“Fill me in,” I said, and both girls snapped around. Neither of them had heard me come in. “Miss Salinger, what’s going on?”
Amy’s face was pale, but she was under control. “Scott went out sometime yesterday afternoon, Mr. Gastner. He never returned.” As simple as that.
“Where was he headed? Did he say?”
“No. None of us were home. This is his favorite time of the year to go hunting.” She tried a semibrave smile. “For whatever screwball reason, he likes the summer heat. That’s what we thought. I checked to see if he had taken his rifle. He never goes without that. It’s still behind the door of his bedroom.”
I turned to Sedillos. “Who’s out and where?”
“Sheriff Holman left early this morning for a meeting in Las Cruces with the DEA. They’re arranging the interagency task force.”
“I know that,” I said quickly.
“I sent Baker up the hill. Miss Salinger showed me on the map where some of her brother’s favorite haunts are. Baker said he was familiar with the rim area.”
“Where’s the schedule?” I turned and grabbed the sheet that told me who was supposed to be working. “Terrific.” Todd Baker was the only deputy on duty until 4 P.M. “All right. If we don’t turn anything quickly, we’ll call the others in. Miss Salinger, what was Scott’s mood the last time you saw him?”
“At lunch. He seemed more relaxed than he has in a long time. He told me about meeting with you the other day up on the mesa. He didn’t say what you two talked about, but whatever it was, it helped.”
“That’s encouraging. Does he have any favorite night spots?” She shook her head. “Any friends with whom he’s apt to spend the night?” Again a shake of the head. “As far as you know,” I prompted.
“As far as I know, no. And neither Mom or Dad could think of any place he might have gone. It’s not like him to go out without telling someone. Dad went out to check a couple places where they used to hunt together. Mom stayed at home, in case he showed up or called.”
I walked over and looked at the map. “The most likely thing is that he took a header somewhere, Amy. That happens. If a person’s out a couple miles, it doesn’t take much to incapacitate him to a point where he just has to sit, wait, and sweat it out.”
“He’s got a trick knee from football,” Amy offered hopefully.
“There you go, then. He’s probably sitting somewhere under a tree, waiting for us to find him. What was he wearing?”
“Jeans. Some freaky heavy metal rock T-shirt.”
I smiled some encouragement. “Let’s find him right now.” I’m not sure she bought my feigned optimism, but I didn’t give her a chance to brood. “Gayle, call Jim Bergin at the airport and tell him we’re on the way. He gets to fly a county contract. If he’s not there, call him at home and get him up. Amy, let’s go.”
Technically, I was giving the county commissioners about thirty-seven reasons to put me on the rack. Twenty-four hours hadn’t passed, and Scott Salinger wasn’t a missing person yet. Taking a civilian on an air search was another, especially on a county voucher. The list went on, but I wasn’t about to sit around, waiting for answers. Amy Salinger and I were worried for the same reason-people like her brother didn’t simply walk away without a word unless something was very wrong. We drove quickly to the airport.
“He’s on the ball,” I said, pointing as we drove in toward the parking area. “If your brother drove his car off a rough road somewhere, this is the quickest way to find him. You can see a lot from the air in country like this.” On the apron in front of his small office building was Bergin’s Piper Arrow. He had a small cowl flap up and was peering inside. When he heard us grind to a stop on the gravel, he snapped the flap closed and walked quickly around the wing. He stood at the trailing edge, and the cabin door was open.
“Morning, Sheriff. Your dispatcher said not to linger over coffee. That’s a tough request.”
“We appreciate it.”
“Where are we going?”
“Local search.”
“I guessed right, then. Marijuana field tip-off again?”
“Go ahead and get in back, Amy,” I said, and she stepped lithely up on the wing, then squirmed inside the narrow confines of the airplane. “No marijuana field, Jim. Missing person. We’re looking for a blue-and-white Ford Bronco. Probably one occupant. Probably went hunting. My guess is up on the mesa somewhere. Let’s head that way, and then we’ll play it by ear from there.”
Jim Bergin nodded and climbed in. I followed, settling more stiffly than I would have liked. “You got to slam it,” Bergin said after my first abortive attempt with the door. He reached over and whumped it shut, then stretched to push the top lock closed. He twisted around to make sure Amy was secure, glanced my way, and then busied himself with the plane.
“Amy,” I said, turning so she could hear me, “does Scott usually park and then hike some distance, or is he a dyed-in-the-wool four-wheeler?”
“He loves to hike, Sheriff.”
I nodded and watched Bergin. He was reading a plastic laminated check sheet methodically. After some twisting, pumping, and switch-snapping, he unlatched a small plastic window, craned his head to see as far around the airplane as he could, and then yelled, “Clear” so loud I startled.
“Who the hell are you talking to?” I asked.
“You never know,” he said, and grinned. The engine came to life promptly and settled into a cowl-shaking idle. Bergin seemed to be running most of his checks as he taxied out, and then, with a healthy bellow, we were airborne.
Posadas lost a good deal of its significance from the air. Almost immediately, I could look ahead and see the main Consolidated Mining building to the north, up on the rise of the mesa. We passed directly over the lake and cleared the edge of the mesa behind it by no more than five hundred feet. Bergin came back on the power and began a methodical sweep pattern, flying east-west tracks a mile apart.
“You holler if you see a vehicle,” he shouted. Almost immediately, I saw Todd Baker’s county car, stark white against the brown and green of the mesa. I keyed the hand-held radio.
“Three-oh-six, Airborne.”
“Three-oh-six, go ahead.”
“We’re over you now. See anything?”
“Negative, Airborne.”
“Three-oh-six, is it possible to tell fresh tracks?”
“Negative. Too dry.”
“Ten-four. I don’t think there’s much more you can do up here. Head back down and stay central. We may need you later somewhere else.”
Baker acknowledged, and on our next pass up the mesa, we saw the dust from his patrol car spiraling up through the trees. “Do you know where your father went?” I shouted back at Amy. She shook her head and leaned forward.
“He didn’t say.”
“Where did they hunt?”
She twisted her face up in thought. “There’s a bunch of old cattle drinkers north and east, over by Bailey. They used to go out there for dove, things like that. I think they hunted deer over by Las Notchas.” I nodded. Bergin continued his tracking, smooth as silk. The wind was blowing slightly, and I noticed he held the plane in a slight crab. I saw a flash of moving metal and tapped Bergin on the arm, pointing. The Arrow immediately stood on one wing and turned so fast my stomach kept going west. We flashed over the treetops, skewed sideways against the wind, and I had a good view of a startled face looking up from the cab of a green Forest Service truck. If he had a radio, he didn’t have our frequency. I bounced a message back to Gayle by way of 306, and shortly we had confirmation from the Forest Service that their man downstairs hadn’t found an unattended Bronco.
All our efforts were concentrated in just seeing as the mesa fell away toward the open wide valley to the north. The mat of pinon and juniper below us was broken only by an occasional dirt road. Amy Salinger tapped me on the shoulder. “I know he used to come out here once in a while,” she shouted, pointing at the flat hot prairie. “Rabbits.” It w
as a rabbit heaven, all right. Stock tanks dotted the landscape, with barbed-wire fences stretching out across the thoroughly grazed bunch grass.
The country was a checkerboard of ownership…some private, some Bureau of Land Management, some state reservation. If a person wanted to get out away from everyone and everything, this was the place. But there was no Bronco. Jim Bergin looked over at me and raised an eyebrow.
I turned to Amy. “I hope somebody checked to make sure he didn’t go back out to the football camp.”
She shook her head. “He didn’t. That was our first thought.”
“How about flying back around the edge of the mesa,” I suggested to Bergin. “Right around the edge.” He nodded and the Arrow turned south. I scanned the trees and brush. I tried to climb inside the adolescent mind for answers, but that was a lost cause. I found myself thinking that as long as we didn’t find anything, or hear from anyone, all was to the good. Deputy Todd Baker scotched that wishful thinking just as we rounded the west end of the mesa, with Posadas still hidden by its center bulge. The reception wasn’t great, but he was understandable.
“Airborne, Three-oh-six.”
“Airborne.”
“Airborne, I have a blue-over-white Bronco, Sam Victor one, five, niner, niner. One-half mile east of County Road 43, on the Consolidated access.” Before the deputy had finished, Jim Bergin pushed the throttle forward and we banked sharply toward the east. Todd Baker was one of those officers whose voice on the radio always sounded like a recording. He would have said, “I don’t like cabbage,” in the same tone as “The world is ending.” Only his pregnant wife could get him excited.
Amy Salinger must have been watching my face, because all she did was lay a small hand on my shoulder. If she hadn’t been leaning forward in her seat, she wouldn’t have heard my exchange with Baker over the loud drone of the airplane’s engine. But she had heard enough, and knew where the Consolidated access road was as well as I…close to town and close to a well-traveled highway. There was no good reason to be stranded there.
In another three minutes, we flashed over the lake at something like 130 miles an hour, and Jim Bergin reached out and pulled back the throttle. My stomach flopped a little as the Arrow nosed up. Our airspeed fell away and we started a big circle around the Consolidated Mines complex. The place had been abandoned for almost four years. A company security man drove through on rare occasions to check the locks. The access road swung off County Road 43 and wound around the complex, gradually dropping down to the huge “boneyard,” where the detritus from thirty years of active mining filled a good five acres: junked machinery; probably thousands of feet of drilling pipe and cable; even a long, neat rick of aspen mine-shaft supports. The access road didn’t belong to Consolidated. In fact, it continued down the hill, rough and rut-gouged, to peter out finally several miles later behind the county landfill. It wasn’t picturesque country.
We looked down and saw Baker’s car parked behind the Bronco. The small vehicle was pulled off the road, nestled in the shade of several small scrub oaks.
“Three-oh-six, any sign of the driver?”
“Negative, Airborne.”
We peeled away toward Posadas, and I looked back over the wing. The sun was just right, brilliant on the back walls of the tin equipment sheds that were built practically on the edge of Consolidated’s artificial mesa. Even though we were flying away at eighty miles an hour or so, I could plainly see the figure sitting in the sun, back against one of the shed walls like a Mexican sitting on the patio at noon. “Tight turn and head right for the lake,” I shouted. Bergin did so, banking hard enough that I could feel the g’s make my cheeks sag. As soon as we were wings-level again, he could see my target as well, and he pushed the nose down. We flew over the tops of the buildings low and hot, turning toward the south to avoid the rising hillside. When we flew over the figure, we were no more than three-hundred feet away. Whoever it was paid us no heed. His knees were drawn up with his arms resting on them, and his head was down. And then we were past. Bergin didn’t have much room to play with, but he brought the Arrow around smoothly, concentrating on his flying and not the scenery out the window. I radioed Baker, and by the time we were lined up to make another slow pass, this time headed downhill, his car was rolling.
None of us in the plane said anything. Because of the fence, Baker had to park a hundred yards away from the shed. He clambered over the chain link, and we saw him trot across the open, sun-baked space. For a long moment, Consolidated was out of view as we turned again. Maybe it was just as well.
I keyed the hand-held. “Three-oh-six, is the subject the owner of the vehicle?”
“Ten-four, Airborne. Ten-fifty-five.” My insides sagged again, and it wasn’t from a tight turn.
“Get back to the field, Jim,” I snapped, and he didn’t hesitate. For the next thirty seconds or so, I kept busy on the radio, too gutless to turn around and say anything to Amy Salinger. When I did, I saw that words were unnecessary. She was looking out the window, staring at nothing. Her hands were balled into fists, held close to her mouth. She was crying. Amy Salinger had the training and the nerve, but there are limits for anybody. She had heard the confirmation from Baker that the figure seated against the building was her brother. And she had worked around emergency personnel enough to know that 55 was a call for the coroner.
Chapter 17
The light plane touched down smoothly and Jim Bergin fast-taxied toward where I had parked 310. The propeller clicked to a stop and the Arrow rolled quietly the last few yards.
I unlatched the door while we were still rolling, and when the plane stopped I clambered clumsily out, then turned to help Amy Salinger while Bergin held the seat forward. “I’ll get squared away with you later, Jim,” I said, and he shook his head, face sober. He was watching Amy Salinger as she deplaned.
“On the house,” he said quietly. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”
I hustled Amy into the car, and we drove away from the airport. “I think I should go up there first,” she said as the car pulled out onto the paved road. “I can’t tell Mom and Dad without knowing for sure. I mean, there’s a chance, isn’t there?” She looked across the room at me. “There’s a chance.”
“Amy,” I said patiently, “The deputy knows your brother. Baker’s worked enough games at school, or seen his picture in the paper often enough.”
Her hands were tightly clenched together on her lap. “I want to go up there first,” she said simply.
We drove in silence for a couple of minutes as we passed through Posadas. I didn’t waste any time, but I avoided the red lights and siren. There wasn’t much need. Only after we had started up the hill did Amy shake her head slowly and say, “I just didn’t believe he’d really do this.” She dug out a wad of tissue and through it whimpered, “I don’t know if I can take this.”
“I wish I could say something that would help,” I said. She shrugged her shoulders simply and looked away, her body occasionally shivering like a little cold kid caught unhappy and out in the rain.
We turned into the access road, and I saw one of the county cars pulled diagonally across the narrow right-of-way. Eddie Mitchel, who had probably been just about ready to go to bed when he received the call, bent down as I lowered my window.
“Sir, you can drive through the gate just up ahead there on the right. We haven’t located the security guard yet, but I took the liberty of cutting the lock off.”
I nodded. “Don’t let anyone down here except department personnel without my say-so, Eddie.” I looked at him hard and added, “Nobody.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you might move your car back up the road-right at the turnoff from the pavement. I want all of this closed off.”
He nodded and made for his car. I picked up the mike as we drove down toward the gate.
“Posadas, three-ten.”
“Go ahead, three-ten.”
“What’s Detective Reyes’s t
wenty?”
“Uh, three-ten, I’m still trying to locate her.” For the first time that I could remember, Gayle Sedillos sounded a little flustered. With good cause, I thought.
“Find her,” I snapped, and hung up the mike.
Todd Baker had moved his unit to the gate, and he met us there. “Stay in the car,” I said to Amy. My guess that maybe a brusque approach might be helpful paid off. She nodded quickly, responding to the desperate need for direction.
No one else had arrived, and I told Baker to stay with Amy Salinger until Estelle Reyes arrived. I didn’t want Amy alone, and I certainly didn’t want her alone at the gate, acting as a greeter for all the law-enforcement personnel who were bound to arrive during the next few minutes.
I started across the hot, packed surface of the boneyard at a fast walk, and after the first fifty feet realized it wasn’t just apprehension that was putting a garter around my insides. I tried for a deep, calming breath, and the pressure under my sternum subsided a bit. I swore pointlessly at the high altitude and slowed my pace, trying to calm my pulse. I reached the shed and turned the corner.
I leaned against the warm metal of the building and looked at Scott Salinger. I had investigated probably a dozen suicides during my years in the military and later as a cop. Some of those incidents seemed to be the result of spur-of-the-moment decisions. If the victim had given himself a few minutes, there might well have been some reconsideration. But others-they showed planning and determination. So twisted had their lives become that nothing anyone could say or do would have mattered an iota. That was the impression I had then.
When a wave of dizziness subsided, I stepped forward and knelt down. The body was in a sitting position, knees drawn up and feet flat on the hard-packed asphalt on which the portable sheds rested. Salinger’s forearms rested just above his knees, as if he had been bracing the heavy revolver with which he had shot himself. The revolver was still in his lap, and his right thumb was in the trigger guard.
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