Out of Season

by Steven F Havill

  “Was your wife home?” I asked. Estelle had gotten out of the car and had her clipboard in hand. The expression on her face was thoughtful as she walked around the back of the Wagoneer.

  “Well, yes, she was home,” Boyd said and turned. By that time, Estelle was at the driver’s-side window of the Wagoneer. She unclipped a photograph from the board and handed it to Boyd, resting the clipboard on the windowsill as she waited for him to look at the photo.

  “What’s this?” he asked and turned the photo against the glare from the sun.

  “We were wondering if you could tell us where that windmill is,” Estelle said. “And, ma’am, if you were home, we need to know if you saw or heard anything unusual.”

  Maxine Boyd shook her head. “I had that darn old television on,” she said. “And now I sure wish I hadn’t. But I did, you know.”

  “So you didn’t hear the aircraft at all?” Estelle asked. Maxine glanced at the clipboard and shook her head.

  “Well,” Johnny Boyd said, “this here is the windmill out by what we call the block house. It isn’t in this picture, but just off to the north”—he held the photo toward me and indicated with a stubby index finger—“there’s the remains of an old stone building. Damn thing was built to last forever, thick as those walls are.”

  “From your place, where would that be?” I asked.

  “East and a bit north. It’s over on the back side of Dick Finnegan’s place.” He shrugged and handed the photo back to Estelle. “There’re old windmills all over. Most of ’em have had the guts pulled off the tower. This one here, though, it still pumps from time to time.” He grinned ruefully. “There ain’t just a whole lot of water ’round about.” He glanced at his wife. “So what’s the significance of that? You want pictures of old windmills, I can show you a couple dozen.”

  “We don’t know yet,” Estelle said. She hesitated as if weighing just how much she should say. “This photo was taken by Sheriff Holman during that flight Friday afternoon.”

  Boyd grunted. “Maybe he was a collector of windmill pictures.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  Estelle had handed the photo to Maxine Boyd, and the woman frowned as she studied it. “This is where Dick was trying to dig that pond, isn’t it?” she asked her husband.

  “No, not there. He was thinkin’ of putting one in over at William’s Tank. But he gave up,” Johnny said shortly.

  “Gave up?” I said.

  Boyd shrugged and took the photo from his wife. He glanced at it briefly again and handed it to Estelle. “Dick wastes his time in all kinds of strange ways,” he said. “There wouldn’t have been any water to put in the tank even if he finished digging for it. I guess after a few hours on the dozer, he reached that same conclusion. The way this soil is, it would never have held water anyway. He’d have to line the tank somehow. Bentonite, or plastic, or something. Not worth the trouble for what little water that mill puts out.”

  “Wasn’t he going to—” Maxine started to say, but Johnny Boyd cut her off.

  “I understand that they’re going to put that plane back together,” he said. “Down in one of those hangars at the airport.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “They’re transporting the wreckage this morning.” I grinned. “The detective and I thought it might be a good idea to stay out of their way.”

  “What do they expect to find?”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “None of us know what we’re looking for. We’d kind of like to have some woodcutter come out of the trees and say, ‘Hey, I saw the whole thing.’ But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  Boyd snorted in derision and stamped out his cigarette. “If you found somebody who’d tell you that, nine times out of ten they’d get it all screwed up, anyways.”

  “You’re right, but it’s more like ninety-nine out of a hundred,” I said.

  “Who told you about the backfiring thing?” Boyd asked. “Or is that privileged information?” He smiled thinly and rummaged in his shirt pocket for another cigarette.

  “Mrs. Finnegan,” I said, and Johnny Boyd’s reaction was immediate.

  He looked heavenward, then at his wife and grinned. “Christ almighty,” he said and shook his head, chuckling. “She might have told you that the airplane was being chased by a squadron of UFOs, too. Her elevator don’t go all the way to the top floor, that’s for damn sure.” He pointed the cigarette at Estelle’s clipboard.

  “That the only picture the sheriff managed to take?” he asked.

  “No,” Estelle replied. “There are others, but they don’t show much of interest.” She paused and then said, “Fence lines, that sort of thing.”

  “Huh,” Boyd said. He slapped a hand on the fender of his wife’s Wagoneer. “Well, if you need anything, you folks just holler. There’s almost always someone to home. I guess maybe you talked to Edwin already.”

  “Yep,” I said and glanced at Estelle. “He was in Drury at the time of the crash, so that’s not going to help much. And who knows,” I said, pushing myself away from my leaning spot on the Jeep’s fender, “we may never know just what happened, or why.”

  Boyd chuckled. “I’ll tell you one thing that’s for damn sure true. If you keep those feds around here long enough, they’ll make up a story that fits, whether it’s anywhere close to what actually happened or not. You know how that goes.”

  “They’ve got a job to do, like everyone else,” I said.

  “Yeah, well,” Johnny said, then shook his head with disgust and dropped the subject. Estelle had turned and apparently said something to Maxine, because the woman nodded briefly before Estelle walked back to the patrol car.

  “You just keep ’em away from me,” Johnny said, and I regarded him with interest.

  “They’ll talk to you if they think it’s necessary, Johnny. That’s just the way things go,” I said.

  The last thing I wanted was to enter into an argument with Johnny Boyd about federal agencies. When it came right down to it, what he thought one way or another didn’t matter much. So I settled for, “Thanks, folks,” and a tip of my hat. As I settled into the car, Estelle was rummaging around in the back seat. Both Boyds had pulled out and left Baca’s parking lot by the time she slid back into the front seat.

  She held the clipboard out to me. On it, in inch-high letters, she’d printed neatly: Do you need to talk to me privately?

  “She nodded that she did, twice,” Estelle said. “So she knows something that either she doesn’t want her husband to hear or that he already knows and doesn’t want to tell us.”

  “Maybe so,” I said.

  “And one other thing,” Estelle said as she tucked the clipboard back under the stack of paperwork that filled the center section of the front seat. “No one told him that we’d been talking to his brother.”

  “Lucky guess,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got a scanner in that rig of his. Half of the ranchers do, along with CBs, cell phones, and God knows what else. If he heard my estimate of how long it was going to take us to get back to the office and then saw us coming in on the state road, he could have put two and two together.”

  “I wish we could,” Estelle said and slapped the steering wheel in frustration.

  “So how are you going to arrange to meet with Maxine Boyd?”

  “First I’ll try the obvious thing. I’ll give her a phone call.”

  “That’s not too private.”

  “It’ll work. The phone’s in the kitchen. I’ll call right at dinnertime.” She lowered her voice an octave. “Hubby at table, eating steak.” She turned to me and grinned. “He won’t get up to answer the phone. She will.”

  I grimaced. “You read too much psychological stuff.”

  “It works, though. Watch.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Neil Costace was leaning against the counter in the dispatch room, idly reading the daily call log, when Estelle and I entered the Public Safety Building. He turned and
saw us, and his lips came close to a smile. But the rest of his face was sober, even grim.

  As I approached, the FBI agent straightened up and extended his hand. His grip was firm. “Bill,” he said, and nodded at Estelle. “Walter Hocker, one of our special agents who works out of Oklahoma City, is up here with me.”

  I looked around. “Fine. Where is he?”

  “He’s using the telephone in the sheriff’s office.”

  I nodded and said to Gayle Sedillos, “When he’s finished, tell him to join us.” I indicated the door to my own office, and as Estelle and Costace filed past me, I turned back to Gayle. “And I need to see Linda Real, Eddie Mitchell, and Doug Posey.” I smiled at her. “In any order.”

  “Linda’s working downstairs, sir,” Gayle said, and made hand motions to indicate a camera.

  “As soon as she can break free,” I said, and walked into my office and closed the door. I’d worked with Neil Costace several times before on cases that interested the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He had a law degree, but never let it get in the way.

  “Bring me up to speed on this fine Sunday morning,” he said, and sat down on one of the straight chairs. “I understand from Buscema that the pilot of the aircraft was killed by ground fire.” He made it sound like an incident in a war zone.

  “That’s correct. It appears that one bullet struck him low in the back, traveled upward and unzipped his aorta. It also appears that the bullet was fragmenting when it struck him, so it’s going to be interesting to see just where it struck the airframe of the Bonanza. That should tell us something.”

  “No ground witnesses?”

  “Maybe one,” I said. “We have a woman…come here and let me show you.” I stepped to the wall map of Posadas County. “She and her husband live right here. The Finnegans. She’s the woman who made the initial call reporting an aircraft in trouble. She told us that she saw it flying in big circles in this area here, and then she claims that she heard sounds that were like an engine backfiring.”

  “Backfiring?”

  “Right. And that’s what the sounds, if she heard them at all, might have been. So far, there’s no obvious evidence of mechanical failure in the aircraft’s engine, but we won’t know definitely for some time.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Costace said with impatience. “They’ll have to tear it down. Weeks and weeks. But you’re saying the sounds that the witness said were of backfiring could have been the gunshots responsible.”

  “Yes.”

  “Weather?”

  “Windy, gusting out of the west-southwest at twenty knots or more.”

  “So regardless of the source of the ‘backfires,’” Costace said, “that noise had to have been fairly close to the witness in order for her to hear it, even downwind.”

  “I would guess so.”

  “And no one else was seen on the ground?”

  “No. We’ve had people scouring the mesa, the forest roads, everywhere. But remember that we didn’t locate the crash until nearly dark, and we didn’t arrive at the scene until well after dark.” I stopped and took a breath. “And we didn’t know about the bullet fragment until yesterday around mid-morning. So the odds of the shooter still being in the area are slim to none.”

  Costace crossed his arms over his chest. “And the wounds that killed the pilot were such that you don’t think he could have flown for any great distance after being struck?”

  I shook my head. “If what Mrs. Finnegan tells us is correct, the plane was flying normally, then she heard the noises, followed immediately by erratic flight patterns. Then it disappeared from view behind a mesa, so she didn’t actually see the crash.”

  “How reliable is she, do you think? You just sounded like her version of events might not be the most accurate.”

  “If she’s not actually mentally ill, Charlotte Finnegan is a hairsbreadth from it. I’m not sure how much of what she actually sees is real or what she imagines.”

  “Husband? Other members of the family?”

  “Only her husband, and he wasn’t home at the time.”

  “Huh.” Costace rubbed a hand through his close-cropped hair. “And Buscema says that…” He let his voice trail off as the door opened. A short, stumpy man in jeans, knit golf shirt, and a light blue jacket stepped into the room. He didn’t bother to knock, and he pushed the door shut behind him. He carried a slender black-leather folder.

  “Bill, this is Special Agent Walter Hocker. Walt, Undersheriff Bill Gastner. And this is Detective Estelle Reyes-Guzman.” Hands were pumped, and Hocker regarded Estelle with interest.

  “Isn’t your husband one of the docs over at the hospital?” His voice was quiet and husky, right on the edge of being hard to hear.

  “My husband is a physician, yes,” Estelle said.

  “He’s doing the autopsies?”

  “Yes. He’s working the autopsies with Dr. Alan Perrone, one of the assistant state medical examiners.”

  “Ah,” Hocker said. He stood with his hands on his hips, feet planted. He transferred his attention to the top of my desk, but it was clear that he was preoccupied with his own thoughts rather than actually interested in my housekeeping.

  While he gathered his thoughts, I walked around behind the desk and sat down. “So,” I said, and folded my hands on the blotter. Hocker jerked out of his trance, squared his shoulders, and sat down on the edge of the desk, dropping his leather folder beside him.

  “Buckmaster…no, what’s his name?”

  “Vincent Buscema,” Costace prompted.

  “Buscema.” Hocker looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, as if he were playing private memory tricks. “Buscema. Right.” He nodded and looked down at me. “He says that you have film from the sheriff’s camera, as well as a fragment of the projectile. Is that right?”

  “Correct.”

  “All right. We need to get those to the lab,” Hocker said. “Just as quickly as we can.”

  “The film is being processed into prints right now,” I said. “And two of the deputies are working on the bullet fragments.”

  “What, you didn’t send the film off somewhere, did you?”

  I didn’t bother to dignify the question with an answer, and Estelle must have seen the flush on my cheeks. “One of our staff is processing the film downstairs,” she said.

  “And the fragment analysis…they’re doing the work here as well?”

  “Yes,” I said. Somehow, Hocker had made the word heresound as if it referred to the end of the earth, and that irritated the hell out of me—even more than the implication that we’d entrust evidence to MinutePhoto down at the mall, if we had a mall.

  “I’ll be glad to share with you what we have so far.” Hocker frowned and I added, “What, we’re going to have one of those ridiculous turf wars now? Where we all waste time arguing about whose case it is?”

  Hocker twisted his head and looked sharply at me. I returned his gaze without further comment. After ten seconds or so, I saw the crow’s-feet at the corner of his eyes deepen just a bit.

  “No, we’re not going to do that, Sheriff. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board asked for our assistance. I wish that they’d made that request through your office initially, and I apologize that they didn’t. You have to admit that it’s a case that will draw considerable attention—a Canadian plane, a Canadian citizen at the controls, shot out of the sky not a stone’s throw from the U.S.-Mexican border, killing both the pilot and a passenger, who just happens to be the county sheriff.” He paused. “That’s the story as it was passed on to me. Am I about right?”

  “You’re about right. Except that the incident has nothing to do with either the Canadian citizenship of the pilot, the Canadian registry of the aircraft, or with the proximity of the incident to the Mexican border.”

  Hocker raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure?”

  “No.”

  He relaxed and this time, the smile lit up his
face. “Well, we can all hope that it doesn’t.” He stood up. “What about the bullet fragment?”

  “We have one piece, about the size of—” I glanced around for something to make a comparison. I pointed at the little rectangular amber light on the front of my computer—“a little bigger than that light. There may be others.”

  “That’s going to be a tough one,” Hocker said.

  I nodded. “I’ve assigned two deputies to work that up. When they exhaust their resources, and I imagine that will be fairly quickly, then we’ll send the fragment to whatever lab is most appropriate. We may develop specific questions to ask that will help in the analysis.”

  “Do you know what kind of work the deputies are planning to do on the piece?”

  “I would imagine that they’ll take basic measurements, weigh it, that sort of thing. If the fragment includes marks from the rifling in the barrel, that may be useful. With a fragment that small, it’s going to be hard to establish the caliber with any certainty. Establishing the make or model of weapon is going to be even more difficult. And photos will be taken, of course. If by some stroke of luck we should come up with a suspect’s firearm, we might be able to make a comparison—if there are enough marks to go on.” I smiled. “The deputies won’t ruin the evidence, Agent Hocker.”

  Hocker shook his head quickly. “I didn’t mean to imply that,” he said. “I just want to make sure that the initial avenues of investigation are opened quickly.”

  “That’s what we do around here,” I said and leaned back. “We open avenues.” I glanced at Estelle, who had remained silent and stood near the door. She regarded Hocker, her face expressionless. I couldn’t tell what was going on behind those black eyes, and maybe that was just as well.

  “And the photos?” Hocker asked.

  “As the detective said, one of our personnel is in the darkroom right now. The film has been developed and she’s working on a series of enlargements.”