Burn Out

Saturday

Numerous official choppers and private planes from surrounding counties were available for the air search. Hy and I flew together in our Cessna. The morning was crisp and clear, and we’d bundled up in down jackets, jeans, and fleece-lined boots. Hy had brewed an extra pot of coffee, and we took it along in a thermos. I piloted, since he’d had that pleasure on the trip up here.

It had been a while since I’d flown, and on liftoff I’d felt a tremendous rush. It made me realize how important not being earthbound was to me. My depression-these days always a background to whatever I was doing-slipped away, and I settled happily into what felt like a cocoon that only Hy and I could inhabit.

“You realize,” I said through our linked headsets as we lifted off, “that this is an exercise in futility.”

“Yeah, but you can’t tell that to the sheriff’s department. And it makes people feel like they’re doing something to help. Besides, maybe somebody in one of the choppers’ll spot something.” Helicopters are authorized by the FAA to fly at lower altitudes than fixed-wing aircraft, and thus are better for searches.

Hy removed a pair of binoculars from their leather case, and I set course toward the area we’d been assigned to search-a barren plain southeast of Rattlesnake Ranch, some ten miles from where Tom Mathers had his wilderness-guide business. The thousand-plus acres, Hy had told me, used to be a working cattle ranch, but had been sold off a decade or more before to a family from the East Coast, who tore down the existing buildings and put up a luxurious vacation home.

As we flew over the ranch, I saw a sprawling house-had to be a minimum of twenty thousand square feet-with a tile roof, various outbuildings, an airstrip, a tennis court, and a swimming pool.

“Who the hell are those people?” I asked.

“Don’t know their name or much about them. The property sale was handled by a law firm, and the local real-estate agent who represented the sellers is mum on the subject. They fly in on a private jet, don’t come to town at all, hire local staff who’re sworn to secrecy about what goes on there. It’s rumored that they’re anything from exiled royalty to Mafia. I say they’re just rich people who value their privacy.”

“Very rich people.”

“Well, sure.” Hy was scanning the place with the binoculars. “Nobody in residence today-too chilly for them. They’re probably off at a similar retreat on St. Bart’s or Tahiti this time of year.”

“By the way, that trip to Tahiti my travel agent wants to book us-”

“Will happen as soon as I get RI up and running properly. And after you decide what to do about your future.”

We’d talked late into the last night about both subjects. Hy was committed to seeing Ripinsky International through the reorganization and then remaining at the helm. I’d told him I still didn’t know what to do about my life or McCone Investigations. Maybe wouldn’t know for quite some time. He’d reassured me: as long as the agency was running properly in my absence I had no problem.

“You know,” he said after a moment of scanning the land beyond Rattlesnake Ranch, “a killer would have to be an idiot to abandon a body out here in the open.”

“Exactly what I’ve been thinking.” I switched the radio to the frequency designated for the search. Negative reports on all fronts.

I let the plane glide to a lower altitude, following a southeasterly course, to an area where snow-like volcanic ash covered the ground, peppered with small obsidian outcroppings and Jeffrey pines. Ash and glass, relics of an ancient conflagration; stubborn pines, reminders of nature’s life force. Hy and I had often flown over here-

“Take it lower,” he suddenly said.

I pulled back on the throttle, raised the nose to slow the plane. “You see something?”

“I’m not sure. Bank left.”

I dipped the wing to a medium angle.

“Over there.” He gestured, handed me the binoculars.

I peered through them, made out a brownish mass. “Dead pine. Or maybe a large animal.”

“Pines and animals aren’t shaped like that. Besides, look over there, behind that outcropping. It’s a white truck.”

I studied the terrain some more. “Right.”

“Can you put down someplace nearby?”

“Not too far from the truck, yes. It’ll be a rough landing, but-”

“We’ve made them before.”

It was a rough landing, the wheels bumping over rocks and uneven ground-the kind that makes your heart race and your adrenaline surge, knowing that you’ve got whatever it takes to be a good pilot. As I braked to a stop, I thought, So aviation’s a man’s world, Amos? Hah!

We got our bearings and started off, boots crunching on the ashy, pebbled ground. The watery fall sunlight bore down, but the day hadn’t warmed much; I wished I’d brought along some gloves. We topped a slight rise, where Hy raised the binoculars and looked around. “Over that way.”

At first all I recognized was a sleeping bag. Olive drab-which had looked more like brown from the air. Then I made out the shape inside it. A large one.

I said, “It’s not Amy. She’s much smaller than whoever that is.”

Hy moved toward it, and I followed. The bag was zipped to the top. I squatted and pulled the zipper down.

Sandy hair, a freckled face-formerly tanned, but now bluish white in death. No marks marred his features; he looked as if he’d crawled into the bag, zipped it up, and gone to sleep.

Tom Mathers, Hayley Perez’s former boyfriend.

The man who, the last time I’d seen him, had been engaged in bitter conflict with his wife, T.C.

Hy stayed with the body while I went to the plane and contacted the search team’s headquarters. They said they’d have a chopper there in ten minutes.

“When was it you last saw Mathers?” Hy asked when I returned.

“Around two-thirty yesterday afternoon.”

“Well, he must’ve been here since last night or early this morning. There’s no odor; the cold’s pretty much preserved the body.”

“Rigor?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to disturb the scene any more than we already have.”

I looked around at the ground: faint tire tracks, no drag marks near the body. Of course, the ash had either drifted in the persistent winds or was hardened by thousands of years of exposure to the elements.

Hy said, “I’ll check out that truck. Why don’t you wait for the sheriff’s people?”

“Okay.” As he walked away, I stared down at the shrouded body. Tom Mathers had been a big man; in death he would have been hard to move.

I pictured T.C. Mathers. She’d appeared very strong. And then there were all those guns and knives gleaming in their cases at the wilderness supply. What if the argument I’d triggered by asking about Hayley Perez had spun out of control…?

The drone and flapping of a chopper came from the north. It hovered, then set down nearby. Kristen Lark got out and, ducking her head, ran toward us.

It was after six when we finished giving statements to Lark at her office in Bridgeport, nearly seven when we got back to Vernon. We’d had no lunch, so we headed to Zelda’s, where a country band whose members must’ve been tone deaf were playing. Bob Zelda, who had heard about our discovery via the small-town grapevine, gave us a table in the bar area, as far from the noise as possible, brought us complimentary glasses of white wine, and took our orders.

“They turn up any traces of the Perez girl?” he asked.

“No,” Hy said, “the search was called off at dusk.”

“Bad enough what you found. Tom Mathers was a good kid.”

“Somebody didn’t think so. He was shot in the back.”

“God.” He turned toward the kitchen.

Hy swirled the wine in his glass, breathed in its aroma, sipped, and made a face. “I’d rather have paid for a really good vintage,” he muttered.

Being one who had spent much of her life opening screwtop bottles, I shrugged.

“Come on, McCone. You’ve got a better palate than that.”

I sipped, and my lips puckered. “You’re right. Any potted plants we can pour this into?”

“We’ll have a bottle of Deer Hill with dinner.”

Deer Hill-my favorite chardonnay, which would go perfectly with the golden trout we’d both ordered. Then my mind flashed back to the night last February when RKI’s building on Green Street in the city had been bombed; I’d walked out with a bottle of that particular wine to take to a dinner at my half-sister’s place in Berkeley just seconds before the former warehouse blew up, killing three people.

Hy studied my face, accustomed by now to my sudden shifts in mood. He put his hand on mine. “It’s over, McCone.”

“That threat, yes. But what about the next? I still have nightmares-”

“About that and lots of other things, I know. I have them too. Things like that leave scars, but if you don’t have scars, you haven’t really lived. Someone like you needs to put herself out on the line.”

“I’m not sure that’s true any more.” I picked up my water glass, drank half, and dumped the sour white wine into it. “You order us a bottle of Deer Hill, and let’s forget about crime for tonight.”