UAAG CH36

Captain Kyle Shulman’s family arrived at the investigation headquarters punctually at 8:00 AM the next morning.

When Lina told Fu Cheng that the bereaved family was already waiting for him in the conference room, Fu Cheng was taken aback for a moment. He looked up at the clock on the wall. “8:02. That punctual?”

Lina smiled, “Actually, they walked in right at 8:00 sharp, not a second off.”

Fu Cheng nodded thoughtfully, picked up the voice recorder and the document folder, and went to the conference room.

Fu Cheng was mainly responsible for questioning the captain’s family, with Su Fei assisting from the side. After the two turned on the voice recorder, Fu Cheng got straight to the point: “My condolences. My name is Evan Fu, a member of the UAAG air crash investigation team, primarily responsible for the investigation of the American Airlines Flight 4012 accident. We met last night. Today, we invited you here to ask some questions about Captain Kyle. Is this Captain Kyle’s son?”

Fu Cheng turned to look at the big boy sitting next to Mrs. Shulman.

When he went to the hotel last night, he only saw Mrs. Shulman, not her son. This was his first time seeing him.

He was a big boy who looked about sixteen or seventeen, wearing a small reddish-brown suit with a brown bow tie around his neck. When Fu Cheng suddenly asked about him, he was stunned and didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he looked at his mother, as if seeking her opinion. Mrs. Shulman’s face was pale, her hands tightly gripping the hem of her clothes. She opened her mouth nervously and answered for her son: “Yes, he is my son David.”

Watching the interaction between mother and son, Fu Cheng pondered for a moment and smiled: “Hello, David, you can call me Evan.”

David lowered his head and didn’t make a sound.

Su Fei scanned the mother and son pair. Even he felt that something was weird about these two.

Fu Cheng continued: “Then let’s first understand Captain Kyle’s daily life. I see from the documents that he was very healthy, had regular physical examinations every year, and seemed to go to the gym every week?”

Throughout the morning, Fu Cheng and Su Fei conducted a detailed interview and questioning of Captain Kyle’s family.

David Shulman hardly spoke; he always kept his head down, and his mother answered everything for him. Mrs. Shulman also had a cautious attitude. She listened very carefully to every question Fu Cheng asked and did her best to answer them. Both were dressed in glamorous and very formal attire, but their cautious demeanor made them look like two suspects undergoing interrogation.

Fu Cheng personally saw the Shulman mother and son out of the investigation headquarters.

After the two left, Su Fei turned off the voice recorder and said in confusion: “If I didn’t know we were investigating an air crash accident instead of a murder case… with their guilty look, I would really suspect that this mother and son are the murderers, or at least they know who the murderer is.” Su Fei paused, looking at Fu Cheng in shock, “Damn, could I have guessed right? Captain Kyle had suicidal tendencies, his family knew about it, so they were so afraid and helped him hide it?”

Fu Cheng: “…”

“Have you watched too many American TV shows?”

“That’s how it’s written on TV. Otherwise, Brother Fu, you tell me why the Shulman mother and son are so nervous. There is currently no evidence proving it was the captain’s fault, and the flying pilot that day wasn’t Captain Kyle, it was Co-pilot Tim. If it turns out to be human error in the end, the more likely party at fault should be Tim, not Kyle. Why are they so afraid?”

“…”

“You can’t say either, can you?”

Lina passed by and saw Su Fei’s triumphant expression and Fu Cheng’s speechless look. She smiled: “What’s wrong, did the interview go awry? You can tell me about it.”

Fu Cheng suddenly remembered that Lina had said she had a master’s degree in psychology from Yale University. Unlike Su Fei’s speculation, in Fu Cheng’s view, the behavior of the Shulman mother and son didn’t look like they had a guilty conscience, but rather seemed like they had some special psychological barrier.

Thinking of this, Fu Cheng looked at Lina with a solemn expression: “There is indeed something I want to ask you about. The specific situation is like this…”

Fu Cheng told Lina exactly what happened during the interview with the Shulman mother and son in the morning.

Lina’s expression grew increasingly grave.

“Fu, maybe I should have interviewed the Shulman mother and son with you.” In the morning, Lina had temporarily received other work, so she let Su Fei replace her to receive the Shulman mother and son with Fu Cheng. She said: “Based on my experience, your guess is correct. The Shulman mother and son’s behavior is not because they feel Captain Kyle Shulman might be responsible and feel guilty. It’s because they have lost the backbone that gave them choices and opinions.”

Lina explained: “In 1967, American psychologist Seligman proposed the ‘learned helplessness’ effect while experimenting on dogs. He locked a dog in a cage and then turned on a buzzer. As long as the buzzer sounded, he would shock the dog. The dog was locked in the cage and couldn’t escape, forced to endure the shock. After conducting multiple experiments like this, he turned on the buzzer again and simultaneously opened the cage door. But the dog not only didn’t run, but voluntarily fell to the ground trembling and whining even when the shock wasn’t turned on. Because it had lost the ability to call for help and grasp hope, and was instead actively waiting for the shock to come. This is the learned helplessness effect.”

“If parents in a family are overly dominant, there are often two changes for the children. The first is excessive rebellion, and the second is learned helplessness. Not knowing how to resist, not knowing to resist, not resisting. Even if they have reached the age where they can resist their parents, because they have been bound by invisible cages and shocked since childhood, they have lost the ability to escape, so they won’t break free from this predicament.”

“Of course, David Shulman hasn’t reached the point of ‘actively waiting for the shock,’ but obviously, he is a child who has been oppressed for a long time. When you took the initiative to talk to him, he didn’t answer you immediately but sought his mother’s opinion. This reflects that in his subconscious, he doesn’t have the right to communicate actively with the outside world.”

Fu Cheng frowned: “But in my opinion, Mrs. Shulman doesn’t seem like a very dominant person.”

“What about Kyle Shulman?”

Fu Cheng’s heart tightened, and he looked up at Lina.

Lina: “A family doesn’t necessarily need two fascists. As long as there is a sufficiently dominant father, he is enough to control his wife and son. Now that the ruler of the family has suddenly passed away, the wife and son suddenly lost their backbone. So they don’t know how to choose.”

“After the plane wreckage was found, they didn’t come to Boston immediately because no one told them they should come, so they kept waiting at home.”

“When UAAG extended an invitation asking them to come to Boston for an interview, only then did they set off. Because they received an ‘order,’ they numbly accepted the order and came to this city.”

“You told Mrs. Shulman last night that you would wait for them at the investigation headquarters at 8:00 AM the next morning, so at 8:00 sharp, not a second off, they appeared.”

Lina sighed: “Little Shulman is only sixteen, but Mrs. Shulman has been ‘educated’ for many years. Perhaps in this family where the father was overly dominant, the one truly affected the most is not his son, but his wife. She no longer has the ability to actively escape the cage. Of course, all this is just my analysis. I haven’t spoken directly with the mother and son, and I can’t distinguish the specific situation clearly.”

Fu Cheng was silent for a long time. He turned around and said to Su Fei: “Kyle Shulman, extremely dominant personality.”

Su Fei had been dumbfounded listening. After a long while, he nodded: “Okay, I noted it down.”

Lina: “Fu, I’ll receive the interviewees with you next.”

Fu Cheng nodded slightly.

Psychology is a mysterious and important discipline. When questioning interviewees, Lina could better judge the other party’s true intentions from their tone, wording, and even expressions. This was also why Zhuo Huan had Fu Cheng and Lina responsible for investigating the relevant personnel together.

In the afternoon, the two met with staff from American Airlines and the airport.

Having a deduction about Captain Kyle’s personality in advance, Fu Cheng’s questions became directional.

Fu Cheng: “Have you flown with Captain Kyle before? May I ask what the situation was roughly like when you were on duty together?”

The interviewed pilot was stunned and replied: “Captain Shulman was a serious and conscientious pilot. He was very excellent. The time we flew together, he was responsible for flying the plane, and I was responsible for radio communications and instrument checks. his flying skills were outstanding, not a single bump throughout the journey. He was a very admirable and excellent pilot.”

Lina: “When you flew together, was there anything that left a deep impression on you?”

He thought for a moment: “Yes. Once when the flight attendant brought the meal, I had Meal B, and Captain Shulman had Meal A. But he didn’t like the taste of Meal A, so I offered to switch meals with him. But he sternly refused. He didn’t eat until an hour later when the flight attendant brought a new Meal B.”

Fu Cheng: “Okay, we understand. By the way, one last question. The records show that you have flown together five times, but you always addressed him as Captain Shulman, not Captain Kyle… Why?”

The pilot blurted out without thinking: “I felt that addressing him this way was more respectful to Captain Shulman. He didn’t seem like someone who took jokes well.”

Fu Cheng and Lina looked at each other.

After this pilot left, Fu Cheng wrote in the document book: “Serious, rigid, hard to approach.”

Lina: “Because he didn’t like Meal A, he insisted on eating Meal B. This reflects the stubborn and inflexible side of his personality. Refusing the co-pilot’s offer to swap meals is a manifestation of a dominant personality and authoritative character. And notice the pilot’s wording, ‘sternly refused.’ In his subconscious, he might not even realize that his memory of this incident is fresh. So subjectively he didn’t notice, but subconsciously he thought Kyle Shulman was very strict, and he had a trace of fear.”

Fu Cheng looked at her: “Could this be one of the reasons for the air crash?”

Lina thought for a long time and shook her head: “I don’t know.”

The interview task gradually reached an impasse.

The person involved, Kyle Shulman, had died in the air crash. To understand this person and his relationship with Co-pilot Tim Harrison, one could only speculate from the fragmented words of others, like looking at a leopard through a tube. However, by evening, things suddenly took a turn.

The interviewee was a senior manager at Logan Airport.

“Once I was in the crew lounge and heard Kyle Shulman scolding Tim Harrison from a distance. Of course, it wasn’t before this air crash, it was a long time ago, at least a year ago. At that time, it seemed that Harrison hadn’t done the pre-flight check properly, and there was a mistake in communication with the airport. But I was just passing by, so I only heard a bit and didn’t hear clearly.”

Fu Cheng’s expression sharpened, and he immediately said: “In fact, these two only flew together three times in total. This time was their third time. The previous two times occurred in March 2020 and July. Please recall carefully, the time you heard Kyle scolding Tim, was it specifically in spring or summer?”

After recalling for a long time, the other party gave a solemn answer: “Summer.”

At night, Fu Cheng printed out all the interview reports from the whole day, compiled them into a booklet, and gave them to Zhuo Huan.

He went to the first floor.

In the tall and spacious warehouse, Zhuo Huan was discussing the mechanical failure of the aircraft rudder with Lawrence.

In front of them was a servo valve eroded by seawater, rusted green. At the moment of crashing into the sea, the huge impact force caused the entire plane to suffer a great impact, but the servo valve placed inside was not destroyed, only twisted by force. Lawrence was arguing with Zhuo Huan about whether the twisted posture of the servo valve could have been caused before crashing into the sea.

“There is a precedent, the rudder hardover. In 1996, US Airways Flight 3157, the captain flew the plane headlong into the Great Salt Lake. One of the possible reasons deduced later was a servo valve failure. Patrick, if a plane accelerated and crashed into the sea due to mechanical failure, then I believe servo valve failure is definitely one of the most likely reasons.” Lawrence argued strongly, “And judging from this twisted posture, the possibility is extremely high. I suggest sending it to Airbus headquarters for inspection.”

Zhuo Huan: “That was a Boeing design fault, and this plane is an Airbus. Don’t waste time, the servo valve is definitely not one of the reasons.”

Lawrence said unconvinced: “Why?”

Zhuo Huan raised his eyebrows. He rarely encountered someone refuting him so righteously. He laughed and was about to speak when a clear and elegant male voice came from behind: “Because Teacher Zhuo has dismantled this plane before.”

Zhuo Huan and Lawrence turned their heads together.

Lawrence: “…”

He admitted defeat: “Fine, then I’ll go check the engine failure first.”

After Lawrence left, Fu Cheng walked up.

Zhuo Huan looked at him with a faint smile, his voice drawn out: “How come I didn’t know I had dismantled an Airbus A390?”

Fu Cheng was stunned: “…You haven’t dismantled it?”

Zhuo Huan said casually: “The Airbus A390 is a new plane that only made its maiden flight in May ’19. I resigned from McFly in June. The planes I dismantled before were all purchased by McFly. So you tell me, have I dismantled it?”

Fu Cheng: “…”

“The planes you dismantled were all bought by McFly?”

A lazy sound: “Yeah.”

Fu Cheng: “…”

So he’s a fake tycoon!

Fu Cheng was expressionless: “Then I’ll call Lawrence back.”

Zhuo Huan couldn’t help laughing out loud: “Yeah, I have dismantled an Airbus A390.”

Fu Cheng looked at him strangely, signaling with his eyes: You just said McFly didn’t buy any more planes for you.

Great Master Zhuo asked back: “If McFly doesn’t buy, can’t I buy it myself?”

“…”

This is still that damn evil capitalist.

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