A FEW HOURS later Koa and Sergeant Basa stood on the observation deck of the Hilo airport as Skeeter’s Fantastic Air Tours chopper circled away from the active runway and settled onto a landing pad. Skeeter Slade climbed out of the cockpit and opened the side door for his passengers. A couple with four children emerged and followed Skeeter across the tarmac to the Fantastic Air Tours office.
Koa and Sergeant Basa were about to walk down to confront Skeeter when they saw him come back out of the office and head back toward his helicopter. Reaching the machine, Skeeter looked around before dropping to the ground to slide between the skids under the belly of the whirlybird.
“What’s he doing?” Basa asked.
“I can’t see. Maybe he’s checking something or performing maintenance,” Koa responded. Yet he was hoping that the pilot was doing nothing of the sort.
Skeeter pulled himself from beneath the chopper, emerging with a black box the size of a videotape cassette. Once again, Skeeter looked around before strolling back across the airport apron. Instead of returning to the office, he skirted the side of the building and headed toward a security gate leading to the employee parking lot.
“He’s going for a drive,” Basa said. “I’ll go grab him.”
“Tail him instead, and let me know where he goes. I’m going to have a look at that helicopter.”
While Sergeant Basa followed Skeeter, Koa secured access to the tarmac and walked out to the whirlybird. He gently lowered himself to the ground and, holding his neck, squirmed his way beneath the machine just as Skeeter had. He spotted an electronics pod installed on the chopper’s belly. So here, he thought, is the pod Drake overheard Kling talking about. The front part of the pod appeared to have hinged access doors, like small versions of the doors covering the landing gear on an airplane, but Koa couldn’t see any way of opening those panels. Toward the rear of the pod, four small latches held another access panel in place.
Cautiously, Koa released the four latches and swung the panel open, revealing what appeared to be a data recorder with an empty slot. It must have contained the cassette Skeeter had carried away. Koa replaced the panel and crawled out from under the machine.
His cell phone buzzed as he walked back to the terminal building. Basa spoke in an excited voice. “He’s headed toward the Monarch.”
“Watch from outside. Keep track of who goes in and out. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Koa rang off quickly and called the Monarch’s bar phone.
“Monarch bar,” Drake answered.
“It’s Detective Kāne. Skeeter’s coming into the bar. If you don’t want to do that health department tango, you won’t let on that we talked. Understand, Drake?”
“Yeah, man, I got the picture.”
Koa caught a taxi and minutes later joined Basa across the street from the Monarch. “Guess who’s in there with Skeeter?” Basa grinned.
“Ricky Kling, the private eye in the Hilo Hattie shirt?”
“Bull’s-eye. Your buddy Ricky Kling arrived about five minutes after Skeeter.”
“He’s gonna be my buddy sooner than he’d like.”
They waited twenty minutes before Kling emerged from the Monarch carrying a black box. He walked up the street and turned the corner toward his apartment.
“Let’s go meet Mr. Slade.” Koa reviewed what he’d learned from Basa about the helicopter pilot as he led the way into the Monarch. Skeeter Slade had been a medevac pilot in Iraq, and like many former military chopper pilots had started his own tourist business after mustering out. Basa had also discovered that Skeeter had filed a police complaint after vandals had damaged one of his choppers, but the responding officer hadn’t done much.
They crossed the room toward a table in the rear corner, where Skeeter sat with his back to the wall, eyeing a half-full bottle of Cutty Sark and a half-empty shot glass. Koa had been at the scene of a number of helicopter crashes and didn’t like seeing this pilot hit the bottle.
“Mr. Skeeter Slade?” Koa asked.
“Who the fuck wants to know?”
It was the wrong way to start. Koa had been prepared to go easy on the former military pilot, but Skeeter’s hostility was quickly going to make him change his approach. “Detective Kāne and Sergeant Basa, Hawai‘i County Police.”
“Is this about the fuckin’ vandals?”
“We want to ask you some questions,” Koa responded nicely, still hoping to do this the easy way.
“I ain’t got time foah questions. I gotta git back to the airport. I got customers.”
That was the last straw. There was no way Koa was going to let this drinker get back in the cockpit after multiple shots of scotch. “Mr. Slade, we’re taking you into custody and down to the police station.”
Koa read the man his Miranda rights.
“You rotten, no-good fuckers. I want my attorney.”
“You can call your attorney as soon as Sergeant Basa completes a Breathalyzer test.” Koa smiled as the light dawned in Skeeter’s eyes.
“Oh, shit,” was all that he could manage.
Koa and Basa took him to the police station and stashed him in an interrogation room. An hour later, after getting test results showing blood alcohol way over the limit, Koa walked back in to confront him. A long wait in an isolated room typically annoyed suspects, and Skeeter was no exception.
“I thought you said I could call my lawyer,” Skeeter challenged.
Koa eyed the pilot. His bloodshot eyes and red face confirmed the Breathalyzer test. The man was a serious drinker. Yellowing in the whites of his eyes likely meant liver damage. Koa still felt an urge to help the former military pilot, but not if it put innocent tourists at risk. “You can call a lawyer, but maybe you might want to hear me out before you run off half-cocked,” Koa responded. People in an interrogation room, especially after waiting alone for a while, wanted out, and if you could give them a path, they were often surprisingly cooperative.
Some of the hostility disappeared from Skeeter’s face, leaving him with an almost pathetic look. “Go on.”
“I talked to the FAA. There are two ways to handle this. We can book you for flying under the influence, in which case the FAA will start license revocation proceedings and you’ll be out of business.”
“Or?” Slade asked suspiciously.
“You can give us the information we want, and if you weren’t involved in criminal activity, we can let you voluntarily check yourself into the FAA’s alcohol rehabilitation program. If you’re dry for thirty days, they’ll lift the suspension and you can go back to flying with periodic sobriety checks.”
Skeeter was looking a lot more attentive. “What’d you want to know?”
“We want to know about your dealings with Kling and Jenkins.”
“This ain’t about the vandals?” A puzzled look came over Skeeter’s face.
“It’s about Kling and Jenkins.”
“I nevah heard of Jenkins.”
“Then it’s about Kling.”
“And if I tell you about Kling, you won’t charge me?”
“We won’t charge you with operating an aircraft while under the influence so long as you check into the FAA program. If you’ve done something else, we’ll have to evaluate that separately.”
“I ain’t done nothing illegal with Kling.”
“We’ll be the judge of that.”
Skeeter still looked confused, but finally he gave in. “Okay. It’s really pretty simple. Kling approached me last year. Wanted me to mount some equipment on my chopper and take readings on flights across the island. Paid me $300 for each trip.”
“You did it for the money?”
Skeeter suddenly looked like a schoolkid caught with dirty pictures. “It wasn’t just the money.”
“What then?”
“Kling knew I’d cheated on my wife … he had pictures.”
Koa felt more sympathy for Skeeter and a flash of anger at Kling. Kling was a recidivist, continuing to use the same MO that had cost him his license. Koa would deal with Mr. Kling shortly. Maybe this time he’d be able to put the little snake behind bars.
“Tell me about the equipment?”
“It’s an electronics pod that Kling provided. I wasn’t supposed to open the sealed unit, but I had a little look-see—wide-angle camera, magnetometer, and ground penetration radar. Takes readings every few seconds and records the readings on a data cassette. I delivered the cassettes. Kling paid me. Simple.”
“What did Kling do with the data?”
“He never said, but I figured they was looking for something out at Pōhakuloa.”
Koa’s heart rate jumped. “On the Army’s Pōhakuloa Training Area?”
“Yeah, Kling had me flying parallel runs across the saddle land, recording while I was over the PTA. Parallel lines like a fuckin’ search pattern.”
“How did you know what lines to fly?”
“Kling gave me a fuckin’ map with GPS coordinates, precise coordinates. Fucking Kling told me that I had to fly the exact path or they wouldn’t pay for the next run.”
“You said you figured ‘they’ were looking for something and ‘they’ wouldn’t pay you. Who are they?”
Skeeter put up his hands in a display of innocence. “Kling nevah said, but I figured he was nothin’ but a front man. I mean, he didn’t know shit about the ’quipment. He had to be selling the data to someone with brains. Shit, Kling ain’t smart ’nough to figure out something that complicated.”
Koa agreed with that assessment. “Who mounted the pod on your chopper?”
“I did. It’s a standard pod, just bolts on.”
“We’re gonna confiscate it and the search map. You want to help the police technician take it off?”
“Damn straight. I don’t want no amateur messing with my bird.”
“Okay, Detective Piki will take you and the tech out to the airport. I’ll talk to the FAA. You’ll be free to go after we get the pod and the map, but your license is suspended. Don’t get in the cockpit until the FAA clears you.”
“Shit, I can’t afford being grounded for a month.”
“You can’t afford to be caught flying. You won’t get another chance.”