Out of Season

by Steven F Havill

Ahead of us, the chunk of the central fuselage was a tangle of metal and tubing roughly the size of a small, imported sedan that had been torn in half lengthwise. Neither wing was attached, nor the tail aft of the rear cabin window. It would take someone far more expert than I was to make sense of the mess that remained. The windshield and its entire framework, including all of the cabin roof, were missing, as was everything from the firewall forward.

  “Christ,” I muttered, and stepped closer so I could sweep the flashlight beam over the wreckage. What was left of Martin Holman was belted to the right front seat, and the seat was twisted and bent backward, mangled with the rest of the cabin’s right-side framework.

  I felt a hand on my sleeve. “Let me do this, Bill,” Francis Guzman said. I nodded and held the light for him, then turned my head so I didn’t have to watch.

  “Thomas,” I said, “did you walk over to the east to find the first point of impact?”

  “No, sir,” Pasquale said. His voice was shaking. “You told me to stay right here, and that’s what I did.”

  “Good man.” I stood quietly and gazed off to the east. If Philip Camp had been trying to land, the Bonanza would have been traveling in the neighborhood of eighty to a hundred miles an hour when it struck the rugged prairie. If it had hit flat, it would have been badly torn up. But it still would have been recognizable as an airplane.

  If the plane had plowed straight in, or at a steep angle, the wreckage would have pulverized itself in a “smoking hole,” as military pilots were wont to say.

  As I stood in the dark and listened to Dr. Guzman’s ragged breath behind me, I could imagine only one scenario that would have resulted in this kind of crash scatter: the Bonanza had struck the earth at a glancing angle, perhaps one wing down, at full speed—perhaps upward of two hundred miles an hour, maybe more. If that was the case, there could be a whole handful of explanations that were obvious, even to me. And an experienced pilot could provide far more, I was sure.

  I had never met Philip Camp, and certainly had no idea of what kind of pilot he was—careful, careless, a hotdogger, a man who flew by the numbers, or a man who didn’t pay much attention to detail. Martin Holman had mentioned in the previous week that his wife’s sister and brother-in-law were planning a visit, but that had been the extent of our conversation. I didn’t even remember the context of the discussion that had prompted the sheriff to mention the upcoming occasion.

  “Let’s look at the other one,” Dr. Guzman said, and he waited for me while I made my way down off the rock pile.

  One hundred and four paces later, we reached the remains of the pilot’s seat. The frame was broken and the entire seat splayed out flat on the ground like a book facedown, its back broken. Thirty steps away lay most of Philip Camp’s remains.

  Headlights swept the area, and the cavalcade from the west pulled up in a vast cloud of dust. I could see Bob Torrez’s county vehicle, along with one of the Posadas Emergency Rescue squad’s four-wheel-drive Suburbans. Bringing up the rear was a pickup truck with a rack of lights across the roof, a spotlight on the driver’s door pillar, and a large feed bin in the back. A dog perched on top of the feed bin, barking and dashing from one side to another.

  The mutt was either well trained or tied, because when the truck jarred to a stop, it didn’t leap off.

  Doors slammed, but Sergeant Robert Torrez was the only person who left the group of vehicles and approached.

  “Over here, Robert,” I called and waved the flashlight. Torrez angled toward me, sweeping his own light from side to side as he approached.

  “It is the sheriff,” I said when he reached me. “Apparently just the two of them. Holman and his brother-in-law. Both dead.”

  “Well, my God,” Torrez muttered and waved a hand back toward the vehicles. “The Boyds have a generator in the back of the truck if we need more light. Edwin said we’re welcome to it.”

  “Light isn’t what we need right now, Robert,” I said. “We can take the bodies back, what’s left of them, but beyond that, we’re going to be waiting on the feds. Did Estelle say anything to you over the radio on your way out?”

  “No, but I can’t imagine that they’ll be able to get investigators here much before mid-morning.”

  “Then all we can do is to secure the scene until they arrive,” I said. “The first thing we need to do is to walk the crash track and locate the body parts.”

  Torrez made a little sigh, tucked his light under his arm and thrust both hands in his pockets. “That ain’t going to be pretty,” he muttered.

  “Nope,” I said. “But we don’t want the coyotes, or the Boyds’ dog, for that matter, making off with parts of the sheriff, either.”

  Torrez let out something that might have been a chuckle. I added, “And everything else stays untouched until the feds get here. Don’t move a thing.”

  “Let’s get to it,” Torrez said.

  “I want to use the radio in your truck first,” I said. “Estelle needs to be tracking down what information she can from her end. The feds are going to want some answers when they get here…like what Philip Camp and Martin Holman were doing flying at this time of day, in weather like this.”

  “I didn’t think the sheriff even liked to fly,” Torrez said.

  “He didn’t. And his brother-in-law should have known better.” I took a deep breath and turned back toward the wreckage. It was going to be a long night.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The sun cracked over the prairie to the east of us, cutting hard shadows across the scrub, arroyos, and rocks.

  To the south, a herd of cattle had gathered, thinking in their own dull way that all the vehicular traffic during the night had been for their benefit, bringing in feed.

  The livestock belonged to Johnny Boyd, and it was one more complication Boyd didn’t need just then. Like everyone else, he was gaunt-faced and tired. He’d done more than his share during the night, moving with the rest of us as, like dark ghosts, we searched through the crash site, lights flicking this way and that.

  Even his wife had returned half a dozen times with coffee, food, flashlight batteries. She had stayed near the truck each time, not wanting to venture out into the darkness. She knew what we were doing, and the last thing she wanted was to catch a glimpse of the contents of one of the black-plastic bags from the medical examiner’s office.

  I saw the cattle before Boyd did. He, Bob Torrez, and Donnie Smith were working carefully near the first point of impact a hundred yards to the east, getting ready to sweep their way along the strike path again now that the sun was far enough over the horizon to provide some definition for objects on the ground.

  Watching my step on the rough terrain, I approached Boyd. A cigarette dangled from his mouth and he occasionally coughed short, choppy little spasms. He looked up and saw me.

  “Those yours?” I asked and gestured toward the cattle.

  “Sure enough,” Boyd said and sighed. “This part of the prairie normally belongs to them.” He grinned wryly and removed the cigarette.

  “Are they going to move in closer? I’d hate to have them in here.”

  He coughed again. “Nah. I’ll keep an eye on ’em. As soon as my brother and his boy get back, I’ll have ’em drive ’em over beyond the windmill. There’s a section fence there. We’ll put ’em behind that.” He stretched and put both hands on the small of his back.

  “What happens now, you reckon?” he asked.

  The smoke from his cigarette wafted past my nose. It smelled good. I hesitated, and even considered bumming one.

  “The remains will go to the medical examiner,” I said. “We’ll get a preliminary report back in just a few hours. The details will take several days. Maybe a week. Maybe longer.” I looked at Boyd. “Bob Torrez tells me you never heard the plane.”

  Boyd shrugged helplessly. “Never heard a damn thing.”

  I turned my back to the sun and looked across the swath cut by the wreckage. In each spot where a fragment of human being
had been recovered, a small orange flag had been stabbed into the ground. Somewhere there was an expert who could tell me exactly what had happened—someone who could look at the trashed aluminum, steel, and plastic and tell me why the Bonanza had exploded itself and two occupants into fragments.

  “The feds will be out later today. They’ll pick through this bit by bit. It’ll take time to reconstruct what happened, that’s for sure.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Johnny Boyd said. “I meant what happens with your department. Something like this throws a wrench in it, don’t it?”

  “I hadn’t even thought about that,” I said. “But I guess it will.”

  “Old Holman’s been sheriff for quite some time now, hasn’t he?”

  “Going on his ninth year,” I said. “And I don’t know what we’re going to do. I suppose the county legislators will appoint someone until they get around to holding a special election.”

  “Hell of a note.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “He leave much of a family behind?”

  “Wife and two daughters. Both of the kids are in college.”

  “Hell of a note. Makes a man wonder sometimes. Here you are, goin’ along just fine, thinkin’ the sun’s going to come up tomorrow like it always has.” He lit another cigarette from the butt of the first, then fragmented the butt between his thumb and index finger. “And then it don’t.”

  I grunted something that Johnny Boyd could construe as agreement and let it go at that. Behind us, the sun was a full ball above the horizon, too bright to look at. And Martin Holman was pieces, flung through the rocks and cactus. For no constructive reason, the image of the Post-it note on Linda Real’s application came to mind.

  When Martin Holman had written that note, he’d been forty-three years old, happily married, well-thought-of in the community, and facing what he most loathed—making decisions that might create hard feelings within his department or within the community—or worse yet, create headlines in the Posadas Register. Sheriff Holman’s decisions had involved personnel—some major realignments before summer’s end.

  Estelle Reyes-Guzman had announced several months earlier that she and her husband were moving to Minnesota—to a wonderful opportunity for Dr. Guzman and a major loss for us. Estelle carried the title “Chief of Detectives,” but that was laughable. She was the only detective, the only person working in plainclothes except for the sheriff and myself.

  Sergeant Robert Torrez was marrying our head dispatcher, Gayle Sedillos, and who knew what their future plans were. We all had expected them to live in Posadas until they were old and gray—but that was wishful thinking, and we knew it.

  On top of that, September first was approaching—the date I’d set as my official retirement. I’d been undersheriff for the better part of twenty years, but my leaving was the least of Martin Holman’s problems. The department had three sergeants—Eddie Mitchell, Howard Bishop, and Robert Torrez. Any one of them could fill the position in a heartbeat, and any of the three could accomplish more in their sleep than I did in a day’s work.

  I was sure that Linda Real didn’t consider herself a problem, but her application was in my folder, awaiting action. And Martin Holman’s Post-it note was still lying on my desk blotter back at the office—perhaps the last thing he ever wrote before deciding to take an air tour of Posadas.

  “Hell of a mess,” I said, and patted Johnny Boyd on the shoulder. I walked back toward one of the department vehicles, deep in thought. If Martin Holman had wanted an air tour of his county, he could have asked Jim Bergin any day. He could have picked a nice, cool morning, when the air was silk.

  I reached the Bronco and saw Tom Pasquale sitting on the back, the tailgate down and the spare tire swung wide, out of the way. His shoulders slumped, and he started to get up when he saw me. I waved a hand and shook my head. “Relax, son. There’s coffee over in Boyd’s truck, if you want it.”

  “No, sir,” he said quickly. “Coffee and I don’t agree.” He wiped his mouth and looked off into the distance.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, sir.” The light wasn’t really good yet and I couldn’t see the expression in his eyes. But I knew that if Tom Pasquale had been “all right,” he’d have been in motion, his natural state of affairs. “I guess I need to hook a ride back to the office before too long and do something about my unit, sir.”

  “Your unit?”

  “The other Bronco. It’s still out in the arroyo.”

  I chuckled and leaned against the vehicle. “That’s the least of our problems, that’s for sure. Forget it. I’ll have one of the county wreckers go out and haul its sorry carcass out of the sand. Don’t worry about it.”

  Tom Pasquale nodded, relieved that he didn’t have to move just then. Another pair of vehicles had arrived, sending up dust plumes from the new road that had been cut across the Boyd property. Most of our department was accounted for. Estelle was back at the office, and if someone robbed a bank, she and Gayle Sedillos would have to handle it, with Linda Real lending some unofficial help.

  “Do you know what he was doing out here?” Pasquale asked. He pushed himself to his feet. He was a head taller than I am, forty years younger, and he outweighted me by forty pounds. As bad as he felt just then, I could see he was hungry for answers, and that was a good sign.

  “No idea, Thomas.”

  “I don’t understand why he and his brother-in-law would be flying over this place, anyway. There’s nothing here.”

  “Just sightseeing, maybe.”

  Pasquale shook his head in disbelief. “What’s there to see? The sheriff hated to fly almost as much as you do.”

  I looked at him sharply. “How do you know that?”

  He ducked his head. “Well, that’s what everybody always says. If he wanted to tour, I can’t imagine him choosing to do it in the weather we had yesterday.”

  “So what else comes to mind, son?”

  “His brother-in-law just got done flying all the way down here from Canada. And Sergeant Mitchell said that Camp had been flying planes for twenty-five years. I can’t imagine he’d be so eager to jump in a plane and tour Posadas County just before dinner. He’d be tired. The weather was bad.” He shook his head doggedly. “It just doesn’t make sense, is all.”

  “So Camp was a veteran pilot?”

  “Sergeant Mitchell said the two wives were talking about that. That’s why they couldn’t believe that anything bad could have happened.”

  “Well,” I said, “something did happen. It’s that simple.”

  Pasquale nodded and looked off toward the horizon. He took a deep breath and hitched up his Sam Brown belt. “Sir, when the feds get here, may I ask to be assigned to them?”

  “I’ll mention it to Sergeant Torrez, Tom.”

  He turned and looked at me. “I screwed up a lot over the years, and it was Sheriff Holman who finally gave me a chance and hired me on. I’d like to be a part of finding out what happened out here.”

  “I’ll talk with Torrez,” I repeated, and didn’t bother mentioning that the single biggest roadblock to Pasquale’s hiring had been myself. When the kid finally had proved to us that he had a head on his shoulders, I’d approved his application.

  Sheriff Martin Holman had been willing to give Tom Pasquale a chance; he’d sounded willing to do the same for Linda Real. He’d had good reasons for both, I was sure, since no man that I knew hated the thought of making an incorrect decision more than Marty Holman.

  There were dozens of reasons that should have kept Martin Holman from sliding into that Bonanza on that choppy, blustery afternoon at Posadas Municipal Airport. Tom Pasquale was right. We needed to know the one compelling reason that had pushed Martin Holman and his brother-in-law into the air.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Janice Holman hugged me, wordlessly, for a long time. I looked over her shoulder at her two daughters, Ellie and Tracie. They were trying their hardest to be brave and thoughtful and considerate
for the sake of the two dozen or so people who cluttered the Holman living room just then. Except for the long faces and tears, it could have been a gathering for a political brunch.

  Despite Sheriff Holman’s continual fight with them over nickels and dimes during the rest of the year, two of the county legislators—Tobe Ulibarri and Sammy Carter—stood now by the sofa, each uncomfortable and stiff, each balancing a coffee cup for want of anything better to do.

  Janice shifted position with a loud sigh and half turned so that she could put an arm around Estelle Reyes-Guzman. The three of us remained motionless for another thirty seconds or so, and everyone else in the large living room left us alone.

  “Janice,” I said finally, “we need to talk with you and Vivian, if you can manage a few minutes.” Estelle turned to intercept one of the Holmans’ neighbors who couldn’t help but press in at the wrong moment. The detective engaged the woman in quiet conversation while we pulled away.

  Martin Holman’s wife nodded and leaned close. “Let’s try the back porch,” she said. She almost managed a smile. “I think Vi is out in the kitchen.”

  The mid-morning sun hadn’t touched the redwood arbor over the back porch, but the air was warm and soft. In a moment, Estelle and the two women stepped out. Janice Holman immediately walked over and took my hand in hers, as if afraid I might stray away more than a step or two.

  Her eyes, red-rimmed and puffy, nevertheless bored directly into mine. “We won’t know what caused this for some time, will we?”

  “No,” I said. “We’re expecting investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board this morning. If there are answers, they’ll find them.”

  She nodded slowly, reaching out as she did so to take Vivian Camp’s hand as well.

  “We need to know if there was any particular reason why Martin and Philip went up yesterday afternoon,” I said. “It would help if you can remember anything they talked about, anything at all. Was it just impulse or what?”

  Janice Holman closed her eyes, whether against the pain or just to help herself think—or both—I couldn’t tell.