CHAPTER FIVE
Detective Lieutenant Nolan Brice stood in the brush near the wreckedaircraft, watching the men move about in the light of several spotlightsthat had been set up by the National Guardsmen who had roped off thearea. The thick blackness of the surrounding forest, plus a glance athis watch, told him that dawn wasn't too far away. FAA investigatorDickson, a thin, stringy ex-pilot stepped around the scrambled bits ofwreckage and offered a light to the dead cigarette in Nolan's mouth.
"Thanks," Brice said and blew the smoke to the night. "What d'you makeof it, Mister Dickson?"
Dickson shrugged and pushed his snap-brim hat back with a bluntforefinger. "Dunno. It's pretty dark to see much, but it's no privateplane."
"Why do you say that?"
"No wings, no tail assembly. Of course, it's hard to tell in the dark.When it gets light enough, we'll know the story; but I don't know of anyprivate plane that looks like that one. Then too, the Army is holdingthe news boys at bay. I think those two government fellows are playingthis one close to their chests."
Brice nodded and dragged on the cigarette, but he said nothing about thespeed of the thing. "Any bodies?"
Dickson shook his head. "The thing is pretty well burned, and thebodies, if there are any to be found, could be all over the area. We didfind a kind of flying suit, though, badly burned and torn."
"Just the suit? No one in it?"
Dickson looked perplexed. "Bothers you huh? Me too. I can't figure outwhy a pilot would carry something like that as an extra. Oh, well, it'llall come out when we really start investigating."
"How long does a thing like that take?"
Dickson shrugged. "A couple of days, a week. Even a few months. It'shard to say."
Brice nodded, took a final drag on the cigarette and tossed it towardthe wreck, watching the red ash burst near the wreck. Dickson hadwandered off to the far side of the crash-made clearing. Hell, Bricethought, I'd better get that butt. Leaving a thing like that around herecould get me in trouble. They'd think it was part of the crash.
When he walked over to retrieve the butt, he saw the light from theflood glinting on a small gold object. He picked it up and found that hehad someone's watch. The crystal had been smashed, likely in the crash,and the hands were stopped at 4:15. The expansion band watch dispelledhis hunch that the pilot of the plane had been a Russian, or something;it was a Bulova, and he didn't think Russians had them. But what cinchedthe whole thing was on the under side of the face, in the light of thespots, he could read: "To Nick, Love, Beth."
And suddenly, it was there! He knew the watch. He knew it as well as heknew his own. Hell, he had picked it up at the jeweler's shop inEverett, two years before, when Beth hadn't been able to get into townand wanted to surprise Nick with it! Stunned and puzzled, Brice droppedthe watch into his pocket and decided not to say anything to Cartwelland Morgan. Maybe it would cost him, later, but he couldn't tell them -not until he had a better picture of what the hell was going on.
He lit another cigarette and stood there thinking about the watch. Howhad it gotten here? Nick didn't know how to fly a plane, and even if hehad studied the art, could he fly an aircraft that cleared a speed oftwo thousand miles per hour? Hell no! Nor had the watch been there, inthe weather, all this time.
Of course, Nick could have hocked the damned thing in some town when heneeded money, and by some quirk of fate it had been brought back to thesame area it had left over a year before. That was possible, but Bricedidn't believe it. It just didn't fit.
"Seen enough?"
Brice turned and saw Cartwell standing behind him. How long has he beenthere, he wondered, and forced a grin. The stocky built blond grinnedback at him.
"Thought you might want a cup of coffee," he said.
"Where the hell will you get coffee out here?"
Cartwell waved an arm toward the foot of the hills. "A farm down there.They wake up early around here. Sam conned the farmer's wife into makingcoffee for the boys. Want some?"
"Might as well. We have a few minutes - in fact, we have a lot of time,before daylight."
"Getting tired?" Cartwell asked, as they started down the hill past thering of soldiers.
"A little. More like anxious to find out what the tale is on thatwreck."
"You've been talking to Dickson, I see."
Brice nodded. "Yeah. Well, one thing we know. It's apparently some kindof experimental aircraft ... like a rocket, or something. And, if itisn't one of ours..." Brice left it hang and Cartwell didn't pick it up.
For a few minutes they walked in silence through the dew splatteredforests, homing in on the glow of yellow lights that winked at themthrough the branches. Finally they reached the rutted, dirt road thattwisted along the stream bed toward the framed shape of the farm house.Cartwell broke the silence as they neared the place.
"Don't talk much about the wreck around these people, Nolan. They'renice folks, but simple natured. They plant by the phases of the moon andthe biggest event in their lives is going to the state fair. They'reLancaster Dutch, recently imported, and they believe in the hex signsthey painted on the barn."
Brice nodded. "Okay, John."
The farm couple were strangers to Brice, but their type was familiar.Pennsylvania was full of them. They were, as Cartwell had said, goodpeople. They were farmers, about three jumps above the witchcraftbelieving stock that had given them birth and were hard to understand.They were the stay-at-home type, to whom Pittsburgh was the Far West,and if they were forced to move farther than fifty miles away from home,their relations screamed that they would never see them again.
The woman, whose name Nolan hadn't caught, was plain appearing, with nomakeup and her hair pulled back into a severe knot at the base of herskull. From the moment, she asked them in and poured their coffee, heliked her. In her own, slow way she was a fine person, but her worldwas the farm, her life was the soil.
"Have you found that poor pilot, yet?" She asked, setting the coffeebefore them.
"No, ma'am," Cartwell told her.
The heavy set woman made a clucking sound with her mouth. "Honest totrue," she mused. "You'd wonder why a thing like that had to come tobe." She sighed heavily. "There'll be some poor woman in tears tonight.D'you think he was married?"
"I don't know, ma'am," Cartwell said.
"It's the children that suffer..." she said softly and allowed the restof what she was about to say trail off as Dickson came in. He smiled atthe farmwife and she poured him a cup of coffee.
Dickson pulled off his hat. "I'd like to thank you," he told her, "forbeing so kind..."
The woman looked pleased and flustered at the same time; there was atinge of flush about her face. "Bosh," she said, smiling. "It's theleast a body can do. I know I'd feel real glad to have someone helping,were it my boy up there."
"Your boy flies?"
"He did." The woman looked a bit pained. "He was killed during the war."
"I'm sorry," Dickson said, and reached for a doughnut from the plate onthe table.
A silence fell over them as they waited for the coming of dawn and achance to really look the wreck over. Nolan was somehow glad to bespared of conversation with the others. He felt like a criminal, withthe small gold watch in his coat pocket and he wanted to tell Dicksonand Cartwell about the thing. But he couldn't. For the first time in hislife he was delaying an investigation, hiding evidence. He was wellaware of the whole thing, but he was also aware of what the presence ofthat watch meant. It was a personal thing now, and until he knew whichway to go, he had to keep the watch a secret.
If Nick Danson had somehow come back in that wreck and, if they found nobodies, he would have gone to Beth ... the whole thing would becomplicated beyond belief. What would such a thing do? What would happento the woman he loved, if Nick Danson was back?
He stared moodily into the dark liquid in his coffee cup and wonderedwhere it would all end.