“How could you tell? I didn’t see much of any portion of the plane.”
“We found the wings and large pieces of both floats. If an explosion of the caliber that destroyed this plane originated in the floats, at least one of the floats would be gone, blown to bits.”
My mind struggled to sort through this new information. I had been so certain that the gas and battery had caused the explosion that I had not thought of an alternative explanation. “Do you think someone planted a bomb?” The idea was ludicrous. This was not a flight from JFK to Cairo. Terrorism was not a major threat on Kodiak Island.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” Hayman said, “but the FBI thinks it’s a possibility. Their bomb specialists arrive tomorrow.”
Chapter Three
“Why would someone blow up a floatplane?”
“I agree, Dr. Marcus, this is unusual, but there were some special passengers on that plane.”
“Who?”
“You haven’t heard?”
I shook my head.
“Well, it’s not a secret. The news is all over the local radio station. I assume you know who Dick Simms was.”
I nodded. “The Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge manager.”
“He was acting as tour guide yesterday for Senator Margaret Justin and her husband, George.”
“George Justin, the corporate raider?” I knew his name, because his picture had been in USA Today a few days earlier.
“That’s right. His wife is, or was, a U.S. senator from New York, and she was on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for the Interior and the Environment. Apparently Simms was trying to convince her to allocate more funds to the Department of the Interior.”
“And she had enemies who disliked her enough to blow up her sightseeing plane?”
Hayman shrugged. “It’s not my job to figure out motive. I’m trying to assign a less sinister cause to the explosion. The fuels and battery are a possibility. If you think of any other explosives Mr. Pederson may have had, please contact me.”
Hayman stood, handed me his business card, and walked out of my office. I sat, staring at the open door. My headache seemed to be letting up, but I still felt responsible for Craig’s death. I should have been on the plane, and he should have been safe at the marine center. I now realized, though, that I had been so convinced that our fuels caused the explosion, I’d believed myself partially responsible for the deaths of everyone on the plane. If something else caused the explosion, my burden of guilt was reduced to one.
Geoff Baker, one of the graduate students at the marine center, always had the radio blaring in his lab. I picked up my phone and dialed his extension.
“Yo,” a deep voice answered.
“Geoff, this is Jane.”
“Hey Doc, sorry to hear about Craig.”
“Thanks, Geoff. Have you been listening to the radio this morning?”
“Always. I never miss the hotline.”
“What have you heard about the crash, about the passengers on the plane?”
Geoff’s voice softened. “Speculation about whether or not someone planted a bomb and talk about the senator and problems with her reelection campaign.”
“What problems?”
“Keep in mind, Doc, this is KDKI, not CNN, but apparently the senator was in a tight race for the primary this August. Her campaign ads claim that her opponent has ties with a Mexican drug cartel. Sounds as if she may have made some powerful enemies.”
“Anything else?”
“Did you know her husband was George Justin?”
“I heard that.”
“Her Senate ties probably didn’t hurt his career.”
“You’re cynical, Geoff.”
“Apparently he had plenty of enemies, too, and KDKI is now exploring the possibility that he may have been the target.”
“While they’re at it, why don’t they consider Simms?”
“Yeah, no loss there.”
“Geoff!”
“Don’t tell me you don’t feel the same way. Everyone at the refuge office hated Simms. He had more enemies running around Kodiak than some senator from New York.”
“Simms wasn’t my favorite guy, but I didn’t wish him blown to bits, especially not while he was flying on the same plane as Craig.” I paused. “Thanks for the update, Geoff. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Hey Doc, who was the fifth passenger? They haven’t said his or Craig’s name on the radio.”
“Darren Myers. He owned Uyak Cannery.”
“Don’t know him. Talk to you later, Doc.”
The line went dead. I replaced the receiver in its cradle and stood. Time to get to work.
The lab-cleaning job that I had been avoiding all morning took less than ten minutes to complete. I put away the blender, ethanol, centrifuge, petri dishes, and lab tools. I looked at the tidy corner where Craig kept his books and personal gear. Tears raced down my cheeks, and I dropped onto a stool. This is what I had been dreading. Usually when I came into the lab, Craig was huddled at his corner desk, pouring over data sheets or researching something. His beloved laptop stared blankly at me, waiting for Craig to wake it up with the touch of his finger. I would have to pack and send his gear to his parents, but I didn’t have the strength for that today.
“Hey, Doc, you okay?”
I realized I still was crying, and I turned away from the open door to wipe my cheeks with my shirt sleeve.
“Here, take this.” A handkerchief appeared in front of my eyes.
“Thanks, Geoff. Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about, Doc. We all miss Craig. He was a smart kid with a bright future.” He paused. “What a waste.”
“You’re doing a lousy job of cheering me up.”
Geoff laughed. “Think it’s a good thing I didn’t become a priest like my mom wanted?”
I smiled at Geoff’s unshaven face, taking in his shoulder-length red hair that was bundled in a ponytail. “You would have struggled with that gig for more than one reason.”
“I didn’t mean to barge in on you,” Geoff said, plunging his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, “but I heard something on the radio that will tick you off.”
“What?”
“The Kodiak Flight Services pilot picked up Simms, the senator, and her husband from Bradford Creek.”
“He took them bear viewing in an area closed to the public?”
“Exactly. Apparently special people can get special permits to go into those areas that are closed to the rest of us.”
“Simms makes,” I caught myself, “made the rules as he went along. That’s why it was impossible to respect him. He threw a tantrum until Bradford was closed to public use, and then he turns around and goes in there any time he wants. I heard he went in there a dozen times last year, once with ten people.”
“Unfortunately, no one calling into the radio station seems to think there is anything wrong with the refuge manager taking bear viewers into a closed area.”
I sighed. “Well, he won’t do it again.” I turned my face away from Geoff, aware that my eyes must be bright red. “Do you honestly think Simms could have been the target?”
Geoff’s long, thin frame rested against the wall of the lab. He was one of the oldest students at the center, nearly my age. He nodded his head, blue eyes blazing. “I think it’s possible.”
Geoff and I locked eyes for several moments and then he pushed himself away from the wall, walked to me, patted my shoulder, turned, and left the lab.
I stared at the door for fifteen minutes, lacking the energy or desire to move. When I did stand, it was only to take five steps and sit again, this time in the chair in front of Craig’s computer.
I turned on the laptop and laughed when the image of a shrieking raven filled the screen.
On the first field trip Craig took with me, he had been humbled by one of these shrewd birds. After we pitched our tents, I assigned him the task of storing the gear, while I walked the beach to inspect
a mussel bed. He put everything in the tents except the two food boxes, and when I returned, I found him stretched out on his sleeping bag, reading a novel, while a raven systematically carried away our food. He’d been so embarrassed that I couldn’t possibly get mad at him, but the story was too good not to share with my colleagues and graduate students at the marine center, and Craig caught a lot of flak. “Beware the raven,” was a chant that haunted him for his first summer at the center, and only a few days ago, I’d heard a graduate student yell the words down the hall to him.
Craig loved practical jokes, and he was good-natured about the ribbing. After his initial embarrassment wore off, he announced he was adopting the raven as his personal totem. I’d given him a Ravens Brew coffee sweatshirt as a going-away present when he returned to school after his first summer as my assistant, and he still wore it often. I didn’t know he had a raven as his computer wallpaper, but I wasn’t surprised.
As I watched his program icons materialize on top of the sleek black image, I felt tears snake down my cheeks. Craig had mentioned a raven only two nights earlier when I’d spoken with him on the sideband radio. I’d been in a hurry and cut the conversation short. I now regretted that.
Craig had been in his usual high spirits, and in the midst of promising me I would be proud of his work, he told me the only problem he’d had was with a strange, old raven. I told him to save the story until he got back to town. Now, I never would hear it.
I shook my head and wiped my eyes. I exited and turned off the computer. I needed to look through the computer files and copy anything that pertained to our project, but I couldn’t bear to do that today.
I returned to my office and thumbed through the file folders stacked in a neat pile on the right side of the desk. I slid the one marked “Cycek” out of the stack and opened it.
The first thing I saw was the photo of Doris Cycek and an unexpected giggle escaped my lips. I’d asked Mr. Cycek to send us a photo of his wife to put in her file. It’s too easy in a project like ours to forget the victims were human beings with hopes, dreams, memories, and families. Our focus is the molecular structure of saxitoxin, our task to develop a chemical test that could reveal the presence of the lurking poison. Our procedure only would be successful if it worked every time and detected even low levels of the toxin. The photos of those who had died from PSP were to remind us why these high standards were necessary, and Craig had posted the photos on the bulletin board in the lab.
The families of the other victims had sent us posed photos of their loved ones, but the picture of Mrs. Cycek was horrible. “Do I have to look at this every day?” Craig had asked when the photo arrived, and after two days, he took it down from the bulletin board and stuffed it in her file. As I looked at it now, I couldn’t blame him.
The photo was slightly out of focus, and the photographer obviously had surprised Mrs. Cycek. Her eyes were open wide; her mouth turned downward into a frown. She stood on the beach with the ocean behind her and was dressed in an outfit so ridiculous I thought it had to be a joke. A red paisley scarf secured her grey hair, which shot straight upward like a geyser. A baggy, red-and-white, polka-dot dress hung over her small frame like a tent, and orange, rubber, knee-high boots and yellow work gloves accessorized the ensemble.
I thought at first that perhaps this was the only snapshot of his wife Mr. Cycek could bear to part with, but then a more logical explanation occurred to me: This was probably the most recent photo Mr. Cycek had of his wife, and he thought that’s what we wanted. I turned the photo over and shook my head. His wife would not have been happy with him. I doubted this was the way Doris Cycek would have wanted to be remembered.
The following ten pages in the folder were a typed transcript of the conversation I’d had with Mr. Cycek at the hospital soon after his wife had been pronounced dead. I’d told Craig to take notes, but I had no idea he’d taken down our conversation verbatim. For a moment, thinking I would tease him about being an overachiever, I forgot he was gone. A weight dropped in my stomach when I remembered.
I thumbed through the pages of dialogue between Mr. Cycek and myself. I vividly remembered the small man, dressed in brown coveralls, a red flannel shirt, and brown rubber boots. He clutched a dirty baseball cap in his right hand while we talked. His grey hair had been smashed flat by his hat, drooping on his forehead and curving around his big, brown ears. His back was hunched, and his eyes were glazed. His answers were concise but wooden, his pitch unvaried. He didn’t look at my face as he spoke, but stared into the air over my right shoulder. I worried he was going into shock, and after I’d finished talking to him, I quietly asked the doctor to examine him.
I read Craig’s notes. The symptoms Mr. Cycek reported were textbook:
Jane: Do you know how many clams your wife ate?
Cycek: No more than ten. She said she wasn’t feeling well, so she laid down on the couch.
Jane: Did you save the shells or the clams she cooked but didn’t eat?
Cycek: No. I cleaned up. I didn’t know the clams made her sick.
Jane: What about raw clams? Did she cook everything she dug?
Cycek: Yes. There’s nothing left.
Jane: I know this is difficult Mr. Cycek, but can you describe your wife’s symptoms?
Cycek: She said she felt light headed and her stomach was upset, so she laid down on the couch. I washed the dishes, and maybe twenty minutes later I walked out of the kitchen to find her coughing and gasping for breath. I called right away for the Coast Guard, and by the time they got there—maybe an hour later—she’d stopped breathing. I didn’t know what to do.
Poor Mrs. Cycek. The doctors believed her heart just gave out. If she’d been younger and stronger, she might have lived until the Coast Guard arrived. After a few hours on respiratory support, she could have recovered fully.
I closed the file and pushed it away from me. It would be up to me to take the notes from now on, and I did not have the time or energy to do as good a job as Craig had. I stood and stretched, and my thoughts returned to Dick Simms. Simms had made enemies, but I couldn’t believe someone hated him enough to kill him.
I dialed the number for the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge. The bear biologist at the refuge was a friend of mine, and she usually had few qualms about divulging department secrets. She had detested Simms, and more than once we had shared a bottle of wine while she unloaded her frustrations about working with him.
“Dana Baynes, please,” I said to the receptionist.
“Baynes.”
“Hi Dana. This is Jane Marcus.”
“Jane. I was going to call you this evening. I was sorry to hear about your assistant. I know how much you liked him.”
“Thanks, Dana. I can’t seem to think about anything else; that’s why I’m calling.” I paused, remembering that Dana just had lost her boss. “How are things around there today?”
“Well, we’re not exactly having a wake; none of us liked Dick. It’s pretty quiet here, though. I guess we’re all in shock.”
“An FAA guy stopped by my office earlier, and he said someone may have planted a bomb on the plane.”
“I heard that,” Dana said. “I gather that Senator Justin had a few enemies.”
“What was Simms doing with her and her husband?”
“Acting the big-shot host, his favorite role. I guess that’s how he made it to refuge manager, because heaven knows it wasn’t his intellect that got him there. He knew who to brown nose.”
“Was it legal for him to take the senator to Bradford?”
Dana said nothing for a moment. Then, slowly, she said, “Yes, legally he could break the rules, and it wouldn’t have been so bad if he had only done it occasionally, but he went into restricted areas on a regular basis and left it to the rest of us to justify his actions. I don’t know how many times I talked to him about it, but he just laughed.”
“Do you think anyone hated Simms enough to kill him?”
Dana’s voice was s
o low I could barely hear it. “Yes.”
“Can you think of anyone in particular?”
I expected a sarcastic reply, but she sounded strained as she said, “Yes, but I can’t talk now. I’ll stop by your place tonight. Is 7:00 okay?”
“I’ll buy the wine.”
I disconnected with Dana and dialed the number for Kodiak Flight Services. Steve Duncan answered the phone.
“Hi, Steve. The FAA inspector stopped by my office, and he told me that the explosion originated in the cabin.”
“Yeah, he told me the same thing.”
“Do you think someone planted a bomb?”
“I don’t know, Dr. Marcus. I’d be happy for any explanation that removes the liability from Kodiak Flight Services, but a bomb sounds far-fetched to me. Think about it. When and how would someone have hidden it on the plane? We made three flights with that plane yesterday before the explosion. I don’t think we left the plane unattended in Trident Basin all day, and you know what that place is like, with pilots and charter service employees buzzing around the docks all the time. We all know each other, and any one of them would have told me if he or she had seen a stranger poking around one of my planes.”
I remembered how quiet the floatplane docks had been when I was waiting for Craig’s plane, but I didn’t mention this.
“I also think Bill would have noticed if a strange object had been put in the plane,” Steve continued.
I didn’t know much about explosives, but I thought a small bomb easily could have been hidden from Bill’s view. “Did you meet the senator, Steve?”
“No.”
“Did anyone at the office receive a call asking about the senator’s flight?”
“Hayman asked us the same thing, and we’ve all thought about it, but we can’t remember anything. That’s just it. How would a stranger know what plane we would use for the senator’s flight? We could have used either of the two Beavers, or for that matter, we could have flown the three of them in the two-oh-six.”
Murder over Kodiak Page 4