She twisted in her seat and tried to look out the back. The Cessna’s small, sloping rear windows provided little visibility. Anyone deplaning would have done so into the darkness, with nothing other than their personal flashlights-if they had them. None had been found. There were no parked cars, with headlights to guide the arrivals. In all likelihood, she realized, the three victims had been herded like sheep, around the rear of the airplane, out beyond the end of the runway.
The prop ticked to a stop as the engine died, and Bergin set the plane’s parking brake.
“My side,” he reminded Estelle. “Take your time.” He slid out and Estelle followed, impressed with how awkward the whole process was.
Had the pilot not been involved, he might have remained with the Cessna, the engine running, unable to see what was happening behind his airplane. Estelle stood just aft of the wing. How many in the plane, then? Three victims, one pilot. A minimum of four. Maybe five. Perhaps even six.
Estelle turned at the sound of boots crunching on gravel. Sheriff Torrez appeared out of the darkness.
“Well?” he asked.
She moved away from the plane, toward the tail. “Why here, Bobby?” She reached out and rested a hand on the Cessna’s horizontal stabilizer. “We need to find out the answer to that.”
Chapter Thirteen
“He had to know this area intimately, Bobby,” she said. “And he’s top-notch. That much is obvious. It was no accident that he chose the airstrip.”
“We knew that.” Torrez regarded the Cessna skeptically. Bergin had switched off the engine and then remained with the plane, waiting patiently. “And so? What did you find out?”
“Awkward,” Estelle replied. “The airplane is awkward. The pilot has a door on the left side of the plane, but the passenger in the right front seat doesn’t. You have to climb across.”
“Okay. But you can fly from either seat, can’t you?”
“Yes. There are dual controls.”
“So there you go.” Torrez shook his head. Without giving Estelle time to respond, he added, “If someone was standing out in the parking lot of the saloon, they would have heard him come in. They sure as hell would have heard him leave if he took off to the east. I was thinkin’ that maybe Herb Torrance might have heard something. I sent Abeyta over to check that out. He was going to swing by the saloon, too.”
“We don’t know if the pilot was the killer,” Estelle said. “That’s the trouble. And heard isn’t the same thing as noticed.”
“He coulda been the pilot. Or not. Kinda don’t like it either way.” The sheriff shifted his weight with a sigh. “If he was flyin’ the plane, then we know where he went. We know where the plane ended up.”
“If he was a passenger, he might have been dropped off anywhere,” Estelle amended.
“For true. And I guess there’s a possibility the pilot didn’t know what was goin’ on. Visibility out the back of that plane can’t be too good.” He nodded at the Cessna.
“It isn’t. And it’s noisy. There’s every possibility that the pilot might not have heard the shots.”
“If the killer didn’t get back on that airplane out here, we got us a different problem,” Torrez said. “Where’d he walk to? Assumin’ there was just one of ’em.”
“The county road is just a half-mile away,” Estelle replied. “But I don’t think that’s what happened.”
“I don’t guess so,” the sheriff agreed. “Anybody with this situation under control the way he had to have it ain’t going to leave himself on foot out in the middle of nowhere. Somebody was waitin’ here for him, or he got back on the plane.” He turned a full circle, hands on hips. “Ted Weaver was out, by the way. He’s not too happy about all this.”
“I imagine not,” Estelle said. Weaver, a gas company executive, would join Jerry Turner as someone uncomfortable with being an innocent bystander.
“One way it coulda worked,” Torrez said, and paused. “If the pilot saw what was goin’ on and spooked, he might have bolted. Took off and left the shooters behind.”
Off to the north, following the circuitous route of County Road 14, headlights glinted briefly through the scrub. As if reading her thoughts, Torrez added, “Abeyta’s on his way up to the Torrance Ranch-that’s the closest dwelling-then on over to the saloon to talk with Vic Sanchez. But all this happened two, maybe three days ago. That’s what Perrone’s givin’ us for the time of death. The killer’s long gone.”
“Maybe he is,” Estelle said. “Back to Mexico?”
“Most likely. That’s what the Border Patrol thinks. Rutledge sees this as payback of some kind. Drug deal, maybe. Something like that. He ain’t impressed.”
“I suppose he isn’t.” Estelle had worked with Barker Rutledge on several occasions, never by choice. In this instance, Rutledge had arrived earlier at the crime scene in company with two other federal agents, and stayed less than an hour. Estelle had not had the opportunity to talk with him, but she was reasonably sure that at some point, Rutledge would have sucked in his considerable belly and announced, “Well, that’s three more we don’t have to worry about.”
“No word yet from Naranjo?” Eddie Mitchell asked. He had been standing quietly in the dark, well away from the airplane, watching and listening.
“Not yet. He’ll work on it. I’ll call him back in a bit,” Estelle said. “I sent the morgue shots to him. He’ll do what he can.”
“Which ain’t much,” Torrez said.
“You never know,” Mitchell said, not so quick to write off the Mexican efforts.
“These three weren’t laborers,” Torrez said. “At least they didn’t spend much time workin’ with their hands.”
At the far end of the runway, a pair of headlights materialized and then flicked out, the vehicle driving down the center of the runway guided only by its parking lights.
In a moment, Jackie Taber’s older-model white Bronco idled to a stop.
“Collins thinks that he’s found where the gasoline came from,” Jackie said. “The lock’s been cut on the tank behind the school’s auto shop.”
Estelle’s heart skipped a beat. “Recently, he thinks?”
“I asked Collins that. He says it’s hard to tell. He’s trying to find the shop teacher now.”
Torrez patted the door panel and stepped away from Jackie’s truck.
“Meet you there,” he said. “You flyin’ back with Jim?”
She nodded. “I’ll be back as quickly as I can.” She walked to the plane and Bergin held the door for her. She settled back against the hard seat and closed her eyes.
“Long day, eh?” Bergin said. He slammed the door and snapped his seat belt. “Won’t take long goin’ home. You learn anything useful?”
“Yes.” She reached across and touched his right wrist. “And thanks, Jim. I appreciate it.”
“Not a problem.” He scanned the checklist briefly and then the Cessna shuddered into life. The taillights of Jackie’s Bronco were fading down the runway, and Bergin gunned the Cessna out of the gravel and back onto the asphalt. Spinning it against the left wheel brake, he turned the plane around and taxied the remaining yards to the end of the pavement. They turned around once again just shy of the yellow crime scene tape.
“Short strip like this, it’s a good thing to use every advantage,” he said, and fed in the power. The takeoff roll was short enough that they were a couple hundred feet in the air by the time they flashed over the county road. To the right, Estelle could look down to the saloon, less than half a mile south.
She knew how quiet the prairie could be. An odd noise stood out, begging to be noticed. Without much effort, she could imagine a couple of patrons sitting at the Broken Spur’s bar, sipping the brew. When they heard the plane, one might smile and turn to the other. “’Nother load dropped off,” he might say. And that would be that.
Bergin banked left, and they headed directly toward Posadas Municipal Airport. He let the Cessna climb to five hundred feet, and then t
rimmed it forward to a fast cruise. It seemed like seconds before he keyed the radio.
“Posadas traffic, niner two Hotel is five southwest, inbound for right base, niner zero.” He clicked the mike button twice, and ahead of them, the runway lights illuminated as if by magic, two long strips to guide them in. “Makes it easy,” Bergin said. “We already proved we can land in the dark.”
In a moment, they were down and taxiing quickly toward the hangar. Jerry Turner’s BMW was still parked off to one side.
“Nervous parent,” Bergin said. “His baby’s become a criminal.” As he shut down the engine, he looked across at Estelle. “Any questions?”
“Several million,” she replied. “Thanks so much.”
“You’re welcome. Any time.” He opened the door and slid out. “’Course, I don’t really mean that. Keep me posted, will you?”
“Certainly.”
“I was thinkin’ of spending a few nights out here, till you get this thing wrapped up.”
“Not a bad idea,” Estelle said. “But if someone stops by to steal an airplane again, just let them take it. We’re not dealing with an amateur here.”
He laughed. “I ain’t no hero. Anyway, they’re going to have to work harder at it. I’ll get that sheet metal siding welded in place, and we’ll change the lock on the dead bolt. That’ll slow ’em down some.”
Chapter Fourteen
The state highway back to Posadas was a reminder that all was not normal this quiet night. Estelle passed two State Police units, running five miles apart, both officers cruising well below the speed limit, no doubt looking in every arroyo and behind every abandoned ranch building. They wouldn’t find anything, she knew. No doubt, they knew it, too.
Closer to town, she saw an SUV pulled into the shadows by an abandoned gas station. She slowed, and the vehicle’s lights winked at her. As she passed, she could see the broad stripe down the vehicle’s flank that was part of the Border Patrol’s insignia.
“Everybody is looking,” she said aloud to herself. “And no one knows who to look for.” Most of the coverage was token, she realized. The shootings, now two, three, maybe four days cold, were long in the killer’s rearview mirror. But the old saw was true-every additional hour only benefited the killer. For want of anything specific to do or someone specific to chase, officers looked in the shadows for things that shouldn’t be there.
As soon as she had heard where the deputy had discovered gasoline thefts, a new theory had crept into her mind, an uncomfortable one that fitted her instincts. The more she thought about it, the more her apprehension built.
Her telephone chirped as she drove past Pershing Park, and she groped it out of her pocket.
“Hey,” Bob Torrez’s voice announced. “I’m at the school. Where you at?”
Fast and direct as the flight might have been, her brief conversation with Jerry Turner at the airport had consumed several minutes. The cell phone salesman had promised not to let his delinquent aircraft leave its hangar without notifying the Sheriff’s Department first.
“Just about into the village. Give me a minute.”
“Okay. I got Archer over here. Grider is on the way,” the sheriff said, not bothering to elaborate where “over here” was. “Some other stuff, too,” he added cryptically.
By then Estelle was turning left on Piñon Street with the high school in view on the other side of the athletic field ahead, its security lights making it look like a row of five various-sized boxes attached end to end. “We’re over behind the vo-tech wing,” Torrez said. She could make out the gathering of vehicles as she turned onto Olympic and skirted the athletic field. There were just enough outside lights around the school to make an intruder’s job easier, pools of bright light alternating with inky darkness.
She eased in behind the sheriff’s Expedition, and before she had shut off the engine, Deputy Dennis Collins trotted out of the shadows cast by the nearest building.
“We’re over behind the auto mechanics wing,” he announced as she got out of the car. “The back gate is open.”
“Is that the way they gained entry?”
“We think it is. The lock is cut.”
The chain-link fence started at the corner of the redbrick building, extending outward a dozen yards to enclose an eclectic assortment of junk. Until the chop of budget cuts ten years before, the building had housed the wood and metal shops, auto mechanics, and vocational agriculture, and the area behind the building had been the natural overflow area. The vo-ag program had been the first victim of the budget woes, but the boneyard behind the building still housed a fair collection of portable steel stock panels, two partially disassembled tractors, and one dual-axle stock trailer.
Collins led her around the fence to a rolling gate. He paused, pointing with his flashlight. “They cut this chain. Real tricky.” He held the light close. “See that?” Two links of the chain, almost behind the side post and well away from the padlock, were tied together with a short piece of insulated black electrical wire. “They didn’t touch the lock. If you don’t look close, it looks okay. It’s hidden behind the post.”
“This is what you noticed first?”
Collins nodded. “My brother did this once,” he said. “Back in Akron, though,” he added hastily.
“Ah,” Estelle said. “Clever. Make sure Linda shoots this.” She looked through the fence toward the dark corner of the building where the other officers were gathered. “How do we get in?”
“When I saw this, I called Matt Grider,” Collins said. “’Cause I knew exactly what was happening. The guy can slip through here whenever he wants. No one the wiser.” He flashed the light toward the building. “The gas storage tank is over there beside that metal shed. I called Matt, and he opened the side door of the building for me so I could get in. Sure enough,” he said with considerable satisfaction. “The lock on the tank is cut.”
Estelle turned and looked at the street behind them. The gravel lane provided obvious opportunities-out of the way, out of sight.
“Let’s see the rest,” she said.
The rest was simple enough. The storage tank, a 250-gallon drum on short pipe legs, included a hand pump-the sort of arrangement that was standard on farms and ranches, or anywhere that the long arm of OSHA didn’t reach. Matt Grider, an angular, morose young man with a shaved head that accentuated his speed-brake ears, was talking to Sheriff Torrez as Estelle approached from the back door of the school’s shop.
“Kinda interesting,” Torrez said. He pointed his flashlight first at the padlock on the pump. “The hasp is cut. Just swing the lock off, and we’re in business.” He swung the light to the door of the storage shed. “Matt says there’s a couple of jerry cans in there. We ain’t touched the door yet. Don’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what we’ll find.”
“Linda?” Estelle asked.
“She’ll be along. Take a couple of shots, though. We need to get in there,” Torrez said, and Estelle nodded. She rapped the side of the gas storage tank with a knuckle.
“Mr. Grider, thanks for coming out,” she said. “Do you use this often?”
“No, ma’am,” Grider replied. “We used to. When we work on a vehicle, once in a while we need gas.”
“When was it filled last?” Torrez asked.
Grider fell silent, mouth pursed in thought. “Sometime last spring, I guess.”
“Not exactly fresh, then,” the sheriff said. “Not too bright dumpin’ it in an airplane.”
“You guys want to tell me what all this is about?” Grider asked uneasily.
“Someone’s stealin’ gas,” Torrez said, and let it go at that. “How much did you have in this? Do you remember?”
“Honestly, I don’t. Maybe half. Maybe three quarters. Like I said, we don’t use it much. I could look up the paperwork.” He looked first at the sheriff and then at Estelle, perhaps wondering why the theft of a few gallons of gasoline would attract such attention. “What happened?”
�
�Good question,” Torrez said. He turned to Estelle, ignoring Grider. “Gravel parking lot,” he said. “No tracks for shit.” He took her by the elbow and together they walked toward the gate. “This don’t fit,” he said when they were out of earshot of Grider and Collins. “We’re barkin’ up the wrong tree. This is the work of some kid. Some punk who wants gas for his four-wheeler. At three-fifty a gallon, even old gas is worth takin’.”
“I think that’s who we’re dealing with, Bobby.”
The sheriff stopped short, waiting.
Her stomach tightened its knots now that she had voiced the notion. “Look at the pieces. Number one, he climbs the airport fence, or slips through somehow, and does it with full cans of fuel. Even if he pulls a pickup truck up beside the fence where it’s only four feet of barbed wire, hops in the back, and then goes over, that takes strength and agility.”
The sheriff remained silent, his signal for her to continue.
“That’s one. Number two, he goes through the back of the building, slipping through a small piece of bent siding. That takes strength and agility, too. And he’s no giant. Maybe he only did that once, because after he was inside, he had the keys. Then he takes the plane and, more important, returns it-that takes some guts and some planning, too, and that flair for risk that appeals to kids. He flies a route to who knows where, at night-and then returns, again at night, making a risky landing on a small strip with a plane carrying a heavy load.” She paused. “It just seems to me that the odds are so stacked that most adults would hesitate. This pilot doesn’t. Have you ever met a teenager who didn’t think he was immortal?”
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