Where the Evidence Lies

Where the Evidence Lies

Jeffery Deaver

"Mayday, mayday. This is Horizonjet Eight Five Eight Four on IFR from Miami to Rio de Janero. Do you read me, San Juan Center?"

"Go ahead, Five Eight Four. San Juan Center."

"I'm descending through nine thousand feet. Not sure where—Hell, losing power. I'm declaring an emergency."

"Roger, Five Eight Four. We have you. Do you want vector to Muñoz Marín airport?"

"Let me…I'll get this under control. Yes, vectors to airport."

"San Juan Center to Five Eight Four. We're holding arrivals and departures. We're vectoring now…What's the nature of your emergency?"

"Power loss. Fire, I think. There was a bang, it sounded like. Aft. I'm—I'm, okay, descending fast through seven thousand feet. I don't know."

"We have your position, Five Eight Four. We're vectoring you to—"

"Descending…I can't slow rate of descent. Through five thousand feet. Not responsive. How far am I from the airport?"

"You're twenty-two miles from airport, Five Eight Four. Can you make it?"

"Negative."

"All right. We're alerting Coast Guard air-sea rescue. They're getting your position, Five Eight Four."

"Jesus. Descending through one thousand. Rate's too high. No power. I—"

"Five Eight Four? Do you copy?…Do you copy?…Any traffic in area north of Marín airport, ten miles out, do you see any sign of an aircraft down?"

Eastern Dade Airport was a small facility near the Atlantic Ocean. It featured a runway, about three thousand feet long, big enough for small jets, though the majority of the two dozen planes parked on the tarmac were one- and two-engine props. Mangroves, royal palm, cabbage palm, live oak, gumbo-limbo, and West Indian mahogany, as well as orchids, bromeliads, and ferns surrounded the area. Lincoln Rhyme, on his way to the airport, spotted an alligator.

"Look. Well," he said to Amelia Sachs, his partner—in both the professional and personal senses. She'd leaned over his wheelchair in the accessible van and gazed at the shallow canal in which a bored-looking gator sat in the humid heat, seemingly too tired to even think about chomping down whatever bored-looking gators normally ate.

His caregiver, Thom Reston, drove the van in a slow circle around this part of the field until Rhyme told him to stop.

Sachs said, "There's a rumor they have those in the sewers of New York, you know. Parents buy them for kids and then flush them down the toilet."

"Really?" Rhyme said. The details of the flora and fauna of this part of the state grew less interesting, as his mind had already drifted elsewhere. His eyes took in the airfield once more.