me more about what happened to the plane.”
“Let me back up a little,” she said. “When the NTSB starts an investigation, we’re concerned with more than determining the cause of any one crash — we study crashes so that we can improve safety. If there’s some design flaw or manufacturing problem in an aircraft, we want to know. When any aircraft crashes for unknown reasons, we notify interested third parties to the investigation — the aircraft manufacturer, the maker of the engine and of the propeller and so on. They help us to investigate. We send parts to them, they send field investigators to us.”
“That’s why the propeller and engine are missing?” Frank said, looking toward the plane.
“Right. Here — come over this way.” She walked toward a series of photographs pinned to a corkboard display. The first group was of the crash site and the plane as it was found there. “I put these up here to help explain it to you.” She pointed to the next group of photos — close-ups of the propeller.
“We start by looking at the propeller. Experts study the scratches on it — are they chordwise, spanwise, and so on. The scratches tell us if the plane was developing power at the time of impact and if the pilot had feathered the propeller.”
“Feathered?”
“Turned the windmilling blade into the wind, to reduce drag. When we took a look at Lefebvre’s propeller, we learned that he used that procedure and that the engine was not developing power.”
Frank looked at the next set of photos. “The engine?”
“Yes. We sent it back to Mobile, Alabama. To Teledyne. They were able to start it.”
“To start it! After it had been through a crash?”
“Yes. Not at all uncommon to be able to do that when the problem isn’t the engine per se. This one isn’t badly damaged — only picked up a few dents. But look at these close-ups.”
“It looks as if there’s some charring,” he said. He glanced back at the photos taken of the wreckage in the mountains. “But no sign that any other part of the plane caught fire. Was this one just local to the engine?”
“Yes,” she said approvingly. “A small engine fire. That will be important later. It’s the only thing that saved your evidence.”
He looked at the next group. “The carburetor?”
“Yes. And that’s where we found our molasses.”
“Molasses?”
She moved to a table and picked up a glass vial. She held it up to the light so that he could see the small amount of crusty brown material in it. “Most of this went to the lab, but I saved a little to show to you. I thought it might be oil varnish at first, but I sent it in for identification. It’s sugar.”
“The fire caramelized it?”
“Right. Without that, we might not have found it. Over ten years, moisture might have washed it out.”
“So someone dumped sugar into his fuel tanks?”
“That seems to be the case. He flew for a while, and then the lines started to clog. It fouled the carburetor and the engine coughed to a halt. That bit of hardened sugar tells us what caused the crash, but we have another indication that someone tampered with his plane.”
“In case the sugar didn’t work?”
“The second has nothing to do with causing a crash, but may have a lot to do with the amount of time the aircraft was missing — the emergency locator transponder. It sends out a signal for a number of hours if certain g- forces are applied — which happens in a crash. If the ELT had been working, we might have been able to locate the plane shortly after it went down. I’m not saying that was guaranteed — especially since he was in rough terrain. But an ELT can certainly help. Lefebvre’s ELT was externally mounted. So someone could have tampered with it.”
He frowned. “Tampered with it… because if Lefebvre survived the crash but needed medical attention, a delay in locating the plane might lead to his death.”
“I can’t help but think that might have been the case.”
“Jesus, that’s cold.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not sure anything was wrong with the ELT?”
“Not absolutely. There is no sign of damage, and after ten years that battery would have been dead no matter what. But the curious thing was, the battery was long past its expiration date
“And Lefebvre wouldn’t have let it go.”
“His maintenance logs say he routinely checked the battery and had just replaced it that May. I can’t believe he replaced it with an old one.”
“No. Mayumi — is there any way to trace the purchase of the battery?”
“I’ve got someone working on it.”
She walked him to his car. He looked back toward the building and said, “What will happen to it?”
“The plane? Depends in part on what his heirs want us to do when we’re finished. Probably be sold for scrap. I try to think of it as organ donation.”
He smiled and thanked her for her help with the case. He started to get into the car, then said, “Mayumi, if anyone else from my department calls about this—”
“I’ll be away from my desk. Maybe even on vacation. Yes, I’ve thought about what all of this means, too, Frank.
