The Quick Adios (Times Six) (Alex Rutledge Mystery Series)

by Tom Corcoran

  My phone buzzed. The Caller ID announced: TIM RUTLEDGE.

  “How’s life in Orlando?” I said.

  “Count this as a fact,” he said. “She was cheating on her cop.”

  “Is that your insight for the day?”

  “For the whole week, Alex. I can’t get it off my mind. Given all the possibilities, all the crap every one of us gets into during our lives, it boils down to misbehavior. I’ll bet you my life savings it was the jealous boyfriend.”

  “Life savings right now,” I said, “or when he’s convicted?”

  “There you go brother, playing the future. It always paid off for you. Have a good one. It’s cold here, since you asked. I gotta go to work.”

  I packed lightly and pocketed a point-and-shoot Canon before I walked to meet the pilot in front of the Eden House. For once I was able to break my travel routine and leave my heavy camera bag at home. Less to carry, but I paid the price. It was the first time in years that I traveled without that bag. For the next hour I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d left something back at the house.

  Rodney drove a Kia sedan shaped like the weird love child of a budget BMW and a Focus four-door. Design aside, I couldn’t fault the legroom. I blamed myself for not preparing in advance for rolling again past The Tideline. The condo would be there for the rest of my life. I needed to put it behind me, chill its association with Teresa Barga’s demise. Seeing it, however, reminded me of Tim’s arm’s-length indictment of Darrin Marsh. Also that I had forgotten to follow up with Wiley and Dubbie regarding schematics for the building’s security system.

  Ten minutes later Sherwin placed the card on his dashboard that allowed him to park inside the private flight facility’s chain link fence. Before we left his car, he said, “I know I look rough, but I’m fine. I say this because you’re trusting your life with me in the air, and my appearance is simply a laundry issue. My wife has been in Toledo this month tending to her dying daddy.”

  “I wasn’t alarmed,” I said. “Key West is not a place where you judge threads.”

  “Well, I also hope I smell more like Old Spice than a bar. I was in Captain Tony’s at 5:30 last night, all set to party late, when Beeson called me. I paid my tab, went home, ate a frozen dinner and slept well. This morning I found out that this shirt from yesterday was my only one that wasn’t clumped in the hamper. Ready to fly?”

  Inside the aviation office, Sherwin signed a fuel chit and did the paperwork that pilots do. We walked fifty yards down the tarmac, and I stood aside while he circled the aircraft and reviewed his exterior pre-flight check list. As he went about his task, he recited a standard charter pilot intro, “Our King Air 90 runs a Rockwell Collins Proline 21 avionics package. Our twin turboprops pull a cruising speed around 260 miles-per-hour, a maximum speed of 311. Horsepower to spare.”

  “I felt that power when you left Key West five days ago.”

  “You bet,” he said. “This King Air will fly fine on just one engine.”

  “Like a glider if both engines quit?”

  “No, altitude and a calculated glide slope can bring you down easy, improve your odds. Like any airplane, sure, if you lose control speed, it drops like a piano. That’s unlikely to occur during my career, but I’ve trained for it, of course.”

  “Why would it happen, bad fuel?” I said.

  “No, that’s rare. More like not enough fuel, which would be pure pilot error.”

  “Don’t gas gauges ever give false readings?”

  “It’s possible,” he said, “but I keep a fuel log with pencil and paper, my own brain, my own hand. I trust me.”

  “Best way to be.”

  “You were pretty cool that last time you flew with me,” he said. “Guess you don’t mind small planes.”

  “I learned to fly a Cessna 170 when I first got to Key West, long ago.”

  “You’re a pilot?”

  “Never licensed,” I said. “When I first arrived in town I was in the reserves, so I joined the Navy Flying Club. I logged about thirty-five hours, did my touch-and-goes here on runway nine back when there was no traffic at all. I flew my cross-country to Tamiami and Sebring. Hell, lessons were only twenty bucks an hour. My instructor flew for Air Sunshine, and moonlighted as an instructor.”

  “After all that prep, why didn’t you get your ticket?”

  “I was right next to broke. I couldn’t afford to go to Miami for the cram school. I couldn’t afford the motel, I couldn’t pay for the school. I sure as hell couldn’t rent a plane whenever I felt like it.”

  “But that license is freedom.”

  “I had nowhere to go, no reason to leave,” I said. “I already lived here. I moved to this island on purpose.”

  “I see your point,” said Sherwin. “But all knowledge is good, whether it’s riding a bike or mastering long division.”

  “It was fun at the time,” I said. “These days I’d be better off with a road map than an air chart, but I remember the basic principles. Do you mind if I ask the name of Justin Beeson’s friend, the person who owns this plane?”

  Sherwin looked baffled. “It’s owned by four plastic surgeons in Palm Beach. I doubt that he knows any of them. They lease mostly to people who write off their charters for business reasons.”

  “Does Beeson fly with you often?”

  Rodney made six or seven check marks on his clipboard then said, “Too often. Justin’s an odd bird.”

  “Afraid to fly?”

  “Petrified,” said Sherwin, “but even more afraid to admit it. I guess he thinks fear is unfashionable. I’ve always believed it’s what keeps me alive.”

  Sherwin hauled down the left-side swingdown door. We felt a rush of warm air escape the closed-up cabin, sun-heated on a tropical January morning. Inside, he pointed at the right side bulkhead. “That cabinet holds bottled water and snacks, should you care for any. That emergency exit handle? It’s number one on Beeson’s list of forbidden mentions. The last time we flew I kept quiet, but the girl and the woman knew how to use it. No one wants to spook Mr. Beeson.”

  He motioned me forward to the cockpit, asked me to take the right seat. Once he buckled in, he handed me a light headset with a mike on a skinny boom that looked like a knitting needle. “You’re welcome to wear this,” he said. “Your voice goes only to me. It’s not patched into broadcast.”

  I positioned my headset, and Sherwin said: “You’ve done pre-flight before, Alex. Check me for accuracy?” He handed me a copy of his check sheet.

  Hooked like a barracuda: “I’ll try.”

  Fat damn chance.

  The real dazzle began, and I tumbled through three harrowing minutes inside a fast, baffling video game with no control stick in my hand. The Cessna I had learned to fly was the equivalent of a Ford built in the 1930s. The King Air cockpit was a maze of high-tech gauges, buzzers, clashing chimes and multi-colored lights. Sherwin ran a new check list reciting aloud, “Left, right boost pumps, on. Master switch, on. Right engine start and ignition. Low idle.”

  I heard whistling to starboard, the gradual increase in RPM.

  “Starter off,” he said. “High idle. Right generator, on for a gen-assisted start. Low idle. Left engine start and ignition. Left starter off. High idle. Low idle, left. Inverter on. Avionics master on. Fuel transfer pumps on. Fuel crossfeed, auto. Fuel control, both on. Fuel vents, both on. With me so far?”

  “Maybe the first third of that,” I said.

  “We’re out of here soon. I saved our flight plan to my route list the last time we went to Sarasota.”

  He flipped a switch and two dozen gauges and LED screens came to life. Lights flashed along the rim of the dash. He worked through another list, pressing buttons, double-checking. I heard the tower, but couldn’t tell when the controller was talking to other aircraft instead of us. Sherwin answered every fourth or fifth query.

  When he asked for a weather report from KEYW, a speed-talker answered in five seconds: “Wind one-one-zero at seven, visibi
lity more than ten, sky condition few at two thousand; temp two-zero, dew point one-seven; altimeter three-zero-one-six and steady.”

  How did he remember all that? He requested departure and set his altimeter.

  The tower said: “Zero-six-foxtrot-foxtrot, to Runway 9 and hold short.”

  “Six-foxtrot to Runway 9 to hold short.” Sherwin powered the engines and we began to move forward, then swiveled left and started westward on the taxiway.

  He reached the end, swiveled right and said, “Ready on 9.”

  “Roger. Check for incoming, then clear.”

  Sherwin rolled to face east, pushed on the King Air’s power and focused on the runway’s center line. I felt like I was sitting on a bar stool perched on the nose of a dragster. Halfway down the runway Rodney eased back on the yoke. All three wheels lifted at once. With a solid, deep hum, we were airborne. Moments later I heard the soft squeal of hydraulics raising the landing gear as we left the broad air field and went to the realm of big water and small land.

  From the tower: “Six-foxtrot-foxtrot, turn zero-two-zero and climb to 4,000.” The voice gave him a frequency, instructed him to contact Miami Center and wished us a good flight.

  “Thank you,” said Sherwin. He tuned his radio for Miami, called and was granted a cruising altitude of 10,000 feet. From that point to altitude he watched his gauges more than the road ahead. It wasn’t until we reached about 5,000 feet that I realized that the morning had been hazy back on the island.

  Passing through 8,000 feet I pointed at weather to the northwest.

  “Too far away to affect us,” he said. “We’ll have clear air all the way into SRQ. It might get lumpy closer to land. Heat of the day.”

  I gave him thumb’s up, listened to the engine sounds, the constant, pulsing hum. I let my mind drift back to Key West, to the front door of 5 Brothers Grocery and my encounter with Sonya Timber.

  I had left Sonya out of my Beeson Way crime scene analysis. While logic told me that, with Anya’s help, she could have had access to the building, I couldn’t guess a motive for Sonya to hurt Amanda Beeson. Unless the twins had expanded the love making, turned it into a trapezoid. Or maybe Sonya wanted to reshuffle the triangle, cut Amanda out of the affair and form a scissor-sister arrangement that allowed her to quit working in a lumber yard. The more I thought about her, the more she fit. I wanted to suggest to Glenn Steffey her possible link to Amanda’s death. I pulled out my cell phone.

  “Good luck,”said Sherwin. “A cell tower in the Gulf of Mexico?”

  I looked down at my useless phone. A screen note told me I had a text message from Wiley Fecko that must have arrived while we were still on the ground, while Sherwin was revving his turboprops. I rarely initiate a text. The concept makes the phone companies look far too brilliant. They sell us a phone that sends and receives free email, then charge us extra to send typed messages over their phone line. What am I missing?

  “Found bronze Hyundai still on William St. Got tag number. Leased 5 days ago to R. Fonteneau of St. Petersburg, Fla. Same dude you described to Det. Watkins on phone 3 days ago. We will ramp up our look.”

  An opening, finally. A link between Ocilla Ramirez, the boss or business partner of murder victim Greg Pulver, and Robert Fonteneau, the man who had shared my taxi from the airport four days earlier, the Canadian who had come to the island to settle a dead friend’s affairs—presumably Emerson Caldwell’s—and who apparently showed a Florida ID to rent a car. Beth Watkins and Fred Liska needed this.

  “I pretty much know the answer in advance,” I said, “but is there any way to send a message over the radio?”

  “If it doesn’t pertain to operating this aircraft or reporting an emergency,” said Sherwin, “the FAA would not approve. Nor would the message be delivered.”

  Out of touch with the world and my mind had turned into a fountain of clues.

  I thought back to my lessons with Del, the Navy Flying Club instructor. He loved to fly west to Ballast Key, Woman Key, Man Key and the Marquesas. He claimed it was for stall training but he loved to sightsee. Every so often he would take control to dive low and chase sharks which I thought was stupid. At twenty bucks an hour I didn’t complain. I also hated practicing stalls though I knew it was fundamental to flying safely, but I loved the car that Del drove to the airport on our lesson days, an antique Chevy hardtop with a Corvette engine. It was a sleeper, a plain-looking car with hidden muscle. My enjoyment of cars like that since high school inspired me to own and drive the ‘66 Shelby that I had disguised as a beat-up Mustang.

  “Damn,” said Sherwin. “I’ve got port engine temp up, oil temp up, oil pressure down.” A scarlet LED on the dashboard lip triple-flashed at him. He pressed a button under it and the light flashed three times again. He pressed more buttons, pulled his procedures manual onto his lap and opened it to a tabbed section. He ran his finger down one page then a couple others. “This isn’t right, to overheat. The damned oil cooler must be leaking, but that’s next to impossible.”

  “Meaning what?” I said.

  “This is going to be an expensive trip, Rutledge, but not for us. The question is, do I let the engine run itself to death?”

  “If it really lets go, could it damage the wing?” I said.

  “Probably not,” he said, “but we’ll be okay if I shut it down to save it.”

  We started a slow climb. “Altitude is our friend,” he said, “just in case the other engine quits, and have to glide toward shore.” He called Miami Central to request 12,000 feet.

  I let him concentrate. He feathered his prop, shut down the port engine, then switched frequencies and identified himself to Sarasota-Bradenton. “We’ll be coming in with only one engine on line,” he said. “Two aboard. I don’t foresee a problem.”

  The tower came back: “We’ll keep an eye on you. Consider RSW, Fort Myers.”

  “I have it dialed in, thank you,” said Sherwin.

  “What’s that, a rescue service?” I said. “Are they going into emergency mode?”

  “Southwest Florida International Airport,” he said. “RSW is their identifier.”

  “How far away?”

  “We’ll fly within twenty miles of it,” said Sherwin, “but Sarasota’s only another forty-five from there. There’s also a smaller airport, Page Field, in Fort Myers, which they should have told me about first.”

  “You think anyone could have monkeyed with the motor or…”

  “No,” said Sherwin. “We can’t be thinking like that. It’s a minor stroke of shit luck, that’s all. A little extra work for the hired help.”

  He showed that work by the shifting in his seat, using his rudder pedals to hold our course, to control yaw, the pull to one side. “This can’t be right,” he said. “I’m seeing the same movement on the starboard engine’s gauges. Temps up, pressure down, but not as bad as the port side engine.”

  “And it’s not a gauge malfunction?” I said.

  “I don’t know… No, no,” he said.

  “Do we want altitude now?” I said, “or do we want to turn toward land?”

  “Oh, umm, land… but I don’t think I’m shutting down that right engine.”

  I sensed his absorption of our situation, his mind hurrying to sift the chances of a gauge malfunction versus the loss of both engines. He eased our heading eastward but his mouth hung ajar as if his brain had shut down with the port side engine.

  “Life jackets aboard?” I said.

  “Right behind your seat. There should be four inflatables.”

  I reached to pull out all four. No harm in doubling up the Day-Glo orange. “How about safety pamphlets or procedures to review?”

  Sherwin pulled a sheaf of photocopied pages from the back of his log book. “I’ve got to pay attention. Can you read this to yourself and tell me what pertains?”

  I skimmed the printout titled Offshore Ditching Procedures. Its intro paragraph gave basic stats on survival, facts meant, I supposed, to be encouraging. Odds wer
e better in a high-wing airplane. Not us, so I had no need to share that with Sherwin. The 82 percent survival rate of blue-water ditching rose to 88 percent in coastal and inshore waters. Comforting.

  “We can survive a splash landing,” I said, “but we could die trying to reach land and save the plane. What’s our stall speed?”

  “Right at 90 miles per hour,”said Sherwin. “If we crapped out, I’d add twenty to that until I saw the beach. Read me some more from those pages.”

  “Best to touch down into the wind and parallel to swells,” I said, reading almost word for word. “Most airplanes don’t flip, but dig in one wing, turn and settle upright or settle straight ahead with a bit of nose under the surface. Once in the water, stick with something big and visible. Search and Rescue can’t see swimmers. Don’t inflate your vest until you’re outside the plane. If you can see land from down in the water, swimming for it is okay.”

  “I’ll race you to the beach,” he said.

  “Unless there’s a coastal rip,” I said. “Does this plane have an automatic EPIRB?”

  “It’s called an ELT, an Emergency Locator Transmitter. It sends out an automatic 406 MHz beacon to GEOSAR.”

  The plane twisted right. I felt a surge, then heard a deep, crunching vibration. A rush of wind replaced the throbbing engine that had hauled us to altitude.

  Sherwin spoke the obvious. “We just lost starboard.” He pushed forward on his yoke, aimed us downward for about fifteen seconds, played it like a stall to ensure we could hold airspeed, then raised the nose to a glide angle.

  “Will your port side restart?”

  He checked his gauges, shook his head. “The temps are higher than when I shut it down. Right now it wouldn’t last two minutes. I’ll try it when we’re closer to land.” He punched buttons under the radio and keyed his mike. “SRQ, zero-six-foxtrot-foxtrot with both engines gone, squawking seven-seven-zero-zero.”

  “Roger, Foxtrot. Do you have enough electrical power to stay with us?”

  Sherwin said, “Affirmative.”

  “Redirect to Page Field, FMY, sir. Glide flaps up. Vector zero-seven-two, range twenty-two miles.” SRQ closed out by giving us the FMY tower frequency.