arguing.”
You lunk-head. What do you think he thought when you took his offer? She said, “Next time I’ll go. Start loading the car, we’re leaving here.”
He objected, calling through the partially closed door with the sound of water running. “But we already paid for two nights!”
“So sue me.”
He yelled back, “I’d rather fuck you.”
She shut off the water and stepped out of the rust-colored tub, quickly covering with a towel. “Get going, dickhead, or I’ll cut you off for a month.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am! Say, guess what I heard?”
She toweled her hair. “What?”
“Good ol’ Jake Ramsey done pulled off a miracle.”
She stopped and opened the door. “Like what?”
“He done got rescued. Swum like eighty miles or somthin’.”
She was standing motionless, wrapped in old terrycloth. “Will, where did you hear that?”
“Oh, let’s jes’ say a bird tol’ me.” He was smiling at his own coyness, expecting her to challenge him.
Instead, she turned around in the bathroom, finishing her hair, with a very faint smile on her face, mixed with remorse.
Investigation
BJ used Jake’s phone to call the Lafayette Police Department. About an hour later, two officers from the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) knocked on the door. After their introductions, Jake showed them to the back room. Officer Tibbs was in plain clothes, assisted by Sargent Rhinewall. After briefly seeing the scene, they sat in the living room.
Sergeant (Detective) Tibbs did most of the speaking.
“Okay now, Mr. Ramsey, you say you had a lot of gold in the safes?”
“I’ve been collecting coins since I was a kid and been buying investment gold coins since I joined the Army thirty years ago.”
Tibbs asked, “How much would you say was in there that got stolen.”
“Well, they cleaned me out, so it was the whole collection. I haven’t appraised it recently, but it’s somewhere between three quarters and a million dollars.”
The two officers looked at each other, then Tibbs had a shocked look on his face when he asked, “You sure it was a million? That’s more than the Governor’s worth.”
“Here’s the inventory. I think if you do the math, it’s probably worth more than a million.” He handed them the list.
“Can we have this? It might be important cuz the state and probably the FBI was gonna wanna get in on this. It’s a major crime.” Jake had several copies.
Jake breathed out, “Yeah, it’s major to me all right. Do you think professionals broke into my safes?”
The other investigator with Tibbs answered, “We sure don’t get many professional safe crackers around here. Does anyone know your combinations?”
Jake was worried. “That’s the other part. My girl, Callie, well, she’s not my girl, but someone special. She knew where I wrote down the combinations. She’s gone. They might have tortured her or something then kidnapped her.”
Tibbs was trim with a grey crewcut, about forty years old. He moved to the front edge of the couch. “Well that’s another matter. Kidnappin’ we don’t usually check for at least forty-eight hours in case it’s really a runaway situation.
Jake was insistent. “Look, you can’t be serious about a runaway. She’s almost thirty. Don’t you see what happened here?”
The young uniformed officer was clean-cut and well spoken. He answered, “Mr. Ramsey, we don’t want to upset you. Let’s just see where the evidence leads. I’m calling the crime scene unit to come right out here. Don’t touch anything more until they’ve been through. It would be best if you just stayed outside for a few hours.”
Jake looked down, shaking his head. “All right, I’ll hang loose. Tell you what. I’ve got another investigation going on about a helicopter crash. How about I come back in a couple hours?”
Tibbs scrunched his lips then nodded his head up and down. “Yeah, that would work. Just take another look around and see if anything else is missing.”
“I already did. The only thing I would worry about is my VISA card. I gave it to Callie in case I got delayed somewhere. It’s gone along with her.”
Tibbs finished, “All right then. You let our folks do their jobs an’ we’ll see what we got.”
“Any chance I can change? I’ve been in this flight suit for days.”
The uniformed officer answered, “Better not yet. Let’s let the forensic guys go through here first. Sorry.”
BJ asked the detectives to move their car so he and Jake could drive back to CHI for the NTSB and News gathering. Jake was beginning to wish he was back on the platform, alone. He now had two worries, his gold and Callie. BJ asked, “You gonna be all right? I mean, man, a million bucks, I don’t believe it.”
“I’m okay, BJ. I got my Army pension, and everything is paid for. I still have a small 401K and will get Social Security someday. In the meantime, I’ll keep flying. I was probably never going to sell those coins anyway. They would all end up donated to some charity. Tell you the truth, I’m mostly concerned about Callie. She’s tough, but I don’t want her hurt.”
They entered the airfield and could see the news vans parked by the big hangar. There were scores of people hanging around. Jake suddenly felt awkward. When they parked, and he got out of the truck, several people with microphones surrounded him, and he couldn’t move. He started to answer questions when Ross walked between them. “Folks, Jake here has got to answer some questions for the Government before he makes any statements. So, if you’ll please make way, we’ll get that part over with and then you can have him.” Ross pulled Jake through the mass of humanity, still bombarding him with questions.
Crash Investigation
Jake, BJ, Ross, Alex Davis (Chief Mechanic), an FAA inspector and some others were sitting in the conference room. An NTSB (National Transportation Safety Bureau) investigator was conducting a hearing into the crash. A Bell helicopter representative was invited but did not attend. The NTSB inspector had a stenographer with him and a voice recorder.
The meeting was an official process of the NTSB. “Mr. Ramsey, on the morning of the fifteenth of this month, were you flying a Bell 407, tail number N407AK, over the Gulf of Mexico?”
Jake had been through similar sessions twice before and learned not to elaborate. “Yes.”
“What was your destination?”
“I was going to platform 1GC for passengers.”
“What was the weather like?”
“Shitty. That’s my professional description.”
The investigator cringed, “Can you be more specific?”
“Stormy, ceiling closing below VFR minimums, sea state three, wind fifteen to twenty-five west-south-west, gusting to forty or fifty.”
“What altitude were you flying?”
“Around five hundred feet to maintain visual contact with the ocean.”
“Sounds like a great day to fly, heh.”
“Oh, yeah, just peachy. You can quote me.”
“Thanks.” The man didn’t appreciate sarcasm.
The investigator continued. “Now, Mr. Ramsey, as you know, the aircraft is lost, and we have no physical evidence. As the pilot, did you detect any mechanical problems?”
“Yes. There was a loud boom and cracking sound in flight, and the helicopter shook violently from the rear.”
“Do you have opinion about the cause?”
“Lost the tail rotor, big time. Not just a drive problem, the blades or hub must have separated from the boom.”
The investigator observed, “The helicopter would be un-flyable.”
“You got that right.”
“I mean it would have spun out of control and been obliterated on impact with the surface.”
Jake avoided getting frustrated. “Normally, I would agree. Maybe I was lucky. I feathered everything, neutralizing torqu
e steer and pushed the nose down, all within a few hundred milliseconds. It was actually a classic autorotation, except I was so close to the deck.”
The inspector observed, “I don’t think we’ve ever had a situation where a pilot was able to control the aircraft with the failure you described without more altitude.” From the questioning, Jake figured the man was experienced as a commercial airline pilot, he was old enough, but didn’t know much about helicopters, other than what he read.
Jake responded, “Actually, the altitude was probably what saved me because I doubt that I could have controlled forward flight very long in the wind and rain without control of the tail. I’ve got almost twenty thousand hours in helicopters and a lot of that was in shitty conditions, but I was lucky this time.”
The investigator smiled. “Lucky if you consider losing a two million dollar aircraft, lucky.”
“I value my life a lot more.”
“All right, let’s go on. You claim to have felt a structural failure that you believe was in the area of the tail rotor.”
Jake interrupted. “Correction. I DID experience tail rotor destruction. It’s not the first time. The bird was wounded and was going down. No way to stop that.”
The investigator then turned to Alex Davis who was Jake’s friend but who was also watching out for his own career. The bottom line was that 407AK (Alpha Kilo) was fresh from inspection, and all Maintenance Directives were current. This helicopter was mechanically like new.
The investigator returned to Jake. “Mr. Ramsey, you maintain that there was a structural failure, yet the Bell 407 has never experienced such failure if properly maintained. What is your