“Crummy night to be flying.”
When Rye didn’t respond, the deputy looked up at him from beneath the brim of his hat. Rye looked back and raised his eyebrows by way of asking if the deputy wanted to hear his story or not. The officer tipped his head for Rye to continue.
Disliking the deputy’s attitude, he decided to stick with the lie he’d told Brynn at the crash site. “I was on final approach when my panel lights blinked out. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “It was a flicker, but it came at the worst possible time. No instruments, no visual because of the fog. I was flying blind.”
“You crashed.”
In abbreviated, layman’s terms, he described the crash. “I narrowly missed the doctor’s car. It was a close call. We were both lucky. Wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. I walked away with nothing but a bump on the head to show for it.” He pushed back his hair to show him the goose egg. The deputy looked at it with no detectable concern.
He said, “The doctor tells us your plane is banged up pretty good and not going anywhere for a while.”
“It can’t be buffed out, no.”
“She gave us the general vicinity of where it is. We’ve got officers going out to take a look.”
Rye grimaced. “I’m required to call the FAA and file an accident report. My phone was busted, and since discovering White, I haven’t had time. I need to get some pictures of the craft, as is, so tell your guys not to disturb anything.”
“I’ll tell them,” Rawlins said, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to do it. “What caused your instruments to blink out?”
“A glitch. It’s an old plane.”
Rawlins looked doubtful. “I’m no pilot, but I know this is a tough place to fly in and out of. We had a guy fly in here last year. Sunday pilot. Came in too low, clipped the power lines as he—”
“I’m not that guy.”
Rye’s curt interruption seemed to rub the deputy the wrong way. “Oh, no?”
“No.”
The lawman looked him over then gave a skeptical snort and wrote something on his pad. “What was so all-fired important that you had to fly here tonight?”
“I fly freight.” Rye didn’t think that would cut it, and it didn’t.
“For who?”
“For whoever pays me.”
“What kind of freight?”
“All kinds. Big, little, dead or alive. You name it.”
“I’d like for you to name it. What were you flying tonight?”
“That.” The deputy followed the direction of his pointing finger to the box where it still sat in the chair adjacent to the door.
“What is it?”
“Exactly what it looks like.”
Impatience evident, the deputy shifted his weight. “What’s in it, Mr. Mallett?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t ask.”
The first statement was true, the second a lie, and gauging by the deputy’s dubious expression, he knew it was. “The doctor didn’t volunteer it?”
“No.”
“Is that typical?”
“In my business, there’s no such thing as typical.”
“Who dispatched you?”
“The name of the company is Dash-It-All.” Rye gave him the contact information, and he wrote it down. “If you don’t mind,” Rye said, “I’d like to call the owner myself and be the one to break the news about his plane.”
“I do mind.”
He gave Rye a smile that Rye would’ve enjoyed wreaking havoc on. Instead, he gave an indifferent shrug and nodded down at the notepad. “You’ve got his number.”
Rawlins called over another deputy, who was older but apparently lower in the department’s pecking order. Rawlins ripped off the sheet of paper that had Dash’s phone numbers on it and gave it to the other officer. He muttered instructions to him that Rye couldn’t hear and pretended disinterest in.
Before the other deputy moved away, he said to Rawlins in an undertone, “Know who she is?” He bobbed his head toward Brynn.
Rawlins leaned back in order to see around the other deputy to where Brynn was being questioned. “Should I?”
“Wes O’Neal’s daughter.”
Rawlins’s eyes narrowed on her. “You don’t say.”
“Wasn’t sure at first, but then I heard her name. I’d see her around the department when she was just a kid. In and out of there a lot.” The older deputy withdrew, presumably to phone Dash.
Rye’s curiosity got the better of him. “Who’s Wes O’Neal?”
Rawlins said, “You’re not from around here, or you’d likely know. Where are you from, Mr. Mallett?”
“Not from around here.” Rawlins gave him a baleful look, and Rye decided that annoying him further wasn’t worth the time it would cost him. “Everywhere and nowhere. Air Force brat. We moved every couple of years, so I don’t claim a home town or even a home state.”
“Where do you live now?”
He rented an apartment in Oklahoma City only so he would have a mailing address. He had no personal attachment to the city. He’d chosen it for convenience. It was in the center of the country, making it easy to get into on his way back from somewhere and easy to get out of on his way to somewhere else.
He hadn’t really lied to Brynn when she’d asked where he lived. The rental was more a storage unit for his few belongings than it was a residence. As often as not, he was far from there, sleeping in a cheap motel or in the back room of an FBO until somebody needed a pilot on short notice.
Like tonight.
His eyes were drawn again to Brynn. She was talking, making small gestures. She reached up and looped a hank of hair behind her ear. As she listened to the deputy’s next question, her teeth tugged at the corner of her lower lip, like she was nervous. Like she was lying.
“Address?”
Rawlins’s question brought Rye back. He provided Rawlins with the address of his apartment. The deputy added it to his notepad. “After you crashed, what happened?”
Rye explained how he’d managed to get out of the airplane. “I was trying to figure out which way back to the road when Dr. O’Neal showed up.” Leaving out how sneakily she’d acted when she found the plane, he related the rest.
“We got to her car, discovered the damage to the wheel, had no choice but to walk here. Found Brady White. That’s it. Just like I told you at the start. That’s everything I know. So can we wrap this up?”
But Rawlins wasn’t finished with him. “You said you were on the radio with Brady. What was his last transmission?”
“He asked if I was nervous.”
“About what?”
Rye smiled.
“What’s funny?”
“That’s what I came back to Brady with. My exact words. He was asking if I was nervous about the landing. I indicated I wasn’t. He said I was due a couple of beers. That’s the last I heard from him. I transmitted that I saw the runway lights, but he didn’t respond.”
“Why do you think?”
“I think because he’d been knocked cold. The radio wasn’t on when Dr. O’Neal and I got here. I checked.”
Rawlins said, “Okay,” but not in a way that sounded like it was okay.
He then went through a series of routine questions: Had Rye seen any other persons or vehicles; had he touched or disturbed anything; did it appear to him that anything had been disturbed; had Brady White said anything? He answered no to all.
The older deputy came back and reported to Rawlins. “Mallett here checks out. That Dash character went nuts when I told him about his plane, but I calmed him down. He’s emailing you the flight plan that Mallett filed, along with the paperwork on his cargo.”
Rawlins pulled out his phone. As he accessed his email, he said to Rye, “Why didn’t you give me all this?”
“You didn’t ask for it.”
Rawlins scrolled through the documents and stopped on the air bill. “Under client’s name it says Dr. Lambert.”
“I assumed that’s who Dr. O’Neal was till she told me different.”
“She came on Dr. Lambert’s behalf?”
Brynn had said to him that she’d come in Dr. Lambert’s place. There was a fine distinction between in his place and on his behalf. But Rye nodded in response to the deputy’s question, because when you didn’t have a freaking clue how to answer, a nonverbal reply was the safest.