Cape Disappointment (21 page)

IT WAS ALMOST EIGHT O'CLOCK
when we set out for downtown Seattle, the sky crowded with black clouds that set off the lights of the city brilliantly. In the distance, a bolt of lightning split the sky. Eschewing the freeway, I motored along Eastlake Avenue to Fairview and then Broad Street, cruising alongside Lake Union, where oceangoing ships berthed in the heart of the city. Six hundred feet above the street, the Space Needle restaurant was lit up like a flying saucer.

I'd been leaving my warren only to visit the dead and commiserate with grieving relatives. Kathy's funeral had been the low spot of my life, and I was doing everything I could to put it out of my mind. It would probably take longer even than I supposed, but I had turned a corner. I was a different man now. Instead of the happy-go-lucky wisecracking guy next door I'd been eight days ago, instead of the neighbor who worked out too much, rode a racing bicycle all summer, and was addicted to movies produced before color film became the norm, instead of the private investigator who let complex cases and anxious clients put his life on hold, I'd morphed into a somber, introspective, and pessimistic study of my former self. I hadn't worked out in over a week, had only infrequently rolled off the sofa, and got light-headed just doing that.

In many ways I felt like a comic-book character who'd met his dop-pelgänger in Bizarro World and was confronting a version of himself
that could pass for the real one in a crowd but lacked the positive characteristics that had formerly defined him.

Kathy once told me the first trait she noticed about me was the attitude I carried that no matter how badly things seemed to be going, everything would come up roses. I'd always exhibited an underlying sense of goodwill and optimism. I mourned for the man I'd been almost as much as I mourned Kathy, because the truth was, in the past eight days I had become infused with hate.

I pulled the rearview mirror around and looked at my face; I'd forgotten to brush my hair after my shower, but my brown eyes were flinty and penetrating. When I tried on a smile, the mirror revealed a face that might be considered handsome in an outdoorsy West Coast kind of way; tanned, pale circles around my eyes from sunglasses; yet it was a face I barely recognized.

We were headed for Belltown, where historically the sidewalks were littered with homeless men and drunkards. That hadn't changed much even though in the past twenty years developers had threaded the area with expensive condominiums in an effort to make it the hub of hip uptown living.

I parked on Bell and we walked west toward Elliott Bay. The neighborhood was populated with well-off, childless couples, heterosexual and otherwise, who flocked to the city to snap up the high-priced condominiums and apartment conversions. When it started to rain, Snake said, “How far are we going? I don't want to get my hat wet.”

“I thought hats were supposed to protect you.”

“Not this one. I protect it. By the way, it's good to see you up and about. You've always had testicular fortitude, Thomas. I ever lost a woman like Kathy, I'd go back to drinking. I'd take dope. I'd kill myself.”

“Thanks for the pep talk.”

On the next block we edged into the security lobby of a fourteen-story building as a trio of young people left, too self-involved to realize we were interlopers. On the fourteenth floor, Kalpesh Gupta seemed surprised to see me. “Thomas, my good man. Thomas …” he said, as he swung the door wide.

“Kalpesh Gupta, this is my friend Elmer Slezak.”

“Call me Snake.”

Kalpesh gave me a startled look, as if I'd brought a bum or a pickpocket into his private haven. “Well, yes, of course. Why don't you come in, Thomas? You too, Snake. What brings you this way? Just in the area, or …”

“Just passing by,” I lied.

Kalpesh led us into the foyer. I pulled off my shoes and contributed them to the neat row of footwear along the wall by the front door. All the shoes were Kalpesh's except a pair of patent pumps that looked to be about a women's size nine.

It was a nice layout, a minimalist black-and-white theme, with about half a ton of chrome in the kitchen, splashes of colorful modern art on the walls, to the right a living room with a small deck and a stupefying overlook of the bay, to the left a hallway with a series of closed doors, probably two or three bedrooms and a den. In the living room an expensive Persian rug had been laid over bamboo flooring. It was the kind of place that could be featured in the Sunday supplement of the local paper.

“Nice digs,” said Snake, striding to the living room window, where he checked out the thunderstorm over Puget Sound. Snake had not removed his cowboy boots, which sank into the plush rug as if into warm chocolate.

“Something to drink, gentlemen?” Kalpesh asked, switching on a light in the kitchen and opening the refrigerator. “I can offer whiskey, white wine, or beer.”

When we both declined, he stepped into the living room and sat primly on the edge of a black leather and chrome sectional. I plopped onto the uncomfortable angular chair across from him. Snake remained at the window. “So, Thomas? What can I do for you? I know you came for a reason.”

“How did you book that airplane?”

“The Sheffield flight?”

“No, the Birchfield flight.”

“I'm sorry. The way people are looking at this must irritate you.”

“A lot of things irritate me.”

We looked at each other for a few moments, Kalpesh trying to evaluate the depth and intensity of my feelings. He was well aware that my fuse was short. At Kathy's funeral the previous day, I'd snapped at a
couple of people, maybe even at him. I remained furious that it was his seat Kathy had been occupying when she died. My love was dead, and here sat this bozo in his silk socks and spotless linen shirt.

“You politicos must make a fortune,” Snake said, peering around the rooms. “On what I earn, you'd have to steal till the cows came home to afford this joint. How about you, Thomas? How much would you have to steal?”

I shrugged. It didn't bother me that Snake wanted to play good guy/bad guy, or that he'd placed Kalpesh on the defensive by essentially accusing him of being a corrupt political operative. Sheffield and her staff were among the cleanest operations to hit Washington, D.C., in ages and everybody knew it. Kalpesh especially knew it. It was a major reason Kathy had been such an enthusiastic supporter.

“Fourteenth floor?” Snake continued. “Pricey. You get a deal or did you buy it with coupons?”

“I'm glad you like it,” Kalpesh said, trying on a genteel smile, “but I'm a houseguest. It belongs to a friend who's out of the country for a few months.”

“Good to have friends.”

Kalpesh turned his attention to me. “You want to know about the flight?”

“You arranged it?”

“With Northwest Apple Flights.”

“Why Apple?”

“It's a company we've used before.”

“Who planned the trip?”

“I did. The original program was to fly up the coast, get some footage for the TV commercials, then hit Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Bellingham, cross over the Cascades, and touch down in all the northern rural towns in eastern Washington nobody else was doing.”

“But Kathy wasn't originally scheduled to go?”

“A couple of staffers caught the flu. And then I got sick. We were shorthanded.”

“You had the flu?” Snake asked from the window.

“Whatever it was, it lasted forty-eight hours and then was gone.”

“You didn't see a doctor?”

“No. Thomas? I want you to know Kathy meant the world to me. Listen, Thomas. You know Jane didn't like to fly. Whenever I set up something like this, I did everything humanly possible to reassure her. I made certain there were two pilots with sterling credentials. Booked a plane with an impeccable safety record. I had them double-check the weather reports. In spite of being sick, I even drove there myself to make sure everything went smoothly. I can't think of anything I might have done differently.”

“You almost could have predicted it,” said Snake, from the window.

“How is that?” Kalpesh asked.

“Northwest Apple? I mean, the apple is how Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity. Right?”

Kalpesh ignored him.

“Did Sheffield have any enemies— I mean, besides the normal political rivalries?”

“These days every politician gets angry calls and letters. And emails. When it's bad enough, we pass it along to the FBI. Listen, you're not suggesting somebody brought that plane down on purpose, are you?”

“I'm not suggesting anything. They keeping you people apprised of developments?”

“We've been in contact with the NTSB. The FBI, also.”

“And?”

“They're at Boeing Field now, will be there for a while, as I understand it.”

“I thought the NTSB was out at Cape Disappointment.”

“That's where they're staging the plane parts, but they've got a hangar at Boeing Field where they're putting it all together. If you want, I'll make a phone call in the morning and advise them you want to meet.”

“Don't bother.”

“Okay. But listen, Thomas. The FBI's working with the NTSB, and they're not going to take kindly to a local private investigator getting involved. Not even if your wife was on the plane. In a week or two, a month at most, they'll announce the cause, and you'll realize how silly your concerns are. They'll find a frayed wire in a rudder controller or a bad engine or whatever. Why not just go back home?”

“I guess I want to be silly.”

“Forgive me. I didn't mean you're being silly. But, Thomas? I beg you not to do this.”

“Good night, Kalpesh,” I said, rising.

Snake and Kalpesh followed me to the front door and waited while I put on my shoes. After we were out in the corridor, I eyeballed Kalpesh. “By the way, do you happen to have any runts in there?”

“Pardon me?”

“Runts.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Later, then.”

We were in the elevator, almost to the lobby, when Snake said, “What's a runt?”

“Like a Trojan, only smaller.”

“You mean miniature condoms?”

“Right.”

“Somebody whittle down his dick?”

“I read an article that said more than fifty percent of Indian men are too small for standard-issue condoms. I was wondering what one of the little ones looked like.” Snake was still laughing a minute later when we ran through the rain to my car. His laughter made me feel almost as shallow as the puddles we were jumping over.

WHEN I CLOSED
my bedroom door at eleven, I could hear Snake in the other room watching
The Last of the Mohicans.
A little before two I woke up soaked in perspiration. The TV was still running in the other room and Snake was asleep, stacked on my sofa like a car wreck. Although the house was cold, I kicked off a blanket and spent the next forty-five minutes trying to get back to sleep. All I could think about, when I wasn't thinking about the empty spot beside me in bed and the miserable funeral service for Kathy, was how the news media had failed to point out certain inconsistencies in the statements from the NTSB investigators. Why didn't the lead investigator know there had been no voice box recorder? And why hadn't the reporters noticed? Why did they seem confused about the number of pilots? I tossed and turned, and when it became apparent sleep wasn't coming, I crawled out of bed and fired up the computer. At the other end of the house Snake was snoring in a miasma of bad breath and farts. Outside it was pouring, as evidenced by the flurry of water in the downspout beside the back door. I checked to see if Spider had returned, but he hadn't. I should have been more concerned, but I knew he could take care of himself and I had more important things missing than a dog— my wife and my sanity, to name two.

My starting point was the pilots. The first, Charles Hilditch, had a personal space on one of the national websites that catered to such
things, informing us he was fond of jazz, purebred cocker spaniels, flyfishing, and downhill skiing; that he had a wife and three grown kids and had accepted Jesus as his personal savior after his youngest child died of leukemia. There was nothing to indicate incompetence. I had met the other pilot at the airport and liked him. According to articles I'd read earlier in the day, Freddy Mitz had learned to fly in the air force and then had retired and moved into commercial aviation. Both pilots had airline transport certifications, the highest industry rating. As far as I could tell, Mitz had not been drunk or hungover when I met him. It hardly seemed possible either of these men had caused the deaths of eleven people.

I still couldn't get used to Kathy being gone. Even after dragging myself home from Kathy's memorial service two days ago, I felt as if I'd been part of a charade, that she wasn't really dead, as if it hadn't been a funeral service but rather a very bad play about a funeral, and that I'd tell Kathy about it when she returned from wherever she was. I'd gone through the ceremony in a trance, wasn't even sure who else had been in attendance.

Coincidentally, another senator had died in the crash of a Beechcraft King Air 100. I read about Minnesota senator Paul Well-stone's fatal crash on October 25, 2002, when a Beechcraft King Air went down in the Iron Range, killing Wellstone and seven others. The Internet was full of conspiracy theorists writing about the Wellstone crash, and many of those commentators were among the gang now blogging about the Sheffield crash— speculating it was not an accident but would be whitewashed by the authorities to resemble one. Several of the Wellstone articles sported links to other conspiracy sites, some dealing with 9/11 and the subsequent, largely forgotten anthrax attacks that had been headline news at the time. I couldn't help recalling Snake's caution about descending down the rabbit hole.