Read 5 - Choker: Ike Schwartz Mystery 5 for Free Online

field otherwise.”
    “Triple-click?”
    “Yeah, they don’t light the field twenty-four seven. If you need to land after dark you raise their frequency on your radio and click the talk button three times, quick. The lights come on for fifteen minutes. It takes some practice.”
    “Had he ever done that?”
    “I made him do it once before I’d sign off on his ticket.”
    Ike studied the map some more. There had to be a glitch somewhere. “Is there a time stamp when he disappeared from the radar?” Trent pulled a sheaf of papers from a pile on his desk and withdrew a piece of foolscap.
    “Twenty-one thirteen.”
    Ike drummed his fingers on the desk. Twenty-one thirteen, Zulu, nine thirteen at night. He opened his phone and dialed Charlie on the private line he’d been given.
    “Charlie, is there a time stamp on the call your niece got from her fiancé?”
    “Geeze Ike, I don’t know. Hold on, I’m in the middle of something here. Is it important?”
    “Until we figure this thing out, everything is important. But in this case—yeah, very important.” Ike could hear drawers opening and closing and an exasperated Charlie searching for wherever he kept his information. Ike had visited Charlie’s office years before, remembered the confusion of papers and empty Styrofoam cups on his desk, and reckoned it might take more time than Ike had. He was wrong.
    “Nine twenty-five. Of course that’s not one-hundred percent reliable. The answering machine’s time stamp was set by my sister-in–law. Nice lady but…”
    “I got it. Thanks.”
    “Anything else you need, Ike?”
    “You can check that time stamp if you get a chance, but I’ll assume it is close enough.”
    Ike snapped the phone shut.
    “His plane was a Cessna 172, modified as a spotter plane, you said?”
    “Right.”
    “Any idea at what speed it cruised?”
    “Maybe 110 miles per hour. But he might have been going faster or slower. Like I said, he’s a baby pilot in a hurry to see his girl.”
    “But he dropped off the radar at twenty-one thirteen, right? And he made a phone call to his fiancée that night at twenty-one twenty-five. Allowing for some inaccuracy in the time register on the answering machine, he must have been in the air an additional ten to twelve minutes after he dropped off the radar. Where would that put him on your map?”
    “Ah! Now that’s interesting.”
    “How so?”
    “In a minute. First I need to tell you that his plane had a tendency to drift to the left. So he could have been off this line by a couple of miles by then. He’d be on the right heading, just running parallel to this one.”
    “He knew about that?”
    “Yeah, but in the dark he might have compensated for it—or not—or even over compensated a little.”
    “So he could have been several miles to the right and some distance to the left?”
    “Correct. Now, assuming he was cruising and not playing jet jockey, he’d be on the south side of Kent Island, somewhere over Eastern Bay.” Trent drew a large circle on the map.
    “So if they were looking for Nick north of Kent Island—”
    “They wouldn’t find anything.” Ike waited. Something in Trent’s voice indicated there would be more.
    “See, after the kid disappeared, like I told you, I flew this course the next day. I fixed up this map and went down the line, so to speak. After I reached the area they thought he might have ditched, I kept on over Kent Island to make my turn. That’s when I thought I saw something—the ‘maybe’ I mentioned before.”
    “You thought you saw…what?”
    Trent pointed to a spit of land on the map. “This map isn’t the greatest, you know. The Chesapeake Bay is fickle when it comes to where the land is. Anyway, right about here there’s a little sandy beach that goes with a small house and pier. I thought I saw a piece of airplane there—like it washed up.”
    “A piece of—”
    “If I had to guess, tail section. But, see, it was in the wrong place,