John Nance - 16 Souls

“Mr. Bogosian?” a uniformed officer was leaning over him.

“Oh! Yes. Sorry.”

“The chief wants to know if you can wait about fifteen minutes while he deals with a routine emergency?”

“Sure,” Scott replied, wondering exactly what emergencies could be considered routine at a major airport.

He settled back in the waiting room chair, recalling the look and the smell of the huge tire he had been inspecting so carefully in the nearby warehouse days before. Whatever had gouged the extremely tough rubber had gone from front to back along the left side of the tread. It was no more than a quarter of an inch deep, but the question that was bothering him most was whether the tire had touched something prior to the launching of Flight 12, or something moments before the crash.

Scott had leaned in to get as close a look as his eyes would allow and by playing the flashlight around the cut, began to realize what he was staring at: a small amount of colored substance along and embedded inside the cut. It looked for all the world like flecks of yellow paint, but just a small track of it.

Scott had glanced around furtively, verifying that the NTSB investigator who had been his willing host was elsewhere for the moment. He pulled an envelope from the inside of his jacket… another overdue bill, but the envelope would do. Using a penknife, he scraped as much of the yellow substance as he could into the envelope and quickly stowed it and the penknife before standing.

“Really fascinating,” Scott said, his voice causing his host to turn around some thirty feet away where he’d been inspecting a part of the broken fuselage.

“I’d like to see the top of the right wing over there, if I could,” Scott added.

“Sure,” the investigator replied, turning and waving him into motion. “It’s an incredible sight, how that Beech fuselage rammed itself into the wing structure without taking out the wing spar and collapsing the wing. There’s no way they should have stayed attached with them flying for over a half hour at such a speed. In fact, there’s no way anyone should have survived such a midair collision to begin with.”

Twenty minutes later, emerging into bright daylight, Scott had thanked the man profusely before lofting a final question.

“There’s no yellow paint used on the runways here, right? No surface signage?”

“Not that I know of. That’s a rather odd question.”

“Just curious. I get these little dangling facts sometime that don’t fit the mosaic.”

To Scott’s relief, the investigator considered the remark too far out to pursue. He decided to let it go, probably wondering if anyone could explain how reporters think.

Scott remembered not a moment of the drive back to town, but he recalled clearly obsessing over the incongruities. He knew the airport and its equipment well. No yellow paint was used on the snowplows, or the airport supervisory trucks. Yellow was used on all the fire trucks and fire command cars, but according to Josh Simmons, absolutely all of the fire and rescue equipment had been well accounted for as Regal 12 flew over.

So, where was the source of the gouge and the yellow paint? What could that tire have grazed? Maybe this, too, was nothing — but the loose-end aspect of it wouldn’t leave him alone, especially since he’d read at least five times the transcript of the NTSB’s interview with the captain:

NTSB: Captain Mitchell, you say a bright light appeared just in front and to the right, startling you.”

MM: Yes. I couldn’t tell if it was like headlights or a single light but something clearly was in the way, on the runway, at the last second. I figured it was a snow plow in the wrong location and to understate things, I did not want to hit it.

NTSB: The First Officer has reported to us that he did not recall seeing such a light.

MM: Maybe he didn’t. I did. Things were happening very, very fast at that speed.

NTSB: But Captain, if a vehicle was on the runway and its lights on sufficient for you to see, and if the copilot was looking out as well, why would you have been the only crewmember to see it?

MM: You guys calling me a liar?

NTSB: Certainly not, Captain Mitchell. We’re trying to…

MM: There was a light from something down there right in front of us and it would have been potential suicide to continue descending into it.

NTSB: You are aware that the airport authority reports that there were no vehicles on that runway, and that all airport and fire vehicles were accounted for.

MM: Yes. That’s what they say. But something was there.

NTSB: Did you tell your copilot you were seeing a light?

MM: No. There was only time to react. Did I tell him? We’re talking a split second!”

NTSB: Could you have mistaken a runway edge light or one of the approach lights for a vehicle?

MM: Absolutely not. I know what I saw, and it was not an approach or runway light!

Scott’s assumption that he could pull a very big favor from the head of the Colorado State Patrol’s crime lab had almost been proven wrong, but an impassioned plea won the day. It was obvious, however, that there would be no future concessions. He’d dropped the yellow scrapings off at the lab and hoped for a call back that hadn’t come for six days. But at last, with the trial of Captain Marty Mitchell in its fifth day, Scott’s phone rang withthe lab director on the other end.

“Scott, your substance is automotive paint, used only on Chevrolets manufactured between the years of 2004 and 2006. Called Wheatland Yellow. Does that help?”

“Immensely. Thank you!”

“I can’t send you a formal report, but I can send the basics to you via email, and I’ll preserve the sample that’s left.”

Just as the trial had adjourned for the day, a quick call to the Denver Airport Police had snagged the chief on his way out of the door. Scott had met the veteran cop months before and dutifully followed his habit of taking business cards or asking for phone numbers.

“May I ask you a question… partially a legal question?”

“Sure.”

“All of this is off the record, if that’s okay with you.”

There was a chuckle from the chief. “Wait, aren’t I supposed to ask that?”

“Works both ways, sir. Okay, here’s the question. If an airport worker drove his appropriately tagged private vehicle onto a closed runway during the January blizzard, without authorization or clearance, about the time of the Regal crash, would that be a police matter?”

There was a calculating hesitation on the other end.

“Well, that would definitely be a disciplinary matter but… yes, we would want to know about it.”

“Chief, there is a small streak of yellow paint confirmed to be from a Chevrolet product manufactured between 2004 and 2006 found in a lateral gouge on the bottom of the right rear tire on the right main gear of Regal 12. The captain maintained to the NTSB that a pair of headlights suddenly came on in front of him that night on final approach and directly influenced his actions, but there has been no proof, and essentially, the story has been discounted. Now, there are no official yellow Chevrolet cars or trucks as far as I can tell in the airport inventory. Additionally, of the fire and rescue equipment on the field — all of which is painted a different, almost greenish shade of yellow — none is made by General Motors. So, would it be possible for you to run a check of all the private vehicles which have permits to be on the air side of the airport to see which ones might be yellow Chevy products manufactured between those years?”

“We have the ability to do that, of course. Probably dozens of cars would fit that bill, if you’re talking about personal cars which can be driven into the appropriate parking areas.”