THE NEXT morning Kelly headed to Ventura, along the coast, to the airport. The sky was a brilliant blue. She drove with the windows down and the music up loud. Since living alone she had started to play the piano again. As a child she had been considered a prodigy on the instrument, and she had been happy to discover she could still play with feeling. But nothing sounded as sad as a lonely piano late at night. Tony never called, he never would.

Before leaving for Ventura she had contacted the airport tower and spoken to the air traffic controller who had been on duty the night Matt Connor’s plane had gone down. The guy happened to be working that afternoon. He said he would be happy to meet with her. But he sounded puzzled with her request for information on Matt’s flight. The feeling was somewhat mutual. She was not sure what she was looking for.

Ventura Airport was modest. She met Gabe Adams in a small office adjacent to the radar room. A small man with the squarest head she had ever seen on a human being—outside of someone who had been purposely tortured by the Mafia with a vise—he looked like a robot who could be plugged directly into his equipment. Across a wooden desk, he pushed a file that contained the records of Matt’s last flight. There was a DVD enclosed—a copy of the radar path his plane had taken, Gabe explained.

“We automatically record the flight path of every plane that enters our airspace,” he said. “If later there’s a problem with a plane, that record is transferred to a permanent disc.”

Kelly glanced at the disc. Gabe had already informed her that Matt’s crash had been investigated by the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB), and ruled an accident caused by pilot error. She planned to contact the federal agency later but felt she could get information out of Gabe more quickly.

“I’ll study this file later,” she said. “But I’d like you to tell me as best you can what happened the night Matt Connor’s plane crashed.”

“He came on our radar thirty miles south of here, which is normal. His altitude was relatively low—a thousand feet—and I contacted him personally to ask how he was doing. He explained about the low overcast. I asked if he was instrument trained and he reminded me that he was not, but that he was comfortable with the conditions. We had spoken before over the radio. He was an experienced pilot. He was flying low so he could keep a visual on the water.”

“Could he see the coast at that point?”

“I doubt it. It was a lousy night to fly. I wished him good luck and he thanked me.”

“What happened next?”