But Charlotte just seemed puzzled. She turned to look at Estelle, and the detective joggled her shoulders as if she were holding a sleepy child. “Did you hear something?” she asked the woman.
“Backfiring, as in engine troubles?” Buscema asked. “Or backfiring like maybe something else?”
“She ain’t going to remember,” Richard said. “Maybe it’ll come to her. If it does, I’ll holler to you.”
“Richard,” I said, “did you see anything? Did you ever see the plane?”
He took a deep, final drag of the cigarette, dropped it beside his boot and ground it into the sand. “Wish I had,” he said. “I got home about six from Belen.” He turned and gestured toward the rolls of black pipe. “Man could spend a fortune on that stuff. Went downtown earlier today and that’s when I heard what happened. Quite an uproar. I was going to drive on over there today and see for myself, but then I got to seein’ all the cars and such and figured it’d be better just to stay the hell out of the way.”
Buscema drew a business card from his wallet and handed it to Richard Finnegan. “We appreciate your help, folks. If you think of anything else, give me a call, will you? You can reach me either through that number there or at the sheriff’s office.”
Charlotte Finnegan was reluctant to have us leave, and she’d forgotten about the offer of coffee. I felt a pang of sympathy for her as she flustered, but Estelle gave her another hug and promised to come visit again when she had time.
As we thumped across the cattle guard, Buscema said, “She’s been around the block a few times, hasn’t she?”
“Yep,” I said. “They had two kids, a boy about sixteen and a daughter who was twenty-one or so. They lost ’em both within two weeks of each other about five or six years ago.”
“Nineteen-ninety,” Estelle prompted.
“Nine years ago, then,” I said. “Time flies. The boy was working on a windmill and got hit by lightning. The daughter was working as a counselor at a church camp and drowned during an outing over at Elephant Butte Lake.”
“Christ,” Buscema said. “No wonder she’s come un-glued.” He rolled down the window. “She saw something, though. Maybe it’ll come to her. But no matter. She’s not what I’d call a credible witness.”
“And it won’t be the first time gunshots have been confused with the backfiring of an engine,” Estelle said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Vincent Buscema caught a ride up to the crash site, and Estelle and I went to my office. With the flurry of activity nonstop since the crash, we hadn’t had time to find a quiet corner to sit down and take stock.
As I walked past the front desk, Ernie Wheeler lifted a hand and then beckoned to me with a clipboard.
“Gayle Sedillos wanted your okay on this, sir,” he said, “but I haven’t been able to catch you since I came on shift. I’ve penciled Linda Real in to sit this shift with me.” He extended the clipboard toward me.
“Fine,” I said. “Where is she now?” It was six forty-five, and thirty-six hours or more without a catnap were beginning to take their toll. My temper was short and my belly was screaming for a long, quiet dinner at the Don Juan.
“Tom Mears needed a matron for a few minutes. Aggie Bishop wasn’t home, so I asked Linda if she wanted to do it.”
“A matron for what?”
“Mears did a routine traffic check and it turns out the driver—Bea Kellogh, remember her?” I nodded. “She was about passed-out drunk. Apparently she had stopped just off MacArthur Street and was parked in an odd sort of angle, and Mears happened by. She had her thirteen-year-old daughter with her. Mears figured it’d just be easier to take them home, but you know how it is. Linda was handy, so it seemed okay.”
I handed the clipboard back. “It’s not okay on several counts, Ernie,” I said, and he frowned. “First of all, Linda doesn’t work for us.”
“Oh. I thought she was hired on.”
“No. We’re talking about it.” Before he had a chance to bring it up, I added, “She filled in on the airport radio earlier yesterday because it was just a relay job. Any civilian could have done it.” I turned to walk back toward my office. “And second, we don’t have time to run a taxi service for goddam drunks right now. If you’re going to use her, use her here.”
“I guess Mears just thought that he didn’t want to spend time right now with a DWI bust. ’Specially since she’d parked it.” He shrugged.
I waved a hand. “When Linda comes back in, tell her I want to talk with her. But give Estelle and me a few uninterrupted moments first.”
Estelle had collapsed in one of the leather chairs in my office, hands folded over her stomach, head back and eyes closed.
I shut the door behind me. She opened her left eye and regarded me as I crossed to my desk and plopped down in the chair behind it.
“Of all the goddam things I could have predicted, this is about the last,” I said and heaved a huge sigh. “It just goes to show that when you think you have everything all planned out, you’d better think again.”
“What had you planned?” Her voice was quiet and distant.
I chuckled and leaned back so that I could lift a leg up and rest my boot on the edge of the desk. “You’re leaving next week, I turned in my retirement effective September one, Robert’s getting married, Linda’s waiting in the wings. I figured payback time. I could just dump all that in young Martin’s lap and let him figure out what the hell to do.”
Estelle put both hands over her face, her fingertips rubbing her eyes. After a few seconds, she moved her hands just enough so she could stare at the ceiling. “What will you do?” she asked.
“Sam Carter asked me to take the sheriff’s job until the election next fall.” If I thought that would surprise Estelle, I was mistaken. She didn’t reply, but nodded, just a tiny inclination of the head, eyes still closed. I wanted an answer, so I asked, “Does that make sense to you?”
“It’s the best idea Mr. Carter has had in years,” she said.
“I want you to be undersheriff, Estelle.”
This time, she opened her eyes. Her right eyebrow went up in that expression I’d come to know so well. She took a deep breath and pushed herself up in the chair. “Sir, we’re leaving Posadas next week. We’ve already started packing. Mama has been practicing driving her wheelchair back and forth from her bedroom to the front door in anticipation.” Her delightful smile lit up her face.
“I know you’re going,” I said. “I know that.” I swung the other boot up and crossed my legs. “I was a little irritated today when Sam was in such an all-fired hurry to make sure I took the job. He didn’t want you to have it, or any of the three sergeants. I don’t know what his agenda is.”
“I do,” Estelle said, her grin even wider. “Sam Carter’s brother-in-law is Sam Carter’s agenda.”
“Why don’t I know who this brother-in-law is?”
“He lives in Deming, sir. He’s retiring from the state police in July.”
“I see. You think he’s going to move here and run for sheriff?”
“Yes.”
“And how do you know this tidbit?”
“Martin Holman told me a week or so ago. The man’s name is Ellison Franklin. At one time he was chairman of his county’s Republican Club.”
“That would have put him head-to-head with Martin in the primary,” I said. “But that would have been three years from now. After this mess, the field is wide open.”
“Right.”
“So. None of that matters, since I’m not running in the election in November to fill the office and you’ll be in Minnesota. I want you as undersheriff for the rest of the week. How’s that for an offer?”
She chuckled, leaned forward, rested her elbows on her knees and ran both hands through her thick black hair. “Is this just to tweak Sam? Make him nervous? Are you sure his bigoted little heart can take it?”
“It’s for selfish reasons, mainly,” I said. “If you’re undersheriff, I won’t have to
spend ten seconds training you. Any of the others will flounder some, and we don’t have time for that. And think of it this way: do this for me and you can write ‘undersheriff’ on your resume when you go job-hunting up in Genesee County, Minnesota.”
She smiled again and shook her head. “Maybe I can avoid job-hunting for a while,” she said. “Remember, Erma’s not going with us.” Erma Sedillos, our senior dispatcher’s younger sister, had been a full-time nanny for the Guzman clan for three years.
“But—” I began and stopped when my telephone buzzed. “Sure,” I said, and hung up.
Bob Torrez was at my office door before I had a chance to explain what the call was. In his hand was a manila folder, and trailing behind him was Linda Real.
“Sir,” Torrez said, “we’ve got the prints from the camera.”
I beckoned them in. “And how’s Mrs. Kellogh?” I asked by way of greeting Linda. She looked heavenward.
“Soused. We just dropped her and her daughter at their house. The car was off the right-of-way, so we just locked it and left it there. The daughter said it wouldn’t be a problem to come and get it later.”
“Wonderful.”
“And then I came back and heard about the film. I helped Sergeant Torrez get the prints ready. Sir, the department needs a new print drier. The old one is shot.”
“Uh-huh,” I said and glanced at Estelle. “So, Robert, what have you got?”
He had already opened the folder on my desk, and he handed me an eight-by-ten print. Linda Real reached across and pointed. “The surface gloss is blotched here and there. That’s the old drier,” she said.
“Thank you.” I leaned over so that I could focus the correct part of my bifocals on the print.
“That’s the first one on the negative,” Robert Torrez said. Estelle came around behind me so she could see the photos at the same time. “It looks like his brother-in-law posed by the airplane.”
“That is Philip Camp, sure enough,” I said. I reached out a hand for the next one. Instead, Torrez handed me a set of three.
The terrain in the photos was rugged, and in the first of the three, I could see the road cutting through the trees. “That’s taken from just beyond the mine,” Torrez said.
“And the others are from on top,” Estelle added.
“An aerial tour,” I muttered. “What the hell was he doing?” The next four photos were of prairie—open, rolling prairie. At least, that was my guess. “Are these out of focus, or is it me?”
“Some of them are really bad,” Linda said.
“That,” Torrez said, tapping one of the photos with his index finger, “is Boyd number-two. One of Johnny Boyd’s windmills and stock tanks. I recognize the sharp turn of the two-track just to the south of it.”
“I don’t even see the windmill,” I said. “Where is it?”
Torrez pulled a pen from his pocket and used it as a pointer. I grimaced and shook my head. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“And this looks like the country just to the north of where the plane eventually crashed,” Torrez said. “This black line is one of the boundary fences. Or a section fence. Something like that. It’s a fence, anyway. And those”—he leaned close and jabbed at the tiny figures with the tip of the pen—“are cattle.”
“Whoopee,” I said. I straightened up, and my back popped with an audible crack. “You need to tie these things down and go over them inch by inch with the stereo viewer. I can’t see much detail, but maybe you’ll turn up something. There’s no reason for Martin Holman to be taking aerial photographs of creosote bushes and cattle on a gusty, bumpy afternoon…or at any time, for that matter. We need some hint of what he was about. That’s half of it.”
Torrez glanced at me, questioning.
“The trouble here, folks,” I said to the three of them, “is that the odds of there being any connection—any at all—between what Martin Holman was trying to see yesterday afternoon and the bullet that killed his pilot are slim and none.” I picked up one of the photos again and looked at it. “Unless there’s something here that we’re not seeing.”
“Maybe we could blow up each negative, a little at a time. You’ve got a pretty good enlarger in the darkroom,” Linda Real said.
“Why don’t you do that,” I said. “That film is evidence, so make sure it stays in the department’s possession at all times. It doesn’t leave the building for any reason, and it doesn’t leave your possession unless it’s locked in the evidence locker.” I reached out a hand and took Linda’s in mine. It was tiny—and clammy with excitement. “Which means that as of now, your soul is ours, my dear. Welcome aboard.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You may regret it, but for now, you’re welcome. And I want to be able to see every grass blade by midnight.”
“I can do that.”
“I know you can. And while you’re waiting on the chemicals, cruise through a catalog and find a new drier.”
She grinned, gathered up the prints and folder, and shot out the door.
“And now,” I said, “let’s see if we can find out what Martin Holman was up to.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
No one had been in Martin Holman’s office since he’d left it sometime after three o’clock the day before. I didn’t know that for a fact, of course—it was just the immediate feeling I got when I opened the door and stepped inside.
I felt as if I were intruding. I stopped and took a deep breath, then felt Estelle’s hand on my shoulder.
“It’s always easier if it’s a stranger, isn’t it?” she said. She reached over and turned on the lights.
I grunted and shut the door. “I wish to hell I knew what to look for.” I walked across to Holman’s desk. He could have stacked a few more papers on it, but it would have been a trick.
“Maybe one thing we have going for us is the sheriff himself,” Estelle said, and I glanced across the desk at her. She had walked around and was standing by the empty chair.
“Meaning what?”
“Well, as far as I know, Martin Holman didn’t work on cases by himself. I don’t recall him ever mentioning a case to me where he had initiated the file. He routinely turned things over to deputies when he got calls personally.”
“True. Half the time he didn’t know what to do, anyway.” I waved a hand. “Yeah, I know, that’s unkind. But it’s true. It seems to me that a good place to start is to inventory every scrap of paper on this desk…his telephone logs, whatever is on that thing.” I nodded at the computer. Toasters were floating across the screen, patiently waiting for their owner to return.
Estelle tapped a key, and the toasters disappeared, replaced by a page of finances. She leaned close and read for a few seconds. “This is that federal grant he was working on to hire two full-time civilian employees.”
I scanned the desk. “An orderly avalanche,” I mused. I settled on three initial piles. The first included routine county documents like budget transfers, time sheets, and purchase orders, along with the myriad catalogs that vendors liked to send to law-enforcement agencies. One was for photography equipment, and I tossed it to one side on the remote chance that I would remember to give it to Linda Real.
In a second pile, I put the small messages that Holman routinely scribbled to himself. He had been an avid fan of Post-it notes. The little yellow things were ubiquitous throughout the county building.
A third pile was reserved for documents and papers that weren’t immediately obvious in nature—and there weren’t many of those.
I sat down in Holman’s chair and pulled myself close to the desk. Estelle still leaned over the computer, cruising down through the various file names. I picked up one of the pink “While You Were Out” slips.
“He had a call from Doug Posey at one-thirty.” I peered at the slip. “Apparently Marty was still out to lunch. Gayle has checked here that Posey was returning a call.” I put that slip down by my elbow. “Are you aware of any complaints we’ve had that might incl
ude the Department of Fish and Game?” Posey didn’t spend much time in Posadas. The village—even the county—wasn’t the center of a sportsman’s paradise, and the state critter cops had more productive hunting grounds elsewhere.
“The last time I can recall was when Posey asked our department for backup when he was busting those Mexican big shots who were hunting turkey down by Regal Springs. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been other activity.”
I picked up another slip of paper, also with Gayle Sedillos’ writing. “And a note to call Sam Carter,” I said. “Politics, politics.” I paused, resting my forearms on the desk. “You know what’s wrong with all this, don’t you?” I shuffled the remaining slips and laid them out on the desk like playing cards, and my eyebrows furrowed. I picked up a slip dated the previous day and read the message again.
I almost didn’t hear Estelle say, in response to my question, “We’re assuming there might be some connection between the incident that brought the plane down and the reason they were flying out there in the first place.”
I laid the slip down on top of the others. “And what if there isn’t? And the odds are all in that favor, by the way.”
“I don’t think there is any connection, sir.” She straightened up and regarded the index on the computer screen. “But this is what bothers me. There are a limited number of people who live anywhere near that quadrant of the county. The shot must have been fired in fair proximity to the crash sight. As Francis said, Philip Camp couldn’t have lived long with his heart pumping blood through a two-inch tear in his aorta. And there is no evidence that suggests that Sheriff Holman was able to grab the control yoke and do anything with it. He certainly didn’t swing it over to his side.”
“What a terrifying ride downhill that must have been,” I muttered.
Estelle walked around the desk and approached the big map of Posadas County that was framed on the wall. She placed her hand over the area north of Cat Mesa. “Charlotte Finnegan said that the plane was flying a repeating pattern in this area.” She traced with her index finger eastward along the back of the mesa to the blue line that indicated County Road 43, running north-south. “First this way, then circling north to within easy sight of the Finnegans’ place, then back to the west again…toward the Boyds’ place.” She put her hands on her hips and turned to look at me.
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