Out of Season

by Steven F Havill

  I had a view of ground out the left window and solid sky to the right. I braced myself and an inadvertent “Whoa!” escaped. Bergin ignored me and continued his tight spiral, throttle to the firewall and eyes glued out the side window. Finally he leveled off.

  “Something down there, all right. Pretty good scatter.” He pulled the throttle back and we sank into the wind. Five hundred feet above the prairie, he added throttle, picked up some speed and turned steeply again, reversing course. “Right over the nose,” he shouted. “I’m going to make a pass with it on your side.”

  The Cessna slowed and Bergin tracked a straight line, letting the aircraft gradually sink. What from on high had looked like flat prairie now took on form and threat. Ahead of us, a swell of rock and scrub rose up, and if Bergin knew what he was doing, we’d skim over the trees with about a hundred feet to spare. I concentrated on watching the ground.

  The northeast side of the rise was littered with junk in a long scatter, as if a giant had dumped a load of metal trash that winked in the late-afternoon sunlight. As we passed overhead, I saw several pieces tumbling in the wind, to be grabbed eventually by stunted junipers or black sage.

  “That’s it!” Bergin shouted and then added, “That looks like the aft fuselage and part of the empennage.” He pushed in the throttle and we headed east, giving ourselves room for another turn.

  This time even I could see one large piece on the side of the slope, resting amid a welter of torn metal. It was white with a blue stripe running under what was left of the registration markings.

  “One more,” Bergin said and turned to cross the site from north to south. “Let me see if I can make out the markings.” From a hundred feet away, it wasn’t difficult, even passing by at ninety miles an hour or more. “I can see the GVM,” Bergin shouted, and leveled out. “And that’s a Bonanza. Philip Camp was registered out of Calgary, Canada. A lot of times they don’t use numbers up there. Just letters. If my memory’s right, his registration was George Victor Michael Alpha.”

  I slumped back against the seat. “Make another pass, just to be sure,” I said, making a circular path with my index finger.

  He did, and this time I saw the scarring of the earth and, many yards from the initial impact, a blocky, solid piece of wreckage that could have been an engine. West of the tail section, there was a dense collection of junk that was probably whatever was left of the main cabin.

  I keyed the radio. “Tom, do you see where we’ve been circling?”

  “Affirmative. You’re about a mile or so northwest of me.”

  “Closer to two or three,” I replied. “The wreckage is strewn across the northeast side of the rise. If you get here before dark, I don’t think you can miss it. We’ll orbit overhead until you’ve got things secured.”

  “Ten-four,” Pasquale said. Bergin poured the coals to the Cessna and we spiraled upward, keeping the wreckage in the center of my field of view, off to the right.

  I pulled the plane’s mike off the dash. “Posadas Unicom, four-niner Baker November Mike. Linda, pick it up.”

  “Posadas, go ahead.”

  “Linda, give Gayle a call and have her contact the FAA in Albuquerque and advise them that we have an aircraft confirmed down. Make sure Estelle is at the office. She needs to put together a team to reach the site. The easiest way will be from the Boyd ranch and then on some of the cattle trails into the northeast. If she can come up with a helicopter from the state police, that’s even better.”

  “Ten-four, sir.”

  “We intend to orbit the area until Officer Pasquale arrives and secures the site. Then we’ll be returning.”

  “Ten-four, sir. Are there any other contacts I need to make?”

  “Negative. We won’t have any casualty confirmation until Pasquale reaches the scene. But tell Estelle that we don’t see any sign of life down there. She’ll know what to do.”

  “Ten-four, sir.”

  I hung the mike up and sighed.

  “Hell of a thing,” Bergin said. We hit a nasty stretch of choppy air and we remained silent until it settled down. “Sun sets, it might calm down some. Another thirty minutes or so.” He looked over at me. “I guess there isn’t much doubt about whose plane that is.”

  “No,” I replied, and that’s all I could think of to say.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The sun set behind the San Cristobál mountains, the wind died, and the Cessna settled down to its job of boring a smooth hole through the air. The sky mixed with the western horizon to a dark, rich purple. The terrain lost its definition, with the hilltops blending into the sky. I sat glumly and watched the transformation.

  Jim Bergin had clicked on the autopilot and dialed in a sweeping, four-mile-diameter turn. A thousand feet above the brush, we droned our patient circles as Tom Pasquale did all the hard work. I couldn’t imagine stumbling across that arroyo-crossed, cholla cactus-studded landscape. One of the few consolations was that it was too early in the season for rattlesnakes.

  At ten minutes after eight, the deputy reached the crash site. If I squinted hard enough, I could imagine that I saw the occasional flicker of his flashlight. A year before, Pasquale wouldn’t have remembered something so simple as a flashlight as he eagerly charged into action.

  I keyed the mike of the handheld. “What have you got, Tom?”

  A burst of static followed, and then a hard-breathing Pasquale said, “Registration is George Victor Michael, and I think it’s Alpha. Last letter, Alpha. It’s pretty badly torn.”

  “Occupants?”

  A pause followed, then, “I’m looking.”

  “Try more to the northwest, as the hill rises. Over near a rock outcropping.” I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the terrain details, now replaced with the uniform charcoal wash of late evening.

  “Ten-four.”

  We completed another orbit before he came back on the air. His voice was strained. “Three-ten, I’ve found what looks like part of the cabin structure. I think it’s a section of the right side. One occupant is still belted into his seat.” The radio fell silent for a moment. “Apparently the left front seat was torn from the structure at some point. I don’t see it or any other occupants, if there were any. There’s…there’s a good-sized chunk of wing over to the left. Maybe over that way.”

  “Can you identify the victim strapped to the seat?” Pasquale had no way of knowing to whom the aircraft belonged, or who had been a passenger in it. I suppose I was putting off the inevitable as long as I could.

  We waited through another pause, this time longer, before Tom Pasquale said, “That’s negative, sir.” His voice was close to cracking. “There’s not enough here.”

  I felt a pang of sympathy for the kid. The prairie was a lonely enough place at night under the best of circumstances.

  I muttered a curse, and when Bergin leaned over to hear me, I just shook my head. “More waiting,” I shouted.

  “I wish there was someplace I could touch down, but I’d sure hate to try it. There’s that cow path over by the windmill to the west, but it’s rougher’n I’d care to try, especially at night.”

  “No, that’s not necessary,” I said.

  “I guess he needs to stay there, don’t he?” Bergin asked. “ ’Til somebody can get out here?”

  I nodded. “Let’s go back.” I keyed the handheld one more time. “Tom, we’re returning to Posadas. There’ll either be a chopper out here or a vehicle coming in from the Boyd ranch just as soon as we can manage it. Are you going to be all right until then?”

  “Ten-four.”

  I probably didn’t need to say it, but I didn’t want any screwups. “Don’t leave the site, and don’t touch anything,” I said. “Just wait for us. And if someone from one of the ranches shows up, don’t let them touch anything either.”

  “Ten-four.”

  The lights of Posadas winked into sight less than five minutes later as we cleared the mesa top. Bergin flew a conservative pattern, circling until he lin
ed up on an eastbound final approach. I could see the lights of the terminal building, and as our tires squawked against the tarmac and we shot past the first intersection, I saw a fair collection of vehicles, including at least two from our department.

  Bergin turned off the runway and gunned the engine, heading us back up the taxiway.

  “I’ll be around all evening,” he said. “Just let me know what you folks need.”

  “I appreciate it,” I replied. “I don’t know if they’ve been able to round up a chopper or not.” As we taxied across the broad apron, the door of the mobile home that Posadas Municipal Airport grandly called a terminal opened and Sergeant Eddie Mitchell walked quickly across to intercept us. He stopped and waited while Bergin spun the plane around against a blast of prop wash and then shut it down in front of the hangar doors.

  I didn’t realize how stiff I was until I nearly fell on my face getting out. Mitchell waited by the wingtip.

  “Sir, Estelle’s inside with Janice Holman and her sister-in-law, Vivian Camp.”

  I kept my voice down. “Who called them? I didn’t authorize anyone to do that yet.”

  “They got worried that their husbands were overdue,” Mitchell said. “They called and talked with Linda Real. She didn’t tell them anything, but Janice Holman asked to speak with Jim Bergin. Linda told her that he was flying a charter and she didn’t know when he’d be back. So the two women came on down.” He gestured off toward the parking lot. “They saw your vehicle.”

  “What a goddam mess,” I muttered, and walked to the terminal.

  Janice Holman was standing with Estelle in the small pilots’ lounge, looking at a wall map of New Mexico. Linda was behind the desk, radio and telephone at her elbow. The door to the rest room was closed, and I assumed that Vivian Camp was in there.

  The sheriff’s wife turned as I entered, and when she saw my face, she wilted, putting out a hand against the wall for support.

  “Bill…” she started to say. Estelle put an arm around her shoulders.

  “It doesn’t look good, Jan,” I said, and took her left hand. “What about the chopper?” I asked Estelle. “Any word?”

  “We expect a departure from Las Cruces within the hour. Apparently there was some problem finding a flight crew.”

  I nodded and took a deep breath, still holding Janice Holman’s hand. “One of the deputies is at the site now,” I said. The door of the rest room opened and a dark-haired, chubby woman appeared, her face puffy, her eyes hollow and dark-rimmed. Vivian was younger than her sister, less angular, dressed in an expensive gray pantsuit.

  “Was there any…any sign…” Janice Holman tried to say, and I brought up my other hand to hold hers in both of mine. Tom Pasquale had seen the remains of one body. If he hadn’t been able to identify the man for whom he’d worked for three years, then the crash impact had been devastating.

  “We’re going to get out there just as soon as we can, Jan.”

  “But did he see anything? Anything at all?”

  “It’s going to be hard,” I said. “That’s rough country, and in the dark…” I shook my head. It wasn’t the answer Janice Holman wanted to hear.

  “Maybe it wasn’t their plane,” the sister said. She had slumped in one of the overstuffed chairs beneath the wall chart.

  The sheriff’s wife gripped my hands harder. “Is that a possibility, Bill?”

  I looked at her for a minute and she could read the answer in my eyes before I said, “Jim Bergin recognized the registration of the aircraft, Jan.”

  “But there wasn’t a fire?”

  “It didn’t appear so,” I said.

  “Then there’s always hope,” Janice Holman said. She drew herself up, dropped my hands and covered her eyes with both hands.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” I asked gently, and Estelle ushered her to one of the other chairs.

  Then Estelle stepped back and indicated the map on the wall. “Bob’s on the way up with the other Bronco. He knows the country and said he thinks he can get within a few hundred yards of the crash site by driving all the way in to the Boyds’ ranch, then cutting the fence here”—she tapped the map—“and following one of the cattle trails past the windmill, back east to the site.” She looked at me. “He was going to stop at the ranch headquarters and pick up Johnny, if he’s home. That way, the two of them can find the fastest route in.”

  “Did you get ahold of the Boyds on the phone?”

  “Gayle said she’d keep trying. No one’s been answering.”

  Looking outside, I saw Jim Bergin crossing the tarmac under the harsh light of the sodium vapors. He glanced skyward just as I heard the heavy drone of an airplane.

  The radio came alive with the rapid, clipped lingo peculiar to pilots. I’d lived for forty years depending on radio communication and they still left me behind half the time.

  “Bonanza niner-seven Gulf Alpha entering downwind zero-niner, Posadas.”

  Janice Holman and her sister reacted as if someone had slid a cattle prod under their seats. I guessed that they’d heard three magic words—Bonanza, Gulf, and Alpha. The plane was the right type, and the two letters began and ended with Philip Camp’s registration.

  “Oh, God,” Vivian Camp said. She was on her feet and headed for the door, colliding with Jim Bergin as he entered. She lost her balance and he caught her, and for a moment, they did an awkward dance in the doorway.

  “That’s the UPS plane,” Bergin said quietly, still holding Mrs. Camp’s arm. “It comes in every day at about this time.”

  As if to punctuate his remark, the voice over the radio barked something else about final for zero-niner, and we could see the bright landing lights coming in from the west. Vivian Camp wasn’t willing to accept Jim Bergin’s word. She stood in the doorway, clinging to the doorjamb and to Jim’s arm until the Bonanza idled across the tarmac and slowed to a halt. The brown UPS van pulled up beside the plane even as the prop windmilled, and then stopped.

  Vivian Camp turned away from the door, and the sobs came in great, gulping waves. She and her sister sat together, and Estelle knelt in front of them, covering their clasped hands with both of hers.

  “Posadas Unicom, Bonanza niner-seven Gulf Alpha departing twenty-seven, straight out to the west.” Bergin leaned across Linda Real and tapped the mike bar.

  “No reported traffic, Ricky.”

  The radio barked two notes of squelch as the pilot keyed his own mike, and then we could hear the powerful surge of the Bonanza as it started its takeoff run.

  “JetRanger Triple Eight November Mike inbound from the south. We’ve got the traffic in sight,” another voice said, and Bergin looked across at me.

  “There’s your chopper,” he said.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, and as Estelle started to rise, I waved a hand. “Eddie and I will hook a ride out,” I said. “You’ll stay here?”

  Estelle nodded. Janice Holman raised an agonized face and tried to say something, swallowed, and tried again.

  “We should go along,” she said.

  “No, ma’am, you shouldn’t. What would be helpful is to let Detective Reyes-Guzman take you back to the Public Safety Building. That’s our communication center, and anything incoming will go through there.” I tried to smile. “You’ll be more comfortable.”

  That was a lie, of course. Neither Janice Holman nor Vivian Camp were going to be comfortable for a very long time.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The downwash from the rotors of the JetRanger tore up half an acre of New Mexico prairie as we settled to earth. A hundred yards ahead of us, caught in the harsh underbelly spotlights, stood Deputy Thomas Pasquale. Around him was the litter of what had once been Phil Camp’s airplane.

  A flash of light caught my eye, a set of headlights from a knoll a quarter mile to the west. If it was Bob Torrez, he’d damn near driven faster than the Bell JetRanger flew.

  Eddie Mitchell hit the ground like a marine, followed by Donnie Smith, one of the state patr
olmen assigned to the Posadas area. But I took my time, gingerly groping for solid footing before I released my grip on the thin door frame of the helicopter. Dr. Francis Guzman waited patiently behind me. Even as we stepped away from the chopper, the state police pilot was spooling the thing down into silence.

  Pasquale walked toward us, head down against the wind and the treacherous footing. Mitchell joined him as he approached. “No survivors,” the young deputy said when we were within earshot. “The pilot’s over there, just a few yards from where the engine block ended up.” Pasquale held up a wallet. “If this is his, then he’s Philip Camp, out of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I don’t know who the passenger is. I didn’t want to touch anything there.”

  “Philip Camp is Martin Holman’s brother-in-law, Thomas,” I said. “As far as we know, he and the sheriff were the only two on board.”

  Pasquale ducked his head. “The sheriff? You mean Martin Holman?”

  I nodded and took Pasquale by the arm. “Let’s go see.”

  Even as we walked the short distance toward the main chunk of fuselage, I could hear vehicles in the distance. Four sets of headlights appeared around the bottom of the mesa to the west.

  “Make sure they park behind the helicopter,” I said to Mitchell, and then Dr. Guzman, Pasquale, and I continued toward the wreckage.

  In the thirty years that I’d worked for the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department, I’d visited the scene of three air crashes. That certainly didn’t make me an expert. Within the next twenty-four hours, investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board would arrive and begin their methodical sifting of the scene. Maybe they’d have some answers for us.

  I stood on a jumble of rocks, taking care to avoid the cactus. Within the range of my flashlight beam, the pieces of the Beechcraft Bonanza spread out like confetti, making a crescent-shaped scar at least a hundred yards long, maybe more.