by Peter Parken
He released the pressure and withdrew his hand. Pushed his chair back and stood up, glaring down at her.
“If Feinstein doesn’t hear from you by this Friday, I’ll find you, and we’ll have another little chat. Well…maybe our next chat will be a wee bit longer.”
Then he was gone.
Chapter 23
During the two days Nate was away in Key West, Stephanie had been a busy little bee. Half the furniture was gone, her three closets that had been bursting at the seams were now empty, and some of Nate’s favorite gourmet cookery had escaped.
But she’d left him a cute little note. ‘I’ve moved in with a friend. We’ll talk as we get closer to the divorce proceedings.’
Nate chuckled. He was able to guess what kind of “friend” it was. Well, hopefully he had lots of money to keep her in the lifestyle she’d become accustomed to.
This was better anyway. He was glad she was the one who’d decided to move—less hassle for him, and he got to stay where he was most comfortable. And he wouldn’t have to force himself to be nice to her, tiptoe around on eggshells.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and checked his phone messages. He smiled—a nice text reply from Shelby: ‘Yes, I’d love to meet for coffee. Day? Time?’
He walked over to the closet, pulled out his favorite golf shirt, and thought, ‘Well, how about right now?’
*****
It ended up being wine, not coffee. A nice little bar in Old Town, not far from Nate’s office on King Street. It was around 7:00 in the evening and she met him at the ‘Rendezvous Point’ lounge.
Nate was sitting in a corner booth when she strolled into the bar. Wearing white jeans with heels and a purple t-shirt, she looked pretty hot. Nate noticed all the eyes turning to watch her as she walked over to his table. He understood why—it was hard not to notice. She was indeed striking. And her looks were made all the more special to Nate knowing they had a special bond between them. She wasn’t just an attractive woman—she was the woman whose life he’d saved. That was special.
He stood up and greeted her. She gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and then slid into the booth. Nate slipped in next to her.
When the Merlot came, Nate held up his glass in a toast, and they clinked.
“To second chances in life.”
Shelby laughed. “Well, considering everything, I’d say that’s the most appropriate toast I’ve ever heard!”
Nate shuffled in his seat. He was a little bit nervous—they had gotten off to a rocky start when he’d visited her in the hospital, although they’d had a nice visit when she came to his office. But he still didn’t know the status of the lawsuit, and he wanted to know whether or not she intended to sue his company. He wouldn’t feel totally comfortable talking with her until he knew.
“How are you feeling now? Everything healed up okay?”
“Yes, I’m doing fine now—as far as recovery from the accident’s concerned. There are other things, though…”
Nate topped up both their wine glasses. “Do you have anyone you can talk to about how you feel—what the next steps for you are?” He was fishing.
“No—other than my mom and sister, there’s no one I can turn to that I’m all that close to. I kind of keep to myself most of the time—unless of course I’m going on junkets with the Coaster Crazies, or skydiving. At times like that, I’m with groups of people who I know fairly well. Well, with the Coaster Crazies, I did know them…that little group that I hung with is gone now, of course.”
Nate lowered his head. He knew that it all must be bothering her more than she would even admit to herself. He tried to change the subject. “I didn’t know you were a skydiver—tell me about that.”
Shelby laughed. “It kind of goes along with this daredevil thing that I’ve had most of my life. I don’t understand it—I’m just a nut that way, I guess. I learned to do it when I was a teenager. My mom wouldn’t sign the permissions and waivers when I was younger. She told me that she wouldn’t be party to me killing myself! So, I had to wait until I was eighteen when I was legally allowed to sign the forms myself. My mom still wasn’t happy, but she respected that it was a decision I was able to make without her.
“Anyway, I took the course and had my first jump. Came off the wing of the plane spinning and when the chute opened up from the tug from the static line the lines got all wrapped around my legs. So I was kinda upside down for half the flight down—had to unwind myself before I could enjoy the ride. I was then way off course and ended up landing in the top of a tree!”
Nate shook his head in shock. “God that must have been scary. I don’t think I could do that.”
She reached across and rubbed the back of his hand. “I think we both found out the hard way that there are things people are capable of doing in a split second that they probably couldn’t imagine doing if they had time to think.”
He nodded. “Yeah, you’re right on that.”
They switched over to coffee and dessert. Both had eaten dinner earlier in the evening, so decadent desserts were in order. And they both had to drive, so the wine had to come to an end.
The next hour was spent talking about their lives. Nate confessed to her about where his marriage stood and that Stephanie had now left. And Shelby opened up to him about how her love life, for some reason, had been a total failure so far.
He found that hard to believe. She was such a charming, intelligent lady, and darn easy on the eyes. But she admitted to being a loner, and had standards that no one had ever seemed to be able to measure up to. Nate thought that was a good thing—and wished he’d set his sights higher when he’d married. He’d rushed into something that was so important. He should have gotten to know his bride a lot better than he had. It was just something he’d fallen into…seemed like a good idea at the time.
Three hours went by in a flash. She was really easy to talk to—and fun. She was outspoken and had a good sense of humor. He was enjoying Shelby’s company immensely, made a little bit easier in knowing that his wife was out of his life for good.
“Shelby, I need to ask you this. Are you going to pursue a lawsuit against my company?”
She paused, which made Nate nervous. “I’ve been saving this to tell you. I’m a little bit scared about something that happened yesterday.”
Nate leaned in closer to her. “What happened? Does it have something to do with the accident?”
She nodded. “I was having lunch by myself in a little café near the hospital. This man just sat down at my table and told me that I have to join the Class Action. I asked him who he was and he wouldn’t tell me. Then I told him that I wasn’t going to join the lawsuit because the lawyer wanted me to lie about the lap bars.
“He said that I had to testify that the lap bars became disengaged on impact. I said no, that I wouldn’t say that. He offered to write me a check to convince me to testify to that. I said no again. Then, he grabbed my wrist and squeezed hard with his thumb. Told me I had until Friday or he’d pay me a visit again. He really hurt my wrist. And Friday is two days away—I don’t know if he was serious or not, but I’m nervous that I might see this man again.”
Nate knew that Shelby was a confident woman, he could easily tell that. But her voice had been shaking when she was telling the story of her encounter with the stranger.
“Maybe you should go to the police. Tell them this story and describe him. They might be able to do a police sketch and locate him.”
“I don’t think they’d do anything. It would be my word against his. How can I prove that he threatened me? How could I prove that he hurt my wrist? Any witnesses in the café would say that we were just holding hands. That’s what it would have looked like.”
She was right. There was really nothing for the police to act on. “Describe him to me, Shelby.”
“Tall, broad shouldered kind of guy, could have been an athlete at one time. Bald, with these expensive-looking tinted glasses. Oh, and he had this big ring on his
right hand—never seen one like it before.”
Nate’s mouth went dry. He sat up straight in his seat and took a deep breath. “I’ve seen that man before.”
“What? Where?”
Nate pulled out his wallet to pay the bill. “Are you going to sue us? I know you won’t join the Class Action, but are you going to sue us separately?”
Shelby touched his hand lightly. “No, I’m not. This whole thing seems so dishonest and it seems as if someone’s trying to stack the deck against you. You can take my word on that. I won’t be suing.”
“Okay, I will take your word. I sense that with you, your word is good. Come to my office tomorrow afternoon—say around 2:00? Can you get off work?”
Shelby nodded. “No problem. I don’t have any surgeries tomorrow, so I’m just on call. I’ll switch my ‘call’ shift with another nurse.”
“Okay, good. I’ll answer your question…and many more…tomorrow. I want my partners to meet you and hear what you have to say. And we’ll let you in on everything. This is a mystery beyond comprehension.”
*****
Nate introduced Shelby to Tom and Ron, closed the door to the conference room and then took his seat at the head of the table.
“There’s coffee over on the credenza, Shelby. Help yourself.”
“Thanks, but nothing for me right now.”
“Okay. So, to start things off, I wanted you guys to hear what Shelby has to say about the accident, and what’s happened to her since then. And I intend for us to share what we know with her. It looks like we’re all in this together, and there are some puzzling and troubling things going on that we need to share.” He looked at Shelby. “Okay, tell my partners what’s been happening.”
Shelby detailed, first, the accident itself and how she noticed her lap bar was unlocked before the train collided against the broken track section. Next, she outlined her meeting with Dwayne Feinstein, and how he told her that she was mistaken about the lap bars. He showed her the NTSB report, which stated that the bars unlocked upon impact with the broken track, and not before.
She then told them about her visit with John Fletcher at the NTSB.
“He seemed like a really good guy…but kind of sheepish, almost ashamed. Hard to put my finger on it, but he seemed to be avoiding my eyes when I confronted him about his report. I asked him why he didn’t bother to interview me, and that if he had, he would have discovered from me that the lap bars opened before the impact. And…it seemed to me that he wanted to tell me something…but couldn’t.”
Tom jumped in. “I talked to him, too. He’s the one who told me that his report would say that the track split due to a faulty weld. I objected to that—he didn’t argue with me, but wouldn’t change his report either, despite me telling him that there were no welds on that part of the track. Also, this Fletcher guy is the one who told me that the wreckage was being hauled away to an undisclosed location. That we—the ones who were being hung out to dry for this accident—weren’t allowed to look at the wreckage or know where they were hauling it to.”
Nate directed the conversation back to Shelby. “Tell us about the guy who visited you the other day.”
She did. There was silence in the room after she described how he’d hurt her wrist and about the veiled threat he threw at her if she didn’t sign on to the Class Action by Friday.
Nate addressed the group. “This man Shelby described to me—this sounds like the same man I saw that day at Adventureland, raising his fist toward the second hill. Ron, you thought that sounded like he was aiming a remote control device.”
Ron leaned back in his swivel chair. “Yes, and after what we discovered down in Key West, I’m convinced that he was using that remote to detonate a fuse—a fuse that had been attached to material called Thermate-3, a military grade substance that can be painted onto steel and burn through it in seconds. It was probably painted on the underside of the track where it couldn’t be noticed. And…Nate, you said you also saw a flash at that exact spot seconds before the accident.”
Nate nodded. “And now we know, firsthand from Shelby, that the lap bars came unlocked before the impact. So, they might have been disengaged by that same remote control unit.”
Shelby jumped in. “Hold on a second. What’s that you said, Ron, about Key West? What did you find out?”
“We found the wreckage down there, ready to be hauled out to sea. The broken part of the track had clearly been melted—it was easy to see that it was molten metal that had hardened since the accident.”
“Jesus! It was sabotage then!”
Tom mumbled, “More like mass murder.”
Ron twirled his pen. “Actually, I don’t think so, Tom.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you what I think in a second. Anyway, Shelby, the way we found out about Key West was an anonymous phone call that Tom got—from a woman. She just told us where to find it and hung up. Someone had a pang of conscience.”
Nate got up and poured himself some coffee. “That guy who visited Shelby, it sounds like he was wearing that same Super Bowl ring that I saw the guy at Adventureland wearing. He fit the description in every other way as well. And another thing that Shelby doesn’t know—all the ambulances were redirected that day to a phony accident on the bridge. And the two guys who had parked the ambulance that Tom and I jumped into—they just disappeared.”
Tom reached over for the water jug and poured himself a tall one. “God, this talk is giving me a dry mouth. Here’s something we need to consider also—for someone to have painted or sprayed Thermate on the underside of the track and attached fuses, they would have had to have been part of the maintenance crew at the amusement park—or one of our guys. And for that bastard with the remote to be able to find out the radio frequency we programmed for the lap bar locks, there had to have been an inside man for that, too. Maybe the same guy?”
They were all nodding at this ominous statement.
Ron Collens jumped up from his chair and walked over to the white board. “Let’s jot down what we know.”
Ron picked up a marker pen and wrote out a list of the key points:
Nate saw a man raising his fist towards the second hill.
He thought he saw a flash on the track.
He saw some of the lap bars in the ‘up’ position as the train fell.
The ambulance was unattended and all other emergency vehicles had been diverted to a phony accident.
Shelby’s lap bar became disengaged before the train hit the split in the track.
She was pressured by the lawyer to testify that the lap bar was disengaged only upon impact, and then pressured again by this mysterious stranger. And pressured by implied threat to join the Class Action.
This mysterious stranger who Shelby met, and similar to the guy Nate saw, would seem to be the same person. And from Nate’s description of the ring on his finger, he may have played for the San Francisco 49ers in the 1994 Super Bowl.
John Fletcher, the chief investigator for the NTSB, seemed to be hiding something when he talked to Shelby.
This accident was assigned to the NTSB despite it having no jurisdiction in amusement park accidents.
Someone had a conscience attack and phoned Tom anonymously telling him where we could find the wreckage, and that it was going to be dumped into the ocean.
On our visit to Key West, our helicopter went out of control, and seemed to have been taken over by a remote operator. It was flying itself and it appeared to be a deliberate attempt to scare us away.
When we searched the wreckage, we discovered that the track had indeed been melted at the point of separation.
We were accosted by military personnel at the site in Key West. We had to get a bit rough in order to escape. They seemed intent on taking Nate and Tom onto the ship that was going to be hauling away the wreckage.
And there must have been an inside man, or men, working at Adventureland or for Flying Machines, in order to paint the Thermate onto the tra
ck and to disclose the radio frequency to disengage the lap bars.
There was total silence in the room when Ron finished the list. You could hear a pin drop. The list was overwhelming. Everyone was just staring at the white board, obviously trying to make some sense out of it all.
Tom spoke first. “Ron, a few minutes ago you said that you didn’t think this was mass murder. What did you mean by that?”
Ron moved away from the white board and sat back down again.
“This was a professional job. Mass murderers don’t do things as sophisticated as this. And it has been designed in a way to make it look like an accident. The threats against Shelby and the attempts to get rid of the wreckage before anyone else could inspect it, just underline the fact that someone wants this file closed and for it to be labeled an accident.”
Tom jumped in. “But twenty-five people died!”
“Yes, they did. I think this was a ‘diversionary murder.’”
Nate frowned. “What are you talking about, Ron? In English, please?”
Ron laughed. “Sorry, bad habit of mine. Let’s narrow this down to some basics. This was designed to look like an accident. And the lap bar disengagement, to me, was a back-up plan. It was to ensure that everyone on the coaster died. Just in case the Thermate fuses didn’t light from the remote activation, Plan ‘B’ was to disengage the lap bars. Both of those things were done with the mere press of a remote. If the track didn’t melt, then at least the bars wouldn’t have held anyone in as they went over the hill because that was the Plan ‘B’. Therefore, both of these things together guaranteed that everyone would die.”
Shelby piped in with a smile, “Not everyone!”
Ron smiled back. “Yes, Shelby, you were the wild card that they didn’t foresee, thank God.” He continued, “Then, to make it even more inevitable, a fake multi-vehicle accident on the bridge was called in to Emergency dispatch, and the two ambulance attendants—obviously ‘plants’ and not really ambulance attendants—who parked the ambulance at the park, just simply disappeared. So, there were no paramedics available to save lives if there were any to save. The ambulance fiasco was just another back-up plan. We’ll call that Plan ‘C.’”