“Tell me about them,” Rhyme asked. He gave a sour laugh. “Since that’s the only so-called evidence we have to work with.”
The detective pulled out a notebook. “Same staff here today was here yesterday. The manager of the FBO is Anita Sanchez. Forty-two, married. Joey Wilson runs the refueling truck. Twenty-eight. Single. Busted twice for pot. No biggie. And Mark Clinton is the mechanic. He’s fifty, divorced. Iraq veteran. There’re other mechanics, but they weren’t working this week. Been a slow time, apparently. Aside from the grass, none of them have any convics. None of them have any connection with Nash, either. He lives in Orlando. Flies through here occasionally — to meet with his lawyer and banker, like he did yesterday. And as far as I can tell, Nash never had any disputes with anybody here at the field.”
Rhyme said, “No, if any of them planted the IED, it was because they got paid to do it. Or extorted into it.”
“And,” Sachs added, “they’d all know airplanes and know exactly where to put in a bomb to do the most damage.”
“They would, I’d imagine. How do you want to proceed, Lincoln?”
“I’ll talk to them. I’m going to treat them as witnesses. Put them at ease. We’ll tell them we don’t suspect them, but I’ll hint we’re suspicious of the deputy who made the security rounds. What’s his name?”
“Cable. Jim Cable.”
“They’ll get the idea that Cable’s the main suspect. And we hope they can help us describe what they saw, if he went up to the plane. What they saw him do. If one of them’s the guilty party, he — or she — will try to solidify the case against the cop or at least deflect attention from themselves. I’ll try to catch them in a lie.” Rhyme considered what he’d said. He laughed.
Gillette regarded him with a raised brow of curiosity.
“It’s the opposite of what we normally do. I get a bit of evidence and try to find the truth. Now I’m trying to find the lie.” He smiled at the pun, thinking of Gillette’s comment.
Where the evidence lies...
Then his expression grew glum. A fierce downpour started once more. Gusts of wind. Then, insultingly, hail. “Goddammit. I think we’ve found a situation where Locard’s principle doesn’t apply, Sachs.”
The French criminalist Locard posited that at every crime there was a transfer of evidence from criminal to scene of the crime or victim, and vice versa. If one worked hard enough and was clever enough, a forensic cop could find that connection. Locard, apparently, never had to deal with a Florida fence-raising storm.
“I need some facts before I start the interview, Detective,” Rhyme said. “What was the orientation of the plane?”
“The nose was there.” He was pointing. “Tail there.”
The plane had been parked parallel to the hangar, about thirty feet away. The nose was to the left, tail right.
The detective continued, “So you’ll tell them you suspect Cable slipped around to the far side of the plane, planted the IED, and then kept on his rounds?”
“I’ll hint at it.” A flash of light caught his eye. Rhyme looked through the rain and mist across the street.
“Sachs, while I talk to the employees, you go check out those buildings.” He’d noted some glass-façade structures, an office complex. “A Burger King, too. And a diner. See if there were any witnesses there when the plane was parked on the tarmac — or better yet, video cameras.”
“Okay. I’ll go see.” Sachs walked out of the hangar, jogged through the rain, and climbed into the van. The vehicle rocked over the tarmac, buffeted by the wind, toward the exit.
“Where can I talk to them?”
“There? The corner of the hangar?”
Rhyme wheeled back into a small, windowless office in the back of the hangar.
His reaction to handling an evidence-free case had at first been dismay and then amusement, but now something within him was eager to try policing skills he hadn’t used for a long, long time.
Detective Gillette went to summon the first employee.
Then, reminding himself he was about to become an interrogator, Lincoln Rhyme decided he better come up with a few questions.
Anita Sanchez was a businesslike woman in her forties. She had short dark hair and a dark complexion, and wore bright red lipstick. Her suit was conservative, navy blue over a white blouse. On the lapel was a silver pin of eagle wings.
She sat across from Rhyme at a desk and seemed uneasy, but no more uneasy than he’d expect under these circumstances — especially considering Rhyme’s condition. The wheelchair, a complex, motorized model, was an attention getter. She wanted to look at it but seemed afraid that would be impolite.
Rhyme asked some neutral questions, then: “Did you notice if Deputy Cable went toward the rear of the airplane at any time on his rounds?”
“Deputy Cable?”
“That’s right.”
“He seems like such a nice guy. Do you suspect him?” She looked down at the digital recorder.
“We’re just getting facts.” He repeated: “Did you see him around the wings or engines of the airplane at any time?”
“I’m sorry, Officer... Mr. Rhyme. I was in my office the whole time, and you can’t see the tarmac from where I was.”
“The whole time?” He asked this because it seemed she’d emphasized the word.
Sanchez added quickly, as if Rhyme had known the truth, “Now that I think about it, I did go outside once. But I went to my car in the lot. That’s the other direction from the jet. It was behind me, so even if the deputy was there, I didn’t see it.”
He asked other questions about Cable and if she’d seen anyone else on the property, other than the two other employees, even if the cameras showed that no one else entered the FBO’s area. The responses were short — she didn’t ramble or volunteer information.
Rhyme had a friend, Kathryn Dance, who was an agent with the California Bureau of Investigation. She specialized in using kinesics — body language analysis — in interrogating suspects and witnesses, and he’d formed a grudging respect for the art by watching her in action. One thing he’d learned was when suspects rambled and offered details it was more likely that they were nervous, which meant they might be deceptive.
His take on Sanchez was that she was probably telling the truth and her demeanor didn’t suggest guilt.
After she left, Detective Gillette brought Mark Clinton into the hangar. In blue jeans and a dusty gray workshirt, the lean man, his beard slightly yellow from chewing tobacco, looked everywhere but at Rhyme as he sat down.
Rhyme began with some preliminaries. Had he known Nash, did he know anybody who wanted to harm him?
He answered negative to all of those. He swallowed frequently and his fingers were twitchy, not necessarily signs of being deceptive, but of simple nervousness.
Finally, Rhyme steered the question around to Cable. Had he seen the deputy near the airplane? Especially the back?
“When would that have been?”
“Around nine thirty yesterday.”
“Oh, I was working in here then, but I didn’t see anything. I mean, I couldn’t. There was too much glare from the sun if you looked out of the hangar door.”
He asked more questions, but Clinton kept referring to his hampered vision.
Rhyme had to admit that blindness — whatever the cause — was a pretty good out for a witness, or a suspect.
Using his good arm, Rhyme reached forward and paused the recorder. “All right. Thanks.”
The mechanic stood, wiped his hands on his jeans, and followed the officer out of the hangar. Gillette returned a few minutes later with a heavyset man in brown overalls and a baseball cap, under which sprouted masses of curly brown hair flecked with gray.