposing, simply a moderate structure of corrugated steel painted a dull tan. Inside, perhaps because it was empty, it felt enormous and abandoned, like a high school gym long after the last game of a losing season. Overhead, exposed girders supported fluorescent lights. Through dusty windows, the midday sun cast dun-colored rhomboids onto the bare concrete floor. Metal cabinets lined the walls, and there were stacks of cardboard boxes labeled to indicate supplies. The air was cool and smelled unpleasantly of engines and the fuel and lubricants of engines.

In a far corner, Sandy Bodine had established his simple office. There was a large desk of gray metal with an overhead work light and a rolling chair. On the desk sat a big tin can wrapped in orange construction paper decorated with a child’s drawings. The can held pencils, pens, and a ruler. The desk was shoved against a wall where two photographs hung. One was a framed family portrait: Bodine, Becca, and their son. The other was a large poster of a prop jet suspended in blue sky with the green earth far below. To the left of the desk stood a metal bookcase whose shelves were filled with aeronautical publications and rolled maps. To the right was a file cabinet that was a twin to the one in Bodine’s home office.

Cork handed Parmer the key ring. “I’m guessing that little key is for the file cabinet. See what you can find.”

“And I’m looking for what?”

“Pull anything on the Canadian charter a couple of years ago. And of course anything on the Wyoming flight. Other than that, anything that strikes you as odd.”

“Okay. What are you going to do?”

“I have an idea why Stilwell asked Becca Bodine about a VCR. I’m going to check it out.”

Parmer headed to the file cabinet and Cork began a slow search of the hangar. He walked along the walls, inspecting the stacks of cardboard boxes, checking under shelves and behind cabinets. He was moving along the final wall when he found what he’d been hoping for-cable wire concealed behind one of the tall cabinets. The wire ran up the wall to an industrial clock and appeared, at first glance, to be the clock’s power cord. Cork braced himself and shoved the cabinet away from the wall. The cord entered the cabinet through a dime-size hole drilled through the metal backing. The cabinet door was secured with a padlock.

“Hugh,” he called across the empty hangar. “Toss me that key ring.”

Parmer sent it sailing with a fine throw, and Cork snagged it midair. He quickly flipped through the keys until he found the one that fit the padlock. When he opened the cabinet door, he said, “Eureka.”

“What is it?” Parmer called to him.

“Exactly what I suspected. A security camera, a time-lapse VCR, and tapes.”

Parmer joined him. He had two file folders. “The Canadian charter. And the Wyoming flight,” he said.

Cork checked the VCR for a tape. The machine was empty. He looked at the shelf above, which held a row of tape cassettes, each marked with the dates during which the recordings had been made.

Parmer scanned the hangar. “Where’s the camera?”

“Disguised as the wall clock,” Cork said. “The dates on these cassettes indicate that each tape was created over a considerable period. It’s a motion-sensitive security system. The clock camera only operates when it detects movement.”

“There’s no tape in the VCR,” Parmer pointed out.

“Exactly,” Cork said. “Bodine wouldn’t have left without activating his security camera, so the question is what happened to the final security tape. My guess is that Stilwell is the answer. He took the tape and headed to the Bodines’ house, where he knew he could find a VCR and a television to view what happened in the hangar the morning Bodine flew out.”

“Why not do that here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t feel safe here. With good reason apparently.”

“Is that what got Stilwell killed?”

“Could be.”

“Why? What was on the tape?”

“I’m not sure. But maybe it was an image of the man who killed Bodine. Maybe it even captured the killing.”

“You think he was killed here?”

“The first stop on that Wyoming charter was at the Aurora Regional Airport. It makes sense that whoever flew the plane flew it from the beginning, from right here in Rice Lake. If they wanted to get Bodine out of the picture without being seen, this hangar would be a good place to do that. And if they were careless and that wall clock did a good job of disguising itself, they might have been captured on film doing whatever it is that they did here.”

“A lot of speculation.”

“Got a better thought?” When Parmer didn’t offer him anything, Cork said, “Let me see those folders.” He checked the information on the Wyoming flight. “No contract here either,” he said.

“What about the Canadian charter?” Parmer asked.

Cork leafed through the documents in that folder but didn’t find anything that raised a concern. “From what Bodine’s wife told me, her husband was in a temporary financial bind. It’s possible the Canadian charter had to do with something illegal, quick money. Smuggling would be a good guess. Cigarettes, maybe, which are a big black-market item because of the tax in Canada. But I’m seeing only this one flight, and that seems pretty small potatoes for the kind of murder we’re talking about with the Wyoming charter. I think there’s something bigger at stake.” He handed Parmer the folders to put back, then he continued his search of the hangar, poking into cabinets that weren’t locked, looking into tool chests, finding nothing that seemed of any help.

“What next?” Parmer asked.

“If Bodine was killed here, whoever killed him had to get onto the airfield. Let’s have a talk with the people in the office.”

Because it was a security issue, the FBO contact who’d given him the key code sent him to speak with Gage Williams, the airport manager.

Cork knocked on the manager’s door, and a firm business voice on the other side instructed him to come in.

Gage, he discovered, was a woman. She sat at her desk and eyed him over her reading glasses. Before her on the desk lay blueprints. She wore a white blouse with its long sleeves rolled back to her elbows. “Yes?” she said.

Cork introduced himself and Parmer. Gage Williams took off her glasses and used them to point toward a couple of chairs.

“I heard you were coming. We seem to have a regular stream of PIs through here lately. Did Becca fire the other guy?”

“He’s out of the picture.”

She folded her hands on the blueprints. “What can I do for you?”

“You can help us figure out how a man who might have wanted Sandy Bodine dead could have gotten onto the airfield and into Bodine’s hangar.”

She didn’t move for several seconds. “You’re not kidding.”

“Not at all.” Cork explained to her everything that had brought him to his conclusion.

“That’s a hell of a story,” she said when he’d finished. “I’ve got to tell you, it’s not easy to buy.”

“Humor us for a moment. If a man wanted to kill Bodine and fly his plane out, how could he get onto the airfield? Could he simply sneak on?”

“That would be extremely difficult. Since 9/11 we’ve tightened things up pretty good. We have PIDS now.”

“PIDS?” Parmer said.

“Perimeter intrusion detection system,” Cork said.

“There are security cameras everywhere,” Williams said. “They feed directly into the Barron County Sheriff’s Department.”

“How closely monitored are they?”

“That I can’t answer. But really, it would be difficult to sneak onto the field without being spotted.” She sat back and toyed with her glasses. “Unless.”

“What?” Cork said.

“I’m not sure I should be encouraging you, because, like I said, your story sounds pretty crazy. But if I wanted to get onto the field without raising suspicion, I’d simply fly in.”

“Explain that,” Cork said.

“We’re a small regional airport. We don’t have a control tower. Planes can land here anytime, day or night. If they’re small enough, we don’t even log them in or charge a landing fee. Unless they want to tie down overnight, we don’t even keep a record of them. Conceivably a small plane could land in the dead of night and take off without us noticing.”

Cork liked the idea, but there was a problem. “No record would exist.”

“Not technically. But if they taxied anywhere near the terminal here, one of our security cameras should have picked them up.”

“Any way we could look at the security tapes from the night before Bodine’s last flight?”

“Actually, we use disks now, but sure. Wait here.”

She left the office, was gone a few minutes, and came back with a disk, which she inserted into her computer. “This should contain the time frame we’re interested in.”

She turned her monitor so that Cork and Parmer could see the image, too, and she began to scan quickly through what the security cameras had caught. It wasn’t difficult finding what they wanted. There was nothing to see except empty tarmac for almost the entire period. But at 3:45 A.M., a small plane touched down and taxied past the terminal toward the charter hangars. It disappeared for a few minutes, returned, taxied back to the runway, and took off.

Williams said, “Now let’s see what happened when it disappeared from the terminal cameras.” She worked the mouse and, with a couple of additional keystrokes, brought up a view of the charter hangars.

The video image confirmed all Cork’s suspicions. The plane taxied to the hangar area and paused for a few moments. A solitary figure quickly exited from the passenger side and slipped into the shadow of Bodine’s hangar. The plane turned back for its return to the tarmac.

“Son of a gun,” Williams said. “You were right.”

“Any way to ID that plane?” Cork asked.

“Sure.” She backed up the image and froze it as the figure was disembarking. “There, see that number on the tail? That’s the plane’s registration. That’s all we need.” She accessed the Internet and went to the FAA’s aircraft registry site. In a few more moments, she smiled broadly, tapped the monitor with her finger, and said, “Voila.”