were found here even if they didn’t die here.”
“We do have a shattered plane to investigate,” but she didn’t sound convincing even to herself.
“But if it was deliberately crashed?” Holly left the question dangling.
“Not much point except as a scientific study.”
Brett pointed his peach hand pie down toward Aspen. “Owners want to know if they can start the cleanup? It may be late June, but summer is very short at this elevation. They want to get crews up here clearing the mountain and fixing the Cirque Poma by winter—which comes early on this mountain.”
“Yay!” Jeff cheered around a mouthful of raisins. “Double black diamonds, here I come!”
Mike smirked just a little. “Do I see a lot of airlift bonus for your birds?”
Brett nodded. “Won’t mind the extra work. Already have a pair of heavy-lift Chinooks on call if I can get the contract.”
“Smart man,” Mike nodded.
Yes, Miranda already knew that about Brett.
Jon’s phone rang and he stepped away to answer it.
His distance made it the first time since he’d crested the ridge that she felt she could think. The man was very distracting, even when he wasn’t doing anything. She pulled out her personal notebook and made an entry for later consideration if that was a bad thing or a good one.
Jeff led Mike away to show off the remains of the Bofors L/60 and M102 howitzer they’d found earlier. Brett tagged along.
Now it was just Holly, Jeremy, and the dry wind riding fast and cool over the mountaintop.
“Think we’ll learn anything more here?” Holly asked softly.
Miranda considered, but finally shook her head. A deliberate crash was a criminal investigation, not a problem for the NTSB.
That felt wrong but sounded right. Would it be better the other way around, if it felt right but sounded wrong?
“This is weird.” Jeremy had perched on a nearby boulder in a way that reminded her of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. He wasn’t blue, three inches tall, or smoking a hookah atop a magic mushroom, but the similarity was there. He had his computer out and cables running into the black boxes that Holly and Mike had recovered. She could also see the card reader for the Quick Access Recorder drive that she’d recovered from the cockpit.
“What did you find, Jeremy?”
“Magic.”
She doublechecked, but he definitely wasn’t sitting on a mushroom.
“This plane magically appeared about five minutes before it crashed. There are no recordings on either device prior to their initial contact with Denver Center air traffic control. No handoff from Salt Lake Center, nothing.”
“Did they erase parts of it?” Holly looked over his left shoulder. Miranda moved to look over his right.
“No. There’s no background noise even. The media are factory fresh. Turned on just to capture the crash. I don’t even have the opening of the door. And I should, right there.” He stabbed a finger at a time mark. “At least that’s when they reported the depressurization event. The door must have already been open specifically so that the event wouldn’t be recorded in the data stream.”
Miranda could see the spikes consistent with voice communication, but there was no mechanical record of the door opening.
“They turned everything on to just capture the crash but wanted to keep their point of origin and flight route hidden,” Holly was nodding to herself as if that somehow made sense. “They wanted us to focus on the dead, assuming that no one would read these devices until they were sent back to the NTSB lab.”
Which, Miranda knew, would have been the proper procedure. But Jeremy’s ability to quickly access the information had proven useful on a number of occasions. It had saved their lives in the New Mexico desert.
“Why would someone do that?”
Jon hung up his phone and joined them. “Because they knew they had to keep the best crash-investigation team in the business distracted.”
That didn’t sound quite right, but Jon continued before she could think of why.
“Brett,” he called out and the man turned from where he’d been repacking the cooler. “On my advice, they’ve called off the Air Force investigation team for this site. You can tell the owners that they’re good to start clearing the mountain. They’re to coordinate with Peterson AFB over in Colorado Springs.”
Brett shot a thumb’s up and got on the helo’s radio to pass along the news.
“Miranda, there’s another—”
“Hang on, mate,” Holly rose to her feet, brushing pastry crumbs off so that they showered over Mike. “What Air Force investigation team?”
“The one coming to investigate the crash.”
“But I