Trace Evidence, page 6
The last moments of any landing went by in a dizzying blur. He’d heard it explained with trigonometry, but all pilots knew it as ground rush. He glanced at his airspeed. The water below him wasn’t solid ground, but at ninety-three knots, the surface would feel as hard as iron.
And it was sweeping up too fast.
He jerked the yoke right to bring the wings level and kicked in some rudder to counter the crosswind.
With the load on the wings, the plane reacted slowly. Too slowly.
The right pontoon hit the water. The shockwave traveled through the aircraft structure and almost ripped the yoke from his hands. He bounced back in his seat, and his harness spilled over his shoulder.
The impact had been hard and level. The pontoon had been almost horizontal. The force pushed the aircraft back up, out of the water. Like a stone skimming across a river.
He fought the yoke. If he could keep the aircraft level he had another chance, but it rolled sickeningly to the left.
The water below him seemed to slow.
He rammed the throttle full forward. The impact with the water had stolen all his speed.
There was no way he was going to get airborne again.
The next few moments seemed to pass simultaneously with sickening speed and excruciating slowness—the zone where the world whipped by but his thoughts couldn’t keep up—like a slo-mo film.
He twisted the yoke and hung on. He was a passenger now. Like Dan and Skip. The plane was no longer flying. It was a ballistic projectile and it would suffer the same fate as all ballistic projectiles.
Terminal impact.
The left pontoon slammed the water. The pontoon was almost level, but the plane was leaning ten degrees. The asymmetric force sheared off the float.
The left side of the plane dropped. The wing dug into the water.
The noise was deafening. White spray was everywhere. A pounding force rammed Josh’s face into the yoke.
The engine died.
The nose of the aircraft dove down into the water.
The plane cartwheeled.
Without a tight harness to hold him in place, the force shoved Josh into the instruments.
Something heavy snapped behind him. It sounded like a tree limb, but the screaming that followed told him the snap was something else.
The aircraft lurched to a halt.
It pushed down into the water and surged back up.
The Cessna tipped forward again. The engine was the heaviest component of the plane and the Cessna’s nose began to sink, lifting its tail in the air.
The weight of the water was forcing the air out of the cabin.
Dan was still strapped into the copilot’s seat. He groaned between gasps. Skip cried out with pain from somewhere in the back.
Josh felt the adrenaline running through his body and recognized it for what it was. His limbs felt energized. His heart pounded hard against his sternum. All senses were on full alert. Except for a few scrapes and bruises, he was unharmed.
Normal time returned.
He unlatched his harness and heaved himself out of his seat. He had to open the rear door. If they sank, opening the door would be all but impossible underwater. They’d never get out. He wasn’t quite ready for a watery grave.
The left pontoon had been sheared, which meant the left side of the Cessna would sink first. The right side would stay out of the water a bit longer. The doors were on the right side.
He steadied himself as well as possible, found the latch, and leaned his shoulder into the door. He pushed it open. Water would soon begin to flood the cabin.
-
Chapter Eight
Houston, Texas
Monday
Veronica Beaumont’s offices dominated the section of Houston where all the trendy, successful businesses battled for attention. Flint approached the front entrance like a man headed for the guillotine. He walked through the revolving door and felt it suck shut behind him with a whoosh, as if he might not keep going without a shove.
“Ms. Beaumont is expecting you, sir,” the man at the security desk said as he handed Flint a temporary visitor’s badge to pin on his lapel. “Take the executive elevator all the way to the top. Someone will meet you there.”
Flint’s boot heels punctuated his walk along the granite tile. Another security guard stood by the elevator door. He pushed a special release button and the door slid silently open. Flint stepped inside and the elevator shot to the top, leaving his stomach on the ground floor. The elevator opened onto a reception area. A fashionably emaciated-looking woman greeted him with a wide smile created by expert cosmetic dentistry framed by fat lips courtesy of Houston’s best plastic surgeons.
“Mr. Flint?” she asked as she pushed back from her desk. Her legs ran all the way to her neck and her skirt barely covered her ass. “Right this way. Ms. Beaumont is expecting you.”
He liked his women with a little meat on their bones and natural body parts. He wondered what kind of man would be attracted to a woman like her as he followed the receptionist down a series of corridors to a door that opened into a private conference room. The rectangular conference table filled most of the space. There were shades covering the floor-to-ceiling windows and the lighting was dim. A seventy-inch television screen was mounted on the wall.
Veronica Beaumont was sitting at one end of the table holding a small remote control. She did not stand up.
“Thank you for coming.” She waved to a chair on her left. “Have a seat.”
Flint might have remained standing simply as a gesture of defiance, but it seemed rather childish. He pulled the chair away from the table and sat, ankle resting on his opposite knee, hands clasped in his lap. But his temperature was rising, so he said nothing. Doing a favor for Maddy was one thing, taking orders from Veronica Beaumont was something else altogether.
“I have something to show you and we’ll talk after that,” Beaumont said. She pushed a button on the remote and the TV screen came to life. A recorded television news program, with a date line from almost seven years ago, began.
Images of an idyllic alpine lake reminiscent of Lake Tahoe filled the screen. Craggy mountains thick with pines, aspens, and other high-altitude trees surrounded a basin filled with sparkling blue water. In several places, the tree line reached the water’s edge. On the south and west edges, rocky beaches extended fifty feet or more from the waterline.
Flint had been to Lake Tahoe, Crater Lake, and other alpine lakes many times. The water was always clear and beautiful, but much too cold. He preferred the warm water of the Caribbean for water sports.
The news reporter said that a small Cessna Turbo 206 floatplane carrying three passengers had crashed six weeks before. He said the three men aboard, a pilot and two passengers, had been traveling to the Red Maple Lake Resort but never arrived. It wasn’t until they failed to return home at the end of their planned weeklong fishing trip that their families became alarmed and contacted authorities in the area. The Cessna had not filed a flight plan, and search-and-rescue operators couldn’t find the plane right away. The crash site was ten miles west of the resort, as the crow flies.
As news stories generally do, this one seemed to develop over time. The first report ended and a second began. The second story aired three days after the first. Deepwater search-and-rescue divers had found the plane resting on the bottom of Red Maple Lake. The plane was hauled out of the water by a helicopter.
The Cessna T206 was severely damaged, the reporter said, as if the images on the screen were not self-explanatory. The left float had been sheared off and was missing. The left wing had been torn almost in half. The back door was open and the cabin was flooded. No bodies were found inside. The three men remained missing. One of the divers said, “Red Maple Lake filled this valley when the glaciers passed. The bottom is as deep and as jagged as the mountaintops. Bodies may float to the surface. If they don’t, we may never find them.”
Flint glanced at Beaumont. If the idea of three drowned men floating up from the depths bothered her at all, she didn’t show it.
The video continued.
The next dateline was two years later. A reporter narrated while a montage of video played. He said deepwater search-and-rescue organizations had approached the area with cadaver dogs. The reporter explained how cadaver dogs could locate a body below the surface. Cadaver dogs had been used to retrieve drowning victims in Red Maple Lake before, but none had found the three men from the Cessna. Until this time.
Next was a short interview. One of the divers, still dressed in his underwater gear, said they had retrieved two bodies trapped on the bottom of the lake. The bodies were remarkably well preserved, probably by the extremely cold water temperatures.
Made sense to Flint. Alpine lake water would function like a liquid deep freeze.
The brief pictures of the recovery operation, obviously filmed from a distance, were chilling. Glimpses of portions of the bodies looked almost as if the men had been lost the day before.
“The two men were identified as Dan Shafer and Skip Evans,” the reporter said, showing headshots of each man in happier times. He asked the diver, “What about the pilot?”
The diver wiped a palm over his face. “We looked everywhere we could. We didn’t find him.”
“Will you be going down again?”
The diver cleared his throat. “If we get another lead, we will go back. For now—” He shook his head.
The reporter closed with an eerie reminder that seemed to stretch the facts. “The divers have assured us they will not give up the effort to find Josh Hallman.”
When the story ended, Beaumont clicked off the screen and pushed another button on the remote to raise the window shades. Diffuse sunlight flooded the room, causing momentary blindness.
“I need to find Jamie’s father.” She nodded toward the screen. “He was the pilot on that plane.”
“It’s an underwater search-and-rescue operation. You need someone with equipment and skills in that line of work.”
Beaumont sighed. “I don’t believe Josh Hallman is at the bottom of that lake. I think he escaped the fate of the others.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I know Josh. Let’s just leave it at that.” She didn’t sound the least bit sad.
“Let’s say you’re right. It takes more than instinct to find a man. Have you ever tried it?” Flint cocked his head and leaned a little farther back in his chair. “If a man is simply missing, the authorities do a pretty good job of locating him, usually in the first forty-eight hours. If he stays missing longer than that, things get tricky. After what? Six plus years? Nobody’s looking anymore. Know why? Because it’s usually pretty pointless.”
“So I hear. You’re not the first investigator I’ve contacted.” Beaumont nodded. “But I’m told you are the heir hunter of last resort for people like me. And I’m at the end of the line here, Flint. If you can’t find Josh Hallman, then . . .” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged.
“Then what?”
“Then I don’t know what happens to Jamie.” Beaumont folded her hands on the table. Her nails were short and well manicured and without polish. She bowed her head for a moment and then raised it to look at Flint again. “Maddy must’ve told you that Jamie is very sick. Now the doctors say he needs a bone marrow transplant.”
That had been Scarlett’s guess. “And you think his father could be a donor match?”
She shrugged. “No guarantees from the doctors, but I hope he is. We’ve tried everything else. Jamie is in the database and hoping for a match that way, but if we could find Josh . . .” Her voice trailed off again. She took a deep breath. “It might be a waste of time. Or not. Do you have kids, Mr. Flint?”
He shook his head. “In my line of work, I’ve seen a lot of dysfunctional families. I’m in no hurry to jump into that situation myself.”
“Jamie has been special to me from the moment he was conceived.” Her voice grew low and it softened her features. She seemed less like a ballbuster and more like a mom all of a sudden, and he liked her a little better, even though he suspected the transformation was temporary.
“He’s a wonderful child. He has his father’s ways.”
“What does that mean?”
“Do you know what an alpha male is, Mr. Flint?” He nodded. The epithet had been hurled his way a few times, usually by angry women on the way out the door. Not that he disagreed with the label. He was as alpha as a man could possibly be. He didn’t consider that a bad thing, but Beaumont obviously did.
“Imagine the opposite. Josh Hallman is all man, but he has a deep feminine side and a lot of emotional intelligence.” She cocked her head and gave him a steady stare. “You don’t find that in very many guys. Jamie’s like that now. Imagine what he’ll be like at thirty.”
Pushed around by a woman like his mother, probably. Flint nodded again because he didn’t know what else to do. “I’m not sure what you’re asking of me, exactly.”
“I think Josh Hallman is alive.” She leaned forward on the table. “Before you ask me, no, I can’t prove it. But they didn’t find his body when they found the others. And, sometimes, a mother simply knows things.”
“So what you want me to do is find Jamie’s dad, dead or alive?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I guess that’s it. But I really don’t believe he’s dead and I don’t think you should make that assumption. And frankly, he won’t be of much use to me if he’s dead, so I’d rather not go with that right off the bat.”
They could go around in circles on the point for hours, so instead he asked, “Did you know the other two guys he was with?”
“I did. They didn’t like me and I wasn’t crazy about them, either.” She wasn’t apologizing for anything. He might be able to like her a little for the strength of her convictions, at least.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small data storage device. She put it on the table and pushed it toward him. “Everything you need to know is there. All the information I have. I’m sure you have access to records and databases and things that I don’t have, but I’ve hired investigators before, as I said. They’ve been very thorough. This will save you some time. And there’s a video of Jamie. Show it to Josh when you find him. It will help.”
“You seem to like him well enough. Why did you two split up?” The last thing Flint needed was a nasty domestic situation on his hands.
She shrugged. “Our relationship was a fling. Never intended to be permanent. It ended. That’s all.”
“What about Jamie? Hasn’t he ever seen his son?”
She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “No.” She offered nothing further on that score.
It was Flint’s turn to shrug. As long as the ex didn’t try to shoot him, he didn’t really care why they broke up. “Do you have a deadline of some sort?”
“I thought I told you?” She blinked. Maybe she was a little glassy-eyed, but the sunlight was still strong in the room. “Jamie’s doctors say he needs the transplant now. They can’t keep him alive indefinitely. Sooner is better.”
Flint felt himself being drawn into a deep quagmire from which he might never extricate himself. Like quicksand tugging on his ankles. The truth was that most people were not that hard to find. There weren’t many places to hide in the modern world. Most average Joes and Janes couldn’t manage the feat.
Death and witness protection were the two most obvious answers when a missing person couldn’t be located with a few hundred keystrokes and a dozen phone calls. After that, Flint concluded that the missing were making an active effort not to be found. Usually for valid reasons. Which made the hunt exponentially more difficult.
Assuming Josh Hallman wasn’t dead, which was a big assumption, he had managed to stay unfindable for almost seven years. Which required some serious motivation, and Flint wondered what his motive was.
Flint picked up the thumb drive from the table and slid it into his pocket. “I will look at this stuff and let you know whether I can help you. But it’s likely Josh Hallman’s body is at the bottom of Red Maple Lake. Because of the temperature down there, his body should be well preserved. You might be able to get bone marrow for the transplant from the cadaver.”
Beaumont was shaking her head before he finished. “I know Josh is not dead. I feel it. My instincts have carried me a long way in this world, Mr. Flint. Keep an open mind.”
He shrugged, but he didn’t believe her. Beaumont wasn’t the kind of woman who operated on instinct. She knew something. He couldn’t refuse the job and move on. He’d promised Maddy that he’d try to help her friend. “It’s your money.”
“I’m well aware of your fees. I’ll deposit the first five million dollars today. I’ll pay the rest when you find Josh.”
“Plus expenses. Which will be hefty. You can count on it.”
She nodded. “No problem. Another five million to start, and more if you need it. Will that be enough?”
“I’ll let you know.” He paused until he felt he had her full attention. “Have you considered that he might not agree to the transplant, even if he is alive and even if we do find him?” He picked up the business card she’d laid before him and handed her one of his own containing the information she’d need to deposit the funds into his Cayman Islands account.
“I know this is a long shot, Mr. Flint. But it’s the only one I have and I have to take it.” Beaumont stood and he followed her to the elevator. She pushed the call button, and when the doors opened he stepped inside. “Keep me posted. Let me know if you need more money.”
On the way down, Flint sketched out a quick plan in his head.
He tossed his visitor badge on the security desk, and as he left the building, he made the first call.
