“God, I wish we knew, and could explain, how Marty lost control and dug a wingtip.”
“Speed had nothing to do with causing that. Well, I mean, I’m no flyboy, but the research does show that despite Butterfield’s statements, there was, in fact, a credible chance he could have made it, primarily because two thousand feet of Runway Seven had not been plowed further and would have provided back-door braking. That changed the equation. That uncertainty is a tiny thread, admittedly, but it’s sound.”
“So, you’re happy?”
He snorted, a twisted smile on his craggy face.
“HELL no! I’m never happy until double jeopardy attaches and my defendant is acquitted. Then I’m not happy ‘til I’m paid.”
“You’re a curmudgeon, Joel!” she teased.
“And that’s why you love me!” he replied.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Present Day — September 10
Police Department, Denver International Airport
Being summoned away from the courtroom at the height of a murder trial was both a relief and a worry; an uneasy balance between the targets of his curiosity.
Scott Bogosian glanced at his watch, which proclaimed him ten minutes early for the appointment that the chief of police of Denver International Airport had requested. Scott sat back and let his thoughts slalom freely around the last two days of Marty Mitchell’s trial, noting that his dislike of Grant Richardson had increased markedly. Maybe it was disgust that a pilot was being forced to fight for his freedom for doing his job imperfectly, a perception that triggered a feeling Scott did not want: a sense of common cause with the pilot. Or perhaps it was the smarmy intensity of the practiced litigator and the constant feeling that Richardson was sneering at anyone who did not believe Mitchell should be drawn and quartered without further ceremony.
Those, of course, were not the words Richardson had unleashed at the jury. His opening statement had been full of righteous indignation about a paid servant of a company with smarter people at the helm who had issued the gospel according to Regal Airlines, and the unbelievable, unforgivable act of the renegade captain to reject that wisdom. It was, Richardson said, open and shut, and the jury would find it very easy to dispense with the case by voting quickly for a guilty verdict. The rest, he warned, would be smoke and mirror verbiage from the defense solely designed to pull the jury off target. After all, he told them, the defense has no defense.
“It’s terribly simple, folks,” Richardson had said, as if talking to a tight team of intellectual equals about to be egregiously bored by morons, “…the law… The Law… okay? The law says, with crystal clarity, that when someone in this state knowingly causes the death of another, that person is guilty of second degree murder. ‘Knowingly’ means that you are informed that if you do a particular thing, it will cause a death, but you do it anyway, and, indeed, a death occurs. You’re then a murderer. No if’s, and’s, or but’s. No qualification. And that is precisely what the state will show: that pilot in command Martin Mitchell did something he was informed in no uncertain terms would, in fact, cause the death of at least one other human. He rejected that wisdom and did what he was told not to do, and sure enough, people died. End of case. Guilty is your only possible verdict.”
“Mr. Bogosian?” a uniformed officer was leaning over him.
“Oh! Yes. Sorry.”
“The chief wants to know if you can wait about fifteen minutes while he deals with a routine emergency?”
“Sure,” Scott replied, wondering exactly what emergencies could be considered routine at a major airport.
He settled back in the waiting room chair, recalling the look and the smell of the huge tire he had been inspecting so carefully in the nearby warehouse days before. Whatever had gouged the extremely tough rubber had gone from front to back along the left side of the tread. It was no more than a quarter of an inch deep, but the question that was bothering him most was whether the tire had touched something prior to the launching of Flight 12, or something moments before the crash.
Scott had leaned in to get as close a look as his eyes would allow and by playing the flashlight around the cut, began to realize what he was staring at: a small amount of colored substance along and embedded inside the cut. It looked for all the world like flecks of yellow paint, but just a small track of it.
Scott had glanced around furtively, verifying that the NTSB investigator who had been his willing host was elsewhere for the moment. He pulled an envelope from the inside of his jacket… another overdue bill, but the envelope would do. Using a penknife, he scraped as much of the yellow substance as he could into the envelope and quickly stowed it and the penknife before standing.
“Really fascinating,” Scott said, his voice causing his host to turn around some thirty feet away where he’d been inspecting a part of the broken fuselage.
“I’d like to see the top of the right wing over there, if I could,” Scott added.
“Sure,” the investigator replied, turning and waving him into motion. “It’s an incredible sight, how that Beech fuselage rammed itself into the wing structure without taking out the wing spar and collapsing the wing. There’s no way they should have stayed attached with them flying for over a half hour at such a speed. In fact, there’s no way anyone should have survived such a midair collision to begin with.”
Twenty minutes later, emerging into bright daylight, Scott had thanked the man profusely before lofting a final question.
“There’s no yellow paint used on the runways here, right? No surface signage?”
“Not that I know of. That’s a rather odd question.”
“Just curious. I get these little dangling facts sometime that don’t fit the mosaic.”
To Scott’s relief, the investigator considered the remark too far out to pursue. He decided to let it go, probably wondering if anyone could explain how reporters think.
Scott remembered not a moment of the drive back to town, but he recalled clearly obsessing over the incongruities. He knew the airport and its equipment well. No yellow paint was used on the snowplows, or the airport supervisory trucks. Yellow was used on all the fire trucks and fire command cars, but according to Josh Simmons, absolutely all of the fire and rescue equipment had been well accounted for as Regal 12 flew over.
So, where was the source of the gouge and the yellow paint? What could that tire have grazed? Maybe this, too, was nothing — but the loose-end aspect of it wouldn’t leave him alone, especially since he’d read at least five times the transcript of the NTSB’s interview with the captain:
NTSB: Captain Mitchell, you say a bright light appeared just in front and to the right, startling you.”
MM: Yes. I couldn’t tell if it was like headlights or a single light but something clearly was in the way, on the runway, at the last second. I figured it was a snow plow in the wrong location and to understate things, I did not want to hit it.
NTSB: The First Officer has reported to us that he did not recall seeing such a light.
MM: Maybe he didn’t. I did. Things were happening very, very fast at that speed.
NTSB: But Captain, if a vehicle was on the runway and its lights on sufficient for you to see, and if the copilot was looking out as well, why would you have been the only crewmember to see it?
MM: You guys calling me a liar?
NTSB: Certainly not, Captain Mitchell. We’re trying to…
MM: There was a light from something down there right in front of us and it would have been potential suicide to continue descending into it.