by Jan Burke
“You got to know Phil Lefebvre?”
“Lefebvre,” she said with disgust. “I suppose I should feel relieved, knowing that Seth’s murderer crashed his plane while he was trying to run away — and that his ass has been rotting on some mountainside all this time — which is almost enough to make me think about getting religion, because if that isn’t divine justice, I don’t know what is. But… but… it didn’t feel as good as I thought it would. And I think that must be in part because he still got away with destroying evidence and letting Whitey Dane roam around free as a damned bird.”
“Did he ever mention—”
“But that’s not the worst thing he did,” she interrupted. “You know what he did? Lefebvre allowed Seth to think of him as his friend. His friend! My son loved that man. Loved him. He’d rather have Lefebvre there than me — Seth made that plain enough. I understood. After the terrible things Seth went through on that boat, my son was scared. Who would protect him? Lefebvre. The man who had saved his life. The man who was in there, day after day, gaining Seth’s trust. Comforting him, helping him, talking to him. Seth didn’t care what he went through in that hospital as long as his good friend Lefebvre was there at his side.”
She leaned over the table and said angrily, “I would have to have Detective Lefebvre come back to life and kill him again and again and again and again to feel any better. Because I trusted him, too. And no one — not even Trent and his bimbo — ever betrayed my trust more terribly.”
She sat back suddenly and gave a short laugh. “I haven’t let you ask me a damned thing, have I? Go ahead — what can I tell you?”
“That last time you saw Lefebvre, was he agitated?”
“To say the least. He talked about leaving — I heard later that he spread some story around the police department about seeing a friend, but the friend didn’t know anything about it. Seth panicked, begged him to stay.”
“He communicated with Seth using a computer?”
She nodded. “I still have it.”
“You have it?” he asked, startled. He was sure he had seen the computer listed as evidence. “I thought—”
She blushed. “Well, Dale got it for me. I mean, he asked for it for me, and they released it to me. There were no fingerprints on it — at least not ones that could have proven anything — and everything was erased from it. But it was — I don’t know, the only way I could communicate with Seth during that time when it was just the two of us. My link to him. I wanted to keep it.”
“Has anyone used it since the night Seth died?”
“No, not unless it was someone in the lab. Dale was the one who checked it when they brought it in, and I don’t think anyone else worked on it.”
“Tory, sometimes files can be recovered even when it seems they’ve been erased. Would you mind if I had an expert take a look at the computer?”
“You really think they might be able to find something on it?”
“I don’t want to mislead you — they might not. And it has been a long time, so… I can’t promise anything. But I have so little to work with right now that I’ve got to try every possible means to recover evidence.”
She suddenly seemed uneasy. “There might be some private conversation on it.”
“There might be,” he agreed. “As well as enough information to prove once and for all who murdered your son.”
She didn’t jump at that, but sat quietly, watching him. Knowing she had long been convinced that Lefebvre had killed Seth, Frank was trying to come up with another way to persuade her when she said, “All right, I’ll bring Seth’s computer to you.”
“Thank you,” he said.
His surprise must have shown, though, because she smiled and said, “You’re wondering why I agreed.”
“Yes, I guess I am.”
“Because I had two children, Frank, not one. Seth talked to Lefebvre about that night several times — went over and over his description of Amanda’s killer and what had happened. If you can find files that have been erased, you might find those, too, right? I know it’s a long shot, but if you had that again, you might be able to do something about Dane, right?”
“I might,” he agreed, not thinking there was much hope in it.
“Good. What else can I do for you?”
“The other questions I have may be a little more difficult to answer, because you and Trent were divorced at the time of his murder,” he said. “I thought you might know if your ex-husband had any enemies other than Whitey Dane — does anyone come to mind?”
“Is someone else in on all of this, too? Hiding the evidence against Dane?”
“I’m just exploring every possibility.”
She frowned. “I guess everyone knew that one of the other commissioners had it in for him. Trent had embarrassed the guy. Let’s see, what was his name? Soury? No, that one was friendly to Trent. It was… Pickens! That was his name!”
“Michael Pickens?”
“Yes, he’s the one. I’ll ask Dale—”
“Actually, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.”
She looked puzzled.
“I know you must want to confide in your husband, and that’s perfectly understandable. But you’ve told me that he has contacts in the department, and word from those contacts could reach Commissioner Pickens—”
“As if Bob Hi — as if his friends in the department are the type to hobnob with commissioners!”
So Bob Hitchcock had called Britton. Acting as if he hadn’t noticed the slip, Frank said, “Even so — there is a difference between helping an investigation and interfering in an investigation. I cannot stress how important it is that you allow me to do my job without being concerned that the person I need to talk to has had time to prepare answers or that a former member of my department is involving himself in the process. I’m sure your husband’s motives would be the best, as would yours, but it will cause problems. I don’t want anyone to be able to get away with murder because we failed to follow the rules the courts have set down for us.”
“You mean — someone could get off on a ‘technicality’ because I talked to Dale?”
“The case might not even go to court if a D.A. believes there is a rogue investigation going on, or that someone who benefited from the deaths of your husband and children influenced the investigation.”
“Benefited!”
“That’s the way the court may see it.”
She crossed her arms, a mulish expression on her face. When he didn’t back down, she relented. “Oh, all right.”
His pager went off. Mayumi Iwata at the NTSB.
18
Tuesday, July 11, 1:15 P.M.
The Riverside Freeway
Several times during the ninety-minute drive to San Bernardino, Frank had to force himself to ease his grip on the steering wheel. He told himself to relax, that he didn’t know anything for sure yet, that Mayumi had simply asked him to come out to the hangar where Lefebvre’s Cessna was being studied. But he knew she would have told him about a simple finding of pilot error or mechanical failure over the phone.
Don’t jump to conclusions. But that, he thought, was like asking a three-packs-a-day man not to worry about being asked to come in for a second chest X-ray.
He tried to distract himself. He thought of calling Irene and decided against it. He hadn’t told her where he was going when he canceled his lunch with her. Although he wished Mayumi’s call had come an hour later, he knew Irene wasn’t adding the canceled lunch to her list of grievances — given their occupations, sudden changes in plans for reasons unprovided were commonplace. They had long ago accepted the fact that they could not always talk to each other about their workdays. They had prided themselves on respecting certain boundaries around their jobs. He knew she still hadn’t completely forgiven him for crossing the line.
On the seat next to him was the videotape Polly Logan had given him. He hadn’t managed to watch it again yet. He wanted to see it without Polly’s commentary, t
o study the people who had surrounded Seth Randolph at that time. He could have locked it in his desk drawer, but he felt strangely uneasy about doing so. He decided to keep it with him. He’d take it home tonight, watch it after going over to visit Bredloe.
Thinking of Bredloe make him think about the paper airplane, and he wondered if there were paper airplane experts. He knew there were paper airplane competitions, but was there some kind of national paper airplane association? It would be far from the most absurd organization he had ever heard of.
He remembered reading about an annual contest among local engineering students to make the best paper airplane. Maybe the man who attacked Bredloe had learned to make paper airplanes in college. It wasn’t hard to believe that a man with a background in engineering could have made the device that toppled the bricks.
Mayumi must have been watching for his car, because she was waiting for him just inside the hangar. She gave him a visitor’s badge, then led him to a large work area where the Cessna was being examined.
It was a sight that unexpectedly disturbed him. On the mountainside, he had seen the plane as little more than a vine-covered tomb and had been interested only in who and what had been buried within it. But now the plane itself was at center stage — Lefebvre’s means of escape held captive. Frank could not rid himself of the notion that he was viewing an autopsy. The Cessna stood gutted — stark, battered, lifeless — delayed from its final disposition for the sake of an examination. A lone corpse, its damage too demanding — distracting observers from the remaining traces of its former beauty.
What had failed? What had brought on the beginning of this end?
“It will be a while before we release any official report of our findings,” Mayumi said, “but I wanted you to know what we’ve learned right away.”
He heard the anxiety in her voice and gave her his full attention.
“We have many factors to consider in an accident investigation,” she said. “The pilot’s experience, his state of mind, his health. The plane itself, especially its maintenance.”
“The pilot is supposed to log all maintenance, right?”
“Yes. There are three required logbooks — the pilot’s log, the propeller log, and an engine and airframe log. If a pilot so much as replaces a screw on his plane, it should be logged. Some pilots are better than others at keeping records, of course. Lefebvre was meticulous. And, I should add, meticulous in the care of his aircraft. Routine maintenance was performed on or even ahead of schedule. He didn’t push a single component of this Cessna past its life expectancy. He took measures to ensure that this machine was in prime condition.”
“Irene — my wife — knew him. She told me he really loved flying, that it was what made him happiest. She also said he was cautious.”
“I can tell you that’s true without ever having met him. You could have guessed it from his logbooks. When we were first notified that he was missing, we looked up what records we could and talked to people who knew him — not just friends and family, but his mechanic, other pilots, and so on. So even before I read these logs, I already knew that he had many hours of both military and civilian flying experience — he knew what he was doing. The logbooks confirmed that, but they tell me more. They tell me that he wasn’t just a weekend flier. In fact, until the first week of June in the year of the crash, Lefebvre never let more than a few days go by without flying.”
“The first week of June?” Frank asked. “You’re sure of that?”
“Yes. There are no entries dated between June third and June twenty-first.”
“The attack on the Randolph family happened just before midnight on June third,” Frank said. “Lefebvre saved Seth Randolph’s life that night — in the early hours of June fourth, and he was with the boy almost constantly after that. Until Seth Randolph was killed — on the night of the twenty-second.”
“My God.”
“You’re saying he completely put aside flying during that period?”
“He completely put aside something he loved.” She gave a small shrug and said, “That’s not a term you’ll find in my report, of course, but — I’m trying to get a picture across to you. I want you to see the kind of care that went into this plane, the hours he spent in it — I’m telling you, it was a love affair. He put a lot more time into its upkeep than most men put into their marriages.” She smiled wryly. “Which may not be saying much. The man who taught me to fly told me that the reason pilots spend more time with their planes than their wives is that there are more women than P-51s.”
Frank laughed. “Oh, sorry. Being the female trainee of a man who valued vintage military aircraft more than women must have been a pain.”
“Nah,” she said. “I was used to it. He was my dad. Anyway, Irene was right — Lefebvre was a cautious flier. We know he checked the weather before he took off that night. We know he filled his tanks. He also had relatively sophisticated navigational equipment aboard this plane, and he clearly knew how to use it.”
“So you don’t believe it was pilot error.”
“That’s not why I told you all of that — but no, I don’t believe it was pilot error. I know why the plane crashed, but I wouldn’t have ruled out pilot error just because he loved to fly and did the maintenance. Pilots make mistakes — even experienced pilots. Or they become incapacitated — have heart attacks, strokes, you name it.”
“But you don’t think it was a health problem or you wouldn’t have paged me to come down here — so tell me, why did it crash?”
“Because someone else wanted it to.”
He said nothing — his mind quickly retracing steps over a path of implications he had hoped he wouldn’t have to consider seriously.
“You aren’t especially surprised, are you?” Mayumi said quietly.
He shook his head. “No, I guess I’m not. I’ve had nothing more to go on than the sort of thing you just talked about — gut feeling, mostly. I haven’t been able to make the pieces fit the way everyone in the LPPD seems to insist they do. Killing a teenage witness, going for a bribe — nothing in Lefebvre’s background matched up with that.” He paused, remembering his conversation with Yvette Nereault, of her unwavering faith in her brother. “Tell me more about what happened to the plane.”
“Let me back up a little,” she said. “When the NTSB starts an investigation, we’re concerned with more than determining the cause of any one crash — we study crashes so that we can improve safety. If there’s some design flaw or manufacturing problem in an aircraft, we want to know. When any aircraft crashes for unknown reasons, we notify interested third parties to the investigation — the aircraft manufacturer, the maker of the engine and of the propeller and so on. They help us to investigate. We send parts to them, they send field investigators to us.”
“That’s why the propeller and engine are missing?” Frank said, looking toward the plane.
“Right. Here — come over this way.” She walked toward a series of photographs pinned to a corkboard display. The first group was of the crash site and the plane as it was found there. “I put these up here to help explain it to you.” She pointed to the next group of photos — close-ups of the propeller.
“We start by looking at the propeller. Experts study the scratches on it — are they chordwise, spanwise, and so on. The scratches tell us if the plane was developing power at the time of impact and if the pilot had feathered the propeller.”
“Feathered?”
“Turned the windmilling blade into the wind, to reduce drag. When we took a look at Lefebvre’s propeller, we learned that he used that procedure and that the engine was not developing power.”
Frank looked at the next set of photos. “The engine?”
“Yes. We sent it back to Mobile, Alabama. To Teledyne. They were able to start it.”
“To start it! After it had been through a crash?”
“Yes. Not at all uncommon to be able to do that when the problem isn’t the engine per se. This one isn’t ba
dly damaged — only picked up a few dents. But look at these close-ups.”
“It looks as if there’s some charring,” he said. He glanced back at the photos taken of the wreckage in the mountains. “But no sign that any other part of the plane caught fire. Was this one just local to the engine?”
“Yes,” she said approvingly. “A small engine fire. That will be important later. It’s the only thing that saved your evidence.”
He looked at the next group. “The carburetor?”
“Yes. And that’s where we found our molasses.”
“Molasses?”
She moved to a table and picked up a glass vial. She held it up to the light so that he could see the small amount of crusty brown material in it. “Most of this went to the lab, but I saved a little to show to you. I thought it might be oil varnish at first, but I sent it in for identification. It’s sugar.”
“The fire caramelized it?”
“Right. Without that, we might not have found it. Over ten years, moisture might have washed it out.”
“So someone dumped sugar into his fuel tanks?”
“That seems to be the case. He flew for a while, and then the lines started to clog. It fouled the carburetor and the engine coughed to a halt. That bit of hardened sugar tells us what caused the crash, but we have another indication that someone tampered with his plane.”
“In case the sugar didn’t work?”
“The second has nothing to do with causing a crash, but may have a lot to do with the amount of time the aircraft was missing — the emergency locator transponder. It sends out a signal for a number of hours if certain g-forces are applied — which happens in a crash. If the ELT had been working, we might have been able to locate the plane shortly after it went down. I’m not saying that was guaranteed — especially since he was in rough terrain. But an ELT can certainly help. Lefebvre’s ELT was externally mounted. So someone could have tampered with it.”