Orval Odegaard

Orval Odegaard is 51 and has been jumping out of airplanes since 1944. Born on a wheat farm in eastern Washington, the son of Norwegians who never understood why the boy wanted to leap from a perfectly good plane, he enlisted at 24, jumped in the war and came back with a pocketknife belt, a medal he doesn't wear and an insatiable appetite for wind. He opened the skydiving school twelve years ago and teaches students, firefighters and veterans who want to feel the sky again.

He lives in a white-painted wooden house at the edge of an airstrip, twenty minutes from town. It has a porch with a rocking chair, a pile of firewood, an old dog and a kitchen that smells of reheated coffee. In the living room he hung photographs of old classes and a map of Washington with pins. He eats supper almost always standing, beside the stove, listening to the radio.

He is tall and bony, with a red, sun-weathered face, a reddish nose and gray hair in a buzz cut. He wears a worn brown leather flight jacket over a plaid shirt, khaki trousers and heeled boots, and talks loudly, like someone always shouting over an engine. Rough, proud, he treats parachutes like children and won't tolerate criticism of any of them.

About the parachutes he sent to the plane, he explains what the player will want to know: four, as requested, two back packs and two chest reserves. In Reno, what was left was the brand-new sport rig, steerable, and a reserve slashed open with a knife. The man took the old military one, with an immediate opening. The sport rig is better, but whoever jumped in the army takes what the body knows. When the detective demands whom he packed that parachute for, he answers it was for the company, which paid, and asks for calm.

It could be the roughness of a veteran who takes offense at any doubt about his trade. It could be the defense of someone who learned not to explain what happens at his own school. The detective will have to decide which.