Uncontrolled flight, p.24
Uncontrolled Flight, page 24
“Nothing that I’ve heard. Not yet.” She cursed herself for doing so little with the lead she’d been handed, and decided to offer a partial truth. “I do know that the trim motor, the rods, the whole damned assembly got trashed by the impact. There’s no way to know what position the trim tabs were in when the plane went down. Without that, it’ll be hard to say whether the trim had anything to do with it.”
“Shit.”
“Don’t worry,” she said quickly. “Your statement about what Rafe said that morning, about the plane not handling right, it still carries weight. It’d carry more if someone else had heard it too.”
“Well, no one did.” He frowned at the table. “It was just him talking to me.”
“Lyndon and Roy will likely re-interview the AMEs on duty that day, the day before too, when Rafe first thought the trim was off. He could’ve mentioned it to someone else that you’re not aware of.”
“Doubtful.”
“Why? If he had concerns, the logical thing would be to report them to an AME.”
“Maybe. But I’m pretty sure he didn’t tell anyone.” Will looked around the boardroom, its beige decor uninterrupted apart from the TSB logo on one wall and the flat-screen TV at the front. It was the quintessential government space: clinical, drab, featureless. There were times, as Nathalie daydreamed through meetings, training, and videoconferences, when she imagined sneaking in one night and spray-painting the walls orange and pink, streaking them with graffiti, anything to relieve the stupefying blankness.
“Listen,” Will said, “I accept that you guys are the experts. But I’m telling you, something was wrong with that plane and Rafe knew it. He should’ve listened to his gut. No one knew that old beater like he did. The sooner you get past pilot error and start looking for something mechanical, the better.”
Pilot error: it always came back to that. It was the cause that no one who cared about, lived with, worked with, or respected a dead pilot would ever willingly accept. Nathalie could list a dozen recent crashes that stemmed from a misstep on the operator’s part, yet those left behind refused to acknowledge it. No matter how iron-clad the evidence, their husband/son/brother/boyfriend/co-worker was always the best-trained, safest pilot in the skies; he could never make a mistake that would destroy an aircraft and end people’s lives. Naturally Will, who had worked a long time with Rafe and by all accounts looked up to the man, wanted to absolve his partner of responsibility. Who could blame him? Nathalie wanted the same thing.
“What makes you think anyone’s looking at pilot error?”
“Come on, everyone knows it’s your main theory. The word’s out, and not just at West Air. Some Conair pilots I talked to yesterday heard the same thing. They kept asking me was Rafe distracted, was he fatigued, that kind of horseshit.” He shook his head, anticipating her question. “I didn’t tell them jack about the trim. I said he was at the top of his game as far as I could tell and left it at that. But that’s why I’m here. Why is everyone stuck on pilot error when there’s a mechanical problem staring you in the face?”
A wave of fatigue washed over Nathalie. What was she doing? She had her hands full enough with the R22. Maybe she should cut her losses and send Will directly to Lyndon and company.
“Listen,” she said, “I can go back to the guys and ask them to keep looking, but it’d be better if you talked to them yourself. You’ll have to eventually. Whether or not they find any evidence to back what you’ve said, they’ll want to take a proper statement and ask you questions of their own. Why put it off? You could move things along by talking to them now.”
“No.” Will folded his arms. “I told you, I’m not dealing with those callous bastards. At least you knew Rafe. I’m dealing with you.”
She was sick of his pointless stubbornness. “Look, I’ve made it as clear as I can. You cannot deal with me on this investigation. I am not allowed to get involved.”
“What do you mean, not allowed? I can see not wanting to trespass on each other’s territory, but not allowed? That sounds harsh.”
Nathalie exhaled slowly. As far as she was concerned, the meeting was over. She no longer wanted Will’s story as a bargaining chip, especially when she had no idea what the chip was worth or how to play it. She’d come clean to Lyndon on Monday, tell him Will had contacted her but she’d been so immersed in the R22 that she’d been slow to forward the information. Honesty really was the best policy. Not one of her grandmother’s sayings, but it had merit on occasion.
“Not allowed, as in out of my jurisdiction.” She stood up. “It’s good of you to take the time to come by, but —”
“You know, it was not remotely easy for me to come here today.” Will stood up too. “I’m supposed to be on call with the rest of the crew in Kamloops, but I asked for a couple of days off, special consideration in light of the recent tragedy, yada, yada. I want this crash looked into properly, not swept under the carpet with a bunch of other so-called pilot error incidents just because it’s easier that way.” His eyes burned with something deeper than stubbornness.
“I assure you, the TSB is taking this crash very seriously. No one’s looking for an easy way out. If there was a mechanical problem we want to find it, but it won’t happen fast. You called me one week ago. That’s a blink of an eye in TSB time.”
“Fine. But you know, I’m interested in time too. I don’t want a couple of know-it-all investigators wasting it looking in the wrong place. Rafe was an excellent pilot, one of the best in the country. He was flying a routine circuit when he went down. There is no way he messed up.”
“I’ll tell the others what you said. First thing Monday morning. Now let’s call it a day.”
Will took a few steps toward her. “I know you’re humouring me. But I am sure of this. I’ll stake my life on it. Rafe did not make any mistakes that day.” He held her gaze, a final, unwavering plea.
Together they returned to the reception area, where the late-afternoon sunshine streamed through the plate glass window. It lit the low table with its fan of government publications. It lit the three armchairs, two of them empty, and in chair number three, Lyndon.
Nathalie flinched as he unfurled himself. The slanted sunlight cast half his face in shadow and accentuated his height.
“Hello, Will,” he said.
“Oh. Hey.”
“It’s Lyndon, Lyndon Johnson. Remember? I interviewed you a couple of weeks back.”
“I remember.”
“So what’s up?” Lyndon asked pleasantly. “Nathalie? What were you and Will discussing?”
In her peripheral vision Nathalie saw Luanne in front of her monitor, toiling over … what? No computer-based task could command that woman’s attention on a Friday afternoon, especially not while high drama unfolded on her private stage.
It was pointless to pretend. “Let’s all have a chat,” Nathalie said. “Not here. The warehouse. We need to look at the wreckage.” She turned just as Luanne looked up from her screen, disappointment pinching her features. Nathalie had seldom liked this cantankerous woman less. “Luanne, we’ll be out back if anyone’s looking for us.”
“It’s Friday, for Pete’s sake,” Luanne stated loudly. “Everyone’s gone home. And that’s where I’m going too, thirteen minutes from now. If you take longer you’ll have to lock up and alarm.”
“You leave whenever you need to.” Lyndon treated Luanne to a dazzling smile. “Nathalie and I are old hands. We’ll close up. Now.” He turned to the others, smile gone. “Let’s go.”
Bound in silence so tight it could snap, they made their way to the warehouse. Nathalie’s mind raced. Lyndon’s tirades were typically superficial and short-lived, the yapping of an irksome dog. Whenever he went cold and terse, he was ready to bite.
Will stopped inside the doorway. A hangar full of burned-out fuselage, blackened engine parts, and twisted metal was a sobering sight for any first-time visitor, but more so for a pilot. This aviation boneyard was a flyer’s nightmare come true. Nathalie wondered: was it wise to bring Will face to face with his partner’s coffin?
The Tracker hunkered in the far corner, sooted up from the fire that had engulfed the plane once it hit the ground. The distinctive orange and white of West Air showed in patches through the black, especially on the wing that had sheared off and lay to one side on the concrete floor. The largest chunk of fuselage contained what was left of the cockpit. The windshield was gone, as were both side windows. The space between the smashed instrument panel and the canted-over pilot’s seat was little more than a crack, compressed by impact to a sliver-sized opening, no room for a child let alone a weightlifter. It was a story whose ending could not be glossed over.
“Jesus Christ,” Will breathed.
“Not an uplifting sight. It never is.” Lyndon chuckled drily. “It’s always a closed casket with these guys. Just be glad it wasn’t you.”
Will whipped around. “You fucking asshole, I’ve had it with you! You may not give a shit about this crash or the person in it, but I do. He was my partner. He fucking died. Right there, right inside there.” He jabbed a finger at the remains of the cockpit. “Show some respect, would you? Even if you don’t mean it, just pretend for two minutes like he’s a real person, not some statistic in your annual report. Otherwise I’ve got nothing to do with this investigation from now on.”
“At ease, captain.” Lyndon looked faintly amused. “No disrespect intended. I agree with you. It’s no way for a man to end up.”
“I wanna know what the fuck you’re doing about it.”
“We’re looking at all the possibilities —”
“Fuck the possibilities. I wanna know what you’re doing about the trim issue.”
“Trim issue?” Lyndon’s eyebrows tented up. “Perhaps you could elaborate.”
“What I told her last week.” Will nodded toward Nathalie. “Rafe saying the trim felt sticky when he adjusted it. What do you think I’m talking about?”
“Last week?” Lyndon turned to Nathalie. “I wouldn’t know, would I? Ms. Girard … well, she hasn’t seen fit to share.”
A moment of silence, an eternity. She glanced at Will’s face, incredulous, and Lyndon’s, frozen in fury. She prayed for inspiration. None came.
“I was going to tell you,” she said finally. “But you know how busy I’ve been with the R22. There hasn’t been time.”
“Yes, of course. Let me think for a moment.” Lyndon stroked his chin. “Did I not see you every day this week except for Tuesday and Wednesday, when you were in Victoria? Did we not have lunch together, oh, yesterday? Were we not standing together right there” — he pointed to the R22 wreckage in the opposite corner — “roughly one hour ago while I handed you the key to your own investigation? And there was no time for you to return the favour?” He addressed Will. “Tell me, captain. Does that sound right to you? No time to tell me? Does it sound believable?”
Will was slack-jawed, half a step behind.
Nathalie rushed to answer. “I know it’s lame, but it’s true. Whenever I thought of telling you, you weren’t around. When you were around, we talked about other stuff and it slipped my mind.”
“And those times when you thought of it, you didn’t have access to, let us say, a telephone? Text messaging? Electronic mail? Ah, the modern-day modes of communication, so helpful yet so easy to overlook when one is busy.” Again he spoke to Will, as if to enlist his support. “No access to a pen and paper even, to compose a brief note?”
She winced. The more enraged Lyndon got, the colder and more formal his speech. There was no way out now and she knew it. She cursed herself for holding on too long, for once again fucking up.
Lyndon smiled thinly. “Mr. Werner, why don’t you just start from the beginning. Tell me word for word what you told Nathalie last week and I’ll take it from there.”
Frowning, the pilot recounted it all: Rafe’s comments about the trim sticking slightly the day before; Rafe’s walkaround the morning of the crash, which turned up nothing obvious; Will’s belief that a trim malfunction or runaway trim might have led to the crash. As Lyndon listened, he grew fixed and still, a heron eyeing its prey.
When Will was done, Lyndon motioned him to the rear section of fuselage. “See this?” He pointed inside the tail. “This is the trim motor and what’s called the actuator assembly, the bellcrank and rods and so forth that operate the trim tabs. It was all like this when we recovered the wreck, smashed to bits. We had a look at it ages ago, but it’s useless to us. There’s no way to tell what position the trim tabs were set to just before the crash, no way to determine if the system was functioning properly, nothing.”
“I know.” Will nodded. “She explained that to me before, in the boardroom. But it was such an old airplane, and the way he just clipped the trees, it makes no —”
“Nathalie told you about the trim system? Just now, in the boardroom?”
“Yeah. I get that part —”
“Let me get this straight.” He stared at Nathalie as he spoke. “She not only took down your statement and kept it to herself, but she also came in here, examined the wreckage, and discussed her findings with you? Do I have that right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Why, Mr. Werner, do you think Ms. Girard would do that?”
“She’s an investigator, she was investigating —”
“No, no, no.” Lyndon wagged his forefinger as if chiding a schoolboy. “She is not investigating this particular crash. In fact, she was expressly ordered to stay out of it. So tell me, why do you think she would get involved anyway, and go to such lengths to keep this involvement a secret from the rest of us? Come on, captain. Any theories?”
“How the hell should I know? I guess because she knew Rafe? That’s why I went to her. Unlike the rest of you, she might actually give a shit.”
“Yes.” Lyndon’s eyebrows shot up. “Yes, indeed. She knew Rafe. She gave a shit about him, as you put it. Intriguing, yes? The interesting question is, how well did she know him?”
“I don’t know. They’d met. That’s all I know.”
“They had met. That’s one way of putting it.”
Nathalie burst in. “What are you talking about? What does this have to do with —”
Lyndon whirled to face her. “You know very well what I’m talking about. In any of these … these discussions you had with my witness about my investigation, did you tell him how well you knew the deceased pilot? How many times you had met him? Were you upfront about that particular detail? Because you’ve certainly not been upfront with the rest of us.”
“Listen, you’re overreacting. I get that you’re angry —”
“Overreacting? No, I don’t think so. What I think is that you would say anything, now that he’s dead, to make it seem like you had nothing to do with it.”
Will stared at her.
Breathe, Scrapper, she told herself. Just breathe.
“Come on, Lyndon. Have you lost it? Of course I had nothing to do with it.”
In one quick move Lyndon had her, his hand like a vise on her arm. Hot rage rolled off him. “You had everything to do with it.” Spittle flecked his lips. “You think I don’t know, but I do. I know why Rafe made bad decisions that day. I know why his mind was not on his job. That man’s marriage was falling apart because of you.” He bent lower. “You thought you were so careful, didn’t you? That no one would find out. Well, you were wrong.”
He let go her arm and made to leave. Then he turned back. “It is typical of you, you know. You are so caught up in your self-centred world. You have no clue about the people around you. You think we’re invisible, that we’re not really here. You think we don’t see. Well, I am here. And I do see.”
His footsteps rang out as he crossed the warehouse and banged the door shut.
Nathalie sneaked a look at Will. He stood by the plane’s tail, hands in his pockets, face unreadable.
“God, I don’t know what that was all about. Obviously I should’ve told him a lot sooner about your call. My fault.”
Will said nothing.
“He’ll calm down. He just needs time. He’ll look into your story. Just because the trim assembly is smashed, that doesn’t mean it’s the end of it.”
Will slumped. He looks so young, she thought, like a sad little boy. “Is it true?” he asked.
“Of course it is. Lyndon will tell Roy everything you said and they’ll work the scenario from a few different angles —”
“Don’t jerk me around.” The boyishness vanished. “You and Rafe, is it true?”
“Well, yeah. I knew him. We were … casual. You could say casual friends. We hung out sometimes after work.”
“You were fucking him.” Even in the glare of the fluorescent lights, he did not blink.
“No. God, no. It wasn’t like that. It was complicated —”
Before she could finish he walked away, leaving her alone in the cave of a warehouse, ruined air tanker by her side, unforgiving lights burning overhead.
Twenty-Seven
Eighteen weeks after
What was it like when movies and TV shows switched from black-and-white to colour? You’d be used to that flat pencil look because that’s all you ever had, right? Then boom, the full spectrum of shades. One change and everything you see is rich and saturated and you realize how deprived you were before.
That’s how it’s been for me these past two weeks. It’s not just colour — there are tastes and smells too. And feelings. If The Counsellor was still on the scene, I’d finally have something to tell her. The days up to now were like outlines of days, I’d say, and now they are filling in.
Sharon. I say her name and this sensation shoots through me, kind of like ownership, though not in a creepy “you belong to me” way. More like her name is mine to speak, like she is mine to think about. I’m allowed. And she is mine, at least for the moment. My unplanned, never would’ve thought it, deep dark secret.
Sharon Mackie. For ten years she’s been on the sidelines, a face in a photo, hardly real, and suddenly she’s the realest thing I know. Even when she’s not with me I can taste her salty citrus flavour. I can feel her hips press into me. I can see her slip off her clothes, shy, like she’s not used to showing her body, and at the same time daring; her eyes stay on mine, sure and on fire. Her face warms mine, her skin forces me to touch it, I hear her whisper, like she’s afraid to say it, that I should go inside her. I think of her, I say her name, and she appears in all her beauty. Not a photo or a dream. Real, even when she’s not there. A connection with life, my first in a long time. A step back from death.
