‘You’re not still barking up that tree? I told you, there’s no way—’
‘I’m not saying he’s one of the guys in the van. But if he’s around, if he’s suddenly come back after all this time, I think it’s worth talking to him, don’t you?’
‘I suppose.’
Evan would’ve liked a little more enthusiasm but that’s the way it goes sometimes.
‘Did you recognize anyone in the photo I sent you?’
Levi hemmed and hawed a minute before speaking.
‘I’m not sure. There’s a guy with his arm around a woman . . . but that photo has to be thirty years old. If it is the same guy who was at Lauren’s funeral, he’s twenty-five years younger.’
‘Gut feel, yes or no?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Evan made a mental note to phrase the question yes or no more clearly next time. It seemed he’d left it too ambiguous for Levi. At least it wasn’t a definitive no.
‘Don’t worry about.’
‘The email account’s all set up and ready to go,’ Levi said with a more positive note to his voice.
Evan wanted to see how things panned out talking to various people, David Eckert included, before he thought about trying to meet with the person Levi was convinced was Lauren.
‘Leave it with me. Did you dig out a photo of Lauren’s father yet?’
‘I forgot, sorry. I’ll find it and take a picture of it, then send it to you.’
They disconnected and Evan leaned across and got a pair of binoculars out of the glove compartment. He worked his way clockwise around the inner perimeter road, studying the hangars that lined it. Most didn’t have anything to identify them but he was hoping a business outfit like David Eckert’s would have a sign to advertise its presence.
He laughed out loud when he saw the name, knew he’d found the right place. Next to the hangar itself was a small office. The lights were on. At least one person was moving around inside.
Now all he had to do was get inside.
He put the binoculars away and sat staring at the card reader next to his open window. It wasn’t a sophisticated setup, like in an office block with buttons for each of the occupants. There was a button to push for assistance, that’s all. He pushed it. If he hoped a lazy security guard with his head stuck in the newspaper would open the barrier without looking, he was out of luck. There was no response at all. Not even a bored, yeah? He pushed it again but you can tell when a buzzer is sounding in an empty room.
He looked to the left, down the perimeter road as it curved away into the distance. Nothing. He looked right and saw a vehicle approaching, still about a quarter mile away. He stuck the car in reverse and backed away from the gate and to the side to allow the other vehicle access to the card reader.
A Ford station wagon made the same right turn he had and stopped in front of the gate. It was towing a long, low trailer with a hinged flap on the front and a vertical tail fin on the back, the sort of thing used to transport a sailplane. The end of the trailer hadn’t cleared the corner yet.
Evan picked up his phone from where he’d dropped it on the passenger seat. The driver’s window of the station wagon came down. An arm extended out of it, held a key card against the reader. The gate lifted and the station wagon pulled forward slowly. Evan saw the driver’s face in the side mirror as he watched to make sure the back of the trailer didn’t clip Evan’s rear fender. As soon as the trailer was clear, Evan pulled out behind it, leaving no more than a foot between his bumper and the trailer.
He held his phone to his ear as the station wagon stopped in front of him, the trailer halfway under the raised gate. The driver stuck his head out of his window.
‘Hey! You can’t do that.’
Evan opened his door and stepped halfway out, the phone still clamped to his ear.
‘Hang on a sec, David.’
‘You can’t do that,’ the guy said again.
‘Sorry. I’m here to see David Eckert. I was trying to save him from having to run over here and swipe me in.’
He transferred his attention back to the phone.
‘No, don’t leave just yet. There’s a guy who might let me in.’ He paused as if the non-existent person on the other end was talking. ‘I don’t know, let me ask him.’
He looked back at the station wagon driver who looked as if he was getting worried he might miss the thermals or whatever it was kept his toy plane up.
‘Sorry, what’s your name?’
‘Bob Whitt.’
‘Bob Whitt. You want to talk to him?’
Shit or bust time.
He held the phone towards Bob who was looking up at the sky, his forehead compacting. Bob stared at the phone. He’d have to get out of the car to reach it or Evan would have to move. Evan stayed put. It was all too much effort. Bob waved it away and mumbled something unintelligible under his breath, pulled his head back in. Evan jumped in his car before Bob put his foot down and left him stranded. He followed the trailer slowly, careful not to shunt it or leave too big a gap, only relaxing as his hood passed under the raised gate.
He was in.
Bob turned right, the opposite way to where he was headed. Perfect. The last thing he wanted was for him to have the hangar adjacent to David Eckert. So far, so good. The only remaining question was whether security had been watching the whole thing and would be hightailing it across the airfield to intercept him.
He drove slowly clockwise around the inner perimeter road towards the hangar. He hadn’t gone far before his question was answered. On the opposite side of the airfield, he saw a dark blue sedan moving fast in a counter-clockwise direction. He didn’t need his binoculars to read what was written on the side of the vehicle. Security. He imagined their excited faces as they raced towards their moment of glory intercepting a rogue Al-Qaeda cell driving a ‘69 Corvette Stingray.
Evan was closer to David Eckert’s hangar and office, but they were moving faster. If nothing changed, they’d intercept him before he got there. He dropped into second and hit the gas, Guillory-style. The car responded instantly, the tires spinning, then biting, the car surging forward.
His gaze flicked constantly between the hangar and the speeding vehicle. The tables had turned. He would get there first, but not by much. He hit the brakes too late, too hard, already turning the wheel to pull off the road. The back end lost it and swung around in a graceful arc, all the way through a hundred and eighty degrees, presenting the driver’s side full on to the rapidly approaching security vehicle.
The Corvette came to a gentle halt as the driver of the security car yanked the wheel hard left to avoid a collision. The car swung around the front of the Corvette and nose-dived, coming to a halt ten yards further on.
Evan was already out of his car. He ran across the tarmac to Eckert’s office, grabbed the door handle and turned it. Locked from the inside. Too late he saw the keypad next to the door. He hammered on it with his fist.
The next thing he knew he was trying to take a bite out of it. One of the security guards crashed into him like the air traffic control tower had fallen on him. Evan’s face smacked into the door, the pair of them tumbling to the ground. The second guard joined in and suddenly he was on his face on the ground, the two guards pinning him, trying to get his arms behind his back.
The door to David Eckert’s office opened. He took a step back as he saw the tangle of bodies on the ground in front of him. He started to close the door. It was no business of his.
‘Go back inside please, sir,’ one of the security men grunted through his teeth.
‘Mr Eckert! I need to talk to you,’ Evan yelled, half of it absorbed by the tarmac.
Everybody stopped at the mention of Eckert’s name. Maybe not Al-Qaeda after all.
‘You know this man, sir?’ the other guard said, his breath coming hard and fast.
Eckert ducked an inch to get a look at Evan’s face pressed into the ground.
‘Never seen him before.’
>
‘Eva Rivera gave me your name.’
The guards froze, waiting to see which way it was going to pan out.
‘I wanted to ask you about Lauren.’
Eckert nodded as if it all made sense now. The pressure on Evan’s back and arms relaxed. It was clear to the guards now that he wasn’t a terrorist, or if he was, he was a terrorist known to one of the legitimate users of the airfield. They pushed themselves to their feet, pressing Evan harder into the ground as they did so.
‘It’s okay,’ Eckert said. ‘I can vouch for him.’
The guards looked disappointed. It had been fun but it could have been so much more.
Evan got up, brushed himself down. One of the guards stood directly in front of him, giving him a hard stare, rent-a-cop style. He rested his fists on his hips, pushed his face into Evan’s. He looked like a fatter version of Charlotte getting ready to chew him out.
‘Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again, you understand?’
Evan shrugged a sort of acknowledgement.
‘I said do you understand?’
‘Yeah sure,’ Evan said. ‘I just didn’t want you looking in the trunk, finding the explosives I’m delivering to Mr Eckert here.’
Rent-a-cop’s eyes bulged. He couldn’t stop his head snapping around to look at Eckert. Eckert shook his head, nothing to do with me.
‘Bet you don’t try that smart-ass crap with the TSA guys,’ the guard said. ‘They’d have you in the back room touching your toes in no time.’
Evan grinned at him.
‘Yeah, and you’d be the guy with the rubber gloves. Quick tip for you. The gloves go on these’—he waggled his hands in the guy’s face—‘and not . . .’
He let the words hang unspoken in the air as he pointed at his crotch, then turned away before the guy’s head got any redder and exploded. Eckert indicated the open door to his office.
‘You could have just called ahead, Mr Buckley.’
He hadn’t mentioned his name.
‘Eva called you.’
‘Yes. She said she’d given my name to a private investigator. I thought you’d call me, not start a fight outside my office.’
Evan wanted to point out that technically he hadn’t started it, rent-a-cop had, but he knew what Eckert meant.
‘Were you hoping to surprise me?’
‘No, but I thought Eva might call ahead to—’
‘Warn me?’
Evan shrugged.
‘You might not have wanted to talk about Lauren, that’s all.’
Eckert opened his hands wide.
‘And now I have no choice. Unless I call security back, of course.’
‘Why not do that? If you want me wondering why you don’t want to talk about her.’
‘Because she’s dead. No amount of talking can bring her back.’
Evan walked across the room to look at a photograph on the wall. It showed a single prop aircraft in a clear blue sky, three people suspended in mid-air below it, arms stretched wide.
‘This is what you do, is it? Take people skydiving.’
‘The clue’s in the company name.’
‘Right. Jumpin Jake’s.’
Eckert nodded.
‘Jake was my business partner.’
‘Lauren’s father.’
‘That’s right. The name was his idea. It was a play on the Rolling Stones song Jumpin Jack Flash. It was very popular at the time. You’re too young to remember it.’
‘You kept the name without him.’
‘Why not? It’s got more pizzazz than Eckert’s Jump School or something boring like that.’
Evan studied the photograph of the plane, thinking about an alternative explanation that involved Jake Kincade never having gone away.
‘It’s a Cessna 208 Grand Caravan. They’re the most popular single-engine jump plane in the world. Takes twenty-one skydivers. People like them because they’re easy to jump from.’ He pointed at the plane’s wing. ‘You see the high wing. And it’s got a very large exit door.’
Evan was looking at the wide-open door, thinking he wouldn’t want to be next to it, parachute or no parachute.
‘Do you keep it open all the time?’
‘It’s closed for take-off for safety, to improve stability. Most of the time it’s opened again once you reach a thousand feet.’
‘Isn’t that dangerous?’
Eckert shrugged, real men don’t worry about stuff like that.
‘It gets hotter than the devil’s ass crack in there, especially in summer. If the plane’s full there are over twenty of you in there, all suited-up. And people still get nervous, especially the inexperienced guys. All that body heat pumping out, maybe somebody forgot to spray with deodorant, if you know what I mean. You wouldn’t believe some of the assholes you get. I’ve had jumpers re-open the door as we rolled down the runway.’
He shook his head sadly.
‘Anyway, by the time you get to a thousand feet, everybody’s thankful of a bit of fresh air.’
Evan reckoned they’d get more than enough fresh air on the way down, but what did he know.
‘Besides, they’re wearing seatbelts. Or meant to be.’
‘Some people don’t bother?’
‘It’s not like a car. It can be a lot of hassle to get it done up right. Maybe they’ve got something more important to do, like take a selfie on their phone. Hey, Mom, this is me right before I got killed in the plane crash. If someone’s not belted in and something happens, I’d just as soon not be squashed by someone who became a human missile. What it comes down to is some people don’t value their life very highly. Or the lives of everyone else in the damn plane.’
Evan felt as if he’d walked into a cross between a pre-flight safety lecture and a bunch of jump pilots fuelling their pet hates in the bar afterwards.
‘Sounds even more like something that’d be easy to fall out of,’ he said in an attempt to lighten Eckert’s deteriorating mood. He wished he’d never asked about the stupid door.
Eckert smiled.
‘Lucky you’re wearing a parachute then.’
‘Jake was the one who flew it, was he?’
‘I did too. Not anymore.’
There was something in Eckert’s voice as he said it, a hint of bitterness, like maybe he wasn’t allowed to fly any more. But that wasn’t all. There was sadness there too. Evan raised an eyebrow.
‘Too old,’ Eckert said in response.
It didn’t ring true but Evan didn’t see any reason to push it. Maybe he lost his nerve. And he hadn’t been wrestled to the ground by security to talk about Eckert.
‘Levi told me Lauren wanted to be a pilot.’
‘She was a pilot. She had a commercial certificate.’
The guy was playing with words.
‘Just not with you.’
Eckert turned away from the photograph, walked over to his desk and dropped into the chair behind it. Evan followed behind him and took the visitor’s chair.
‘It wasn’t what I employed her to do.’ He gave Evan a big grin, jabbed his chest with his thumb. ‘I’d like to have a go at being the President. Reckon I couldn’t make a bigger mess of it than any of the idiots we’ve had recently. But just because I want to, doesn’t mean I get to have my turn.’
‘He said it caused a lot of problems between them. He said you were taking advantage of her, dangling the carrot in front of her.’
Eckert leaned forward, put his elbows on the desk. All trace of the grin was gone, his mouth turned down.
‘Yeah, well that boy can keep his opinions to himself. He doesn’t . . . didn’t know what he was talking about. If he thought I was going to let Lauren go up in that plane’—he jabbed an angry finger towards the photo on the wall—‘after what . . .’
He threw himself back in his chair so hard it flew backwards into the wall behind him.
‘After what?’ Evan said.
Eckert shook his head, more to himself than Evan.
&nbs
p; ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘But—’
‘It’s not important. It’s ancient history.’
‘Was it because of all that stuff you were talking about? People opening the door when they shouldn’t, not wearing their seatbelts? You didn’t want to put her at risk because of some stupid asshole?’
They stared at each other a few beats. Then Eckert got a look on his face, the sort of look that said, okay, you asked for it, I’ll tell you why I wouldn’t let her fly. He opened his mouth to speak. But then the moment passed. He clamped it shut and the silence stretched out again. Evan was the first to break it.
‘Sorry. I don’t mean to open up old wounds.’
Eckert shook his head again, laughed sourly.
‘Maybe you should have thought of that before asking your questions, then. Is there anything else I can do for you?’
‘I’d like to show you something,’ Evan said and got out his phone and found the picture he’d taken of the photo in Eva Rivera’s hallway. He passed the phone to Eckert, who did a small, but noticeable, double-take.
‘That’s the photo in Eva’s hallway.’
‘Yep. I took it yesterday.’
‘Whatever for?’
Evan leaned forward and pointed to one of the men in the picture.
‘Do you know that man?’
Eckert gave him a you serious? look.
‘Don’t be a smart-ass. You can see it’s me.’
‘What about him?’
‘It’s Jake, even if you can only see the top of his head.’
‘Have you got a better photo of him?’
Eckert didn’t really hear him. He was staring at Evan’s phone. It trembled slightly in his hand. Evan had a good idea who he was looking at.
‘I said have you got a better photo of Jake?’
‘Probably. Somewhere. I don’t know where.’
Evan leaned across again. He pointed at the man with his arm around Kristina.
‘Who’s that?’
Eckert made a big show of looking more closely. He zoomed in and back out again. Evan let him play his games.
‘I can’t remember his name.’
He thrust the phone at Evan as if it had been dipped in radioactive waste. Evan took it and studied it himself.
‘It’s funny. There you are, and there’s Jake’—he pointed at each person as he identified them—‘who you can identify just from the top of his head, and there’s Kristina.’ He looked up sharply and was rewarded with a look of surprise on Eckert’s face before he got it under control. ‘And I’d be willing to bet there’s a good chance Eva was the one who took the photo. A big group of good friends. And yet neither you nor Eva can remember that man’s name.’ He jabbed the screen so hard it flexed.
Resurrection Blues Page 18