Rhyme explained this to Gillette.
“Ah, well, that’s the problem, Mr.... That’s the problem, Lincoln. The plane didn’t break up. Whatever the explosion was, it didn’t blow the plane up, just destroyed the flight controls. The plane hit the water but stayed intact and sank.”
“Well, that’s okay. Water won’t necessarily destroy any evidence.” He frowned. “Unless you don’t know where it is.”
“Oh, we do.”
“Good.”
“Not really. It’s at the bottom of the Puerto Rican Trench.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“The deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean. About twenty-eight thousand feet under water. Twice as deep as the Titanic. We can’t raise the plane. And there’s no way to get to where the evidence lies.”
That’s the problem, Lincoln...
They had moved into the hangar to get out of the wind.
The place was deserted at the moment. “I’m not sure how I can help you, Detective. You’re asking my advice on a case where there’s no evidence. My expertise is forensics.”
“I heard your lectures, Lincoln. You’ve got a mind that’s, well, like nobody else’s. I was hoping you could just give us your insights. The NTSB will be here tomorrow. I was hoping we could have something to tell them.”
Sachs turned to Rhyme with a smile. “You like your challenges, Rhyme. Doesn’t get any more challenging than this.”
She had a point there.
And what could it hurt?
He shrugged, one of the few physical gestures he was capable of. “All right, we’ll give it a shot. Now, any witnesses to the crash itself?”
“A container ship, not too far away. All they saw was the plane come in and crash-land and go under before any doors opened. They changed course and steamed over to the spot. But there was nothing there — just a little oil.”
“Ah, oil?” Then he frowned. “But they wouldn’t have collected it. It’s all gone now.”
“I’d guess,” Gillette said. “And the way the currents run, the Coast Guard was sure the plane was five miles down in about a half hour. They had search-and-rescue combing the area, but no sign of anything.”
“Do you have the last transmission?”
“Sure. On my computer. I’ll get it.”
He went out to his car and returned a minute later. He called up an audio file of the exchange between Nash and air traffic control.
Those in the hangar remained silent as they listened to the tragedy unfolding. Gillette shut it off.
“Okay. Well, I think a preliminary question is: why don’t you think it was an accident? Nash didn’t mention a bomb. He just said ‘bang.’”
“Sure, it could’ve been a malfunction. But I’m suspicious by nature. And I looked into Nash’s life last night. He had enemies.”
Who doesn’t? Rhyme thought.
“Now, there’s an ex. Sally Nash. Divorced two years and under a restraining order. She’s still ‘Nash’ — kept her married name. Never let go.”
Rhyme asked, “He had an affair? He dumped her?”
“Nope. The other way around. She cheated on him, and when he found out he filed for divorce. Pissed her off. Go figure. Oh and the judge kicked out her request for alimony — yeah, she asked. So she wasn’t a happy camper.”
“Any threats?”
“From time to time. Never amounted to much. But he called us a few times to have the deputies go out there and remind her of the restraining order.”
“Okay. An angry ex. Who else?”
“Nash was in a dispute with his business partner. After he found the man was talking to competitors. At least, those were the facts in court. It was for a few million dollars, but at a level I’m not sure that’s worth killing somebody for.”
“Angry ex — business partner.”
“What was his business... Nash’s?” Sachs asked.
Gillette chuckled. “I really couldn’t tell you. He owned companies that made components that went into other components. Apparently he was pretty good at coming up with parts like that. Components. Nothing sexy. But he made a ton of money.”
“Any other suspects?” she asked.
“He’d had problems with a stalker. A woman he dated. Her story is she’s sort of a gold digger — do you still say that nowadays? Anyway, he walked away, and she threatened him a few times. Attacked him once, but it was more throwing a glass of wine in his face at a fancy restaurant than blowing him up.”
“Bad choices with the ladies, it seems,” Sachs offered.
Gillette continued, “And Nash was serving on a grand jury in Orlando, and so we wondered if that exposed him to threats. But they were pretty mundane cases. Mugging, some drug cases. Lot of them. But low level. Real low. Getting a bomb into a plane? I looked at the indictments and it just didn’t fit.”
“No obvious motive,” Sachs said. “And stalkers and exes — ex-wives, that is — don’t really have much access to IED makers. But you can find just about anything on the Internet nowadays. Maybe the most likely explanation is mechanical failure.”
“Should say we’re exploring that with the manufacturer. They’re going to run some simulations. They weren’t optimistic about finding anything, not without the plane. I checked all of those folks out and nobody was in town yesterday.”
Rhyme then asked, “Assuming there was an IED, why do you think it was planted here? Not where the flight originated?”
“Security in Orlando’s a lot tighter than here. That’s where Nash keeps the plane. Same at Miami. Even the private aviation areas are swept with dogs and explosives detectors. Here — well, like I said, deputies make the rounds occasionally and that’s it.”
“Let’s go through the details of how somebody could’ve gotten an IED on board.”
He wheeled to the front of the hangar and looked out over the tarmac, the chain-link fence, the buildings on the other side of the highway.
Gillette explained: In the short time Nash’s jet had been parked here, there had been only four people inside the fenced area, with access to it. Three employees of the FBO and the deputy making his semidaily security check, though the man checked the buildings and gates only, not the aircraft. Besides, Gillette knew him personally and could vouch for him.
“That video?” Rhyme said, nodding at a camera on a tall pole in front of the hangar. Another was nearby. “We may have some forensics after all.”
But no such luck. The detective reported the cameras were trained only at the taxiway and the road approaches to this portion of the field, not the tarmac itself. The cameras were aimed at the area in front of the FBO; the plane was not in view. They knew no one had entered through the gate or jumped over the chain, but they had no way of knowing if anyone had actually approached the aircraft.
“What was the exact timing?” Sachs asked.
“The employees arrived between seven and eight. Nash landed at eight ten. He came into view on the camera at the gate about eight thirty, met a cab. He met with his lawyer and they left together. We checked out the cabbie — and he’s legit. The video showed he didn’t get out of the taxi. Then the deputy making the rounds for security arrived at the FBO about nine ten and was seen walking away around nine thirty. Nash returned at ten thirty, and the plane took off a half hour later. Cabbie stayed inside his car again the whole time, and nobody got out with Nash.”
“How hard would it be to turn a video camera on the tarmac, hmm?” Sachs asked wryly. “The good news, I guess, is that at least we can limit the number of suspects to the three employees.”