Everything To Prove. Nadia Nichols

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СКАЧАТЬ immediately snapped back into a tight scroll. He was tall, broad-shouldered and clad in a pair of well-worn coveralls that could have used a good washing. His eyes were blue, his dark hair cropped short, his jaw shadowed with stubble. He looked to be in his mid to late thirties, long on experience but short on sleep. A jagged, raised welt slanted across his forehead and disappeared into his hairline, tracked with the marks of stitches that had been recently removed. Another shorter scar crossed the bridge of his nose, his left cheekbone was seriously abraded, and one hand was wrapped in a wad of bandages that allowed only the fingertips to show. Libby could only imagine what the rest of him looked like if his face had taken that much abuse.

      “What can I do for you?” he said in a voice as rough as his appearance.

      Libby indicated the wreckage on the concrete floor behind her. “Did you salvage this plane?”

      “Most of it,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Look, lady, if you’re with the press, I have nothing to add to what’s been said, and if you’re a relative of someone who was on the plane, you’ll have to talk to the state police.”

      “I’m neither,” Libby said. “You were recommended by Elmer Brown of the Fish and Game Department. He told me Alaska Salvage always got what it went after.”

      “Almost always,” he corrected. “That plane behind you crashed in Cook Inlet just after takeoff with six souls aboard. The riptide took some of the wreckage out before we could get to it. My crew’s still looking for the missing pieces.”

      “Was anyone killed?”

      “There were no survivors.”

      Libby glanced back at the pieces of wreckage and wondered who the people had been, and what their last moments had been like. She felt a sudden chill. “Did you…?”

      “We don’t recover bodies. The state police dive team was in charge of that. We assist as necessary, of course. Their dive team isn’t nearly as good as mine.”

      “What do you do with the wreckage?”

      “The FAA likes to look it over, so we lay everything we find out for ’em in here. It’s a convenience for them and they pay us for the privilege. When they’re done with their investigation we’ll sell what we can and scrap the rest. Why? You looking for a grisly souvenir? Something with a little blood on it, maybe? If so, you’re out of luck. I already sold all that stuff off to help pay my medical bills.”

      Libby’s chin lifted in response to the hostile sarcasm in his voice. “I’m looking to hire a salvage outfit to find a plane that went down twenty-eight years ago in Evening Lake, just south of the Brooks Range.”

      Now that she’d announced her business for being there, he eyed her up and down as if trying to decide if she was worth talking to. “Evening Lake?”

      “Yes.”

      “Any idea where it crashed?”

      “Not exactly. I’m hoping to find out more after I speak with some people.”

      “Evening Lake is big. I’ve fished it. Spent a couple weeks camped up there a few years ago. Must be a good three, four hundred feet deep in some places.”

      “So I’ve been told,” Libby said, wishing he wouldn’t stare at her quite so brazenly. She decided that he was both crude and rude and any sympathy she’d initially felt for his battered condition evaporated as the heat came up in her cheeks.

      “When you’re talking remote salvage operations, you’re talking big bucks.”

      “How big?” Libby asked.

      “For a salvage operation on Evening Lake…that’d take a crew of at least three people, flying in all that gear and some pretty sophisticated equipment. Just finding the plane could take some time. Once it’s found, purchasing the salvage rights and getting the wreckage to the surface could run you maybe seventy-five, eighty grand. Possibly a lot more.”

      “I see.” Libby was staggered by the sum. “What if the plane crashed in shallow water?”

      “If it were in shallow water, the initial search party would have spotted it.” He rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “I’m assuming there was a search?”

      Libby nodded. “But they may have been looking in the wrong location, and if there was a lot of chop on the surface, wouldn’t that have made it difficult to spot anything?”

      “Maybe. But over the years a helluva lot of planes have flown in and out of there. If nobody’s reported seeing anything in all that time, I’d have to assume it’s way down there, and if you’re not sure the plane really crashed in the lake, you could be wasting a lot of time and money. Were there any eyewitnesses?”

      Libby shook her head. “Not to my knowledge. But the plane was taking off from a lodge, the only one on the lake at that time. They think it went down just after takeoff. The pontoons were found half a mile down the outlet of the lake.”

      “Must’ve crashed real close to the mouth of the river, then. The wind blows pretty strong through the pass there and would’ve pushed the pontoons clear to the opposite shore otherwise.”

      “That’s what the searchers figured. How do you base your salvage fees?”

      “Depends on the size of the plane.”

      “It was a de Havilland Beaver. Six-seater.”

      “We require a deposit of ten grand up front. You’d pay a straight hourly fee contingent upon the size of the crew and the equipment being used. When we find the wreckage, we’re willing to negotiate fair salvage trades toward payment if the plane is deemed restorable.”

      “What shape do you think the plane would be in after all that time?”

      “Pretty good, if it was down deep and wasn’t demolished when it hit the water. It’s the ice and salt water that plays hell with wrecks. The plane would probably be in close to the same shape as it was when it crashed.”

      “If you found the wreckage in just two hours and raised it the same day, would that be less than ten thousand?”

      “The minimum charge for any remote salvage operation is twenty-five grand. The retrieval cost of the last plane we dredged up out of a lake ran three times that amount. If you don’t mind my asking, why is salvaging this plane so important after twenty-eight years?”

      “It’s not the plane so much as what it was carrying,” Libby said. “Thank you for your information. It’s been helpful.”

      He gave her a keen look and rubbed the stubble on his jaw again. “My name’s Dodge. I own this business. Let me know if you want us to take a look.”

      “Thank you,” Libby said, accepting the business card he pulled out of the chest pocket of his coveralls and glancing down at it briefly. Carson Colman Dodge. Fancy name.

      She left the Quonset hut in a discouraged mood. Twenty-five thousand dollars was an impossible amount for her to come up with, never mind seventy-five. She had the sinking feeling that she’d made a terrible mistake in giving up the residency at Mass General. But she was here, so she might as well persevere for as long as she could. By 10:00 a.m. Libby was on a flight СКАЧАТЬ