“Sharon, he just got in the car. Let’s go get him now,” I say, as I start heading towards the back of the pier.
Just then, the director tells Stephen to go ahead and get ready for the shot as he changed his mind and wants the tug in the pan shot. And then they will hurry with the stunt double to go over the end and get it all in the shot.
As we are walking towards the car, he notices Sharon and me heading his way. He starts the car and revs up the engine. The director is telling him to go ahead and drive and stop at the appointed spot, right before the end of the pier. As the tug is not quite in the location for the shot, but the stunt doubles would have enough time to get the perfect shot. Stephen, who is wired for sound, tells the cameraman to start shooting. He steps on the gas, heads down the ramp towards the end of the pier.
The director sees that something is wrong and calls out for all cameras to be on.
“He isn’t going to stop,” I yell out to Sharon, as I push her out of the way. I also dive for cover to the side as he flies past us and almost hits the both of us. I roll over and sit up only to see the car knocking out a lamppost, plowing into the fence, and going over the edge. It leaves a gaping hole at the end of the pier, just past the bait and tackle shop.
“What the hell is he doing?” the director yells out. “Did you guys get that shot? Did everyone get the shot? Make sure you’re still rolling; make sure you get all of the air bubbles and debris that float up. Keep shooting, don’t stop. Camera 3 and 4, I hope like hell you got a close up of all that.” Camera 3 is the one that is under the pier and Camera 4 is on the beach. “We got it,” the cameramen say, as both check in and acknowledge that both had gotten good clear shots, “but damn it, next fucking time, give us more notice.”
Bill is still telling all cameras to keep running.
I get up and run to the edge and look over. The waters are now not as clear as they once were. “Do you have divers? Get the divers in there right away.”
Bill Saxton, the director, comes running up next to me. “Do it, get the divers in. Oh my God, that son of a bitch almost ruined the shot.”
I call for our department's divers to get here just as soon as possible. Both Sharon and I are looking over the side, hoping both will come to the surface soon.
A diver comes up to the surface, with the female actor at his side, and pulls his mask off. “I located the car. He isn’t in the car; he’s missing, but here she is, and she has a broken neck. She went through the window. She wasn’t wearing her seatbelt.”
I think, “Why would she, she thought they were just going to do a slow drive by and then get out? Probably didn’t want to get her dress wrinkled.”
“Damn, Sharon, he saw us and knew we were there to arrest him.” I look at her and then back over the edge. “I want the whole beach area for up to the next two miles in both direction searched for him.” I walk away after looking to see if he is going to show himself. “Where the hell did he go? The water is clearing, and we should be able to see where he is.”
I point to three of the officers to head down to the beach and search to the right of the pier, as I mention the two of us will search down the beach in the other direction. We walk down, looking for shoe prints that might just have come out of the water and onto the sand. About a hundred yards down the way, we ask the people on the beach if anyone saw anything. Some say they saw the car fly off the pier but haven’t seen anyone walk out from the water with a business suit on. After walking about half a mile, we turn around and head back.
Once back, below the pier, our divers arrived. “I want you to search the area, see if he is hiding somehow around the pier poles.”
We head back to the top of the pier. Bill, the director, is ranting and raving about how good the shot had been. I didn’t hear him say one word about where or how Stephen was.
By now, a wide path has been made for a large towing truck to back up to the edge of the pier. It lowers the towing pulley to pull the car up from the floor of the ocean. The divers attach the cable to the rear end of the car. As the vehicle is being pulled out the water, the driver door opens up and water rushes out. As they lift it and place it onto the pier, I walk over to it and look inside. I hope to find Stephen in the back seat, but I feel he's long gone. I look over to Bill. “I will need to see those shots as soon as possible.”
Bill looks up at me, as he stands only five foot three. He wears a long-sleeve white shirt that is neatly tucked into his pants. “Come with me,” he says, as he takes us to one of the truck trailers that is at the back of the pier. We climb the steps and into the video room on site. “Run each shot for the detective, as many times as he needs to see them.”
“Thank you.” Sharon and I take a couple of seats that are being made available to us, as two of the technicians get up and step aside. “We will also need a copy of all of the tapes.”
“Give it to them.” He walks out of the trailer.
We watch all of the different angles they have on hand. The shots are pretty impressive, with the car going over the edge and flying through the air into the water. In one of the shots, I can see the woman raising her hands and yelling out obscenities to Stephen. I notice the tugboat was pulling the barge, which is very unusual to be there, wasn’t that far from where the car had landed. Maybe not where the director had hoped for, but almost perfect for him. The tug had pulled up some sediment and clouded the waters just a bit, making it harder for us to see clearly which way Stephen could have gone. The police and divers report back in—no trace of him.
“He got away.” I look at Sharon.
“Maybe the currents have taken him down the beach?”
“Wouldn’t it be nice, to find his body. I would take that as a plus. But I will tell you right here, and now, that is not going to happen. He knew we were coming to get him; he might even have been tipped off. And the only person who could have done that was Mark. He told him to watch out for us.”
“Or the maid,” Sharon adds.
“You're right, but just maybe he even planned this from the beginning. I’m going to check with Julius, as I wouldn’t be too surprised if he is the one who wrote this into the scene.” We walk out of the trailer and down the steps.
The last thing I hear from the director when leaving the trailer is, if Stephen doesn’t show up, they will have to reshoot the few parts he was in and find a new actor.
Before we leave, I tell several of the officers to go up and down the beach one more time and ask everyone if they have seen anything. I send one group to head down past Venice Beach and the other group to head up past Will Rogers State Beach.
We head back to the office.
Chapter 45
“Come up to the cockpit, and I’ll let the pilot go over what he is going to do in about an hour.” Fred leads Mark towards the front of the plane. “Bob, this is my godson, Mark. He’s the new owner of this aircraft. Tell him what we have in store for the officials and the FAA and NTSB.”
The co-pilot gets up out of his seat and heads towards the cabin. One of the flight attendants gets him a coffee, and he takes the seat in the cabin, just occupied by Mark a few seconds earlier.
“Have a seat.” He motions Mark to take a seat next to him. “I’m guessing Mr. Tan has already told you what this baby can do.”
“He told me a little about the plane being a composite, the speed and the distance it can travel.”
“So I won’t rehash that. Did he tell you what a composite plane can do?”
“No,” Mark replied.
“It doesn’t show up on the radar as well as a plane made of aluminum, and for what we have in mind, it’s perfect, and we're glad it is. What he has in mind is once we get close to Corpus Christi and on their radar, we’ll make a mayday call. As we start to descend towards where their radar will just about lose us, I will turn off the IFF on the plane and fly low for about two hundred miles. This way they will think we crashed, and by then, we should be off their radar scan. Oh, by the way, turn
off your cell phone.”
“What’s an IFF?” Mark asks.
“It was developed during World War II. It stands for Identification, Friend or Foe. It was and is an interrogation system to identify aircraft, vehicles, or forces as friendly and to determine their bearing and range from the air traffic controller. IFF is not what it should be called, as it really can’t tell if the aircraft is friend or foe. Not without contacting the plane first, and if it received an invalid reply or no reply at all, well, then they will consider it a foe. Any questions so far?” He looks towards a somewhat interested individual sitting in the co-pilot's seat and the new owner.
“There is the method of operation since the IFF is used by both civilian and military aircraft, they break it down into modes 1 through 5. All except mode 3, which is for military use only. Modes 1, 2, and 3 are collectively known as Selective Identification Feature (SIF) modes. All civilian aircraft also use modes A, C, and S. Mode C, which is the one we're most interested in, includes barometric pressure altitude information. The air traffic controller uses Mode 3/A, which provides a four-digit octal identification code for each aircraft. Right now, on their radar, we are assigned a number. It will soon drop off of their radar and, with a mayday, they will send out search parties, and it will look like we ditched and crashed, and were blown into thousands of pieces. The Coast Guard along with the NTSB will come to the conclusion we were all killed in the accident, except Mr. Tan, as he isn’t officially on board. So they will only find evidence of the five of us in the plane crash.” He glances back and forth from Mark and the control panel. “He must care a lot about you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Buddy, for what he is paying us to fall off the edge of the world, he has to. The four of us will have enough money to retire in luxury.”
The captain picks up his MIC and announces, “Please take your seats and buckle up. We will begin descending in one minute.” He looks over to Mark. “I would advise you to change seats with the co-pilot.” He has a grin on his face, just knowing what is about to happen. After several seconds pass by, and his co-pilot is back in the cockpit, he again picks up his MIC, turns a knob and announces. “Mayday, mayday, mayday, Houston Airport, this is Alpha Romeo 675, we have an emergency. We are losing cabin pressure. Weather is clear. We are approximately two hundred miles southeast of Corpus Christi, heading due south. Our coordinates are (with a crackle over the reception). Fuel is good. We have five souls on board. I will try to ditch the plane into the Gulf.” He repeats the transmission just before the plane takes a nose dive and drops below the radar and levels off. He heads East and flies over the Gulf of Mexico, flying between the Yucatan and Cuba.
Chapter 46
“Is he sharp enough to have thought this far ahead?” I say to Sharon. “Hell, he might have been the brains behind this for all we know, but I have a gut feeling there is someone else.”
We walk into the office. “Paul, what did the air traffic controller find out? Have they arrived yet?”
“The last time I spoke to him, they were still on course, flying down towards Corpus Christi right now,” Paul replies. Just then the phone rings. Paul answers and looks a bit pale as well as disturbed. “Oh no, and you're going to confirm they've gone down?” He listens some more and says “Okay, still keep us informed with whatever you find out ….”
He looks at me. “The plane went off the radar, as they were heading over the Gulf. They reported a mayday, and it's believed they had to ditch the plane into the Gulf. They have notified the United States Coast Guard to start a search, somewhere around Padre Island.”
“I don’t believe it. I don’t buy it. Everything has gone against us today. Too coincidental. Too well planned.” I am saying this as I am looking at both Sharon and Paul. “God, there has to be a mastermind behind all of this. Someone we haven’t put too much thought into. Mark is good, but I don’t think he is that good.”
I pick up the phone and make a call to an old friend of mine. Someone I went to high school with. Someone I trust with my life. Someone who I know would go out of his way to assist me, as I would him. Someone I have a lot of faith in just might be able to help us with this case. Someone who was nearby where the plane went down.
Somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. About 20 miles off of Padre Island, Texas, a fishing trawler is dumping pieces of composite materials from a mock-up of a Learjet 85, along with clothing and some personal papers. The Corpus Christi International Airport hears a mayday distress call, just as they lose them off their radar.
Chapter 47
“Paul, I want you to review these tapes of Stephens’s car going over and see if you can find anything. I got copies of every direction that were taken.” I hand a box filled with tapes to him.
“I’ll get right on them.”
“Sharon, let’s get back over to Mark’s and see if anything is there to let us know what he might be doing or gone.”
We drive over there and ring the doorbell, and Martha opens the door and lets us stay standing outside while she asks, “Do you have a warrant?”
“Do we need one?” I ask her as I look directly into her eyes.
“Yes, Mark told me no police could enter his home without a warrant, so yes you need one,” she says with her hands on her hips.
I pull the paperwork from my coat pocket, “Well, I guess this will suffice then.” And we walk right by her. “I figured you would ask for one.” I hand it to her. “You know, if you weren’t working for him, I would ask you to come work for me, but I feel your loyalty would be elsewhere,” I tell her with a smile on my face.
Sharon goes directly to his room, to pack up his computers, some programs, and disks.
I ask Martha if she knew where he was going. Had he spoken of any trips or foreign places? What had he been doing the last couple of days? Who had he spoken with and who was over to the house?
She answers all of the questions as if she knew what questions I was going to ask and had rehearsed the answers beforehand.
I felt I got no help from her answers. Sharon brings all of the computer equipment down with her. We walked through the mansion but didn’t find anything else that either one of us thought would be of any help.
“Martha, just to let you know, we may be back. You are aware he took off and abandoned his home, aren't you?”
“I know he left, but he will be back,” she says in a reassuring tone.
We drive out of the driveway and head down the street to Stephen's home. After getting in, we search the whole house but mainly look for his computer and equipment.
“I doubt if we went over to his other place, the one his wife owned, that we would find any clues to what is happening.” She passes me and walks into another room. “He used this home as a getaway from her, did most of his work here. Probably only went there to be with her on occasion, but not too often.”
“Well, if she were anything like her reputation and what some people have said, a drunk, a bitch, and an overbearing woman, I wouldn’t blame him,” she says as she passes by me again, placing items in the entryway.
“Why not just get a divorce? Why kill her?” I say, glancing her way.
“Could have just been the opportunity came up, or maybe she did fall on her own.”
“No, not with what Susan has found. He killed her, no doubt about it, and that is why he ran.”
“Maybe his body will show up.”
“No, he got away, somehow. He had this all planned. He wants us to think he died in the accident. His body will show up, not dead, but alive and well, just where and when I don’t know,” I say with assurance. “Let’s get these over to Paul and have him, and Susan do their thing.”
We pack up and drive back to the office. Once there, and after giving the materials to Paul to check, Sharon and I go into my office and start making some calls.
“I know they say the plane went down. I don’t believe it.” I am getting a little upset with the person I am speaking with. “Yes
, I know you found the wreckage, but I’ll bet you a steak dinner it isn’t theirs. Have you located the black box?”
“This guy’s an idiot.” I place my hand over the phone.
“I know I’m not there, but I’m sure you will find it was not their plane. What you need to try finding out is where their plane went. You need to follow that. You need to find out where they were headed.”
I hang up. “They will find that I am right, but by the time they do, they will be long gone.” I look up at Sharon.
“Mike, you won’t believe what I think I found.” Paul comes rushing into my office. “Look at your screen. I blew it up, look, look right there.” He points at the spot where he wants us to follow.
“Looks like a hand hanging onto the tug's side ropes, that are loose and over the side of the boat,” Paul mentions as he turns around and looks at us.
“That’s how he did it,” he added, looking over to Sharon, “The tug boat happened at an opportune time, and he took advantage of it.”
“Pretty smart,” Sharon adds.
I look at the both of them. “Now that we know he is alive, we have to get a hold of the tugboat captain and find out where he is headed.”
The Hollywood Serial Killers: A Mike Kane Mystery Series Page 11