Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

Sheriff Bosey parked next to the tractor rig and cut the engine. “Bert Cooper, the state dive master, is in charge out there,” he said. Unhooking the dashboard mike, he radioed the barge. “Recovery, this is Cascade One, come in, please.” Within seconds there was a reply.

“Cascade One, this is Recovery. That you, Dan?”

“Yeah, it’s me, Bert. I have Mr. Nash from the insurance company with me over here on shore to take some pictures. Can you give us a quick inventory of everything you’ve found so far.”

“No change from about noon yesterday, Dan,” said Cooper. “We’ve got a total of three pieces of the aircraft. Two were floaters, on the water when we got here: a broken-off section of propeller about fourteen inches long, and a section of fuselage measuring about eighteen-by-twenty inches, which looks to me like it came off the underside of a wing. The third piece is a section of tail stabilizer that was found floating at about eight hundred feet; looks like it probably snapped off from water pressure as the plane sank.”

“Engine?” Nash asked the sheriff.

“Bert—?”

“I heard,” said Cooper. “Not much chance of finding it. Something that heavy went clean to the bottom of twenty feet of silt wherever the plane hit. Maybe it broke out of the fuselage and went down by its lonesome, or maybe it dragged the plane with it. Either way, the hole closed in on top of it. Take six months to find it, less’n you got very damn lucky.”

“Anything else?” the sheriff asked his passenger. Nash shook his head. “Thanks, Bert,” said Bosey. “You packing it in after today?”

“That’s affirmative,” said Cooper. “I’ll stop in and say adios.”

“Ten-four,” said Bosey, and hung up the microphone. “Want me to run you out to the hospital now to see the pilot?”

“If it’s not too much trouble,” said Nash. “Just let me take a few quick pictures first.”

Nash uncased a 35mm Handlemann with a telephoto lens and took a series of photographs on a one-hundred-eighty-degree swing from where the sheriff’s car was parked. Then he got back in the cruiser and Bosey drove away. “I’ll introduce you to Dr. Smalley, who heads up our little hospital,” the sheriff said on the way.

The Cascade Regional Medical Center was a fifteen-bed facility with a separate maternity ward and basic surgery unit. It had two administrative employees, three general nurses, one general-surgery nurse, and a resident physician, all under the supervision of Dr. Leo Smalley, who had come to town to fly-fish twenty years earlier, fallen in love with the little mountain community, and stayed to build a hospital and become its chief of medicine. He fished every day from eleven to two, even when he had to cut a hole in the ice to do it.

Dr. Smalley was tying a fly as he spoke with Nash and the sheriff about Cliff Logan, the Eureka Petroleum pilot who had survived the crash.

“We’ll probably release him in a couple of days,” Dr. Smalley said, “soon’s the swelling in his knee goes down. Knee wasn’t broken, but there is a minor hairline fracture and some very deep bruising. He’ll limp for a while and need some therapy. Also got a broken forefinger and middle finger on his right hand, but both set all right. Contusions and abrasions on his head and upper torso are no problem. Symptoms of pneumonia were false; just respiratory stress and fever from being wet in the woods most of the night.”

“Any objection to my interviewing him?” Nash asked.

“None at all. He’s in room eight, down the hall.” The doctor looked at the sheriff. “They going to have that damned barge off my lake today, Dan?”

“Looks like, Doc.”

“Good. Disturbs my fish.”

Nash left them and walked down to room eight. The door was open. When he stepped inside, he saw that the blond woman from the cafe the previous night was sitting near the window, looking through a magazine. Their eyes met and she said quietly, “I’m afraid he’s asleep right now.”

“No,” a voice said from the bed, “I’m awake.” Cliff Logan used a control to raise the head of his bed to a half-sitting position. “Can I help you?”

“Jack Nash, claims investigator for California All-Risk Liability Company,” Nash said, handing Logan a business card. “We carry the blanket life policy on Eureka Petroleum’s executives. You feel up to a few routine questions?”

“Sure. The personnel director of Eureka is in town and came to visit me yesterday. He said there’d probably be someone coming around to see me. Said I was to cooperate fully.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Nash. “Claims are always settled more quickly when everyone cooperates.” He drew a chair alongside the bed and sat down. “Any idea what caused the crash?”

“Wasn’t a crash,” Logan said firmly. “It was an emergency landing.” He had a square jaw, unshaven for a few days, and a brush crew cut, giving him an old-fashioned B-movie convict look.

“Okay,” Nash said agreeably, “what caused the emergency landing?”