Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

L ucy opens the side door and we step inside a concrete space not so different from my offices’ vehicle bays. But this is brightly lit and spotless with workbenches, tool cabinets, a hydraulic lift and multiple utility carts. Shadows of tire tracks crisscross the shiny concrete flooring, not a speck of dirt, the hangar more like a laboratory cleanroom than a large garage.

Crime scene investigators in white are taking down the translucent plastic tent shrouding Sal’s blue Chevy truck. I detect the sharp odor of superglue used to fume for latent prints left on nonporous surfaces such as glass and metal. The cyanoacrylate vapors react to amino acids secreted by skin surfaces such as finger pads. The prints turn whitish and hard, the ridge detail permanently set in glue and readily visible.

“Before we fumed the truck, we went over it inside and out, making sure we didn’t glue something we shouldn’t.” Lucy continues, explaining what’s been done. “We found the odd impressions on the front door windows, most of them partials. We lifted them with magnetic powder, and a picture’s worth a thousand words.”

We follow her to a workbench where evidence has been bagged and labeled. Mostly, what’s been collected is from the seats and carpet.

“Under UV, there’s glittery stuff all over the driver’s seat, the steering wheel and other areas, including inside the covered truck bed.” She’s typing a password on a laptop computer that’s open on the workbench. “I’m not saying it’s the same thing that fluoresced on Sal Giordano’s body. But it certainly looks the same.”

Lucy shows us photographs taken with an orange-tinted filter, clicking through images of the residue sparkling cobalt blue in the fabric of the truck’s front seats. The inside of the covered truck bed sparkles like a galaxy.

“Why in both seats?” I ask. “As if two people were sitting up front and had this residue on their clothing?”

“Unless it was already inside the truck.”

“You mean if Sal was transferring it in and out himself.” It’s a startling thought.

“We can’t be sure how long the residue has been there,” Benton says. “If it’s fake moon dust? What was he doing with it? Was he doing research? And if so, where?”

“He never mentioned regolith simulants to me,” I reply. “And most people don’t want a hazardous material like that around. It needs to be stored and worked with in a controlled environment.”

“Whatever he might have been doing behind the scenes, he wasn’t doing it for us.” Lucy means the U.S. government. “Or we’d know about it.” She shows us another photograph.

This one is of a smudge about the size of my hand but nothing like it. The somewhat V-shaped impression is long and slender like a hoof. Or possibly a mitten with vague, irregular fingerlike shapes inside it. Yes, somewhat clawlike, and reminding me of a Rorschach ink blot, actually. I see no suggestion of the friction ridge detail associated with skin, and I’m baffled.

“This was on the outside of the driver’s window,” Lucy explains.

“Made by what? Do we have an idea?” Benton’s shoulder is pressed against me as we stare at the image on the laptop computer. “It doesn’t look like an impression of any type of glove I’ve ever seen.”

“Not anything I’ve ever seen, either,” Lucy replies. “And it’s not the only one we found.”

Lucy walks away from the workbench, and we follow her to Sal’s pickup truck. Utility carts are parked around it, and the tent is gone.

“What about the sparkling residue?” Benton asks. “Was any of that associated with these impressions?”

“Not a lot of it,” Lucy says, and I pass along what Lee Fishburne told me about moon dust.

“Not the real thing but a simulant that has a fluorescent additive causing it to glow cobalt blue under UV light,” I explain. “And what that was doing on Luna Briley’s pajama top is anybody’s guess. We’ll find out soon enough if this same residue was on Sal Giordano’s body and is inside his truck.”

“I have a feeling it will be,” Benton replies. “Not too many things fluoresce cobalt blue or at all.”

“The deaths are connected, and it’s more than a feeling,” Lucy says flatly. “What’s happened to Luna Briley and Sal Giordano is related for some reason. That doesn’t mean the same person killed them.”

“The same person didn’t,” Benton says. “His death was calculated and carefully planned. I don’t believe hers was.”

On a cart are crime lights and pairs of tinted goggles that Lucy hands out to us. We put on gloves, hair covers and face masks. She calls for someone to cut the lights directly overhead. We begin painting our UV lights over the truck, starting with the driver’s window. The clean rectangular shape in the middle of it is from the lifting tape, we’re told.

Also on the glass is a constellation of the pinprick cobalt-blue sparkles. I find more of them on the driver’s door handles inside and out. Even as I’m looking I’m invaded by memories of riding in this very truck with Sal to meetings at the White House, the Pentagon and other official places. I often joked that we looked like Ma and Pa Kettle making a visit to the big city.

I slowly circle the familiar old Chevy with its mangled chrome bumpers and shattered square headlights. The residue glitters near the tailgate handle, and there’s a scant spattering of sparkles on the outer front passenger door handle. But not on the interior one.

“Possibly suggesting the passenger door was opened and closed from the outside.” Benton paints his light over it. “Possibly Sal was incapacitated and placed in the passenger’s seat. Maybe the seat belts were fastened so the alarm didn’t chime while Sal was driven somewhere. Assuming the truck had an alarm as old as it was?”

“It’s possible, alarm or not. What we’re talking about is a habit, something one does without thinking,” Lucy says, shadowing us.

“But his truck went off the mountain,” I remind them.

“Before it did, someone took the time to remove everything from inside it,” Benton says. “It’s possible Sal was abducted in his own truck, and then transferred into a different vehicle that was parked out of sight nearby. Finally, the truck was sent off the mountain into the ravine.”

“Now that we’ve been able to look inside and under the hood, we know that at the time of the crash, the gearshift was in neutral with the engine running.” Lucy continues making comments from the shadowy sidelines. “In something old like this you could shut the doors and lock them from the outside while the key’s in the ignition.”

“I’ve known Sal to do that accidentally a number of times,” I reply. “Do we have any idea how much gas was in the tank at the time of the crash?”

“Nope,” Lucy says, the overhead lights turning back on. “It continued running until it was out of gas, but we can’t know how long that took. Diesel engines don’t have sparkplugs. They don’t emit electric signals that flash on radio telescopes and various sensors. His truck could have been running in the ravine for hours and it wasn’t going to be detected by anything.”

“And you found nothing inside it?” I ask, envisioning the gift basket I carefully put together for Sal.

“Even the glove box was cleaned out,” Lucy says.

We remove our tinted goggles, placing them back on the cart.

“Why take everything?” I ask them. “What was someone looking for?”

“Anything that might be there,” Benton says. “And the person didn’t want to spend a lot of time in the pitch dark going through the truck while trying to manage a hostage. And perhaps worrying about another motorist rolling up while all this is going on. Even if Sal was drugged and manageable, better to grab everything out of the truck. Then go through it later when you get where you’re going.”

“Makes sense…,” Lucy starts to say. “Hold on.” She must see something in her “smart” glasses.

She steps away to make a call, her back to us as she paces. I can’t hear what she’s saying but know from her body language that the news isn’t good. She’s walking in fast small circles, pushing back her hair the way she does when frustrated.

“What’s happened now? What next?” I say to Benton as he scrolls through red-flagged alerts landing on his phone.

“A small aircraft just crashed not too far from here,” he says as I watch Lucy talking and gesturing. “Off the shore of Fort Monroe…”

Dana Diletti’s helicopter has gone down into the Chesapeake Bay twelve miles from where we are at NASA Langley. Rescuers are on the way but it’s not sounding hopeful. Benton tells me what he’s seeing in emergency alerts.

I remember from the news that the celebrity TV journalist was supposed to film at Berkeley Plantation this morning for Virginia’s Historic Garden Week. Anybody paying attention would be aware of what she was doing and when. I watch Lucy as she gets off the phone and stops pacing not far from Sal’s pickup truck, investigators covering it in white plastic.

They’ll use heat guns to shrink-wrap it like a boat stored for the winter. I wonder what will happen after they have no further use for the old Chevy that Sal had as long as I’ve known him. Maybe it will be crushed into a cube. Or sold for parts. Or someone ghoulish will try to buy it.

“You’ve heard what’s going on?” Lucy asks as she trots back to Benton and me.

“We know about Dana Diletti’s helicopter but nothing more,” he tells her.

“Who was on board?” I ask.

“Bret Jones, one of several pilots she uses. I’ve seen him around and he was always nice enough. But I didn’t know him,” Lucy explains. “He landed at Berkeley Plantation to drop off Dana and three members of her crew. The plan was for him to head to Newport News. He’d refuel and wait until they were done filming.”

It appears he was the only one on board, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet, she goes on to say. His last radio call was fifteen miles northwest of the Newport News-Williamsburg International Airport. At 11:10 A.M. he contacted the tower, saying that he was inbound for landing. He was told to radio back when he was five miles out. He didn’t do that or call the UNICOM at the private terminal to request fuel and parking.

Entering the Class C airspace without clearance, he didn’t answer repeated radio calls. The airport declared an emergency, halting all traffic as F-16 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the small white helicopter. It continued on the same southeast heading at an altitude of twelve hundred feet, overflying shopping malls, crowded neighborhoods, a hospital.

“Had it gone down over land, it could have killed a lot of people,” I reply.

“I suspect that was the intention,” Benton says.

“Obviously, it was on autopilot,” Lucy continues. “When the F-16s flew close enough for the pilots to see inside the cockpit, they reported that Bret Jones was slumped forward in the right seat either unconscious or dead. It didn’t seem that anyone else was on board, and there was nothing to be done except wait for the inevitable.”

“I have a feeling you may be here for a while.” Benton says this to me.

“That’s how it’s looking,” I reply. “I’m disappointed I won’t be riding home with you.”

“It will be very lonely.” He smiles into my eyes. “Most of all be safe and stay out of trouble.”

“Don’t worry. Tron and I will take good care of her,” Lucy promises.

“I’m not so sure.” He puts on his sunglasses. “I don’t trust it when the three of you are together.”

We walk out of hangar 1112 and into the noon glare. I hug and kiss Benton goodbye for now. I’ll see him tonight if not sooner, I promise as Tron roars up in a black Dodge Charger.

“Did someone call Uber?” She jumps out, folding down her seat so I can squeeze in back.

“Jesus. What have you got in this thing? An anvil?” I haul a heavy tactical backpack out of my way.

“Field glasses. A spectrum analyzer. And other surprises. Just like Cracker Jack.” It’s Lucy who answers.

She drops her own heavy backpack on the floor in front of the passenger seat, climbing in.

“You know the Boy Scout motto. Be prepared.” Tron slides behind the wheel.

“Also the Girl Scout motto, just so you know.” The seat is so low I feel I’m sitting on the ground, the engine shaking my bones.

“I didn’t know you were a Girl Scout once.” Lucy directs this at me.

“I wasn’t. Or a Brownie and never earned a single merit badge, I’m sorry to report.” I look out the window at Benton driving away in his black Tesla.

“Well, I was a Girl Scout while wanting to be an Eagle Scout before girls got to do fun shit like that,” Tron says to the percussion of their doors shutting. She turns up the fan.

“Speaking of fun. Where did we manage to borrow this beauty?” My knees are touching the back of her seat.

“Our Norfolk field office.” Tron shifts the car into reverse, scanning her mirrors. “I’ve been running around since oh-dark-hundred delivering evidence, including to your place.” She makes a NASCAR-worthy U-turn, and I bump my head against the window.

“I’ll make sure the labs know to get started immediately.” I rub my temple as we rumble out of the parking lot.

“And while I was making deliveries in your building, I dropped off the ashes,” Tron says to me in a gentler tone, the reminder jolting, emotions swelling in my throat. “Wyatt was starting his shift and promised to put them in your office.”

“That was thoughtful of you.”

“I took special care packing them up in a cardboard urn with lots of bubble wrap.”

“Thank you.” I look out at other hangars tucked in the woods as images flash.

… Flames licking over melting plastic… Pink skin and gray hair showing through…