I could tell John was warming to his topic. He talked about the electrical systems of planes for some time. I hoped my eyes didn’t glaze over. I did manage to make a note that he thought he found a tracking device, but it no longer seemed functional.
“The oddest part is that there wasn’t anything in the plane with writing on it,” John said. “Most planes have something somewhere. A gauge or even a computer monitor has some sort of indication about what it is but this had nothing. Either the pilot had to be familiar with the controls or he’d be lost.”
“What about using this plane up in the wilds, say like a bush plane. Would that have any merit?” I asked.
“I don’t see why.” John looked thoughtful. “It was set up like an odd fighter plane. It’s like whoever designed this threw out everything we know about making something aerodynamic and started from scratch and came up with this.”
I nodded, feeling a slight chill.
“You need to be careful,” Zari’s voice came to me, quite loudly and pronounced.
“Why?” I sent back.
“Peter has just said that the plane has been moved around.”
“Have RaeLynn call me, okay?” I sent back to the cat.
“I wonder what could be going on?” I said aloud, hoping that it was close to an appropriate comment. The phone rang before John had a chance to respond.
“This is Rain,” I said picking up.
“Zari tells me you need me to call,” RaeLynn said.
“Yeah,” I said, hoping Zari would explain that I needed a reason to know about the plane.
“Gotcha,” RaeLynn said a second later. She then proceeded to tell me what Zari A had just said. I made the appropriate noises before hanging up.
“I just had a call,” I said, unnecessarily as he could see that. “There are parts missing from the plane. It’s like someone removed all of our unusual metal.”
“It was intact when I left,” John looked surprised. My read was that he really was surprised. Zari A seemed to have it in her head that there was a reason he might be involved. “I mean the way it was when your people saw it. I took a small piece off of one of the weapons systems but nothing that large.”
“I guess someone hacked apart large pieces and left odd pieces lying around,” I said, trying to get a sense of what Zari was saying. “The seats were moved and turned over and pieces of the plane had been moved from place to place. There would have been several people to do that sort of damage.”
“I can see the bears liking the seats maybe, but not pulling apart the intact parts of the plane, well, not unless you smeared it with food,” John said. “Otherwise, they shouldn’t have been interested in it.”
I nodded waiting.
“I should have stayed no matter what Peter said. Then we’d know what was going on.”
“Or you’d be missing too,” Peter said walking into the office area.
John looked up surprised.
“You’re the most silent guy I know,” John said.
“I’d like to go up to your home and get the piece of metal that you took from the plane. I don’t like that someone seems to be cleaning up after themselves. The piece of the metal you have is all that’s left.”
John nodded. “I can drive you up there if you like.”
“Is it in the garage?” Peter asked.
“It’s the third bay of my daughter’s garage,” John said.
“Does she lock it?” Peter asked.
“Usually. She might be home today. She said something about having a doctor’s appointment.”
“I’ll run up there myself, while you and Rain finish your conversation,” Peter said, moving towards the door.
“Rain said you would be the expert to look at it for radiation,” John said.
“I can do that.” Peter halted looking from me to John.
“They’re unusual,” John said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before and I’ve been trying to find a match but I can’t.”
“It’s a different metal,” Peter said, “So it’s not so strange that the readings are different.”
“They just don’t conform to anything that I’ve ever seen, even as a natural phenomenon. I know I’m not an expert but they feel wrong somehow.”
Peter narrowed his eyes a bit before replying. “I’ll look into it more closely.” He left the room, looking thoughtful.
I wondered what that was about, but Zari seemed disinclined to fill me in either.
Meg
Meg, Colleen and Dillon looked around the plane for some time, searching for any sort of tracks. Meg was fairly certain they weren’t going to find anything. Peter hadn’t mentioned seeing any signs of people, other than that vague dream sense he’d had. No one could hide from an earth spirit on his land. Meg wandered around the plane. She was looking for something new that seemed out of place, something that could tell them what was happening.
Colleen and Dillon were working a sort of grid pattern looking for anything that might be a clue.
“The back of this seat has blood,” Meg said picking up a seat.
“I think I noticed that earlier,” Dillon said.
“It’s the back of the seat though?”
“The pilot could have started bleeding there, brushing against it.”
“But where was he bleeding from?” Meg asked.
“He had a big wound on his side, like he something sharp had penetrated his side, probably during the crash. There was also a wound on his arm.”
“Were the wounds bound?” Colleen asked.
“The side wound was bound pretty heavily. The arm, less so.”
“He could have leaned against the back of this seat, while he bandaged himself,” Colleen said.
“Too low,” Meg responded.
“If he was at least as tall as me, he’d have leaned here. His side wouldn’t have fit there.”
“His arm?” Colleen asked.
“I think the right arm was bleeding,” Dillon said.
“Another person?” Meg asked. Peter didn’t think so but wasn’t certain. After all, there just wasn’t another person there when the plane crashed.
Despite that, the three of them wandered around looking for anything that might have indicated another person or persons in the plane. They’d talked about it earlier but the fact that people seemed to appear and disappear made Meg wonder more about the mysterious other persons that might or might not exist.
Meg sent out a thought to Peter, asking him if others on the plane could have disappeared the way other people seemed to be doing. Would he have known about that?
Peter showed up walking out from behind the tree.
“Normally, I’d say yes,” Peter responded. “However nothing about this plane and its passengers is normal. I’m surprised I even realized there was someone on the mountain at all given what is happening.”
“You know, there are two seats missing. The last time we were here there were four seats. Why do we only have two of them now?” Dillon asked.
Meg looked around. Dillon did also. They hadn’t noticed the seats until then. Of course the seats had been moved around.
“Are you sure that was the front seat?” Dillon asked.
“I think so. There’s a slight tear in the fabric and that one seemed like it was the pilot’s seat,” Colleen said.
Dillon nodded, remembering that. “I can get why someone might want to hide that metal, but why the seats?”
“Could it be the blood?” Meg asked.
Peter moved to the seat to smell the blood left there. He rubbed his fingers into the seat and then put them back to his nose, sniffing again. “This blood is different from that of the pilot.”
“You can tell that?” Colleen said looking at him.
Peter gave her a long look, as that was a silly question.
“Never mind,” she finished. “Of course you can.”
Meg smiled.
“So if that isn’t the pilot who was it?” Dillon asked
. “And what happened to him?”
“It wasn’t anyone who was ever on my land,” Peter said, “Nothing in his blood feels familiar, except the way I’d remember someone, a memory. But…” Meg caught trails of thoughts that he shut down from her, probably worried about a repeat of her last attempt to look to closely at something in his mind.
Meg wondered how someone could hide from Peter. And what did that memory remind him of?
Rain
John left shortly after Peter did. He seemed thoughtful and troubled by what he’d learned. “Hopefully I haven’t put my daughter in any danger by bringing that metal to the house,” he said just before leaving.
“I’m sure Peter will take care of it,” I assured him.
John shrugged. Within that shrug were the vestiges of age and worry. He looked older somehow.
“You know,” he paused at the door, “I was doing some figures and it does seem like the angles on the gun might offer a slight advantage with their placement. Unfortunately any advantage they gain is lost because the engines shouldn’t be able to give the plane as much maneuverability as a more traditionally designed plane. It’s an odd thing.”
I agreed. I made that as a note as that observation might give us a clue as to why the plane had been built. Fire power but not maneuverability.
“I found something,” RaeLynn said walking into the door.
“What?”
“Well, you know our pilot?”
“Not personally,” I said, smiling even as I nodded at her to go ahead.
RaeLynn frowned at me but ignored the comment. “At any rate, he’s got no background other than his business. It’s like he’s a ghost.”
“I wish you people would stop insisting this whole thing is about ghosts,” Peter said walking up behind RaeLynn. To her credit, RaeLynn only jumped a little bit and her feet never left the floor.
“What do you mean?” she asked, standing aside to let him in the office. Peter entered, not pausing to let her walk in front but took center stage, sprawling in one of the chairs.
“Dillon has asked about ghosts and spirits as well,” Peter said. “I’ve explained that I’d sense that kind of thing.”
“That wasn’t exactly what I mean,” RaeLynn smiled and gave a little hiccup like she was trying not to laugh.
Peter clearly caught that and looked over at her with an expression as close to a glare as I’ve ever seen.
“Look, in the terms I meant, a ghost is someone without a past. What I think it means is that this guy has had an identity change or three in the past and we’ll have a heck of a time tracing him. Considering I’ve already worked on that, you can bet the identity change was well done. Zari even helped me.”
“And she’s good at that,” I said. She’d helped me change my identity on more than one occasion. She knew what to look for on both sides of that equation.
“Good at what?” Now Kyle was standing at the door too. I was feeling claustrophobic with all of them crowding around the entrance. I gestured for them to come in. RaeLynn walked into the office and leaned against the chair across from the desk. Peter didn’t move but Kyle came in and settled down at the table near the door.
“Is anyone else out there?” I asked.
“Just Kaitlyn,” Kyle said. “But I thought you might want to know about the guy I was investigating.”
“Did you find something?”
“Well, Paul, that’s the guy, says he was set up. The electronic components are missing from the building he was supposed to guard but he says he didn’t take them. The place was empty when he went in.”
“Why did he go in?” I asked.
“First he told everyone that he thought he heard something odd and found the place empty. Actually, he doesn’t remember what happened. He could have sworn that’s what he did, but he doesn’t remember getting there. He says he felt like someone slipped him a drug of some sort because he felt like he was walking forever and not getting to the building. Then when he got there, the place was empty.”
“Did he get a tox screen?” I asked.
“Unfortunately no. He wasn’t sure why someone would go to all that trouble. And he made it to the warehouse finally. I got a look at the surveillance cameras and they show a worker who looks like my guy, only shorter and thinner, going inside. And he’s removing things. We get one look at the face and it’s like someone tried to distort the camera with some sort of photo editor. The weird thing? The guy is wearing different clothing than my defendant and Paul, the real Paul, shows up in the video a few minutes later dressed like he says he was dressed and looking normal.”
“That’s strange,” RaeLynn said. “Suppose that they had someone who looked a little like him and then distorted that part of the video?”
I immediately thought of the pilot’s picture when Kyle said distorted. “Was it like his face was elongated or something?”
“Exactly. It was strange looking to see the rest of the background look so normal though,” Kyle said.
“So there is that link too.” I put my hand under my chin, thinking. There were people who shouldn’t be here and we were losing people who should be.
“And didn’t you say that your Mike Taylor wasn’t short and the person who said he was, was short,” RaeLynn asked.
“So this is like that,” Kyle said. “I ought to tell my Uncle. It may not help legally because this is weird but there’s something going on.”
I looked at Peter. He wasn’t looking at me. I was staring off into the corner, running his hand along the wall, but not with his usual attention to detail.
“This is more about the perception of vision. Would that be more in the realm of air than earth?” I asked Peter.
“The eyes are earth. They too are part of the human body. This distortion could be something dealing with air, but air spirits do not think like humans so they would be difficult to get information from.”
“What about Marcus?” I asked.
“I can get in contact with him,” Peter said. “Meg has suggested he spend some time at the plane site, but that could be dangerous for him. It’s possible that as half element spirit and half human he’d see something that I wouldn’t connect to the plane. And in this case, perhaps get a fix on something I cannot seem to.”
Peter left the room, still looking thoughtful. RaeLynn picked up her notes, following him out, looking equally lost in thought. That left me in the office with Kyle and Zari A.
Kyle was looking out the window. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to be accused of something and not have done it,” he said. “I’d hate that. At least if you’ve done it, you know that you did, right?”
I nodded watching him.
“Of course, even if you know that, some things you can’t take back, no matter how much you want to.”
“You can only move forward,” I agreed.
“It’s just damn hard to know that that guard is gone because I used that gun. He ought to be alive. Maybe in jail or something but alive,” Kyle said. Kyle hadn’t talked much about this aspect of the killing. Mostly he’d talked about things like being grateful to be alive and wanting to use his life for something more than just his own selfish reasons.
“You shot to protect yourself,” I said.
“At what cost? Was the cost worth it, really?” he asked. Clearly no matter how much he tried to offer a shoulder or a listening ear, the new tender Kyle worried that his life had to make up for the one he took.
“I heard once, from a veteran, that it’s easy to kill someone. It’s living with yourself after that’s hard.”
Kyle frowned. “How do people do that? Kill a lot of people and live with themselves after?”
“I think it’s harder than we know. It’s why the returning vets often have such a difficult time reintegrating into their old world. They’ve done things that can’t be shared and no one understands.”
“I get that,” Kyle said.
Zari leaped down from the cat tree and stepped
on Kyle’s lap looking up at him with great golden eyes, a look that I knew too well. It was the one that suggested she was trying to see into your soul. I couldn’t hear if she said anything but Kyle started petting her for a few minutes, even as she stood there looking at him. For the first time, I felt a little left out of the relationship with my cat.
Zari turned to give me a look before turning back to Kyle. I could see her toes flexing and contracting while she “made biscuits”. She hated that term as it seemed too cute for the cat that she was. I tried to avoid thinking that she was being very cute cat in this moment and was acting surprisingly empathic.
“As if I have never killed anything,” she snorted at me.
Meg
Meg walked around the plane, moving farther and farther from it, although she kept it at the center of her search. There had to be something, some clue, which would help them put the pieces together. She felt as if she was looking at a large puzzle and had most, if not all the pieces. She just needed to understand how to put them together.
Meg knelt and looked at the ground. Footprints etched the dirt which didn’t match those of her friends. Peter kept a running commentary in her mind in case she had any doubt. There were several sets. One might belong to John but not all of them. Peter didn’t recognize the others. Meg wondered briefly if they could belong to the pilot. Peter’s response was an unqualified no.
There was something different about the plane, beyond the obvious things, like the tearing apart of the wings and the movement of the seats. Meg couldn’t quite put her finger on it though.
“Do you know what I mean?” Meg said quietly, looking for some sort of comment from Peter.
“As if I’d know a plane if I saw it,” Peter murmured, almost grouchy in his response. Meg could feel tension running through his mind, taut like a wire. Something kept him from settling in with the land. She was reminded of herself, pacing back and forth in the glass room that Blayn G had held her in. His mind was like that, running through things over and over again, frustrated at those things he didn’t understand and further frustrated when some of those things were obvious to others but not to him.
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