Brass in Pocket Read Online Free PDF Page B

plane.
    â€œLooks that way. Postmortem hypostasis will be easy enough to read when they get the victim’s clothes off at the morgue,” Riley said. “Could this really blow enough carbon monoxide into the cockpit to kill him, though? It’s only coming in one of the vents, so there’s other ventilation at work.”
    Her question had been intended rhetorically, but Jamal Easton jumped in with both feet. “That depends on how the airplane is flown,” he said. “In Jesse’s case, I’d have to say yes, it could.”
    â€œHow it’s flown?” Greg asked. “What do you mean by that?”
    Jamal took a deep breath and let his weight rest against the side of the plane, making himself comfortable. He gave every indication of having addressed this general topic more than once, and at considerable length.
    â€œYou folks ever heard of the great LOP/ROP debate?” he asked. Riley supposed they showed him blank faces, because he continued without much of a pause. “LOP means ‘lean of peak.’ ROP means ‘rich of peak.’ It describes two different flying techniques, and if you were to go into the airport office where everybody is waiting around and ask the people there about their preferences, I guarantee you’d start an argument that’ll last until dawn. If not longer. I strongly urge you not to do so, because frankly I’m sick to death of it. Stan and Patti are both LOP folks, while Tonya and Benny are ROP types. To me, it all comes down to the individual aircraft and its pilot. Jesse knew what he was doing, no two ways about that, so I respected his decision.”
    â€œEven the janitor has a viewpoint on this?” Greg asked.
    â€œIt’s hard to find any airport rat who doesn’t.”
    â€œWhat does this have to do with the victim?” Riley asked. She was starting to fear that the man’s explanation would last until dawn anyway, even without the argument.
    â€œJesse Dunwood flew ROP. He was devout about it.”
    â€œWhat does it all mean?” Greg asked. “You kind of lost me.”
    â€œSorry.” Jamal straightened up, and the airplane shifted without his weight against it. He moved his gaze between Greg and Riley and blew out a faint sigh, reminding her of a college professor addressing a pair of substandard students. “They’re adjustments the pilot can make in the engine’s exhaust gas temperature. We call that EGT. As you lean the mixture, adding more air and less fuel, your EGT gets higher. Keep leaning and it drops again, so that midpoint, just before it drops when it’s running as hot as it’ll get, is the
lean
of peak.
Rich
of peak means that the pilot likes to keep the fuel-to-air mixture on the
rich
side. Heavy on fuel, lighter on air. The increased fuel flow keeps the EGT down, but it obviously burns more fuel. On the flip side, the LOP folks claim that they have the smarts and the instrumentation to risk running a little hotter, knowing they’re not going to erode their exhaust manifolds or set their engines on fire, and they’ll save fuel in the bargain. As you might imagine, when fuel prices shoot up but air is still free, LOP gets more popular, and when fuel prices come down, you might see a little increase in ROP.”
    â€œI think I get the gist of it, but I’m not clear on how it ties in,” Greg admitted. Riley knew that was hard for him to say—he was a brilliant guy, and he was usually the first to admit it. “Can you bring this back around to carbon monoxide?”
    â€œSorry,” Jamal said. “I guess we all get carried away when we go there, even me. Like I said, JesseDunwood is a serious ROP guy. A richer fuel mixture is going to generate much more carbon monoxide than a middle-of-the-road mixture or a lean of peak mix. A
lot
more. If he had been flying LOP, there might not have been enough of it blowing his way from the