Out of Season

by Steven F Havill

  “Suppose that the person who was standing behind that building fired the shot,” she said finally. “Suppose that’s what happened. What would be the most logical way for him to drive out of here?”

  I peered back down the slope at the block house. “Right from there,” I said. “He’d drive out the same way that we came in and then hook up with County 9010. And then on out east to Forty-three. If that’s where he was headed.”

  “Richard Finnegan would drive out that way to go back to his house. Johnny Boyd would have to turn west. And it’s possible that they could have driven due south, up the back of Cat Mesa.”

  “Lots of choices,” I said. “Too many. It leaves us with nothing, except one big, glaring fact.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If he wasn’t familiar with the area, Estelle, he wouldn’t have been here in the first place. He couldn’t have known that the aircraft was coming over here. It’s that simple.”

  “Assuming the shot wasn’t accidental.”

  “Assuming that. And the simple logistics of it say that if the shot was fired from about here, then either the person left to the east, through Finnegan’s, or west through Boyd’s. That’s about the choice. If he took that road”—I pointed toward the north-south track—“and headed south, toward the back side of Cat Mesa, he’d have to know the roads really well to pick his way out of there once he got into the trees.”

  Estelle nodded and pulled out the folder of photographs. “So far, we’ve identified two of these,” she said. “The windmill, and the block house.” She shuffled through the other pictures, frowning. “Before that truck gets here, I’d like to take a look at the fence line just north of us.”

  I turned, expecting her to be looking off into the distance. Instead, she was still sorting photos.

  “What truck?” I said, scanning the prairie.

  This time she looked up and pointed to the south. “If you follow the road down from the back of Cat Mesa, you’ll see the dust. Right now he’s about a finger’s width below that dark belt of junipers, headed this way.”

  The binoculars were in the truck, of course, where they always did the most good. But I shaded my eyes with both hands and concentrated, and sure enough, eventually a tiny portion of the distant terrain moved. I saw the dust plume first, then the speck.

  “You’re right, Sharp Eyes,” I said. “And what fence?”

  Estelle held up a photo. “Linda marked this as the next photo on the roll. It’s also the last photo that Martin Holman took. And I think this grove of trees”—she indicated a small blotch in the top right corner of the photo—“is right over there.” She turned and looked north. A hundred yards away, a stand of junipers was bunched near a jumble of boulders that marked the north edge of the mesa on which we were standing. “There’s a fence just over the crown of the hill.”

  “Just around the next corner,” I said and grinned. “Lead on.”

  I had no doubt that we’d find the fence. If I’d learned nothing else working with Estelle Reyes-Guzman over the past decade, it was that she didn’t make idle guesses. As we walked toward the junipers, she held the photo in front of her as if it were a witching rod.

  “Just north of the rim,” she said. We circled around the grove of stunted, withered old junipers. They were skirted with mountain mahogany, making a dense brush barrier. But sure enough, after we picked our way through a jumble of rocks, we found our progress blocked by a livestock fence.

  Estelle stopped and turned this way and that until she was satisfied that she had the orientation of the photograph correct. “We are here,” she announced, and used her pen as a pointer. “This fence goes east-west, and you can see quite a bit of it in this photo. Sheriff Holman snapped the shutter when the plane was still a bit west of here.” She turned and looked along the fence. “He was shooting ahead of the wing, and the shadows say he was looking east.”

  “And if he’d swung the camera just a degree or two to his right, he’d have been able to see the top of the mesa, maybe even the back side of the block house.”

  Estelle pursed her lips and gazed at the barbed-wire fence. “If we assume that Martin took a photograph of exactly what he meant to, then he was interested in this fence. Or at least in something in this area.”

  The fence was not new, but it was well-maintained. The four strands of wire were tight, with two twist-’em wire stays spaced between each steel post. “This would be a boundary fence, I assume,,” I said. “There’s nothing temporary about it. If it is, then the Boyd land is on the other side and this is Finnegan’s. Or state property.” I shrugged. “Or federal. Who the hell knows? Maybe it’s just a section fence.” I put a hand on the top of one of the posts and shook it. “And it must have been hell getting these posts in the ground up here,” I said. “So what’s the big deal, I wonder. Why this fence, why now?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” She replaced the photos in the folder and looked back the way we’d come. “If that truck that we saw earlier was Richard Finnegan, he’ll be just about to the windmill by now. Maybe he knows.”

  The rancher’s dark blue Ford pickup was parked beside our county unit, and I could see the four-wheeler ATV in the back. As Estelle and I started down the rocky slope toward the block house, I scanned the area, looking for the rancher. It wasn’t until we were a dozen yards from the back corner of the structure that I saw Richard Finnegan taking his ease in its shade, smoking a cigarette and leaning against the cold-stone east wall.

  “Howdy,” he said as we approached. “I saw your outfit and figured you must be up here somewheres.”

  “We took a short hike up to the top,” I said. “Our daily constitutional.”

  “I bet,” he said, but there was little humor in his voice. His posture said that he’d done all the walking he wanted for one day. “Can I help you find something?”

  “Is this your property, or do you lease it from the feds?” I asked, knowing damn well what the answer was.

  “I own it,” Finnegan said and took the cigarette out of his mouth. With deliberation, he curled his little finger around and nudged the ash off, watching the process as if it were the major fascination of the moment. And the tone of his reply added, “What do you want?” But he had the courtesy not to say it, even though I’d ignored his initial question and certainly given him cause to ask.

  “Is that fence that runs east-west on the other side of the hill the property line between you and the Boyds?” I asked.

  “Parts of it. On over to the west some.”

  “If we were to follow it off to the west, how far would it run?” Estelle asked, and Richard Finnegan eyed her for a moment. “I assume it has to join a north-south boundary eventually,” she added.

  Finnegan raised the hand with the cigarette and pointed with the butt. “Eventually it does,” he said, and then he glanced at me as if he’d just realized he didn’t sound overly helpful. “That fence runs down the back of this mesa, then maybe a quarter mile on.” He bent his hand. “Jogs to the south, runs along over to his Black Grass Tank, then west and then south again.” The crow’s-feet around his eyes crinkled. “Runs all over the place.” He took a deep draw on the cigarette and then ground it out on his boot heel. “Why the sudden interest in property lines, folks?”

  “There’s some evidence that Sheriff Holman was interested,” I said. “We don’t know why. And Black Grass Tank? What’s that?” I asked.

  Finnegan nodded. “One of Johnny’s cattle tanks. Like this one.” He indicated his windmill with a thrust of his jaw. “Only difference is he’s got water there.”

  “And you don’t here?”

  “Nope. She ain’t pumped for six, seven months now.”

  “And so you’re planning to pipe water from the Forest Service spring, is that the plan?”

  Finnegan glanced at me and his eyes narrowed. “That’s the idea,” he said.

  “All the way up here?” I continued.

  “Nope. No point in that. There’
s another tank a mile or so south. We’ll pipe it there.”

  “That’s expensive,” I said.

  “Sure enough is.”

  “Mr. Finnegan, is it true that there’s some friction between Johnny Boyd and you over where you want to run that water line?” Estelle asked.

  “We got us a few things to work out,” he said. “Is that what the sheriff told you?”

  “Did you have a chance to talk to him about this?” I asked. “To Sheriff Holman, that is.”

  “Never met the man,” Finnegan said. He pushed himself away from the wall. “And what Johnny Boyd does, or what I do, ain’t nobody’s business but our own. But I don’t guess, what with a plane crash that killed a couple people, that you’re all that interested right now in what a couple of old ranchers do with a black-plastic water line.” He grinned and found another cigarette.

  “No, I guess we aren’t,” I said.

  Finnegan’s grin widened. “Let me walk with you on up there,” he said, indicating the mesa. “Give you a tour. You can see most places from there. Maybe give you a chance to ask whatever it is that’s eatin’ at you.” He stepped out of the shade and squinted up at the sky. “Hot day for spring,” he said. “It’s going to be a hot summer, for sure.”

  He set out up the hill, streaming smoke from his cigarette. Estelle touched my arm. “I’m going to get my camera,” she said, starting toward the vehicles. “I’ll catch up with you.”

  I nodded and hastened to join Finnegan.

  “Quite a pretty young señorita,” he said. “She’s not coming with us?”

  “She wants her camera,” I said. “What for, I don’t know.” That was only partly true, of course. We plodded along, the two of us watching our feet as we picked our way through the loose rocks and around the cacti that studded the hillside.

  I would have liked to claim that it was my eagle-eyed vision that did the trick, but it was simply the habit of watching the ground so I didn’t trip and break my neck. Estelle had no trouble catching up with us. When she did, we were standing near a runty juniper, waiting for her about a third of the way up the mesa…less than fifty yards from the back of the block house.

  I held up a hand so she wouldn’t walk past me, then pointed at the ground. The rifle cartridge casing wasn’t bright and shiny, but nevertheless, the contrast was stark against the earth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Richard Finnegan bent down and damn near had the casing in his fingers before I could say, “Leave it.” He straightened up and his face was an interesting study in the dawning of an idea.

  “What’s the matter? You startin’ to think that someone took a shot at that airplane, is that what’s goin’ on?” he asked. Neither Estelle nor I replied, and Richard nodded. “It adds up, you being out here and all. Are you going to tell me what happened, or am I going to have to wait and read it in the paper?”

  “We don’t know what happened,” I said. “We’re following up on a few ideas, that’s all.” I put my hands on my knees and bent down, eyeing the casing. Estelle unscrewed the barrel of her ballpoint pen, removed the slender filler and slipped it inside the casing’s mouth.

  “Looks like a two-twenty-three,” I said, and she nodded. She turned her back to the wind and held the casing to her nose for several seconds. “Recent?” I asked, and she grimaced, then shrugged.

  “It’s hard to tell,” she said quietly.

  “One of yours?” I asked Finnegan, and he looked at me with surprise.

  “No,” he said. “Last coyote I shot was over by the springs. And I sure as hell don’t use one of those little things. That looks like something from one of those military jobs.”

  Estelle turned the casing this way and that, frowning at it, no doubt wishing it could talk. “It’s clean,” she said, “so it’s been here since the last rain.”

  Finnegan laughed. “And that’s been a while, young lady.” Estelle only grinned.

  “You want a bag?” I asked, but she was far ahead of me. She produced a plastic evidence bag from her back pocket, slipped the casing inside and marked the tag. Richard Finnegan watched her with interest. She jotted a note to herself on the bag’s tag, then looked up at me. “I think it’s important that we grid this area, sir. I want to mark where each casing fell. If the rifle was an autoloader, it will make a difference where the casings were ejected.”

  “Assuming there are others,” I said, and surveyed the ground.

  “There’s one by your left foot, sir,” Estelle said, “and another two behind Mr. Finnegan.”

  Finnegan jerked like he’d been goosed. He cranked around at the waist to look at the ground without moving his feet. He pointed and chuckled. “By God, sure enough. And there’s another one over there.” He pointed at a spot not three feet from my right foot, a spot obscured from Estelle’s view by a large chunk of limestone. “What I’d give for a set of eyes like she’s got,” he said.

  “Amen,” I said, and then to Estelle, I added, “I’ll go get my briefcase.”

  By the time we had finished, we had a collection of twelve .223 shell casings and a remarkably neat rendition on graph paper that marked where each had fallen and the distance between them. The pattern they formed on the ground was roughly fan-shaped.

  I eyed the paper critically. “If a person stood in one place and fired all twelve rounds, then we would expect them to all group fairly close.” Estelle was busy packing her camera after shooting an entire roll from every imaginable angle. “And if we draw a line that is roughly of the same length to each casing, then the point of origin is somewhere around here,” I said, indicating a spot just off to my left. I held up my left hand and made throwing motions away from it with my right, trying to visualize the casings being spewed out of the rifle’s ejection port.

  “It’s possible, sir,” Estelle said in that exasperatingly noncommittal tone that I had come to know so well.

  Finnegan put his hands on his hips and regarded me. “So, you’re sayin’ that airplane was shot at? Actually shot down? Or what?”

  “We’re not sure yet, Richard,” I said, and Finnegan wasn’t so quick to accept my fabrication.

  “What, you can’t find holes in the airplane? If you ain’t got holes, then you wouldn’t know about its being shot at, now would you?”

  I took a deep breath. “Yeah. We’ve got holes,” I said. “At least one round struck the pilot and killed him. They went down so fast that the passenger—Sheriff Holman—didn’t have time to react and try to save himself.”

  Finnegan just stared at me, and I stared back. Finally he dug out another cigarette and lit it. “Well, Jesus,” he said. “Who’d do a thing like that?”

  “Interesting question,” I said. I hefted the bag with the twelve brass casings. “Maybe this will get us a little closer. And maybe not.”

  Despite our best search efforts, the side of the mesa produced nothing else of interest—no identifiable marks, no more casings, no handy piece of torn fabric, no lost wallet full of identification papers.

  I realized the day was catching up with me, and I wasn’t so eager to trek back up the mesa. Estelle didn’t mention the need again, so we worked our way back down to the vehicles. On the way, she took several more photos of the block house and the area around it, particularly of the spot where we thought someone had been standing.

  But the rough walls produced no convenient threads of fabric, and there were no readable footprints that I could see. Maybe Estelle had her own theories, since she expended a fair-sized film budget taking portraits of the ground, especially east of the structure.

  One of Finnegan’s blue heelers greeted us with rapid-fire yapping as we approached the trucks, but it didn’t jump out of the back. The rancher’s rig wasn’t for show, that was for sure. The truck itself was battered and dented, the sort of scrubbing I could imagine it received every time Finnegan pulled to a stop and the livestock mobbed around, looking for the feed.

  The ATV in the back, once bright red and ready
to charge out of a television commercial, was equally battered and bent. It was crowded between various boxes of pipe fittings, oil cans, and other bits and pieces.

  I put a foot on the back bumper and regarded the dog, which strained to the end of its light chain, bicolored eyes eager to figure out who I was.

  “That’s your rifle, I assume,” I said, indicating the bolt-action inside the truck. It hung upside down from the window rack.

  “Yep,” Finnegan said. The rifle was as battered as everything else.

  “May I see it?”

  “Sure.” He reached inside the Ford and slipped the rifle off the rack. I took it, surprised at its weight. The scope was worn but expensive, just like the rifle.

  “I’d hate to lug this during a day of deer-hunting,” I said.

  He grunted. “So would I. Most of the time, it rides right there, in the truck.”

  I opened the bolt just far enough to see the extractors draw the long, brass body of the cartridge partway out of the chamber.

  “Two-sixty-four Winchester mag,” Finnegan said.

  “Antitank,” I grinned, and out of habit, I closed the bolt while I held the trigger back, uncocking the rifle. I handed it back to him.

  “Nah,” he said and turned back toward the truck. With just a flick of his wrist, he pulled the bolt handle up and then thrust it down again, cocking the weapon. He hung the rifle back in the rack. “But it’s hell on coyotes. I busted one last week at almost five hundred yards.” He clapped his hands together. “Never knew what hit him.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. I glanced around and saw that Estelle was standing at the opposite side of the pickup, putting her camera back in the bag.

  “Well, you need anything else, you just let me know,” Finnegan said.

  “Expect some traffic the next few days,” I said. “Other than that, I don’t know what to tell you.”

  He nodded and hoisted himself into his pickup. The diesel started instantly, and he pulled away with a final lift of his hand in salute. The dog dashed back and forth on top of the toolbox, excited to be going back to work.