Where the Evidence Lies [A Lincoln Rhyme Short Story]

“Mayday, mayday. This is Horizonjet Eight Five Eight Four on IFR from Miami to Rio de Janero. Do you read me, San Juan Center?”

“Go ahead, Five Eight Four. San Juan Center.”

“I’m descending through nine thousand feet. Not sure where — Hell, losing power. I’m declaring an emergency.”

“Roger, Five Eight Four. We have you. Do you want vector to Muñoz Marín airport?”

“Let me... I’ll get this under control. Yes, vectors to airport.”

“San Juan Center to Five Eight Four. We’re holding arrivals and departures. We’re vectoring now... What’s the nature of your emergency?”

“Power loss. Fire, I think. There was a bang, it sounded like. Aft. I’m — I’m, okay, descending fast through seven thousand feet. I don’t know.”

“We have your position, Five Eight Four. We’re vectoring you to—”

“Descending... I can’t slow rate of descent. Through five thousand feet. Not responsive. How far am I from the airport?”

“You’re twenty-two miles from airport, Five Eight Four. Can you make it?”

“Negative.”

“All right. We’re alerting Coast Guard air-sea rescue. They’re getting your position, Five Eight Four.”

“Jesus. Descending through one thousand. Rate’s too high. No power. I—”

“Five Eight Four? Do you copy?... Do you copy?... Any traffic in area north of Marín airport, ten miles out, do you see any sign of an aircraft down?”

Eastern Dade Airport was a small facility near the Atlantic Ocean. It featured a runway, about three thousand feet long, big enough for small jets, though the majority of the two dozen planes parked on the tarmac were one- and two-engine props. Mangroves, royal palm, cabbage palm, live oak, gumbo-limbo, and West Indian mahogany, as well as orchids, bromeliads, and ferns surrounded the area. Lincoln Rhyme, on his way to the airport, spotted an alligator.

“Look. Well,” he said to Amelia Sachs, his partner — in both the professional and personal senses. She’d leaned over his wheelchair in the accessible van and gazed at the shallow canal in which a bored-looking gator sat in the humid heat, seemingly too tired to even think about chomping down whatever bored-looking gators normally ate.

His caregiver, Thom Reston, drove the van in a slow circle around this part of the field until Rhyme told him to stop.

Sachs said, “There’s a rumor they have those in the sewers of New York, you know. Parents buy them for kids and then flush them down the toilet.”

“Really?” Rhyme said. The details of the flora and fauna of this part of the state grew less interesting, as his mind had already drifted elsewhere. His eyes took in the airfield once more.

The three of them were en route to the airport, because a detective with the local sheriff’s department had approached Rhyme after one of his lectures in the county building and asked for some help. Paul Gillette was a trim forty-five-year-old with impressive posture, a hairstyle that an army major would have sported, and a face that seemed incapable of smiling. But he had revealed a droll sense of humor when, as a thank-you for the lecture, he gave Rhyme the choice between a coupon to the local Red Lobster or an incident report on a local businessman who’d just died in what might or might not have been an accidental plane crash.

Rhyme had replied, “Hmm. Murdered crustacean or murdered human. I’ll pick the latter.” He’d turned to Amelia. “You up for that, Sachs?”

“Sure. Nothing pressing back in New York.”

So Rhyme agreed to stay for an extra day or two and help out on the Stephen Nash homicide investigation. Besides, he’d enjoyed the trip here and had for the first time tasted stone crabs. Quite the delicacy. And the rum in Florida seemed better than the rum anywhere else but the Bahamas.

At Rhyme’s direction, Thom now piloted the accessible van into the airport itself and aimed for the unmarked police car at the far end of the field.

According to Gillette, there had been a possible explosion in Nash’s plane midflight. A bomb was suspected, though a mechanical malfunction could have been the cause of the crash. As they were driving in, Rhyme noted that it was unlikely that a bomber could have breached the perimeter fence and not been spotted. Or injured — the fence was topped with razor wire. There were also cameras, facing down and out. That meant if anybody did get in to plant the bomb it was most likely — not certain, but likely — an inside job.

They drove to the one hangar at the airport, on the far eastern edge. It was a small structure, windowless and doorless at the rear — facing the water — and open at the other end. Presumably so that the relentless wind from the Atlantic, not far away, wouldn’t blast the aircraft and workers inside.

Thom parked near the squad car and he, Rhyme and Sachs exited the van and met the detective on the tarmac. A fierce storm had descended upon the area yesterday; it had passed, but the wind still buffeted those present. Rhyme brushed his dark hair from his eyes with his one working limb and fingers, his right.

“Thanks again, Mr. Rhyme. Detective Sachs.”

“‘Lincoln’ and ‘Amelia’ are fine. What was the aircraft?”

“One of those new ones, personal jets. Horizonjet, twin engine, mounted in the rear. Real small, seats four.”

“Nobody else on board?”

“No. For those planes you don’t need a copilot. The autopilot’s so good; they do most of the work.”

He added that this secure area was owned by Southern Flight Services, a fixed base operator — a company that provided ground services to upscale private pilots.

Rhyme was familiar with such operations from a prior case, and he noted that this was a shoestring FBO. There was only one jet and two twin-engine prop planes parked here now. And they were covered with leaf-strewn tarps. It seemed they’d been there for a long time.

“So, Lincoln, we’ve kept the scene secure. What equipment do you need? I’ll call forensics and get you whatever. We’ve got some pretty good stuff.”

Rhyme was looking at the dim hanger. Good. Concrete floors, which would retain footprints. And it looked like the place hadn’t been swept for a week. Any trace would still be there. “Where exactly was the plane?”

Gillette pointed to the middle of the rain-soaked tarmac.

“It wasn’t in the hangar?” Sachs asked.

“No.”

“At any time?”

“No.”

Rhyme grimaced. The storm would have destroyed any evidence of anybody planting a bomb on the airplane — tread marks would have been the best source of information. But trace evidence, too. The bomber — if there was a bomber — might have shed trace evidence.

The storm, which Rhyme remembered clearly, had not exactly been a hurricane, but the winds had been close to sixty miles an hour and the rain had fallen for hours.

He gave a sour laugh. “I’m sorry, Detective. But there’s nothing left. Weather is one of the worst contaminators of crime scenes. This storm now’d be enough to destroy all the trace. Yesterday’s downpour? Nothing’d survive.”

“Oh.”

Sachs laughed. “Thought he was a miracle worker, hmm?”

“Guess I kind of did. Your lectures were pretty damn impressive.”

Still, Rhyme reflected, this was only a secondary crime scene. The more important one was the plane itself. However powerful the improvised explosive device had been, it would have left bits of trace on the wreckage of the plane that had been recovered. There would be fingerprints, possibly, chemical residue profiling, even a bomb maker’s signature — a unique construction pattern that ties a bomb to its builder.

Rhyme explained this to Gillette.

“Ah, well, that’s the problem, Mr.... That’s the problem, Lincoln. The plane didn’t break up. Whatever the explosion was, it didn’t blow the plane up, just destroyed the flight controls. The plane hit the water but stayed intact and sank.”

“Well, that’s okay. Water won’t necessarily destroy any evidence.” He frowned. “Unless you don’t know where it is.”

“Oh, we do.”

“Good.”

“Not really. It’s at the bottom of the Puerto Rican Trench.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“The deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean. About twenty-eight thousand feet under water. Twice as deep as the Titanic. We can’t raise the plane. And there’s no way to get to where the evidence lies.”

That’s the problem, Lincoln...

They had moved into the hangar to get out of the wind.

The place was deserted at the moment. “I’m not sure how I can help you, Detective. You’re asking my advice on a case where there’s no evidence. My expertise is forensics.”

“I heard your lectures, Lincoln. You’ve got a mind that’s, well, like nobody else’s. I was hoping you could just give us your insights. The NTSB will be here tomorrow. I was hoping we could have something to tell them.”

Sachs turned to Rhyme with a smile. “You like your challenges, Rhyme. Doesn’t get any more challenging than this.”

She had a point there.

And what could it hurt?

He shrugged, one of the few physical gestures he was capable of. “All right, we’ll give it a shot. Now, any witnesses to the crash itself?”

“A container ship, not too far away. All they saw was the plane come in and crash-land and go under before any doors opened. They changed course and steamed over to the spot. But there was nothing there — just a little oil.”

“Ah, oil?” Then he frowned. “But they wouldn’t have collected it. It’s all gone now.”

“I’d guess,” Gillette said. “And the way the currents run, the Coast Guard was sure the plane was five miles down in about a half hour. They had search-and-rescue combing the area, but no sign of anything.”

“Do you have the last transmission?”

“Sure. On my computer. I’ll get it.”

He went out to his car and returned a minute later. He called up an audio file of the exchange between Nash and air traffic control.

Those in the hangar remained silent as they listened to the tragedy unfolding. Gillette shut it off.

“Okay. Well, I think a preliminary question is: why don’t you think it was an accident? Nash didn’t mention a bomb. He just said ‘bang.’”

“Sure, it could’ve been a malfunction. But I’m suspicious by nature. And I looked into Nash’s life last night. He had enemies.”

Who doesn’t? Rhyme thought.

“Now, there’s an ex. Sally Nash. Divorced two years and under a restraining order. She’s still ‘Nash’ — kept her married name. Never let go.”

Rhyme asked, “He had an affair? He dumped her?”

“Nope. The other way around. She cheated on him, and when he found out he filed for divorce. Pissed her off. Go figure. Oh and the judge kicked out her request for alimony — yeah, she asked. So she wasn’t a happy camper.”

“Any threats?”

“From time to time. Never amounted to much. But he called us a few times to have the deputies go out there and remind her of the restraining order.”

“Okay. An angry ex. Who else?”

“Nash was in a dispute with his business partner. After he found the man was talking to competitors. At least, those were the facts in court. It was for a few million dollars, but at a level I’m not sure that’s worth killing somebody for.”

“Angry ex — business partner.”

“What was his business... Nash’s?” Sachs asked.

Gillette chuckled. “I really couldn’t tell you. He owned companies that made components that went into other components. Apparently he was pretty good at coming up with parts like that. Components. Nothing sexy. But he made a ton of money.”

“Any other suspects?” she asked.

“He’d had problems with a stalker. A woman he dated. Her story is she’s sort of a gold digger — do you still say that nowadays? Anyway, he walked away, and she threatened him a few times. Attacked him once, but it was more throwing a glass of wine in his face at a fancy restaurant than blowing him up.”

“Bad choices with the ladies, it seems,” Sachs offered.

Gillette continued, “And Nash was serving on a grand jury in Orlando, and so we wondered if that exposed him to threats. But they were pretty mundane cases. Mugging, some drug cases. Lot of them. But low level. Real low. Getting a bomb into a plane? I looked at the indictments and it just didn’t fit.”

“No obvious motive,” Sachs said. “And stalkers and exes — ex-wives, that is — don’t really have much access to IED makers. But you can find just about anything on the Internet nowadays. Maybe the most likely explanation is mechanical failure.”

“Should say we’re exploring that with the manufacturer. They’re going to run some simulations. They weren’t optimistic about finding anything, not without the plane. I checked all of those folks out and nobody was in town yesterday.”

Rhyme then asked, “Assuming there was an IED, why do you think it was planted here? Not where the flight originated?”

“Security in Orlando’s a lot tighter than here. That’s where Nash keeps the plane. Same at Miami. Even the private aviation areas are swept with dogs and explosives detectors. Here — well, like I said, deputies make the rounds occasionally and that’s it.”

“Let’s go through the details of how somebody could’ve gotten an IED on board.”

He wheeled to the front of the hangar and looked out over the tarmac, the chain-link fence, the buildings on the other side of the highway.

Gillette explained: In the short time Nash’s jet had been parked here, there had been only four people inside the fenced area, with access to it. Three employees of the FBO and the deputy making his semidaily security check, though the man checked the buildings and gates only, not the aircraft. Besides, Gillette knew him personally and could vouch for him.

“That video?” Rhyme said, nodding at a camera on a tall pole in front of the hangar. Another was nearby. “We may have some forensics after all.”

But no such luck. The detective reported the cameras were trained only at the taxiway and the road approaches to this portion of the field, not the tarmac itself. The cameras were aimed at the area in front of the FBO; the plane was not in view. They knew no one had entered through the gate or jumped over the chain, but they had no way of knowing if anyone had actually approached the aircraft.

“What was the exact timing?” Sachs asked.

“The employees arrived between seven and eight. Nash landed at eight ten. He came into view on the camera at the gate about eight thirty, met a cab. He met with his lawyer and they left together. We checked out the cabbie — and he’s legit. The video showed he didn’t get out of the taxi. Then the deputy making the rounds for security arrived at the FBO about nine ten and was seen walking away around nine thirty. Nash returned at ten thirty, and the plane took off a half hour later. Cabbie stayed inside his car again the whole time, and nobody got out with Nash.”

“How hard would it be to turn a video camera on the tarmac, hmm?” Sachs asked wryly. “The good news, I guess, is that at least we can limit the number of suspects to the three employees.”

“Tell me about them,” Rhyme asked. He gave a sour laugh. “Since that’s the only so-called evidence we have to work with.”

The detective pulled out a notebook. “Same staff here today was here yesterday. The manager of the FBO is Anita Sanchez. Forty-two, married. Joey Wilson runs the refueling truck. Twenty-eight. Single. Busted twice for pot. No biggie. And Mark Clinton is the mechanic. He’s fifty, divorced. Iraq veteran. There’re other mechanics, but they weren’t working this week. Been a slow time, apparently. Aside from the grass, none of them have any convics. None of them have any connection with Nash, either. He lives in Orlando. Flies through here occasionally — to meet with his lawyer and banker, like he did yesterday. And as far as I can tell, Nash never had any disputes with anybody here at the field.”

Rhyme said, “No, if any of them planted the IED, it was because they got paid to do it. Or extorted into it.”

“And,” Sachs added, “they’d all know airplanes and know exactly where to put in a bomb to do the most damage.”

“They would, I’d imagine. How do you want to proceed, Lincoln?”

“I’ll talk to them. I’m going to treat them as witnesses. Put them at ease. We’ll tell them we don’t suspect them, but I’ll hint we’re suspicious of the deputy who made the security rounds. What’s his name?”

“Cable. Jim Cable.”

“They’ll get the idea that Cable’s the main suspect. And we hope they can help us describe what they saw, if he went up to the plane. What they saw him do. If one of them’s the guilty party, he — or she — will try to solidify the case against the cop or at least deflect attention from themselves. I’ll try to catch them in a lie.” Rhyme considered what he’d said. He laughed.

Gillette regarded him with a raised brow of curiosity.

“It’s the opposite of what we normally do. I get a bit of evidence and try to find the truth. Now I’m trying to find the lie.” He smiled at the pun, thinking of Gillette’s comment.

Where the evidence lies...

Then his expression grew glum. A fierce downpour started once more. Gusts of wind. Then, insultingly, hail. “Goddammit. I think we’ve found a situation where Locard’s principle doesn’t apply, Sachs.”

The French criminalist Locard posited that at every crime there was a transfer of evidence from criminal to scene of the crime or victim, and vice versa. If one worked hard enough and was clever enough, a forensic cop could find that connection. Locard, apparently, never had to deal with a Florida fence-raising storm.

“I need some facts before I start the interview, Detective,” Rhyme said. “What was the orientation of the plane?”

“The nose was there.” He was pointing. “Tail there.”

The plane had been parked parallel to the hangar, about thirty feet away. The nose was to the left, tail right.

The detective continued, “So you’ll tell them you suspect Cable slipped around to the far side of the plane, planted the IED, and then kept on his rounds?”

“I’ll hint at it.” A flash of light caught his eye. Rhyme looked through the rain and mist across the street.

“Sachs, while I talk to the employees, you go check out those buildings.” He’d noted some glass-façade structures, an office complex. “A Burger King, too. And a diner. See if there were any witnesses there when the plane was parked on the tarmac — or better yet, video cameras.”

“Okay. I’ll go see.” Sachs walked out of the hangar, jogged through the rain, and climbed into the van. The vehicle rocked over the tarmac, buffeted by the wind, toward the exit.

“Where can I talk to them?”

“There? The corner of the hangar?”

Rhyme wheeled back into a small, windowless office in the back of the hangar.

His reaction to handling an evidence-free case had at first been dismay and then amusement, but now something within him was eager to try policing skills he hadn’t used for a long, long time.

Detective Gillette went to summon the first employee.

Then, reminding himself he was about to become an interrogator, Lincoln Rhyme decided he better come up with a few questions.

Anita Sanchez was a businesslike woman in her forties. She had short dark hair and a dark complexion, and wore bright red lipstick. Her suit was conservative, navy blue over a white blouse. On the lapel was a silver pin of eagle wings.

She sat across from Rhyme at a desk and seemed uneasy, but no more uneasy than he’d expect under these circumstances — especially considering Rhyme’s condition. The wheelchair, a complex, motorized model, was an attention getter. She wanted to look at it but seemed afraid that would be impolite.

Rhyme asked some neutral questions, then: “Did you notice if Deputy Cable went toward the rear of the airplane at any time on his rounds?”

“Deputy Cable?”

“That’s right.”

“He seems like such a nice guy. Do you suspect him?” She looked down at the digital recorder.

“We’re just getting facts.” He repeated: “Did you see him around the wings or engines of the airplane at any time?”

“I’m sorry, Officer... Mr. Rhyme. I was in my office the whole time, and you can’t see the tarmac from where I was.”

“The whole time?” He asked this because it seemed she’d emphasized the word.

Sanchez added quickly, as if Rhyme had known the truth, “Now that I think about it, I did go outside once. But I went to my car in the lot. That’s the other direction from the jet. It was behind me, so even if the deputy was there, I didn’t see it.”

He asked other questions about Cable and if she’d seen anyone else on the property, other than the two other employees, even if the cameras showed that no one else entered the FBO’s area. The responses were short — she didn’t ramble or volunteer information.

Rhyme had a friend, Kathryn Dance, who was an agent with the California Bureau of Investigation. She specialized in using kinesics — body language analysis — in interrogating suspects and witnesses, and he’d formed a grudging respect for the art by watching her in action. One thing he’d learned was when suspects rambled and offered details it was more likely that they were nervous, which meant they might be deceptive.

His take on Sanchez was that she was probably telling the truth and her demeanor didn’t suggest guilt.

After she left, Detective Gillette brought Mark Clinton into the hangar. In blue jeans and a dusty gray workshirt, the lean man, his beard slightly yellow from chewing tobacco, looked everywhere but at Rhyme as he sat down.

Rhyme began with some preliminaries. Had he known Nash, did he know anybody who wanted to harm him?

He answered negative to all of those. He swallowed frequently and his fingers were twitchy, not necessarily signs of being deceptive, but of simple nervousness.

Finally, Rhyme steered the question around to Cable. Had he seen the deputy near the airplane? Especially the back?

“When would that have been?”

“Around nine thirty yesterday.”

“Oh, I was working in here then, but I didn’t see anything. I mean, I couldn’t. There was too much glare from the sun if you looked out of the hangar door.”

He asked more questions, but Clinton kept referring to his hampered vision.

Rhyme had to admit that blindness — whatever the cause — was a pretty good out for a witness, or a suspect.

Using his good arm, Rhyme reached forward and paused the recorder. “All right. Thanks.”

The mechanic stood, wiped his hands on his jeans, and followed the officer out of the hangar. Gillette returned a few minutes later with a heavyset man in brown overalls and a baseball cap, under which sprouted masses of curly brown hair flecked with gray.

More preliminary questions, which Joey Wilson responded to with a helpful attitude.

Then Rhyme asked if he’d seen Cable near the airplane.

“Umm, I think I did.”

“Where?”

“I don’t recall. I was headed to the lunchroom. For some breakfast. Ha. ‘Lunch’ room for breakfast. That’s funny.”

“You didn’t see him while you were refueling?”

“Oh, I didn’t tank him up... Mr. Nash, I mean.”

“You didn’t refuel the plane?”

Wilson looked up from the floor. “No, see, he wasn’t scheduled for it. That jet of his can go two thousand miles on a tank. The more you carry — the more gas, I mean — the heavier it is and the worse the mileage. Best to fly with as little juice as you can. Mr. Nash’d refuel in Brazil. I remember one guy one time was flying a Cessna Citation — now, that is a fine airplane. You ever been in one? No, well, it’s a superb piece of aviation machinery and he lands with about a hundred gallons left, you believe it? He was trying to save the money on fuel! He’s flying a two-million-dollar aircraft and scrimping on the Shell.”

“Just to confirm, you saw Deputy Cable near the plane.”

“I’m pretty sure. Couldn’t swear to it. Say, seventy percent sure. No, fifty-five.”

“Thanks for your cooperation.”

The man gave another look at the wheelchair and then headed off.

Rhyme and Gillette were about to go over the man’s performance when Sachs returned shortly later. “Got some finds, Rhyme.”

“A picture of somebody with a moustache and a black top hat filling a bowling-ball bomb with gunpowder and sticking a fuse in it?”

“Not quite so good, but close.”

“And?”

“Some video. From one of the office buildings.”

“You got it that fast?” Rhyme asked.

“I was persuasive,” Sachs said. “Well, threatening really.”

“Want to review it?” Gillette asked.

“Please.”

He loaded the card into his computer and began playing the video. As they watched, Rhyme told Sachs what he’d learned — a synopsis of the three suspects’ stories.

You couldn’t — naturally — see the airplane, but you could get a good image of the office door of the Southern Flight Services company. There was motion. “Look.”

The door of the FBO was opening and Anita Sanchez was walking outside.

She turned and disappeared off camera.

“Ha,” Gillette said.

Anita Sanchez was walking to the left. Exactly the opposite of the way she said she’d turned.

Rhyme said, “So she was lying. She did walk toward the plane.”

“Was she carrying anything?” Gillette asked.

It was hard to see, given the bad quality of the image. She might have been holding a purse. Or maybe a small package containing C4 explosive.

Ah, interesting. Rhyme was beginning to think this interrogation business had something to it.

Gillette said, “It’s probably not enough to bring her in.”

“But we could get a warrant to listen in to her conversations. Maybe poke around in her office,” Sachs said.

“Sure, I’ll put that together.” He pulled out his cell phone.

Then Rhyme cocked his head. “Dammit.”

“What, Rhyme?”

“G-nissap sert on.”

“What?” Gillette asked, pausing with the phone in his hand.

Then Sachs was nodding. “Just caught it, Rhyme.”

He told the detective, “Look at the upper-right-hand corner.”

“That sign?”

“Right.”

“What about—? Oh, it’s backwards.”

GNISSAPSERT ON... NO TRESPASSING

Gillette was chuckling.

Rhyme, though, was not amused. “That’s why the image was so dim. It was a reflection.”

Sachs said, “The camera must’ve been pointed at the window of one of the office buildings. The glass façade was like a mirror. It looked like Sanchez turned toward the plane. Actually she turned away from it. Just like she said. She was telling the truth.”

“Almost as bad as witnesses, goddamn videos. Hell.” He actually felt betrayed by the one forensic clue they had.

“She’s innocent,” the detective said.

“Not innocent,” Rhyme corrected. “We just didn’t catch her up with that lie.” He shrugged. “And there’s nothing else in her interview to implicate her.”

“What about the mechanic?” Sachs asked. “What’s his name again?”

“Mark Clinton.”

“Right.”

“You can’t catch somebody lying if they don’t tell you anything. He was sun blinded.”

“Was it sunny?” Sachs asked. “There was that terrible storm yesterday.”

Gillette said, “Clear blue skies until about ten. Then the storm came in. Yep, he’s telling the truth, too.”

Rhyme, though, said, “Or maybe not.” He was studying the hangar door.

“How do you mean, Lincoln?”

“The ocean’s behind us?”

“That’s right.”

“East.”

Gillette said, “Son of a gun. Right. The hangar opens to the west. At nine in the morning, nobody in here would see any sun at all. The light was coming from the opposite direction.”

“Okay, so he was lying.”

“But what’s his motive for lying?” the detective asked. “He was just saying he didn’t see anything.”

“That’s not important,” Rhyme reminded. “All we need to do is find deception and then start wearing him down.”

“So, should we get that warrant?” Gillette asked.

“I’d say...” Rhyme’s voice fell silent. He was looking out on the tarmac. “I’d say wait a minute. Get him back in here.”

“Clinton?”

Rhyme’s taut smile said, Who else?

A few minutes later the man was in the hangar once more. Rhyme looked him over with a curious expression. “We’re just trying to figure out exactly where the plane was parked and hoped you could help us with that. I know there was glare, but you had a sense of the plane’s position, right? Because the sun was bouncing off the windows.”

“Not so much the windows, but the fuselage itself. It was silver, you know. Not white, like most of the private jets.”

“Silver, hmm. Must’ve been some glare.”

“Always happens when the pilots park that way, you know, parallel to the hangar. We oughta put a door in but, being Florida, it’s not worth the expense. We’d use it twice a year. But where those chocks are, yeah, that was pretty much where the aircraft was.”

“All right. Thanks.”

After he’d gone, Rhyme gave a cynical laugh. “Another reflection issue. See why we can’t trust our senses?”

“So he’s innocent... Sorry, Lincoln. What I meant to say was he may be guilty as sin, but we didn’t catch him there.”

Rhyme grunted. The allure of interrogation was wearing off fast. He was reminded of why he believed evidence was the cornerstone of investigations.

“How about the last suspect?”

“The refueler. Joey Wilson.”

Rhyme thought back to that interrogation. “He’s the one who most seemed to be lying. Maybe it’s just an impression, but that was the sense I had. He was rambling. He seemed evasive... Ah, but maybe there is something here. He said he thought he saw that deputy near the airplane, right?”

“Thought so. Couldn’t swear to it.”

“But Cable wasn’t near the plane,” Sachs pointed out.

“Nope. His rounds take him around the buildings and the gas pumps.”

Rhyme was nodding. “And how did he know Nash was going to Brazil? If he didn’t refuel the plane, there’d be no reason to know the flight plan. Let’s get Wilson in here again, talk to him again. Put some more pressure on.” It seemed like a futile idea but Rhyme had no other ideas.

“I’ll go get him,” the detective said. And strode through the rain toward where Wilson was parking his fuel truck, which apparently he’d just replenished. Rhyme saw the man glance Gillette’s way and then, pretending he hadn’t seen the detective’s wave, walk fast to a battered Honda Accord, jump in, and speed away.

“He’s rabbiting,” Sachs said. She instinctively glanced at the only wheels available to her here — the van. Sachs loved cars. She worked on them, rebuilt parts, and drove like lightning. But she wasn’t going to be doing any high-speed chases in an accessible van.

Not that it mattered. Detective Gillette was pretty good at the wheel himself. He was in the driver’s seat of his car in five seconds and, with the lights and siren going, he sped forward. The big Chrysler skidded once, but he kept it from careening into the fuel truck and instead spun around it. Then he blew through the gate and disappeared onto the main highway.

An hour later Detective Gillette led a handcuffed Joey Wilson into the hangar.

He directed the refueling man into an orange fiberglass chair and helped him sit. None too gently, Rhyme observed, thinking it must have been a harrowing, if short, chase.

“What’s the story?” Rhyme asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Please. “Why’d you run?”

“I wasn’t running. I just wanted to get home and close up my windows. Because of the storm. I forgot about them.”

Rhyme said, “You were lying to us. You did go out to the plane.”

“Maybe I did.”

“When?”

“Maybe eight thirty, a little later.”

“To plant a bomb in Nash’s plane.”

“No!”

“But you didn’t refuel the plane. We can check the logs.”

The man grumbled, “I told you no.”

“Perhaps an attitude is not what we need now. What did you go out to the plane for?”

But just that moment the answer came via a phone call. Gillette spoke for a few minutes and then hung up. He grinned as he looked over Wilson. “The crime scene people just went over your car.”

“Oh, hell.”

“And guess what they found?”

“I don’t know.”

“A kilo of very high-quality pot.”

“I don’t know anything about that!”

“Not even how it ended up in your spare tire?”

Wilson closed his eyes.

Rhyme said, “That’s why you were out at the plane, Joey, right? You didn’t plant any bombs; you were getting a delivery.”

“I swear... I didn’t kill him. But I lied about going to the airplane. I did, sure.”

“Because you’ve got a network of people who work on planes, right. They smuggle some drugs on board in equipment holds or wheel wells. That’s how you knew his flight plan.”

The sigh said, Yep, that’s right. He muttered, “It’s not even very good shit. All this trouble and it’s lousy pot.”

“Was Nash involved?”

“Naw, none of the people who fly the private planes know. That’s what makes the plan work so well. See, they don’t get nervous talking to Customs.”

This was undoubtedly true — using businessmen beyond suspicion made sense.

Rhyme continued, “Where were the drugs?”

“Port side. Left. An access compartment to the hydraulic system under the engine.”

Gillette said, “Opposite of the bomb.”

Rhyme wasn’t pleased. Had the drugs been sitting next to the bomb, there might have been a transfer if the two items had touched. But, no, this case was simply not going to be a forensic one.

“And you didn’t see anything else?” Rhyme asked.

“No, sir.”

Gillette escorted him to his feet. Several other officers from the Dade County East Sheriff’s Department took him away.

Sachs said, “Well, at least it’s clear he didn’t plant the bomb. We can believe him there.”

Gillette nodded. “No, he’s not going to kill his golden goose.”

“Well, on the surface, seems that those three suspects aren’t suspects after all. We’ll have to see what the NTSB says, but my conclusion from these facts is that it was an accident.” Rhyme gazed out over the tarmac. The planes seemed fragile in the wind and rain, as if the smallest of disruptions, let alone a bomb, could bring them down.

“Can they bring up the plane eventually?” Sachs asked.

“Five miles down?” Gillette said. “Maybe, for a few million bucks. But no police department in the world’s got that kind of money. Well, I thank you both, Lincoln and Amelia. Especially for coming out to help us on one of our oh-so-pleasant Florida days.”

Rhyme extended his good hand and the men shook. Sachs, too, gripped Gillette’s palm. Rhyme said, “Let’s check in with New York, Sachs. Find out if there’s anything that needs our attention. And I wouldn’t mind a few more of those stone crabs.”

But the case was not quite as closed as it seemed.

The next morning, Gillette, Sachs, and Rhyme were reassembled on the tarmac once more, at Rhyme’s request. Thom was nearby. He’d occasionally wipe sweat from Rhyme’s forehead; today was much clearer, sunny and bright, and not a breath of wind, but the temperature was already soaring.

Sachs was explaining to Gillette, “When I was canvassing yesterday at those buildings and the restaurants, where I got the video tape...?”

“Remember.”

“I gave my number to all the businesses there, told them if anybody remembered seeing anybody next to a jet parked on the tarmac by the Southern Flight Service’s office, to let me know. I got a call this morning. Seems a tourist and his family were sitting at that Burger King, outside around the time Nash’s plane was there.” She pointed. “They heard the story of the investigation on the news last night and got my number. The father has some pictures.”

Rhyme squinted as he studied the fast food place. “He’d have had a perfect view of the engine.”

Gillette asked, “Tourist? Where is he, still in the area?”

“Blue Heron Inn.”

“Sure, I know it. Five miles from here. Let’s go talk to him. You want to follow me?”

“Will do,” said Thom.

“I’ll call dispatch on the way. Have a forensic team meet us there — with those programs they have to enhance photos.”

“Forensic,” Rhyme said, drawing a satisfied breath. “If I believed in clichés, I’d say the fish is back in the water.”

Dade County East Patrolman Jim Cable pulled off the highway and nosed his car — his personal Buick — into a stand of magnolia. Pulling on latex gloves, he reached into the glove box and removed a cold gun, a.38 special Smittie. He’d taken it off Billy or Rodrigo or Juan sometime, someplace, over the past six months.

And he’d told the kid to get lost. Because a collar for a little coke and firearms possession wasn’t as good as getting a gun that couldn’t be traced to Cable. A gun that could be used in a situation like this.

Cable loaded it with bullets fresh from the box — rounds were always untraceable, if you touched them only with gloves. And then he slipped into the marshy field behind the Blue Heron Inn and made his way toward cabin 43, which was where the tourist was staying, the tourist who’d videoed Nash’s private jet the other day — and had very possibly gotten an image of him slipping the bomb into the right engine hydraulic access compartment.

At thirty-two, Cable was too old to be a patrolman, looking through airport restrooms for illegals and chasing Billys and Rodrigos and Juans for little bags of drugs and big pistols. But he had a mouth on him and a temper and a problem with the bottle, so he hadn’t moved up the way he should have — the way he deserved to.

But he wasn’t going to have to worry about that anymore. He’d just made a cool hundred thousand bucks by slipping a little package into the side of Nash’s plane, timed to blow up when the plane was over the deepest part of the Atlantic. Cable knew ordnance — he’d been a combat soldier until the fucking dishonorable — and he had set up the device just right.

Things had seemed to go smoothly enough. But now the job had turned messy. This tourist and maybe his family would have to be killed. Still, the gun would be traced to the streets of Miami, and Cable would scatter enough coke around the room to make it look like a drug-related robbery and homicide.

He hoped the tourist was in the room alone. On the other hand, if the guy was reluctant to tell him where the camera was, pointing a gun at his kid’s head would make him talk real fast.

He didn’t want to kill anybody else. But you did what you had to.

One hundred thousand...

Boat or mortgage?

Tough call.

No, it’s not. Boat.

Then he was at the door of the bungalow where the Johnson family from Nyack, New York, wherever the hell that was, was staying.

He looked around. Nobody. This cabin was the last in a row near the field he’d just come through. Pulling back the hammer on the gun until it clicked, he leaned forward and put his head close to the door, listening. The TV was on. Cartoons. They were probably just finishing room service breakfast, before heading to the beach.

So the kids were in the room. He grimaced.

The good news, at least, was that if he wasn’t going to leave any witnesses he didn’t need to wear the ski mask. It itched like hell, and the day was already close to ninety degrees.

Thom parked the van beside Gillette’s unmarked in the front parking lot of the Blue Heron Inn.

The place was what Rhyme expected of a near-the-beach resort in this part of Florida. The rear-facing rooms got a view of trees and power lines, the front got the highway and strip mall. An anemic pool, sandy parking lot, breakfast room with plate glass two days past a half-hearted Windexing.

Eggs Anyway

Ask about Our specials.

Rhyme thought about commenting to Sachs that the pronoun carried a certain theological connotation but refrained. Together they walked and wheeled toward the tourists’ cabin.

“There’s nobody here from the department yet,” Sachs said.

Gillette looked around. There were no other police cars in view. “I’ll gave ’em a call. Funny they’re not here by now. Well, let’s go talk to the folks inside.”

They approached the front door of the cabin and Gillette knocked. “Dade County East Sheriff’s Office.”

The door opened, though no one appeared at first. Gillette stepped in, saying, “Hello?”

It was at that moment that a pistol, held by someone inside, appeared out of nowhere, and the muzzle touched the side of the detective’s head.

Archie Crenshaw, the chief sheriff of Dade County East, read Paul Gillette his rights.

The massive fellow, tanned and sweating through his beige uniform, had nearly deferred to Lincoln Rhyme for this task, so impressed was he that the New Yorker had broken the Nash homicide case.

Rhyme pointed out, though, that he was no longer an official law enforcer. Amelia Sachs was active duty, of course, but not of this jurisdiction.

The same was true for the third member of the Big Apple team: Ron Pulaski, the young, blond NYPD Patrol officer.

Pulaski and Sachs and several local deputies were inside with Gillette’s partner in crime — Jim Cable, the deputy who’d actually planted the bomb in Nash’s aircraft. Rhyme was enduring the heat outside with Crenshaw, the handcuffed detective Gillette, and a half-dozen other officers from the sheriff’s department.

Now Sachs and Pulaski emerged from the cabin, followed by Cable, also in cuffs, his arms gripped by two grim-faced deputies. He was led off to the back of an unmarked car.

The two New Yorkers joined Rhyme, Crenshaw, and Gillette.

Sachs nodded in the direction of Cable. “Gave us everything we needed.”

“Good,” Rhyme said. “Won’t have to do any more interrogations.” A grin.

“What?” Gillette raged. “He gave me up?”

Crenshaw clicked his teeth and said, “You going to cooperate too, Paul? I’ll put in a good word with the DA.”

Gillette debated. His lips drew together tightly. Then he muttered, glaring at Rhyme. “You! How did you know?”

Rhyme, always pleased to explain — and to show off his reasoning — was happy to oblige. “What was the key to this case? Deception. Remember? I didn’t have any evidence, so I had to work with witnesses.” He said the word as if it left the taste of tainted food in his mouth. “Finding out who lied.”

“Yeah, yeah. I lied about vouching for Cable.”

“You did, yes, but I didn’t pick up on that. You were both law enforcers and you’d asked me to help. Why wouldn’t I believe that? Naive of me, obviously, but sometimes we have to take things at face value, don’t we?”

Now it was Crenshaw who persisted. “So how’d you figure it out, Lincoln?”

“I was thinking too narrowly. That was my mistake. I assumed that if somebody told a lie, they’d be guilty. But we saw how that isn’t necessarily the case. The reflections, remember? The lie could turn out to be a mistake. And even if it was truly a lie, that might not mean the liar was guilty of the crime you were investigating — Joey Wilson, the refueler at the fixed base operator, for instance. He was lying, but because of drugs, not bombs.”

“Then it occurred to me that guilt can also be revealed by telling the truth.”

“What truth?” Crenshaw asked. Another tooth click.

To Gillette, Rhyme said, “You mentioned which side of the plane the bomb was on. But there was no reference in the transcript of where the explosion was. How did you know it was on the right side?” He corrected, “Starboard.”

Gillette began to speak then fell silent.

Yesterday after Rhyme had become suspicious of Gillette, he’d discussed his thoughts with Sachs. Then they’d called Pulaski and had him fly down to Miami and play the role of a tourist who’d shot pictures at Burger King and possibly captured images of the bomb being planted.

This morning Rhyme had Amelia tell Gillette about the witness and waited to see what would happen. The detective had told them he’d call the sheriff’s office and have a forensic team sent out to the Blue Heron Inn.

But he hadn’t.

Rhyme had called NYPD headquarters and had an officer from the crime scene unit call the Dade County East forensic team, and he’d learned that they knew nothing about an operation at the Blue Heron.

Then Rhyme had asked to be patched through to the sheriff himself, and he explained to Crenshaw what he believed was going on. Crenshaw sent deputies to back up Pulaski in the hotel, and when Cable showed up, thinking he was going to steal the photo disk and kill the tourist and his family, he was immediately arrested.

The officers went back into position inside the cabin for the takedown of Gillette.

A perfect operation. Not a single gunshot fired, no injuries, sure, but more important, for Lincoln Rhyme, he had a case with trace evidence and tool marks and bank records and fingerprints. And all of it on the surface, not in Davy Jones’s locker.

Rhyme then looked the blustering man over. “But I don’t understand, Paul. “Why did you ask me to help?”

“Because you’re famous,” Gillette muttered. “And when you suggested that the plane crash was an accident — which I thought you’d do — everybody’d believe it.”

“So. You going to help us, Paul?” Crenshaw asked.

Gillette glanced toward Cable. He muttered, “Prick, selling me out... Yeah, I’ll give you a statement.”

“It’ll have to include who hired you.”

“What can you give me?”

Crenshaw clicked his teeth. He made a call and came back a moment later. “You give up whoever hired you and the state’ll waive capital murder.”

Gillette was considering this.

“Or you call a lawyer and take your chances.”

“All right, all right.”

A half hour later, Gillette signed the handwritten statement.

The ultimate perp was Nash’s business partner. Former business partner, that is. The one Nash was in litigation with. There was a provision in the partnership agreement that if he died before a certain date the partner could buy out the shares at a very discounted rate.

Money. The dullest of motives.

Though certainly one of the most common.

The partner, Gillette explained, knew Cable from the army and had raised the subject, knowing that Cable had been discharged for some shady business dealings. Cable suggested both he and Gillette — who’d together had put together various criminal activities in the Miami area — would take care of Nash for $200,000.

“You did the right thing, talking to us,” Crenshaw said, pocketing the statement. “Come on. Let’s get you to the station.”

As they walked past the squad car where Cable sat, Gillette glared at him.

But the younger deputy said, “Don’t worry. We’ll beat ’em.”

Gillette stopped, frowning.

“Just don’t say a word and we’ll be okay. They don’t have anything. No evidence, remember?”

Gillette blurted, “But didn’t you...? You gave me up!”

“Hell, no. I didn’t say a word! What’re you talking about?”

Gillette spun around and glared at Sachs. “You said he gave you everything you needed.”

She replied, “He did. His address, phone number, and Social. That was all we wanted at this point.” She blinked in curiosity. “What did you think I meant?”

“You lied, bitch.”

Rhyme said icily, “It was hardly a lie. You misinterpreted what she said.”

Crenshaw nodded toward the two officers beside Gillette. “Get ’em both downtown.”

The sheriff thanked Rhyme and Sachs and walked back to his own car. Sachs and Rhyme returned to the van, where Thom was getting the accessible ramp ready. She said, “So what did you think, Rhyme? How was your first evidence-free case?”

“No question, Sachs: as between dealing with witnesses on the one hand, and a crime scene five miles underwater on the other, I’ll take Davy Jones’s locker any day. People... they’re way too much trouble. Say, Thom, is it cocktail hour yet?”