Everything To Prove

Her mother had mentioned a warden, Charlie Stuck, who had been kind to her after Connor’s death. He’d taken her in his plane while he searched for her missing fiancé. They’d searched for over a week before declaring him lost and presumed dead. No plane wreckage was ever found, just the two pontoons hung up in the rapids about a half mile down the Evening River, which led searchers to believe that the plane had gone down in the deep waters somewhere near the lake’s outlet. Charlie Stuck had been in his late fifties then, but with any luck he might still be alive. He might remember something helpful, and it was a starting place.

When her flight touched down in Anchorage it was 10:00 p.m. and still broad daylight. Libby rented a car and threw her bags in the backseat. She drove down Highway One to a right-hand fork that took her along Six Mile Creek to a place called Hope. An empty state campground, open for the season but devoid of tourists, offered her the choice of sites overlooking Turnagain Arm. She pitched her tiny tent, ate a can of cold beans sitting on the edge of the bluff then walked a short way in the violet dusk down Gull Rock Trail. She walked until the twilight thickened and jelled, then carefully retraced her way back to her tent site and climbed into her sleeping bag.

An hour later she heard a mysterious noise and crawled out of her tent to watch the ghostly movements of a pod of Beluga whales through the dark waters of Chickaloon Bay. Sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, she listened to them breathe as they surfaced and swam past, and she wondered why it had taken her so long to come back home.

Two hours later she was making coffee on her tiny camp stove, drinking it in the dawn while a cow moose browsed along the water’s edge. She cleaned up the site, packed her gear back into the rental car and returned to Anchorage. Once there, she headed for the regional office of the Department of Fish and Game and had to wait outside for an hour before the first employee showed up, still blinking sleep from his eyes. He introduced himself as Elmer Brown, and appeared surprised to find her waiting on the doorstep. He ushered her into the office and listened to her story while he made a pot of coffee. Libby told him about the plane crash, omitting any mention of her relationship to the pilot or any implications of foul play. She expressed her interest in locating the plane and speaking to the warden who had been involved in the search.

“So, you’re looking for this Charlie Stuck,” Brown concluded.

Libby nodded. “I’m hoping he’s still alive. He was in his fifties then, based out of Fairbanks.”

Brown reached for the phone book and placed a call to the Fairbanks office, briefly describing the circumstances and asking if they could look into their records, then hung up. “They said they’d call back. Coffee?”

“Love a cup, thanks,” Libby said, taking the offered mug. “Assuming the plane is still in the lake, how would one go about finding it?”

“Well, it’d be easier now than it would have been back then, but still, that’s a mighty big lake. Deep, too,” Brown said. “There’s a good salvage outfit not too far from here. They’re expensive, all those outfits are, but Alaska Salvage just about always get what they go after. They’ve hauled a lot of planes and boats out of a lot of deep water. The company is owned by a guy named Dodge. He spent eight years as a Navy special forces combat and demolition diver before starting Alaska Salvage maybe six, eight years ago. Loads of experience, but he nearly bought the farm in a freak diving accident while salvaging that commuter plane that went down in the inlet five weeks back. You probably saw that in the news.”

Libby shook her head. “No. I didn’t.”

Elmer seemed pleased to be able to enlighten her. “He had a new employee on board the salvage vessel, and the kid accidentally started the winch while Dodge was attaching the cable to a piece of wreckage a hundred feet below. He got tangled up in a big jagged piece of plane wreckage. His divers managed to free him and get him to the surface but he was more dead than alive when they brought him up. Spent over a month in the hospital getting put back together. Just got out. He’ll probably never dive again but he still ramrods the outfit and he’d be the one you’d want to talk to. His office isn’t far from here.”

“If he just got out of the hospital, I doubt he’ll be at work.”

“He’ll be at Alaska Salvage. He lives and breathes that place.” Brown wrote the name and phone number on a card, handing it to her just as the phone rang. He picked it up. “Oh?” he said after a long pause. “I see. Okay, I’ll pass that information along. Thanks, Dick.” He hung up and gave her an apologetic shrug. “Well, I’m afraid you’re out of luck when it comes to Charlie Stuck. He died last winter in the old folks’ home, but he had a son, Bob, who still lives in the Fairbanks area. Runs a garage out toward Moose Creek. Might be worth talking to him.”

He scrawled another name on another card, then went through the phone book and wrote the phone number down. “You might also check with the warden service based out of Fairbanks. They keep pretty good files on that stuff. They probably still have Charlie Stuck’s report on that particular search. Good luck.”

THE SUN WAS WELL UP when Libby pulled into the Alaska Salvage parking lot in Spenard. The building was a huge blue Quonset hut with a neatly lettered sign spanning the wide doors and three late-model pickup trucks blocking the entryway. The metallic sound of banging and clanging came from inside. She stepped between the trucks and into the dimness, startled to see several massive pieces of what appeared to have been a large commuter plane scattered all over the floor. Hoses snaked across the concrete, and in a separate alcove she caught the bright flash of welding light.

A side door opened into a small office, and when the man bent over a large nautical chart spread open on the desk glanced up and spied Libby he straightened, lifting his hands from both sides of the map, which 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?”