Marine One

33

I RACED THROUGH the darkness trying to imagine what Bradley had found and why he needed to meet with me at his lab. His lab was halfway to Washington from Annapolis, in Bowie, Maryland, about a half hour away. We could go on to the WorldCopter plant from there no problem.

It was a little hard to find, but I typed the address into my GPS so I wouldn't miss the turn, an unmarked road that led deep into the woods. I found the turn and kept my bright lights on as I hurried down the dark pavement. It was about a mile from the main road to his lab. It looked unusually bright as I approached the end of the road. My cell phone rang, and I picked it up.

It was Bradley. He sounded panicked. "Where are you?"

"I'm on the road to your-"

"Stop! Don't go down the road!" The tone of his voice was alarming.

I hit the brakes. "Why not?"

"My lab is on fire! The flames are fifty feet high. I'm heading back toward the main road. They may be there, Mike. There may be somebody waiting for us there!"

I felt a quick jolt of adrenaline. "On fire? What happened?"

"I don't know. I was driving down-"

"Is that you driving away?"

"Yes. Stop, that's me right in front of you."

He stopped his Honda Pilot right next to me. I opened my window. "What started the fire?"

"Not what, who. They're after us, Mike. They're onto us. I was staying away, trying to use other labs or make due. But I had to go back to get something. They know we're going to blow this thing sky-high, and they're trying to stop us." He looked in his rearview mirror and around in the darkness.

"We don't know what happened. Maybe somebody left the coffeepot on."

"No, Mike. We don't leave coffeepots on. It's the safest lab in the country. Somebody thinks we found something and burned the place down. Either to burn the evidence or to warn us. Or to get me."

I listened to the engines of our idling cars and looked at the glow at the end of the road. "They know the critical evidence is the tip weight. You still have it?"

Bradley nodded, with his mouth open.

"They wouldn't know that. But they would know it is made of bronze, or some other type of metal that's not likely to burn in a fire. It would make it through a fire, right?"

"Depending on how hot the fire is, but generally."

"That means they're talking to us. They don't want to kill us-we're too obvious, too much in the public eye. They just want us to shut up and let this case take its course, us losing and them fading into the shadows."

"You think it's the other attorney?"

"Hackett? He's sinister enough, but I don't know if he'd go that low. Can you show me at WorldCopter what you found?"

Bradley nodded, regaining his composure. "It would have been better here, but I have a portable in the back here." He indicated the back of his Pilot.

"Let's go. Stay right behind me. If you see anything suspicious, flash your brights."

I pulled up in front of the WorldCopter facility and stopped quickly. I was sure we hadn't been followed; of course, I'd thought that before, every day, and now realized I was probably wrong. Rachel and Marcel were waiting in the parking lot. Bradley pulled up right behind me. He got out of his Pilot. He looked disheveled, with his cuffed khakis hanging up on top of old brown leather boots that were two-thirds unlaced, and a large Hawaiian shirt overhanging his portliness. His reading glasses dangled around his neck, and his hair was everywhere.

"So what do you have, Wayne?"

Marcel and Rachel greeted him, but Bradley was all business. He pointed to the back of his Pilot. He opened up the back hatch, and there was what could only be described as a traveling lab. The backseats had either been taken out or laid really flat, and he seemed to have built out the back with snugly fitting cabinets and padded toolboxes. At the very back was what appeared to be a flat bottom; but he reached down, pulled on an invisible handle, and a table came up to his waist level. He reached over to the left, opened a door to one of his fixed cabinets, and pulled out a leather bag, or pouch, the kind of pouch you might expect to hold coins in the eighteenth century. He reached to the right side of the Pilot, which was still running, and pulled up the extension arm of a halogen desk light, which now sat directly over the table in front of him, illuminating the black felt surface. He opened the drawstring of the leather bag and dumped out the contents. It was the tip weight, but it had been further dismantled. I tried to control the panic rising in my chest.

"Shit, Wayne. You've destroyed it! We'll never get this thing into evidence."

"Bear with me here, Mike."

"Marcel, Rachel, this is one of the tip weights from Marine One. Marcel, see this serial number here. We can only see four of the six numbers, but they're the last four, and these are among the numbers of one of the tip weights that are missing from your list of known tip weights. We found it embedded in a tree at the accident scene."

Marcel leaned over, lifted the shattered disk up to his eyes, and examined the tip weight carefully. "How long have you had this? Why wasn't I told?"

Bradley nodded. "We weren't sure what it meant. Look at this." Everyone huddled under the upraised rear hatch of his Pilot with the bright halogen light shining on the tip weight of Marine One. Bradley pulled down a large magnifying glass that was attached to a boom from the ceiling of the Pilot. He pulled it down and held up the tip weight, now brilliantly illuminated behind the lens. He took a small metal instrument like a dentist's pick, although straight, and pointed to a section of the tip weight. "See this?"

We all squinted and looked hard. I thought I saw what he was pointing at. He continued, "See this?" Bradley waited for recognition to hit us. A small window was cut half the depth into the tip weight, showing a small wire.

I was suddenly thunderstruck by the implications. "Bradley, is that what I think it is?"

He smiled and nodded. "It is. I tested it."

I closed my eyes in disbelief. "Are you shitting me?"

"I shit you not."

I put my hands to my head as my thoughts raced to help me understand what I was looking at. "What does this mean? What do we do with this?"

Bradley put the pieces back in the leather pouch, placed it in his pocket, turned off the halogen light, put the magnifying glass back up where it belonged, stowed the shelf, and said, "You need to get me in to see the helicopter sitting behind that Plexiglas wall inside. If my theory is right, we can confirm it right now."

I wasn't following him. "How?"

"This tip weight didn't end up on Marine One by accident. There have to be more just like it. Probably many."

Bradley turned toward Marcel. "Have you looked into this helicopter?"

Marcel said, "In what regard?"

"Any of the blades replaced in the last three months?"

"I don't know. Probably. They replace blades all the time. The slightest nick and they replace a blade on Marine One."

Bradley nodded. "What I'm thinking may be true even if it was more than three months. But if less than three months, I think we could be almost sure. You've got to get us in there, Marcel. We've got to get access to that helicopter, and I need to take the end cap off of the blade that's been put on most recently."

"They'll never let us touch it. It's a Marine One helicopter. We don't have clearances."

I shook my head. "Make it happen, Marcel. Call Jean Claude if you have to."

Marcel shrugged and threw out his chin. "Let us try."

We closed the Pilot, walked into WorldCopter headquarters, and persuaded the guard to let us go back to the hangar area. Then we were confronted with the Plexiglas wall and a humorless guard. Marcel pleaded with him and begged for access to the helicopter. Not a chance. Marcel got the head of the Marine One maintenance program out of bed and begged for access. No. To allow anyone to even touch the helicopter without a Yankee White clearance would ground it forever unless they completely dismantled it and reassembled it. No way. Marcel wasn't giving up.

He continued up the chain of command, to the president of WorldCopter U.S. He was persuaded, but said it wasn't his call. He said we needed to get a hold of Jean Claude. Jean Claude was staying in a private home that had been rented in the hills of Annapolis for $10,000 a week. The mansion was owned by some mysterious businessman who had some indirect relationship to a shipping line that no one seemed to know the name of. Jean Claude's phone was off. Marcel grew more frustrated. He called everyone he knew, including Jean Claude's personal secretary in France. She was sound asleep when he called and was annoyed when he awoke her. When he explained the importance of what he was doing, she happily agreed to contact Jean Claude and seemed to have some other secret number for him. We waited and stared at the brightly lit Marine One helicopter sitting behind the Plexiglas wall, hoping against hope that we'd be able to test Bradley's theory.

Marcel's phone rang. He spoke in French and seemed pleased. He handed his phone to the head of security, who stood as he listened to the president of WorldCopter SA tell him to allow access to this group even though it would mean losing the use of this helicopter as Marine One. The guard threw the bolt electronically and pulled the heavy Plexiglas door toward him. We walked inside the restricted area, very aware of the intense lights and scrutiny that were on us. The security guard had called one of the other security guards, who had brought a video camera and was filming everything we did. Fine with me.

Bradley quickly grabbed a ladder and pulled it over to the helicopter. He turned to Marcel. "Which blade was put on more recently?"

Marcel said, "I will check. Do you want to take off the end cap?"

"The end cap and the tip weights."

"I'll check the maintenance records and bring the tools."

Marcel disappeared toward the back of the hangar, reviewed the maintenance records, and came back with two hand tools. "The blue blade was replaced forty days before the crash." Marcel looked at the rotor hub, saw the blue marking on one of the blades, and put the ladder underneath the end of it. He labored up the ladder and removed the Allen screws that held on the end cap. He pulled it off, handed it down to me. I set it on the floor, well out of the way. I looked up and saw the tip weights properly placed with a large nut holding them onto a bolt. Marcel loosened the nut, pulled it off, and removed the four tip weights that had been attached to the blade when it had been balanced in France. Marcel handed the tip weights to Bradley and climbed down from the ladder. Marcel asked, "Is that all we need?"

"That's it," Bradley said excitedly. "Let's go back to my car."

We exited the sterile environments of the hangared Marine One and waved to the security guards as we hurried outside to the Pilot. Bradley set up his portable lab and put a small block of metal on the tray. He put the tip weight on top of it and picked up a chisel and a hammer.

Marcel was horrified. "You're not going to destroy it, are you?"

"I'm going to break it open." Bradley raised his hammer and cracked the chisel into the tip weight, breaking it in half.

I got no sleep that night. And contrary to what I had told Brightman, I wasn't going to go meet Bradley the next morning. He was coming to my house. I still couldn't take the chance that the office was bugged and that Hackett would know what I was doing before I pulled the trigger. Bradley had agreed to stay at the first hotel he encountered, pay cash, and come to my house for breakfast at eight o'clock the following morning. He was to keep the tip weights in his possession at all times, including inside the hotel room. He was not to leave them in his car, and he was to have a separate bag for the tip weights taken from the Marine One at the WorldCopter hangar.

I was up banging out a new outline on my computer before the sun even hinted at the horizon. I stayed there while Debbie prepared breakfast for the kids, got them ready for school, and they left.

He arrived at eight. I let him in, brought him to the den, and got him a cup of coffee. He looked confident and rested. I felt confident and unrested. We walked through his testimony. He understood. He was ready to go. One pocket held the tip weight from the crashed Marine One, the other pocket held the tip weights from the intact Marine One.

I heard the front door open, which was a surprise because Debbie always came in through the back after she parked her car. I glanced out through the den's French doors and saw Debbie. She looked concerned. I excused myself.

"What's up?" I asked.

Debbie looked at the front door and put her car keys in her purse. "There's a woman standing in front of our house who said she needs to see you."

I rolled my eyes. "Reporter."

"She looks very unsure of herself, very much out of her element. She kept looking around."

I walked toward the front door. "What does she look like?"

"Black, pretty; early fifties."

I looked out the thin window next to the front door. I saw the woman Debbie had described. I'd never seen her before. I checked my watch. It was nine fifteen. The trial was back under way, any journalists would be there. "I'll see what this is about. Did you talk to her?"

"She said she needed to talk to Mike Nolan. I told her I was your wife, and she said she could only talk to you."

"Come with me."

We walked out of the front of our house and went to the woman on the sidewalk. She looked uneasy as I approached her. "Hi, I'm Mike Nolan. My wife says you need to see me."

She nodded. She handed me an envelope. I looked into her eyes, but she wouldn't look at me.

"What is this?" I took the envelope and saw that my name was written on the outside, in what was probably a man's handwriting.

"He said to give this to you."

"Who did?"

"My husband."

I looked at Debbie, but neither of us had any idea what this woman was talking about. "Who's your husband?"

"Tinny."

I felt a shot of fear. "You're Tinny Byrd's wife?"

"Yes."

Debbie glanced at me and reached to her. "Won't you please come in?"

Mrs. Byrd nodded her head.

As Debbie walked next to her, she asked, "What's your first name?"

"Cherie."

We went into the house and I signaled to Bradley that it would be a minute. He continued to study some documents that he had spread on his lap. We took Cherie Byrd to the kitchen, where she sat at our table. Debbie poured her a cup of coffee, which she took gladly. I asked her, "Did you drive from D.C. this morning?"

"Yes."

"How'd you find where I lived?"

"Tinny had your address on that envelope. I just used MapQuest."

"Thanks for coming. What made you want to come find me?"

"Tinny was mur-"

"I know. I'm so sorry. It's so… horrible. Police have any leads?"

"Nothing. He was working on a lot of cases. It could be anything." She clutched her purse to her chest, then looked into my eyes for the first time. "It could have been this case. I always told him something like this was going to happen. He wouldn't listen to me. He just kept doing it, living his life, thinking he was bulletproof and smarter than everybody-"

"I'm really sorry. He was a good friend of mine. I can't believe I never met you."

"I know. He spoke of you."

"So why did you come see me?"

She nodded her head and relaxed slightly. "I've been going through his things. One of them was our wall safe. He kept it in his closet, and I never went into it. I didn't even know what was in it. I'd forgotten the combination to it because I'd only done it once when he put it in. But I remembered he wrote the combination on the bottom of the drawer of my dresser with a black-ink pen so if I ever needed to get into that safe, all I ever needed to do was turn over my drawers. That's what he said, just turn over your drawers and you can get it. So I remembered that and found the combination and opened that wall safe yesterday. There were all kinds of things in there that I don't have any idea what they were. Some things I did know and didn't want to know. Like a gun and some bullets and some cash money. Then I found this envelope. He had a yellow sticky on it that looked pretty new. The sticky said-hold on, I've brought it with me." She reached into her purse and pulled out a folded yellow sticky. She tried to unfold it, but the adhesion was too strong. I looked at it and read, "If anything happens to me, give this to Mike Nolan."

The envelope that I held had my name and address on it. It was a letter-size, not thick. I asked, "Did you open this?"

She shook her head. "No. He told me to bring it to you and I have. It's out of my hands and into yours. So I think I'll go now."

"Wait one minute. I want you to be here when I open it."

She was hesitant, but said nothing.

I broke the seal of the Scotch tape on the back flap and opened the envelope. I pulled out a piece of paper and a key. On the piece of paper was written, If you're reading this, something has happened to me. I can't tell you what, 'cause I don't know. I also can't tell you if it was related to this case. I hope not. And I hope I didn't make a fool of myself, but I told you I'd take care of you so I'm going to. Then in large block letters he had written, J. Mark Grosvenor. Underneath was a home address, cell phone number, home telephone number, and pager. Taped to the bottom of the page was a key. I pulled the key off and looked at it. I wasn't sure what it was. I held it up. "Do you recognize this?"

Cherie took her reading glasses out of her purse and examined the key. "Well, I do. It's a key for a safety-deposit box at our bank."

"Is this from your safety-deposit box?"

She shook her head. "No, ours is a different number."

"You think this is another safety-deposit box at your bank?"

"Looks like it to me."

I looked at my watch and considered the implications of putting Bradley on the witness stand with no preparation. If anyone could do it, it was him. "Take me there. Now. We don't have any time to lose."

I stood up, put the key in my pocket, and said to Debbie, "Would you watch Wayne? Don't let him out of your sight, except for the bathroom. Seriously. Literally. Do not let him out of your sight. If anybody comes to the door looking for me or him, or anybody else, nobody's home. I'll call you on your cell phone, otherwise don't talk to anybody. Don't answer the house phone. Understand?" She looked alarmed at my intensity.

"I understand, but explain this to me."

"Later." I turned to Cherie. "Let's go. I'll drive."

As I started my car, I pulled out my cell phone from my glove box and texted Rachel, who was sitting next to Brightman in trial. She was probably pulling her hair out. I told her to call me at her first break and I headed off to D.C.

It was an awkward drive. I was actually surprised I'd never met Tinny's wife. Tinny talked about her in glowing terms all the time, yet I'd never met her. I didn't know how to even start a conversation with her. I finally thanked her again for going out of her way to track me down and give me something that she didn't know was significant. But she knew her husband well enough to know that if he thought it important enough to put in a safe and ask her to do it after his death, it was important enough for her to actually do it. She related that it had actually done her good to get out of the house and get out of D.C. to see the rest of the world. She hadn't been outside the District in almost two years. Tinny was always going outside the District in his Corvette, jetting here and there in airplanes, but she preferred to stay home in their small house. I asked her to tell me about their life together, the fun they'd had together. She relaxed and told me stories of their courtship and marriage, their early days when he was work-obsessed and she was repeatedly pregnant. They'd been in love for thirty years, and she still was. When he was killed, her life had been gutted and she would never be the same.

As we drove along, I continued to look at the cars around me. I noticed one that had been behind me the entire way. A fairly new Dodge Caravan. It had stayed fairly far back most of the time. But once it had come close enough for me to get a look at the driver. I had seen young Asian men drive all sorts of cars, but never a Dodge Caravan.

By the time we got to D.C. and headed toward the Northeast section, near Mercedes' Grill, I had almost forgotten about the trial. That was refreshing. As we turned down Tennessee Avenue, she said, "The bank is up there on the right."

We turned into the parking lot, found a spot, and walked into the bank. I followed her straight to the back left corner of the lobby, where they had a light wooden wall with a glass door that separated the safety-deposit boxes from the rest of the bank. She pressed a buzzer next to the door. A young black man appeared on the other side of the glass, recognized her, and smiled. He pressed a button on his side of the glass that released the door, and he pulled it open. We stepped through. "Hello, Ronald," she said, shaking his hand gently. "This is my friend Mike Nolan."

Ronald said, "Hello, Mrs. Byrd. I'm glad to see you. I'm really sorry about Tinny." His face clouded as he shook my hand as an afterthought. "I just can't believe it. I'm so sorry."

She nodded and fought back a tear. "Thank you. Would you give us a hand? I'm here to open a safety-deposit box."

"Yours and Tinny's? I wondered when you were going to come for it."

"No. Another one. Show him the key, Mike."

I handed Ronald the key, which he examined.

"Sure, let me check it. Was it listed under Tinny's name?"

"I don't know. I assume so."

He returned with the signature card in his hand. "It's in Tinny's name and yours." Ronald looked embarrassed. "But we've got a problem. The only signature on the card is Tinny's. To give you access I have to have the owner's signature."

I couldn't believe my ears. I said, "He gave me the key to this box and told me to retrieve something. I'm in the middle of a trial, and it may be evidence. Don't you recognize me?"

Ronald looked at me and suddenly realized who I was. "You're the attorney in the trial about the president's helicopter."

"Exactly. And Tinny was my investigator. He'd found something critically important, was killed, and left a note for his wife-" I pulled it out of my pocket. "Here's the note he left for her to give me in case he died. He wants me to have access to that box."

Ronald read it and returned Tinny's note to me. "That's amazing. There must be something really important in there, but I'm sorry, I can't let you into the box. The bank has rules. I can't change them."

I felt that old nemesis of mine, that white anger that I sometimes had to fight, raging up inside me. I had to pause for a moment. "Ronald, this is not the time to be a bureaucratic hero and screw me with rules. Let us into that safety-deposit box."

I had miscalculated. He felt the power that came from being able to deny an angry person his strongest desire. "I can't, Mr. Nolan. Sorry."

"You'd better get the manager."

Ronald said, "It won't make any difference. He's the one that told me never to change these rules. But worse, he's out."

I detected just a slight bit of joy in Ronald. It was total bullshit and I was not going to be deterred. "Is there anyone here senior to you, Ronald?"

"Assistant manager. Debra Hastings. She's over there."

I looked around, saw Debra, went back to the glass door, buzzed the button I'd seen him buzz, and slammed it open. I marched across to Debra's desk and interrupted a conversation she was having that was undoubtedly extremely important, probably somebody opening a new checking account. "Ms. Hastings. As the assistant manager, I need your help with a safety-deposit box immediately. This is an emergency. Ronald asked me to get you."

She looked at me like I was a lunatic. "I'm with a customer, sir, you'll have to wait-"

"No, I'm not waiting for anything. Get up, come with me right now to the safety-deposit-box area. I must insist."

"Sir, are you threatening me?"

"No. I am not. I am begging you."

She looked at this customer sitting in a chair that was right next to me who was trying to inch away from me and said, "Will you excuse me for just a minute, I'll be right back."

"No problem. Take your time," the customer said.

Debra got up and followed me to the safety-deposit-box area. She put her access card in front of the reader, and the glass door opened away from us. We walked in. Debra walked over to where Ronald and Cherie were silently standing. Debra was about forty-five, thin, and homely. I said to her, "My name is Mike Nolan. I'm an attorney involved in the trial over the crash of the president's helicopter. Do you recognize me?"

She looked at me with shock on her face. "Yes, I do."

"I had a private investigator working for me, Mr. Tinny Byrd. You may have heard they found his remains. He'd been murdered and thrown to the dogs. Do you remember that?"

"Yes, I do. That was-"

"This is his wife. She found a note in her home safe from Tinny to me that instructed her to bring me a key to the safety-deposit box right over there in your bank. I have that key and asked for access. That access has been denied by my good friend Ronald here. Would you please tell him to give me, or you can authorize it yourself, access to that box with that key that was given to me by the owner of that box?"

She nodded with immediate understanding. "That should be no problem. Do you have the signature card, Ronald?"

He handed it to her and she looked at it. "Only Mr. Byrd's signature is on the card. So he would have to be the one to sign for the box."

I tried to slow down and take a breath. "Right. He's dead. I just told you that. So is it your belief that no one left on the face of the earth can now open that box?"

She smiled as she understood the implications of my question, but also recognized the simple solution. "Oh, no. It's no problem. His wife can access the account."

I relaxed. "There we go."

Debra continued, "All we need is the death certificate and the documents appointing you executrix of his estate."

I looked at Cherie. She said, "I don't have copies of those on me."

Debra understood. "That's no problem. You and Mr. Nolan can just go get it, and when you get back, then you can have access to the box."

I tried not to scream. "I don't have time for her to go retrieve a copy of the death certificate. I want you to open the box now."

"I can't do that."

I wanted to break something, but then a thought occurred to me. I looked at Ronald. "You said the box was in the name of both Mr. and Mrs. Byrd. Right?"

"Yes, sir. But she never signed the signature card."

"But the other owner can add her signature to the account, to the box signature card, at any time, right?"

"That's true."

"Then give it to her now, let her sign it now in your presence."

Ronald shook his head. "Can't do that. The signature has to be notarized."

"Is there a notary in the bank?"

"Yes, Rikki Carlson is a notary."

"Which window?"

"The first-"

I headed to the glass door, pressed the buzzer, and ripped it open and jogged over to the first window. A customer was talking to Rikki. I took her CLOSED sign, and slammed it down in front of him. "This window is closed. Rikki, please come with me and bring your notary kit."

"Sir, I don't know you."

"Debra, the assistant manager, and Ronald, the gentleman at the safety-deposit-box area have asked you to notarize the signature of one of the box owners. It is critically important and you will be right back."

The customer was pissed. "This is ridiculous. Who do you think you are-"

I reached into my pocket, pulled out my wallet, pulled out a $50 bill, and slammed it down in front of him. "Here. Is your two minutes worth fifty bucks? Take it."

Rikki shrugged, turned behind her, grabbed her purse, and followed me to the safety-deposit-box area. Ronald buzzed her through when he saw her coming, and I followed her quickly. We went through the process, the charade, the ridiculousness of her notarizing Cherie's signature on a signature card so she could turn around and sign a piece of paper authorizing herself to have access to her box. We finally stepped into the safe, used our key and Ronald's, and pulled out the long, medium-size box. Ronald said, "Would you like to step into the booth to open it?"

"Yes," I said.

Cherie and I stepped inside the booth, a small wooden structure like a study carrel that had walls that went up about seven feet. We closed the door behind us, turned on the small fluorescent light, and opened the top of the long box. As I lifted it up, I could see two envelopes in the box. I opened the first one with some trepidation. As I laid the contents on the desktop, I just stared at it with my heart pounding. I leafed through the pages to see what they were, then laid them down flat and ironed out the creases gently with my fingers.

Cherie was baffled. "It looks like some kind of government document. What is it?"

"It changes everything." I opened the second manila envelope and pulled out the several pages that were inside. I turned them around so they were right side up and stared at them. "That son of a bitch."

"What is it?" Cherie asked.

"The who, and the why."

I picked up the document and yelled, "Ronald! You got a scanner?"