1

Two Months Later

Known as the Carnation City in the early 1900s, Wheat Ridge,
Colorado, had grown from a single stop along a Gold Rush travel
route to a full-size suburb just outside of Denver. After incorporation
years later, the small city in present day served as a prime suburban
location for young families with parents commuting into downtown
Denver, all against a perfect backdrop of the great Rocky Mountains.
The mountains towering in the distance were covered in white
snow. At night, they faded into darkness and were replaced by
another version of Wheat Ridge visible only under the bright glow of
thousands of city streetlamps. Currently, they highlighted a curtain
of fresh snowflakes, twirling quietly to the ground and marking the
third official snowfall of the season, and enough to blanket the
sounds of the late evening traffic.
The very same blanketing that helped muffle the sound of a large
window sliding open just minutes after eleven p.m., beneath a cold
dark sky now. Most of the small town was either close to or had
already turned in for the night.
The thick double-paned window made no discernible noise as it
slid open along a white vinyl frame. Now open, gloved hands
appeared on the sill from inside, struggling to support a raised foot
and the larger body behind it.
The exit wasn’t smooth. Rather clumsy actually, considering it
was the ground floor. When the figure reached the snow-covered
earth, he briefly stumbled backward to regain his balance, leaving a
wild scattering of footprints in the snow.
A large, dark blue duffel bag was then pulled out and dropped
with a soft thud before the window was carefully closed again from
the outside. The figure hefted the duffel bag back over his shoulder
and scanned the street before ambling across the soft crunching
blanket of snow and disappearing into the darkness.
2
For those who thought all government offices looked the same,
the National Transportation Safety Board in Denver stood as a
glaring exception. Located downtown, the single-story brown
building looked more like a medical group than the regional office of
a well-known government agency.
Officially separated from the Department of Transportation
agency by Congress in 1975, the NTSB was run by a five-member
board and tasked with investigating and reporting on all civilian
transportation accidents in the United States. They also provided
recommendations for systems or process improvements where
necessary in an ongoing mission to improve public safety throughout
the nation.
Something far easier said than done.
Like any other government agency, the NTSB was not immune
from scandal or controversy, leaving Assistant Director Kevin
Wilkinsen thankful not to have been caught in the Federal Aviation
Administration’s public relations nightmare over Boeing’s 737 MAX
airliner accidents, including the painful revelations over the FAA’s
own negligence in the matter.
He knew several of the directors caught up in the scandal, and it
wasn’t something Wilkinsen would wish on his worst enemy.
The short and slightly overweight Wilkinsen hung up the phone
and returned a pair of black-framed glasses to his nose, continuing
through the report in front of him—one of several to be included in
his weekly briefing to headquarters in D.C.
“Come in!” he barked, barely looking up at the knock on his door.
The door swung inward and one of his agents stepped in, along
with a wave of loud chatter from those seated at the dozens of
desks outside. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes.” Wilkinsen nodded and motioned him to close the door.
Joseph Rickards was taller than his boss by almost a foot. Twelve
years younger, in his forties, he wore a somber expression under a
full head of hair.
“Need a limited investigation. Small aircraft about forty miles
south of here. Block and a half from an elementary school. Take
Gutierrez and get it cordoned off as quickly as you can.”
Silence filled the room, leaving the assistant director to glance up
at Rickards when he didn’t respond.
“Problem?”
“You sure you want me?”
Wilkinsen’s reply was sarcastic. “It’s a small aircraft. I think you
can handle it.” After a pause, he asked, “Can you?”
Rickards nodded. “Yeah.”
“Good.” Wilkinsen motioned him out and returned to his papers,
adding his signature to the first report. When the door closed, he
stopped and looked up again, watching through the glass as
Rickards crossed the open area.
Finally, he sighed. The situation was beginning to feel hopeless.
***
Outside, Rickards retrieved a few things from his desk and
glanced up to see Dana Gutierrez staring at him.
“I take it he already told you?”
The younger woman nodded and passed him a folder.
“You ready, then?”
“Yes,” Dana said, promptly rising from the desk and slinging a
pack over her shoulder.
It took the agents over an hour—in complete silence—to reach
the site through Denver’s morning traffic. The crash site was a field
just beyond a new housing development where they spotted several
patrol cars positioned between the wreckage and nearby school. The
blackened pile still smoldered slightly, leaving a thin trail of smoke
ascending like a black snake, twisting upward before finally
dispersing into the frigid mountain breeze overhead.
Exiting the car, the two immediately detected the all-too-familiar
odor–a combination of fuel, charred metal and burnt bodies. It was
a sickly stench no investigator ever got used to, no matter how long
at the job.
Together, they plodded through foot-high snow until reaching the
first pieces on the ground. There they were met by an approaching
deputy sheriff.
“You guys NTSB?”
Rickards nodded and presented his badge, as did Gutierrez. Their
gazes scanned the pieces scattered around the bulk of the mangled
wreckage.
“What do you have so far?”
The deputy turned and looked at the wreckage with them as he
spoke, his breath visible in the morning air. “Still piecing things
together, but we think it happened early this morning. Maybe two or
three o’clock. Nobody heard the impact, but everyone noticed it on
their way to work. We’re checking Flight Service to see if anyone
filed a flight plan.”
Rickards frowned. “In the middle of the night?”
“Maybe they were passing through from somewhere else.”
He looked up at a sky of muted gray clouds. “Not through this
weather. Unless they were stupid.”
Dana stepped forward. “We can take care of that. What else do
you have?”
The deputy motioned forward and continued walking. “Only got a
partial of the serial number, but it should be enough. We’re running
it right now. Four-seater and two bodies. Both completely burned.
Probably going to take some forensics.”
“Which means a lot of fuel.”
“So probably took off from somewhere close,” Dana finished.
“Likely traveling south.” She looked at Rickards. “Only a few major
destinations between us and New Mexico.”
“We’ll check those, too.”
The three reached the main pile of burnt aircraft, where two more
deputies were examining pieces, careful not to accidentally touch or
move anything.
“We’re not sure what kind of aircraft—”
“It’s a Cessna 182. Turbo,” Rickards said. “Max range with two
people in this weather, a thousand miles, give or take. Baggage?”
The deputy nodded. “Over there.”
A chime sounded, and one of the other deputies several yards
away pulled out his phone. “Looks like we have an ID on the plane.
And the pilot.” He looked at his superior. “It is a 182.”
He stepped over a few pieces on the ground and approached,
handing his phone to the senior deputy. He, along with Rickards and
Gutierrez, squinted to see the tiny screen in the daylight.
After a moment of reading, Rickards and Gutierrez glanced at
each other in surprise.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
3
They all turned when the sound of a distant vehicle rumbled to a
stop behind them, a nondescript white Dodge van. A man and
woman climbed out on either side. Both dressed in dark blue
uniforms and moved back to open the vehicle’s rear doors.
“Coroner.”
Rickards reached for the phone in the deputy’s hand and read the
message again, more carefully this time. He then passed it to Dana,
who read while Rickards wrote some things down on a palm-sized
notepad.
“Pilot’s name was Jim Huston,” Gutierrez said. She peered closer
at the screen. “Says the guy was eighty-six years old. What the hell
is an eighty-six-year-old doing flying a plane?”
Rickards shook his head, watching the technicians approach
toting a heavy duffel bag. “Don’t know. But something tells me he
hasn’t flown in a long time.”
***
Contrary to large commercial crashes requiring a major
investigation with multiple teams, small private aircraft accidents
required only a “limited” investigation, along with a limited amount
of data collection and analysis, until a reasonable conclusion was
formed–unless something unusual stood out to the investigators.
In the case of the Cessna 182, rough weather and poor judgment
were both likely culprits. Why someone would take a plane out in
the middle of the night like that made no sense. It indicated both
people on board were exercising not only poor, but possibly
compromised, judgment. It was not a huge leap for Rickards, given
that the pilot was just a few years shy of ninety, which left him
wondering if some forms of medication may have been involved.
He watched Gutierrez circle the smoldering wreckage, recording a
detailed video on her phone, before he turned back to take several
more pictures of the remaining fuselage. Large sections of its thin,
white-painted aluminum skin were torn and ripped from beneath the
frame.
The coroner’s technicians had already extracted and bagged the
remains, leaving him and Gutierrez to finish some documentation
before the NTSB cleanup crew arrived.
If Rickards had to guess, rime ice, a form of ice created by
supercooled vapor or droplets quickly freezing on hard surfaces, had
played a part in what had gone wrong. An occurrence not entirely
common, but deadly for small and medium-sized aircraft in unusually
cold conditions. Most pilots were aware of the risks and avoided
situations prone to creating it, making this particular crash even
more puzzling.
Rickards scanned for more pieces and spotted a dark blue duffel
bag crumpled on the ground, ripped and soaked from the moist
snow beneath it. He walked over to it and took a picture before
unzipping the pack and pulling out several pieces of clothing,
followed by a bundle of documents, a vinyl case of personal items, a
smaller black case containing bottles of pills and several books.
Finally, to Rickards’ surprise, he removed a thick stack of cash, which
fell out when he unfolded the documents.
He was examining the bills when Gutierrez approached behind
him.
“Smugglers?”
Rickards looked around and shook his head. “Not unless we find a
hell of a lot more.”
“How much is there?”
He flipped through several hundreds and fifties. “I don’t know.
Maybe ten grand.”
“Maybe on their way to buy something?”
“Like what?”
Gutierrez shrugged. “I don’t know. A car? Lot of these old guys
like to pay for things in cash.”
“Maybe.” Rickards shrugged, then stood up and examined the
rest of the papers. Without looking up, he handed something to her.
“What’s this?” Gutierrez asked, flipping the small item over to
reveal the front cover of a passport.
“It’s our passenger.”
4
Formerly known as the Tri-County Airport, the newly designated
Erie Municipal Airport was north of Denver and situated less than
forty miles from the crash site.
Rickards and Gutierrez arrived to find it home to dozens of small
private airplanes, all carefully covered and winterized to protect
them from the elements. The airport itself was little more than a
cluster of individual buildings and hangars. A single fuel tank and
pump sat nearby, covered in a thin white layer of snow.
According to the sign, it was closed during the peak winter
months, and both agents had to squeeze through an opening near
the gate–a feat easier for Gutierrez than Rickards.
Once through, Gutierrez answered her phone as they plodded
forward toward the airport’s small administration building.
After a short exchange, she ended the call. “The guy who runs
this place is evidently out of town.”
“For how long?”
“Till March.”
Rickards rolled his eyes and continued forward, reaching the
structure to find the door and windows covered from the inside.
Outside the building, next to the entrance, hung a glass cabinet,
enclosing a cork board covered with dozens of flyers and
notifications.
Together, they turned and looked out at the tiny runway.
“No tracks.”
“Covered up by now. When did the snow start falling last night?”
“After midnight, I think.”
Rickards nodded. “Which means they probably took off before
that. And still in the dark. Otherwise, the crash would have
happened early enough for people to see it.”
“So, they take off in the freezing cold and in the middle of the
night?”
After a few minutes, Rickards sighed and stepped out from
beneath the building’s overhang. Snow crunching with each step, he
walked out several feet and did a full 360-degree scan, his glance
stopping again on the administration building.
Then something caught his eye.
An old, dull yellow light illuminated the wall just below the roof’s
ledge. And below that, a large round dial with big numbers. An
outdoor thermometer, its red arm pointing at forty-four degrees
Fahrenheit.
Rickards studied it curiously before withdrawing his phone from
his coat pocket. He scrolled past several icons and tapped the
weather app.
He stared at his phone for several seconds, then looked back up
at the wall. He gave a sidelong glance at Gutierrez and walked
forward again. Stopping under the light, he reached up and tapped
the plastic face of the thermometer. When nothing happened, he hit
it again, harder. This time the pointer suddenly jumped from forty
four to twenty-three degrees.
“Oh Christ.