“Time for you to go back to sleep.”
I kissed her, said I’d be back as soon as I could, and eased out of bed.
Streeter and I rendezvoused on Emerald Bay Road, south of town, at a log cabin with a big wooden sign out front that said, “Steve’s Coffee Shop.” Virtually everything inside — tables, ceiling, walls — was made from, or covered with, tongue-and-groove planks of knotty pine. Yogi Bear would’ve felt right at home.
The waitress was a grizzled blue hair easily as ancient as my landlady, Mrs. Schmulowitz. She called Streeter, “Matty,” in a raspy voice that bespoke a lifetime of inhaling cigarette smoke. He ordered coffee, biscuits and gravy, with bacon on the side, extra crispy. Then she turned to me with pad and pen poised.
“And for you, sweet cheeks?”
“I’m good with coffee, thanks.”
“You got it, Pontiac.”
Streeter watched her shuffle off toward the kitchen.
“That’s Ruby,” he said. “She used to own the place. Sold it to her stepson a couple of years back. He can be kind of a jerk sometimes, but he cooks the best flapjacks this side of Reno.”
I pressed my fingers to my eyes and rubbed, still trying to wake up.
“Deputy Woo tells me you came up to Tahoe to get married. Congratulations. You must be very excited.”
“You didn’t roust my butt out of bed at zero dark to congratulate me on getting married, Deputy. So why don’t you just spill it.”
“You get right to the point, don’t you?”
“One of my many character flaws.”
Except for two truckers wolfing down sausage and scrambled eggs at the counter, we were the only customers in the place. But that didn’t stop Streeter from glancing nervously over my shoulder, then his, then leaning in closer, to make sure nobody could hear him.
“There’s something real weird going on with that airplane up there,” he said.
“Aside from the mummy in the pilot’s seat and the dead kid, you mean?”
Streeter nodded. He started to say something, then hesitated. “I don’t know if I should tell you this.”
“If you didn’t want to tell me whatever it is you ‘shouldn’t tell me,’ Deputy, we wouldn’t be sitting here.”
He inhaled and let his breath out slowly. The old waitress brought over two coffees in heavy white ceramic mugs.
“Cream’s on the table if you need it, honey.”
Streeter gave her a small smile and waited for her to move off.
“It’s about that airplane,” he said. “What kind did you say it was again?”
“A Twin Beech.”
“A Twin Beech, right.” He ran a palm over his mouth. “I have reason to believe the government’s hiding information on it.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You know that plywood from the crate, the piece that was outside the plane?”
I nodded.
“After you left, I turned it over.” He fished a smartphone out of his jacket pocket, tapped the screen a few times, then handed it to me. “That was on the side that was lying in the snow.”
There was a photo on the phone’s screen, a close-up showing a stencil that had been burned black into the plywood. It read:
SSFL
Property of US Government
Extreme Caution When Handling
“I did some digging,” Streeter said, spooning sugar into his coffee. “SSFL stands for Santa Susana Field Laboratory. It was a federal research facility. They operated in the hills outside Los Angeles, way back in the 1950s. Classified top secret.”
“They designed rocket fuel.”
He looked at me. “You’ve heard of it, then?”
I shrugged.
“Figured you might’ve, considering your background.”
“My background?”
Streeter clearly hadn’t restricted his digging to the Santa Susana lab.
“You were tied up in a homicide investigation a year or so ago, back in Los Angeles County,” he said. “I saw a newspaper story online. It said you and the victim used to work together in the intelligence community. Some big hush-hush assignment. It said you threatened to punch out a reporter who came snooping around, wanting confirmation. That true?”
I sipped my coffee and said nothing.
Streeter half smiled. “That’s what I thought.”
He told me that his forensic investigators could find no wallet on the pilot who’d died at the controls of the Twin Beech. Without an airman’s certificate or driver’s license, there was nothing readily available to identify him. Moreover, the serial number on the .45-caliber pistol stashed in the dead man’s coat pocket had been filed off, rendering the gun all but untraceable.
“But that’s not the weirdest part,” Streeter said.
“And that would be…?”
“The Federal Aviation Administration has a web site.”
“That is pretty weird, considering how Neanderthal the FAA is.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I let him finish.
“The FAA maintains a registry of every plane ever built in the United States. I inputted the tail number to see who owned it and find out when it was reported missing. All I got back was, ‘File access restricted.’ ”
Streeter said he promptly called the FAA’s twenty-four hour operations center in Washington, identified himself as a sworn member of law enforcement, and explained that he was actively investigating a homicide. Whoever he spoke to, he said, told him he’d have to write a formal letter of request for any information and send it by registered mail. The request would be reviewed by staff counsel. He could expect a response in six to eight weeks.
“I told her that was unacceptable. She couldn’t have cared less.”
“Consider yourself lucky. For the FAA to respond to anything in six to eight weeks, we’re talking world-record pace.”
“You’re a pilot,” Streeter said. “You tell me: why would they restrict any information on a plane that’s been missing that long, let alone an entire file? It’s like they’re hiding something.”
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Ruby brought over a white china plate with five thick strips of hickory-cured bacon and set it down in front of Streeter.
“Matty always likes to eat his bacon first, before anything else,” she explained to me. “He’s an eccentric, this one.”
“I just don’t like getting maple syrup on my bacon, that’s all,” Streeter said.
She gave him an affectionate peck on the top of his head and shuffled outside for a quick smoke, lighting up a Virginia Slims before she was even out the door. Cold air rushed in.
“What about Chad?”
Streeter looked at me like he didn’t understand.
“Your victim. The dead kid. From the airport.”
“What about him?”
“What was he doing up there?”
Streeter chewed a strip of bacon. “Best guess? You landed, told Chad you’d seen a downed airplane. He calls my department. Deputy Woo buys the call. Woo shows up, you tell him what you saw, correct?”
“Affirmative.”
“Chad’s standing there. He’s listening in. He’s local, knows the area like the back of his hand. He gets off work, tells a buddy, and they decide, ‘Hey, we’ll just hike in there and steal whatever we can from the wreckage before search and rescue can get in.’ Happens all the time, people looting downed airplanes. So they get up there. They pry open the crate. Something inside that’s worth big money. Only Chad’s buddy decides he’s not interested in profit sharing. So, like you said yesterday, Chad gets capped and his buddy makes off with the merchandise.”
“Sounds like you got it dialed in.”
“It’s a workable premise. Let’s put it that way.”
“Why did you want to see me this morning?”