5 - Choker: Ike Schwartz Mystery 5 (4 page)

Chapter 6

Ike got a visual on Martin State Airport and began his approach. Cleared to land, he set the plane down on the runway and pulled into the taxiway. He found Brett Aviation and eased the plane to one side, where a ramp attendant wig-wagged him to a tie-down at the side of their building. He shut down the engine. He asked to see the manager. The ramp girl pointed to the office entrance. Inside he asked to speak to Trent Fonts and was referred to a tall, balding man in a back office.

“I’m Trent Fonts.” He extended his hand.

“Ike Schwartz. I’m here to sign up for some refresher lessons.”

“Fine. We can surely do that. How’d you hear about us, if I may ask?”

“I heard about you from a friend of a friend, you might say.”

“Friend of a…who might that be?”

“Nick Reynolds. I guess you remember him?”

“Good kid, too bad what happened.”

Ike nodded and glanced around the room. Pictures of airplanes, the vision of the late Glen L. Martin’s jet sea plane, and a smattering of ‘B’ list celebrities covered the walls. “Any thoughts about what put him in the drink?”

“Who’d you say you were?”

“Ike Schwartz.”

“And you want flying lessons?”

“Yes.”

“You were close to Nick?”

“A friend of a—”

“Friend. Yes, I heard you. It’s just that since his accident, all kinds of people have come around asking about him…and it.”

“All kinds?”

“Family, ‘friends,’ police, FAA, you name it, and others.”

“Like who?”

“Like you, for example. And some spooky people who could be ICE, FBI, or CIA for all I know. What’s up with Nick? Was he an undercover somebody?”

“Okay, I’ll need your help. Truth is, I really would like some lessons. It’s been a while. Also Nick’s fiancée’s uncle, who is one of those spooky people you mentioned, thinks something is not quite right about the disappearance. So it’s semiprofessional but also a personal call. I volunteered to poke around, that’s all.”

“Credentials?”

Ike dropped his ID, badge, and Air Force certification on the table.

“You’re ex-Air Force?”

“No. I used to be one of those spooky people, too. Air Force taught us how to fly. Long time ago.”

Trent studied Ike for a full minute, shook his head and signaled for Ike to take a seat.

“Nick. Good kid, good pilot too, for a newbie, but, like all young kids, he thought he was invincible. It was the Fourth of July, you know.” He paused and sipped from the coffee cup on his desk, made a face and put it down.

“It was like this. I didn’t want him to fly that night. He was a good pilot, like I said, but night flying can be tricky. Well, you know about that, I expect.” Fonts’ eyes focused on the wall behind Ike. He took another sip of coffee, put the cup down and shoved it away.

“Coffee’s in that pot behind you.”

“No, thanks, not now.” The aroma of badly burnt coffee convinced him he could wait. “What do you remember about that night?”

“That night…well, okay. The sun had set and with no moon; it got dark in a hurry. We were standing right out there,” Trent pointed to the T hangars, “and I argued with him. I warned him, but he was itching to see his girl, and he had this fancy box…had a present, one of those little necklaces, you know, a choker, he called it. ‘You don’t approve?’ he says. Nick knew what my answer would be but must have figured he’d better get the argument over with as quick as possible. Like, he was late already or something. I was angry and worried. His flight plan is letter-perfect, but he wasn’t asking me about that. He wanted my blessing for the flight. ‘Well, you won’t get it.’ I says.

“‘Look,’ he says, ‘I can do this. It’s no big deal. I fly south past the Bay Bridge and turn southeastward to Cambridge, then south to Salisbury. I could do it flying by the seat of my pants.’

“Seat of his pants! I told him he wasn’t ready for it. ‘You’ve logged the minimum hours to fly at night. There is no moon so you will not have a visual on the horizon.’ ‘I’ve got instruments,’ he says, like that would be enough, like some real experience flying in the pitch black didn’t amount to anything. ‘There will be lights on both sides of the Chesapeake and fireworks. No problems.’

“I practically shouted at him. ‘Will you listen to me? You are a good pilot. But this is different. Too many new pilots like you think they can fly over water at night. I got instruments—there will be lights—yahda, yahda, yahda—but then no one ever sees them again. Junior Kennedy had more hours and experience than you, and he’s gone. You think you’re better?’”

Ike let Fonts rant on. He obviously had an emotional investment in the situation and needed to vent. Expiation.

“‘I’ve done this one many times. No moon won’t make a difference. Worst case, I follow the channel markers.’ Worst case, my foot.

“‘I’ll be on BWI radar the whole way down. I fly straight and then east. If I slip off course, all I have to do is head southeast and turn on the transponder. When I am in range, the runway lights at Salisbury will go on and I just make my approach and land.’ Like he knew all about it. I should have stopped him right then and there. I could have done it, you know.”

Ike heard the guilt and grief in Trent’s voice. He knew the feeling, remembered the times years ago in the field when he’d let someone go into a high-risk situation, when he knew no was certain it might go south.

“‘This may be my last chance to fly this bird. Do you have any idea what I had to do to get the plane for the Fourth of July weekend?’ He tells me that and, I don’t know, I guess I just caved in.

“Sitting on the apron in the dark outside the hangar, that plane was damn near invisible. Only the white stars amidships and wing tips showed up in the light from inside the hangar. It practically disappeared in the moonless night. I never saw him again. I wish—”

“That he’d listened to you? He was young and cocky. There wasn’t anything you could or should have said that would have made any difference.”

“Yeah…still, I wish…”

Ike waited for Fonts to regroup.

“His plane was a beefed-up Cessna 172, high wing, an old war bird, painted olive drab, and had seen action as a spotter plane. Vietnam, Korea—I don’t know which—never asked. He, and two of his pals had purchased it from a woman down on the Eastern Shore. They kept it hangared here and flew weekends mostly. Anyway once he’s in the air, the tower at BWI picked him up and assigned him an altitude. I don’t know anything else.”

“Your best guess, Trent, did he slip into a death spiral or some other rookie screw-up?”

“Guess? Okay, I would say, no. He was raw, maybe a little rash, but not easily distracted in the air. You get to know things about people when you fly with them. He’d call in and ask for help, turn around before things got too dicey. He was Navy, you know, not a pilot, but smart and not reckless.”

“Will you help me?”

“Do what?”

“Fly the course he took that night, like it’s a lesson, only we scan the land and bay all the way down to where he dropped off the radar at BWI. There has to be something. Planes don’t just disappear into thin air.”

“Maybe. See, I already flew that patch and…” Trent’s voice trailed off.

“And?”

“It’s just a maybe, but I thought I saw something the next day.”

“Did you report it?”

“It was in the wrong place. It didn’t make any sense. I figured it must have been something else.”

Ike let it pass. If Trent connected it to something later, he’d say so. In the meantime, he felt sure he was missing something important.

Chapter 7

Trent Fonts cleared the clutter from his desk, unfolded a large aeronautical chart, and spread it out.

“I pulled his flight plan and made a tracing.” He put his index finger on the chart. “This was his course and here, the check points.” He tapped the map and traced a line he’d drawn with a red felt-tipped pen. Ike looked at the line, which ran from Martin State straight down the center of the Chesapeake Bay, then, south of the Bay Bridge, turned easterly toward Cambridge, then veered again south-southeast to Salisbury. “The X shows where he dropped off the radar at BWI.”

Ike studied the map. The X covered an area a mile or two off the northwest tip of Kent Island, a heavily developed area. If the plane had gone into the water there, someone must have seen or heard something.

“Nobody said anything about hearing or seeing a plane in trouble north of Kent Island?”

“Nope.”

“If his engine had stalled, how far could he have glided?”

“It was a heavy Cessna, and at that point he’d still have most of his fuel, so not too far—a mile or more. It would depend on his altitude, of course.”

“But still, there are several small strips on the island. Here and here.” Ike put his finger on the marks indicating landing fields.

“The only real choice would be at the Bay Bridge field here.” Trent put his finger on a spot just south of the bridge. These others are private and not lighted. Add to that there was no moon. Nick knew the strips, but I don’t know if he could have found them in the dark, and if he overshot them he’d end up in the bay opposite Annapolis. He’d have to triple-click to get the lights on at the Bay Bridge field. If he was trying to stay aloft he might not have thought of that in time. No way, on a moonless night he’d have found the field otherwise.”

“Triple-click?”

“Yeah, they don’t light the field twenty-four seven. If you need to land after dark you raise their frequency on your radio and click the talk button three times, quick. The lights come on for fifteen minutes. It takes some practice.”

“Had he ever done that?”

“I made him do it once before I’d sign off on his ticket.”

Ike studied the map some more. There had to be a glitch somewhere. “Is there a time stamp when he disappeared from the radar?” Trent pulled a sheaf of papers from a pile on his desk and withdrew a piece of foolscap.

“Twenty-one thirteen.”

Ike drummed his fingers on the desk. Twenty-one thirteen, Zulu, nine thirteen at night. He opened his phone and dialed Charlie on the private line he’d been given.

“Charlie, is there a time stamp on the call your niece got from her fiancé?”

“Geeze Ike, I don’t know. Hold on, I’m in the middle of something here. Is it important?”

“Until we figure this thing out, everything is important. But in this case—yeah, very important.” Ike could hear drawers opening and closing and an exasperated Charlie searching for wherever he kept his information. Ike had visited Charlie’s office years before, remembered the confusion of papers and empty Styrofoam cups on his desk, and reckoned it might take more time than Ike had. He was wrong.

“Nine twenty-five. Of course that’s not one-hundred percent reliable. The answering machine’s time stamp was set by my sister-in–law. Nice lady but…”

“I got it. Thanks.”

“Anything else you need, Ike?”

“You can check that time stamp if you get a chance, but I’ll assume it is close enough.”

Ike snapped the phone shut.

“His plane was a Cessna 172, modified as a spotter plane, you said?”

“Right.”

“Any idea at what speed it cruised?”

“Maybe 110 miles per hour. But he might have been going faster or slower. Like I said, he’s a baby pilot in a hurry to see his girl.”

“But he dropped off the radar at twenty-one thirteen, right? And he made a phone call to his fiancée that night at twenty-one twenty-five. Allowing for some inaccuracy in the time register on the answering machine, he must have been in the air an additional ten to twelve minutes after he dropped off the radar. Where would that put him on your map?”

“Ah! Now that’s interesting.”

“How so?”

“In a minute. First I need to tell you that his plane had a tendency to drift to the left. So he could have been off this line by a couple of miles by then. He’d be on the right heading, just running parallel to this one.”

“He knew about that?”

“Yeah, but in the dark he might have compensated for it—or not—or even over compensated a little.”

“So he could have been several miles to the right and some distance to the left?”

“Correct. Now, assuming he was cruising and not playing jet jockey, he’d be on the south side of Kent Island, somewhere over Eastern Bay.” Trent drew a large circle on the map.

“So if they were looking for Nick north of Kent Island—”

“They wouldn’t find anything.” Ike waited. Something in Trent’s voice indicated there would be more.

“See, after the kid disappeared, like I told you, I flew this course the next day. I fixed up this map and went down the line, so to speak. After I reached the area they thought he might have ditched, I kept on over Kent Island to make my turn. That’s when I thought I saw something—the ‘maybe’ I mentioned before.”

“You thought you saw…what?”

Trent pointed to a spit of land on the map. “This map isn’t the greatest, you know. The Chesapeake Bay is fickle when it comes to where the land is. Anyway, right about here there’s a little sandy beach that goes with a small house and pier. I thought I saw a piece of airplane there—like it washed up.”

“A piece of—”

“If I had to guess, tail section. But, see, it was in the wrong place, so I let it slide, but it has bugged me ever since. Now, it makes sense.”

Ike punched the redial button on his phone.

“Garland.”

“Charlie, we have a satellite in synchronous orbit over the Washington, D.C., area and coast line, right? I need satellite photos of the Chesapeake Bay.”

“We have the Littoral Scanning System, yes. What pictures exactly?”

“I need distance and blow ups of the area known as Eastern Bay on the day before and the day after Nick disappeared. I might need more, I’ll start with those, as many as you can get.”

“I’m on it. Have you turned up something?”

“It’s just a maybe,” Ike said, and grinned at Trent. “I need those photos ASAP, Charlie. Can you messenger them to me at the beach?”

“Can do. This is important, correct?”

“I wouldn’t ask if they weren’t. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Ike ended the call.

Trent frowned and studied the chart again. “If they were not even looking in the right sector…it’s no wonder they couldn’t find anything. What do you want to do?”

“I want to study the photos as soon as they arrive, and then I’d like you to fly this line with me tomorrow. No, tomorrow’s Sunday. Maybe the next day and show me that beach.” Trent hesitated. “We’ll call it a lesson, and you can bill me at your hourly. That way you don’t use up your vacation time, tick off your boss, or both.”

Trent looked relieved. Ike asked for a fuel top-off. When the refueler pulled away, he started the engine, adjusted his gauges and radio and, cleared by the tower, taxied onto the runway and headed south following the course Nick Reynolds flew in July. He wanted to see Eastern Bay while the light was good. Once he had a look, he’d turn eastward at Cambridge and go back to Delmarva Aviation.