"Not really. The plane took off from Chicago just after lunch time and a good many of the people who got on there had had a drink or two, but there wasn't really enough time to make trouble. The plane had hardly cleared the runway. All the passengers, except one, had their seat belts fastened."
"Now there is something I didn't know! Who was this?"
"Preston, a lawyer from New Jersey. You know how tentative any reconstruction of events must be under the circumstances, but we're pretty sure of this, especially since there was no fire. Preston apparently broke a fingernail trying to fasten his seat belt and one of the stewardesses had brought him a little first-aid kit. He had torn open a Band-Aid and was trying to fasten it around his finger. Obviously this was just before the crash."
"But how do you know he did it with the seat belt?"
"Guesswork, except that it wasn't fastened and we think maybe it just got overlooked after he hurt himself."
"Was he one of the drinkers?"
"No, not at all. Never touched it. In point of fact, nobody was really drunk at the time of the take-off. The flight engineer however had had two drinks at lunch."
Brogan raised his eyebrows. "You were thorough. You're sure?"
Kessler nodded. "Brown was a problem drinker though it didn't seem to interfere with his work. The two drinks are all he had that day so far as we can determine. He showed up for lunch at a girl friend's apartment with a black eye. Made some joke about walking into a door and wouldn't tell her anything else about it. She gave him the drinks at his request, and a big lunch, and put a little makeup on his eye because he'd been pulled from a flight a few months before when he showed up looking as though he'd been in a scrap."
"How did he really get the black eye?"