Polar Quest

29

After spending the night in Waco, Kilkenny and Tao caught an early morning flight to Tucson.

‘Just pull up next to that blue Jeep,’ the guard at ASRF’s main gate instructed Kilkenny as he handed back their IDs. ‘Someone will be right out.’

As Kilkenny parked, a woman in jeans and a denim shirt stepped out of the office. ‘You the FBI?’

‘Yes.’ Tao replied, flashing her ID.

‘I’m Anne Newburg. If you’ll hop into the Jeep, I’ll run you out to see the planes.’

Newburg drove them past the neatly parked rows of aircraft that filled the Boneyard. The planes were arranged by type, and as they drove around a cluster of cargo transports, Kilkenny saw the tip of a broad flat ski beneath the rounded black nose of an LC-130. A second sat immediately behind the first, and beside the two planes was a large empty space.

‘There they are,’ Newburg said as she parked the Jeep.

‘We were told you had four of these aircraft in inventory,’ Tao said. ‘I only see two.’

‘Until recently, we had seven. A few months ago, the Pentagon had us prep five for flight to Raytheon-Waco for upgrade.’

‘When was the last time these two planes were flown?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘It’s been years, ever since the navy brought ‘em in for storage.’

Kilkenny checked the tail numbers against his list. He’d accounted for all but two of the LC-130s that had ever been made. ‘We’d like to see the paperwork on the transfer of those five planes.’

‘Sure thing.’ Newburg put the Jeep in gear. ‘It’s all back at the office.’

Newburg pulled the files for the five aircraft and set them on her desk in front of Tao and Kilkenny. Kilkenny checked the ID numbers and made two piles.

‘We saw these three planes at Waco yesterday,’ Kilkenny said, ‘and according to the Pentagon’s records, that’s all they were supposed to get.’

‘That can’t be right.’ Newburg brought up the report on her computer. ‘Here. At the Pentagon’s request, we prepped five planes for flight. That means we stripped off the protective coating, checked all the electronics, refilled the hydraulic lines, and did about a hundred other things. For an LC-130, all that work takes about sixty days and costs several thousand dollars. This is a civilian facility and the owners won’t touch a plane unless the work is paid for, and we got paid to prep five planes.’

‘The Pentagon says they only paid for three,’ Tao said. ‘I wonder who paid for the other two.’

‘Do your personnel deliver the planes?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘No, flight crews are provided by the owner. We have two pilots on staff, but they’re not rated for every type of aircraft we have in storage, and certainly not the LC-130s.’ Newburg leafed through the file. ‘Here’s the paperwork formally transferring the aircraft over to the owner’s representative, in this case the pilot.’

Tao studied the five signed forms. ‘Two of the planes were received by a pair of pilots on January third. A day later, a different pilot took possession of the third plane. This pilot then returned on the following two days to fly out the remaining planes.’

Kilkenny compared the numbers listed on the form with those in his Palm Pilot. ‘The serial numbers on the planes flown out on January four, five, and six match those on the planes we saw in Waco. As yet, we don’t have a fix on the other two.’

‘Our release of these planes was by-the-book,’ Newburg said, puzzled. ‘I don’t understand how two could just disappear.’

‘Can we get a copy of everything you have on these five planes?’ Kilkenny asked. ‘I’d like to see every scrap of paperwork from the time they arrived until these pilots flew them out of here.’

‘Certainly. Most of what you want is right here, but I can have my assistant pull the logs on everything else. I’ve only been the manager for a month; all this happened before I was promoted.’

‘What happened to your predecessor?’ Tao asked.

‘Oh, it was terrible, the poor man. He was bit by a rattlesnake.’

‘Sheriff, my partner and I appreciate your seeing us,’ Kilkenny said as they entered the man’s office.

‘You said over the phone that this had to do with the snakebite death out in the park. It looked like an accident, but we still have a few questions before we close the case up for good. Why are you folks interested in it?’

‘There appear to be some irregularities at the victim’s place of work prior to his death,’ Tao replied. ‘We’re looking to see if there’s any connection between the two.’

‘Hmmm. What kind of irregularities? Embezzling?’

‘No, the theft of two cargo planes.’

‘Planes? Probably drug dealers,’ the sheriff said, ‘which makes me even more interested in this death.’

‘You mentioned you had some unanswered questions about this incident. What are you looking into?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘Evers’s body was found up in the hills in the national park; he was trail riding. It looks like he stopped to take a leak, tripped, and fell on a rattlesnake.’ The sheriff pointed to a spot on his right arm. ‘Bit him right about here. It takes a little while for a snakebite to kill you, so he must have fainted, because he never got up. When the park closed, the rangers saw a car in the lot and went looking for the owner. By the time they found him, he was dead. That’s when they called us in. What bugged me about this death was a footprint.’

‘A footprint?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘Yeah. You see, Evers was wearing this backpack thing with a big bag of water inside. When we got to him, there was a print right square in the center of this backpack and, inside, the water bag had burst. We found a few partial prints on the ground, some of which matched the one on the backpack. Now, we checked Evers and the Rangers, and none of their shoes matched this print. I wouldn’t have thought much of it, except for the water bag. It was still wet, so we know it held water, which means somewhere along the way it broke open.’

‘Could it have happened when Evers tripped?’ Tao asked.

‘I don’t think so. Evers fell forward on the snake, and when we found him he was lying on his stomach.’

‘What’s your theory?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘I got two. Somebody found the body first, stomped on it, and rode off. It’s morbid, but it’s the kind of thing a teenage boy might do on a dare. The plastic on that water bag is pretty thick, so it took a hell of a whack to pop it. That kind of hit, on someone laying on the ground, should have broken a rib or two. The coroner looked into this, but he didn’t find any postmortem injuries on Evers’s back or chest. Now, if Evers didn’t get that print when he was on the ground, he must have gotten it while he was standing up. That means somebody kicked him in the back so hard it ruptured the water bag and pushed Evers on top of the snake.’

‘Which would be murder,’ Tao said.

The sheriff nodded. ‘Manslaughter at the very least.’