"Security exemption authorized," Keller said, printing a fresh slip and handing the copy to Miller. "Miller, take custody of console fourteen's journal. Marcus, surrender your airport badge and ramp keys right now."
Finch’s hands shook as he unclipped his lanyard and dropped it onto the counter. "You think Albright will listen without the deed, Vance? My uncle’s lawyers are already waiting in Wenatchee. You’re landing in a hornet’s nest."
"Then you’d better call them and tell them I’m on the plane," I said.
Captain Ross gripped the handle of his flight bag and took my arm. "Pick up your canvas kit, Mr. Vance. We have an arrival window to make."
I lifted my brother’s kit from the floor, squared my shoulders, and followed Ross through the threshold. The heavy carpet gave way to corrugated steel, vibrating under the deep rumble of twin turbines turning on the tarmac. Behind us, the heavy metal door clicked shut, sealing Marcus Finch on the concourse side of the glass.
CHAPTER 3: The Bench That Broke The Lien
The twin turboprops throttled back as Flight 814 banked over the dark ribbon of the Columbia River, dropping through the autumn inversion layer toward Pangborn Memorial Airport. Below us, the geometric squares of the Wenatchee apple orchards lay dormant under the frost, dark grids of leafless branches that Julian and I had pruned together every November for forty-two years.
When the cabin chime sounded and the main door swung open into the biting mountain air, Captain Ross walked down the aisle ahead of me. He did not go to the operations desk to file a standard post-flight log. He walked directly to the chain-link perimeter gate where a white Chelan County Sheriff’s cruiser and a federal courier van were already idling under the sodium vapor floodlights, their yellow hazard bars pulsing against the fog.
Wayne Keller’s emergency exemption had outrun our ground speed. Standing beside the courier van was Special Agent Kenneth Vance—no relation to me, though his family had run dryland wheat out by Waterville—assigned to the regional FAA oversight office in Spokane. Beside him stood Deputy Sheriff Tom Calder, Julian’s former commander at the local veterans of foreign wars post.
"The aft cargo bin stays sealed until morning, Dave," Agent Vance said to Captain Ross as we reached the bottom of the steel mobile stairs. He tapped the red tamper-proof cable tie looped through the latch of container forty-four. "Port Authority transit dispatch forwarded the console fourteen keystroke logs forty minutes ago. Every crate in that compartment is evidence in an active federal tampering inquiry. That includes your brother’s footlocker, Arthur."
I stood on the tarmac with my hands deep in the pockets of my wool coat, watching Julian’s battered steel chest sit thirty feet away behind two layers of locked aluminum. "My brother's dress uniform is inside that chest, Tom," I told Calder. "The service at the Methodist chapel is at ten o'clock. The honor guard from the legion post won't fire a volley over an empty pine box."
"The service happens at ten, Arthur, but the property docket is set for nine-fifteen in Judge Albright’s chambers," Calder said quietly, his hand resting on my shoulder. "Sterling Finch filed an emergency motion for default possession at four-thirty this afternoon, the minute Marcus told him your reservation was killed in Seattle. He brought three lawyers from Yakima. If you don't show with that original patent deed, Albright has to grant the easement forfeiture by statute."
"I have the carbon manifest," Ross said, holding up the yellow dispatch slip bearing his own bold signature and the electronic timestamp. "And Arthur has the Spokane freight receipt."
"A dispatch slip isn't a deed, Dave," Agent Vance replied, though his tone was sympathetic. "Under federal code, I cannot cut this cable tie without a signed subpoena duces tecum issued by a district judge from the bench. If I open it on the ramp, the chain of custody breaks, and Sterling Finch’s lawyers will have every piece of paper in that trunk thrown out of court for the next five years."
I spent the six hours before sunrise sitting in the kitchen of Julian’s farmhouse on the bench above the river. The house was cold; the pilot light on the oil furnace had clicked off two days after he died, and I didn't bother to bleed the line. I sat at the yellow formica table where our father had tallied the fruit crates during the hard freeze of sixty-eight, watching the dawn turn the basalt cliffs of the canyon from charcoal to gray. On the table lay Julian’s spare pocketknife, his reading glasses, and the receipt Spokane agent forty-one had handed me twelve hours earlier.
At twenty minutes past eight, Martha Corliss pulled her station wagon into the gravel drive. She was sixty-one, wearing a heavy tweed overcoat, and carrying a green canvas title binder that had belonged to her father, Howard Corliss, before his stroke in twenty-two.
"Marcus Finch used my father’s terminal credentials to execute that cargo hold, Arthur," Martha said before she even closed the car door. Her breath formed pale plumes in the crisp mountain air. Her eyes were sharp with the cold fury of a valley woman whose family name had been dragged into a thief’s enterprise. "Daddy kept the original escrow ledger from the ninety-four dissolution in his safe in Cashmere. When Marcus pulled that stunt at gate fourteen, he didn't know Daddy made two carbon duplicates of Clara Finch’s final accounting before she entered hospice."
She opened the passenger door and nodded toward the front seat. "Get in the car, Arthur. Captain Ross is already at the courthouse with the flight deck logs. Let’s see Sterling Finch try to hide behind a dead man’s signature."