“McCone and I are both pilots,” I said to Evans, who was looking quite interested. To her I said, “Think airport. Think the Citabria fueled and ready to go. Think terrific destination.”
“Oh?”
“Terrific-and surprising.” I nodded.
Now, if I could only come up with a terrific surprising flight plan by the time we got back to the Bay Area…
SOLO
“That’s where it happened.” Hy put the Citabris into a gliding turn and we spiraled down to a few hundred feet above Tufa Lake. Its water looked teal blue today; the small islands and gnarled towers of the calcified vegetation stood out in gray and taupe relief. A wind from the east riffled the lake’s surface. Except for a blackened area on the south side of Plover Island, I saw no sign that a light plane had crashed and burned there.
I turned my head from the window and looked into the forward part of the cockpit; Hy Ripinsky, my best friend and longtime lover, still stared at the scene below, his craggy face set in grim lines. After a few seconds he shook his head and turned his attention back to the controls. Putting on full throttle and pulling back on the stick, the small plane rose and angled in for the airport on the lake’s northwest shore.
Through the dual headsets Hy said, “Dammit, McCone, I’m a good flight instructor, and Scott Oakley was a good student. There’s no reason he should’ve strayed from the pattern and crashed on his first solo flight.”
We were entering that same pattern, on the downwind leg for runway two-seven. I waited till Hy had announced our position to other traffic on the Unicom, then said, “No reason, except for the one you’ve already speculated on: that he deliberately strayed and put the plane into a dive in order to kill himself.”
“Looked that way to me. To the NTSB investigators, too.”
I was silent as he turned onto final approach, allowing him to concentrate on landing in the strong crosswind. He didn’t speak again till we were turning off the runway.
“Ninety percent of flying’s metal and emotional-you know that,” he said. “And ninety percent of the instructor’s job is figuring out where the student’s head is at, adapting your teaching methods to the individual. I like to think I’ve got good instincts along that line, and I noticed absolutely nothing about Scott Oakley that indicated he’d kill himself.”
“Tell me about him.”
“He was a nice kid, in his early twenties. From this area originally, but went up to Reno to attend the University of Nevada. Things didn’t go well for him academically, so he dropped out, went to work as a dealer at one of the casinos. Met a woman, fell in love, got engaged.”
He maneuvered the plane between its tie-down chains, shut it down, and got out, then helped me climb from the cramped backseat. Together we secured the chains and began walking toward the small terminal building where his Land Rover and my MG were parked.
“If Oakley lived in Reno, why was he taking flying lessons down here?” I asked. Tufa Lake was a good seventy miles south, in the rugged mountains of California.
“About six, eight months ago his father got sick-inoperable cancer. Scott came home to help his mother care for him. While he was here he figured he’d use the money he was saving on rent to take up flying. There isn’t much future in dealing at a casino. And he wanted to get into aviation, build up enough hours to be hired by an airline.”
“And other than being a nice kid, he was…?”
“Quiet, serious, very dedicated and purposeful. Set a fast learning pace for himself, even though he couldn’t fly as much as he’d’ve liked, owing to his responsibilities at home. A month ago his father died; he offered to stay on with his mother for a while, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Said she knew the separation from his girlfriend had been difficult and she didn’t want to prolong it. But he came back down for a lesson each week, and on that last day he’d done three excellent takeoffs and landings. I had full confidence that I could get out of the plane.”
“And you noticed nothing emotionally different about him beforehand?”
“Nothing whatsoever. He was quiet and serious, just like always.”
We reached the place where our vehicles were parked, and I perched on the rear of the MG. Hy faced me, leaning against his Rover, arms folded across his chest. His eyes were deeply troubled, and lines of discouragement bracketed his mouth.
I knew what he was feeling: He took on few students, as he didn’t need the money and his work for the international security firm in which he held a partnership often took him away from his ranch here in the high desert country for weeks at a time. But when did take someone on, it was because he recognized great potential in the individual-both as a pilot and as a person who would come to love flying as much as he himself did. Scott Oakley’s crash-in his full sight as he stood on the tarmac at the airport awaiting his return-had been devastating to him. And it had also aroused a great deal of self-doubt.
I said, “I assume you want me to look into the reason Oakley killed himself.”
“If it’s something you feel you can take on.”
“Of course I can.”
“I’ll pay you well.”
“For God’s sake, you don’t have to do that!”
“Look, McCone, you don’t ask your dentist friend to drill for free. I’m not going to ask you to investigate for free, either.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Ripinsky. Nothing in life’s free. We’ll come up with some suitable way for you to compensate me for my labors.”
My obvious starting place was Scott Oakley’s mother. I called to ask if I could stop by, and set off for her home in Vernon, the small town that hugged the lake’s north shore.
It was autumn, the same time of year as when I’d first journeyed there and met Hy. The aspens glowed golden in the hollows of the surrounding hills and above them the sky was a deep blue streaked with high cirrus clouds. In the years that I’d been coming to Tufa Lake, its water level had slowly risen and was gradually beginning to reclaim the dusty alkali plain that surrounded it-the result of a successful campaign by environmental organizations to stop diversions of its feeder streams to southern California. Avocets, gulls, and other shorebirds had returned to nest on its small island and feed on the now plentiful brine shrimp.
Strange that Scott Oakley had chosen a place of such burgeoning vitality to end his own life.
Jan Oakley was young to have lost a husband, much less outlived her son-perhaps in her early forties. She had the appearance of a once-active woman whose energy had been sapped by sadness and loss, and small wonder: It had been only two weeks since Scott’s crash. As we sat in the living room of her neat white prefab house, she handed me a high-school graduation picture of him; he had been blond, blue-eyed, and freckle-faced, with and endearingly serious expression.
“What do you want to ask me about Scott, Ms. McCone?”
“I’m interested in what kind of a person he was. What his state of mind was before the accident.”
“You said on the phone that you’re a private investigator and a friend of Hy Ripinsky. Is he trying to prove that Scott committed suicide? Because he didn’t, you now. I don’t care what Hy or the National Transportation Safety Board people think.”
“He doesn’t want to prove anything. But Hy needs answers-much as I’m sure you do.”
“Answers so he can get himself off the hook as far as responsibility for Scott’s death is concerned?”
I remained silent. She was hurting, and entitled to her anger.
