Cape Disappointment (30 page)

MY RENEWED VITALITY
lasted about a day and a half. I could feel the energy draining out of me as we exited the Maddox campaign headquarters. I'd worked up my gumption, invested in a good night's sleep, come up with new ideas, and now on the second day of my quest to discover whether my wife had been murdered and by whom, I was stricken with a depression that came on like a dose of strychnine.

I was a few blocks from my house, sitting alone at a table in a Thai restaurant called Araya's, one of Kathy's favorites. Snake had been pestering me to stop for lunch ever since we ate breakfast. The place was packed, and we had a table near the giant Buddha in the corner. Snake had gone to the washroom to clean up and was now making calls on his cellphone on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

“What's wrong?” he asked when he came back inside.

“Nothing.”

“Like hell. You look like warmed-over death.”

“My wife died. Maybe was murdered.”

“Not that. What happened today?”

“I don't know. It just came over me.”

“Christ, you look like you're about to stick your head in a meat grinder. Want to go home? I can go another few minutes without food in my belly.”

“I'll make it.”

It was the longest lunch of my life. Snake took me at my word and ate at a leisurely pace, failing to note I didn't touch a morsel of my order. It was good to have a friend nearby, even if that friend was pushing food into his mouth like he was shoveling coal into
Titanic
‘
s
boiler. He insisted on driving the car to my house, and for that small gallantry I was grateful, collapsing into the passenger seat like an invalid. Once home, he gave me an aspirin, as if aspirin might cure the black mood I'd fallen into. Aimlessly, I stumbled around the house while Snake made phone calls, most having to do with various investigations he was working on. I couldn't help wondering how much money it was costing him to babysit me.

By rights, I should have been on my way to Sheffield headquarters, but I knew I wasn't going to leave the house again today.

I had a hunch that going through two week's worth of stacked-up mail might alleviate my misery, or at least take my mind off it, so I sat in an overstuffed chair near the front door and pulled over a small table piled high with envelopes. Sunshine slanted through the windows on the south side of the house, dappling the Oriental rug Kathy had bought for the dining room last spring. After separating the junk mail from the bills, I got down to the envelopes with personal handwriting on the front. Most were condolence cards printed with drugstore salutations like “My deepest sympathy” or “A prayer for you.” “May warm memories of your loved one soothe you in this time of travail.” There were cards from people I knew, from people I used to know, from people I never wanted to know. There were a substantial number from folks who'd seen the crash coverage on television but didn't know either Kathy or me personally. There were cards from people I'd known in high school but had lost contact with. There was a note from the employees in the toy store on the first floor of our building at First and Yesler. I put their note under the window with the last of the now-dying flowers. One by one, I opened and read the cards.

Somewhere toward the end of the condolences I opened a fat card with an embossed drawing of lilies on the front. In shaky longhand somebody had penned:

I wondered stupidly if, after fifty-nine years together, Kathy and I would have looked as haggard and stooped as the couple I remembered from Cape Disappointment. I opened two more cards before it struck me.
My cellphone wasn't working.
At the time of the crash, during those few moments when we'd all stared dumfounded at the ocean, my cell had given up the ghost, too. I wondered if Burl Reid's cellphone had lost its signal, or if he'd forgotten to charge the battery. Or if he'd been so nervous at seeing the plane go down that it had been operator error. I wondered if his cell company used the same transmitting towers as mine.

It took less than a minute to retrieve his phone number on the Internet. Reid resided in Tacoma, not far from Wilson High School, where I'd been a student about a million years ago. When he answered, Reid sounded the same as I remembered, old and crotchety. “To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

“This is Thomas Black. We met a couple of weeks back at Cape Disappointment. You took a picture for me.”

“Black?” I heard him cover the mouthpiece and shout. “Louise! It's that private investigator. From the plane crash.”

“Mr. Reid, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask some questions.”

“Fire away, boy. What is it? You know, Louise couldn't record it that first time they did the piece about your wife on the TV, but she stayed up and got it on the late news. It's in the middle of our
Sound of Music
tape. We can make a copy and mail it to you.”

“That's very thoughtful of you, but I recorded it myself. Do you remember taking a picture of me?”

“You wanted to get you, the plane,
and
the lighthouse all in the picture. I remember that.”

“After it went down, did you make a cellphone call?”

“As I recall, there was a period when the phone didn't work. But later, I made calls till I about wore out my hearing aid.”

“How much later?”

“Only time it didn't work was when I tried to notify the state patrol.”

“What cellphone company do you use?”

It wasn't the company I was with. I thanked Burl Reid for his time and went to the other room, where I thumbed through the stack of printouts I'd made the previous night. I found one about the Paul Well-stone crash. I read it twice. Then I phoned Bert Slezak, who answered on the first ring. “Thomas?”

“After the Wellstone incident several people in the vicinity complained that their cell service went out around the time the plane went down. My phone went out at the Cape. I've found another man who said the same thing happened to his phone.”

“Can I get back to you?”

“No.”

“I'll call you right back.”

“Don't hang up, you—” But he was gone.

While I waited, Snake received a call on his cell. Despite his recent meal, he'd been in the kitchen ransacking the fridge and cabinets for edibles, had finally opened three cans of chili, and was mixing them in a saucepan on the stove with some of his own ingredients. “Here, Thomas. It's for you.”

When I answered, a male voice said, “Mr. Black?”

“This is Thomas Black.”

“Timothy Hoagland. I've been in meetings all morning. This was my first chance to catch up on my messages. You said something about a phone call.”

“In the middle of the night I got a call from my wife's cellphone. I was wondering if you folks had recovered it.”

“You received a … ?”

“I got a call from my wife's cellphone. I didn't answer, and there was no message. I was wondering if you'd recovered it, and if so, was it in working order?”

“We're not going to be able to return any personal effects for months.”

“But did you find her phone?”

“As far as I know, no functional electronic equipment has been recovered.”

“And you've brought up most of the large pieces?”

The line was silent for a few moments. “Mr. Black? I spoke to your boss. Has he gotten back to you?”

“My boss?”

“Jim Maddox.”

“And?”

“With this type of investigation, amateurs have a way of gumming up the works. We've got twelve professional investigators working here in the state. Lab technicians back at Quantico. The local law enforcement community has supplied a number of people. We don't need help.”

“My wife died in that crash.”

“You have my sympathies. It's affected a lot of people around here. But if everybody who lost a loved one initiated their own investigation … well, you can you imagine what a mess it would be.”

“But everybody isn't initiating their own investigation. Only me.”

“Surely, you see my point?”

“Do you or do you not have her phone?”

“You're not listening.”

“Have you recovered any more bodies?”

“I want you to tend to your own business and leave this to the professionals.”

“You're not going to tell me whether you have my wife's body?”

“The site where the fuselage came to rest off the coast has been pretty much picked clean now. We're going to scan the bottom today and then call off the search. I don't know that your wife's body … It may wash up on one of the beaches. I have to warn you … bodies left in the open ocean for long periods …”

“I was wondering on the day of the crash what time the FBI arrived out at the coast.”

The connection was quiet for a time. Finally, Hoagland said, “I'm going to reiterate. I do not want you horning in on our work. Don't contact any of my people, and don't get caught interfering in our investigation.”

“Is that an order?”

“I'm afraid it is.”

“Is it legal?”

“You bet your ass it is.”

“You going to arrest me?”

“Don't turn this into a clash of wills.”

“You better send somebody over right now. I might not be home later. The media should love it.”

“If I have to arrest you, it'll be under the antiterrorism statutes, and I can guarantee you the media won't know anything about it.”

“What are you afraid of, Hoagland?”

The line went dead. Anybody in his position would have wanted me out of the picture: a private investigator retracing their case? Hell,
I
would have wanted me out of the picture. Using Snake's phone, I called the FBI and was eventually and surprisingly put through to the special agent-in-charge of the Seattle office, a man named Winston Seagram. “Mr. Seagram, my name is Thomas Black. I work for James Maddox. I've got a couple of questions, if you don't mind.”

“I just saw Jim Maddox this morning.”

“I'm wondering if you still have agents out at Cape Disappointment?”

“Uh, the Cape? I don't believe so. Not today, anyway. Our time out there was limited.”

“So you were there a few days?”

“Right.”

“And you got there the day of the crash?”

“Correct.”

“That would have been Tuesday afternoon? What time did your people arrive on scene?”

The line went quiet. “What are you up to, Mr. Black?”

“Just checking facts.”

“Mr. Black, you're going to have to get your information somewhere else. And tell Jim Maddox he better get on the same page with the rest of us.”

From across the room, Snake spoke after I'd hung up. “Didn't Hoagland just tell you to keep your nose out of it?”

“Yeah.”

“You don't listen, do you?”

“One of many weaknesses.”

I phoned the Coast Guard station at Cape Disappointment and asked for a guardsman named Hutchins. By a lucky accident he was on duty. When he came to the phone, he recalled who I was without prompting. He'd been my guardian angel during my days at the Cape, supplying me with hot soup and bottled water and staving off reporters.

“Hutchins? I wonder if you could do me a favor.”

“Anything, sir.”

“Could you get me the official time for the plane crash, as well as the official time the FBI showed up?”

“We have a logbook. Can you wait a minute?”

“I'll stay on the line.”

When he came back, he said, “Fifteen thirty-seven for the crash. Sixteen thirty-five was when the FBI checked in.”

“Three thirty-seven and four thirty-five p.m.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hutchins?”

“Yes, sir?”

“How long does it take to drive there from Seattle?”

“Well, sir … gee … I see what you mean.”

I was watching Snake gobble his chili concoction when my cell rang. It was the first time I'd gotten an incoming call since the one from Kathy's phone, and my heart skipped a beat. “Bert?”

“EMI devices.”

“What?”

“Electromagnetic interference. It's long been suspected in the Well-stone crash. It's why when you fly commercial they don't want you using a cellphone or your laptop during takeoff or landing. Your personal devices probably won't interfere with any crucial signals, but if they do, there's not much time to recover.”

“Would an EMI device take out my cellphone?”

“Depends on how close you were and what sort of device they were using. You said somebody else's phone went out?”

“Yes.”

“EMI.”

“Is there such a device? Does somebody really have a contraption that could knock a plane out of the sky without a trace?”

“If your phone shut itself off, they didn't do it without a trace, did they? But to answer your question, yes. We've long thought the Agency had a way to knock planes out of the sky with EMI. Look, buddy. I think we gotta get back together.”

“I was thinking the same.”