The insurance investigator’s name was Ratterfield. They welcomed him into the conference room at the law school. He removed his jacket as if they might be there for hours. Ray was wearing jeans and a golf shirt. Mirk was just as casual.
“I usually record these,” Ratterfield said, all business as he pulled out a tape recorder and placed it between him and Ray. ‘Any objections?” he asked, once the recorder was in place.
“I guess not,” Ray said.
He punched a button, looked at his notes, then began an introduction, for the benefit of the tape. He was an independent insurance examiner, hired by Aviation Underwriters, to investigate a claim filed by Ray Atlee and three other owners for damages to a 1994 Beech Bonanza on June 2. According to the state arson examiner, the airplane was deliberately burned.
Initially, he needed Ray’s flying history. Ray had his logbook and Ratterfield pored through it, finding nothing remotely interesting. “No instrument rating,” he said at one point.
“I’m working on it,” Ray replied.
“Fourteen hours in the Bonanza?”
“Yep.”
He then moved to the consortium of owners, and asked questions about the deal that brought it together. He’d already interviewed the other owners, and they had produced the contracts and documentation. Ray acknowledged the paperwork.
Changing gears, Ratterfield asked, “Where were you on June the first?” :
“Biloxi, Mississippi,” Ray answered, certain that Ratterfield had no idea where that was.
“How long had you been there?”
“A few days.”
“May I ask why you were there?”
“Sure,” Ray said, then launched into an abbreviated version of his recent visits home. His official reason for going to the coast was to visit friends, old buddies from his days at Tulane.
“I’m sure there are people who can verify that you were there on June the first,” Ratterfield said.
“Several people. Plus I have hotel receipts.”
He seemed convinced that Ray had been in Mississippi. “The other owners were all at home when the plane burned,” he said, flipping a page to a list of typed notes. “All have alibis. If we’re assuming it’s arson, then we have to first find a motive, then whoever torched it. Any ideas?”
“I have no idea who did this,” Ray said quickly, and with conviction.
“How about motive?”
“We had just bought the plane. Why would any of us want to destroy it?”
“To collect the insurance, maybe. Happens occasionally. Perhaps one partner decided he was in over his head. The note is not small—almost two hundred grand over six years, close to nine hundred bucks a month per partner.”
“We knew that two weeks earlier when we signed on,” Ray said.
They shadowboxed for a while around the delicate issue of Ray’s personal finances—salary, expenses, obligations. When Ratterfield seemed convinced that Ray could swing his end of the deal, he changed subjects. “This fire in Mississippi,” he said, scanning a report of some type. “Tell me about it.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Are you under investigation for arson down there?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. You can call my attorney if you’d like.”
“I already have. And your apartment has been burglarized twice in the past six weeks?”
“Nothing was taken. Both were just break-ins.”
“You’re having an exciting summer.”
“Is that a question?”
“Sounds like someone’s after you.”
“Again, is that a question?”
It was the only flare-up of the interview, and both Ray and Ratterfield took a breath.
“Any other arson investigations in your past?”
Ray smiled and said, “No.”
When Ratterfield flipped another page, and there was nothing typed on it, he lost interest in a hurry and went through the motions of wrapping things up. “I’m sure our attorneys will be in touch,” he said as he turned off the recorder.
“I can’t wait,” Ray said.
Ratterfield collected his jacket and his briefcase and made his exit.
After he left, Carl said, “I think you know more than you’re telling.”
“Maybe,” Ray said. “But I had nothing to do with the arson here, or the arson there.”
“I’ve heard enough.”
Chapter 39
For almost a week, a string of turbulent summer fronts kept the ceilings low and the winds too dangerous for small planes. When the extended forecasts showed nothing but calm dry air for everywhere but South Texas, Ray left Charlottesville in a Cessna and began the longest cross-country of his brief flying career. Avoiding busy airspace and looking for easy landmarks below, he flew west across the Shenandoah Valley into West Virginia and into Kentucky, where he picked up fuel at a four-thousand-foot strip not far from Lexington. The Cessna could stay aloft for about three and a half hours before the indicator dipped below a quarter of a tank. He landed again in Terre Haute, crossed the Mississippi River at Hannibal, and stopped for the evening in Kirksville, Missouri, where he checked into a motel.
It was his first motel since the odyssey with the cash, and it was precisely because of the cash that he was back in a motel. He was also in Missouri, and as he flipped through muted channels in his room, he remembered Patton French’s story of stumbling upon Ryax at a tort seminar in St. Louis. An old lawyer from a small town in the Ozarks had a son who taught at the university in Columbia, and the son knew the drug was bad. And because of Patton French and his insatiable greed and corruption, he, Ray Atlee, was now in another motel in a town where he knew absolutely no one.
A front was developing over Utah. Ray lifted off just after sunrise and climbed to above five thousand feet. He trimmed his controls and opened a large cup of steaming black coffee. He flew more north than west for the first leg and was soon over the cornfields of Iowa.
Alone a mile above the earth, in the cool quiet air of the early morning, and with not a single pilot chattering on the airwaves, Ray tried to focus on the task before him. It was easier though, to loaf, to enjoy the solitude and the views, and the coffee, and the solitary act of leaving the world down there. And it was quite pleasant to put off thoughts of his brother.
After a stop in Sioux Falls, he turned west again and followed Interstate 90 across the entire state of South Dakota before skirting the restricted space around Mount Rushmore. He landed in Rapid City, rented a car, and took a long drive through Badlands National Park.
Morningstar Ranch was somewhere in the hills south of Kalispell, though its Web site was purposefully vague. Oscar Meave had tried but had been unsuccessful in pinpointing its exact location. At the end of the third day of his journey, Ray landed after dark in Kalispell. He rented a car, found dinner then a motel, and spent hours with aerial and road maps.
It took another day of low-altitude flying around Kalispell and the towns of Woods Bay, Polison, Bigfork, and Elmo. He crossed Flathead Lake a half-dozen times and was ready to surrender the air war and send in the ground troops when he caught a glimpse of a compound of some sort near the town of Somers on the north side of the lake. From fifteen hundred feet, he circled the place until he saw a substantial fence of green chain link almost hidden in the woods and practically invisible from the air. There were small buildings that appeared to be housing units, a larger one for administration perhaps, a pool, tennis courts, a barn with horses grazing nearby. He circled long enough for a few folks within the complex to stop whatever they were doing and look up with shielded eyes.
Finding it on the ground was as challenging as from the air, but by noon the next day Ray was parked outside the unmarked gate, glaring at an armed guard who was glaring back at him. After a few tense questions, the guard finally admitted that, yes, he had in fact found the place he was looking for. “We don’t allow visitors,” he said smugly.