Final Payment

Chapter Ten

Sebastian stood beside the airplane, his leash hanging relaxed from the State Police officer’s hand, tongue lolling and eyes looking expectantly from human to human. Neither luck nor his phenomenally precise nose had located any trace of the fragrant little red ball with which he had been so meticulously trained.

Estelle knew that it often came as a surprise to drug dealers that the dogs didn’t know hashish from hot dogs, or blood from grape juice. Find the source of the smell for which they had been trained, whether it was the real thing or the essence smeared on a rubber ball, and win a treat. It was as simple as that.

The trick was keeping distractions to a minimum. As soon as he had been released from the backseat of the State Police car, Sebastian had caught sight of Bob Torrez. The dog did a little dance, uttering a girlish yelp of greeting.

“He loves you, Bobby.” Lieutenant Adams laughed. Aloof with other human beings except his handler, Sebastian went to pieces with Bob Torrez-no one, including the sheriff himself, knew why.

Socializing turned to work in short order. Keeping Sebastian on short leash, Lieutenant Adams led him into the hangar. For the next ten minutes, he guided the dog’s efforts, covering the perimeter, the exterior of the plane, and finally the inside.

Tail wagging furiously, Sebastian leaped through the large door of the aft baggage compartment, eager to please. No matter how thoroughly he thrust his nuzzle into dark corners, even wedging his wet nose into the seat pockets, he found nothing.

After several attempts, Adams led the dog out of the hangar, where he collected a single pat on the head from Sheriff Torrez.

“Nothing,” Adams said. “Absolutely nothing. If this aircraft has been hauling freight, it wasn’t coke or grass or any of that shit.” He looked approvingly at Turner, as if somehow the cell phone salesman’s reputation had been at stake.

Fifteen minutes later, they had another answer-another negative one. The black light wand produced nothing. The interior of the airplane hadn’t been splashed with bodily fluids-certainly not blood, anyway.

A perceptive businessman, Jerry Turner watched the circus with nervous interest. At one point, he sauntered with exaggerated calm over to where Leona Spears waited by her county truck. Leona had stayed well back from the crime scene, but her natural curiosity-especially since the airport was county property-kept her from leaving.

“What do you think?” Torrez asked.

“I want to know where the gasoline came from,” Estelle said.

“That shouldn’t be too hard. How many places in town sell gas? Six?”

“About that. And I would think that they’d remember someone filling multiple cans.”

“And it don’t have to be gas stations,” Jim Bergin offered. “Any rancher that has a storage tank. Probably another half a dozen outfits in town have tanks.”

“It still ain’t that many,” Torrez said. “Let me get someone started on that.”

“Eddie’s still out at the airstrip?”

“Far as I know. Him and Jackie. I’m going to leave her out there, get the rest combin’ the area for gas sales.”

Estelle shook her head slowly. “Ay,” she whispered. “If this is the plane…”

“Then it’s somebody local,” Torrez finished the thought.

“Or somebody who knows the community as well as a local.” She reached out a hand to Bergin, taking him by the left shoulder. “How many pilots do you know in Posadas who fly well enough to do something like this?”

“Oh, shit,” Bergin said. “You mean steal an airplane and bring it back? Just about anybody with a pilot’s license, Estelle. Now, if they’re flyin’ at night, that’s different. And if they’re dodgin’ border security, that’s something else again. I don’t know anybody who’d be crazy enough to do that.”

“Well, taking the plane is the least of it.” She drew him several steps farther away from Jerry Turner’s hearing. “Jim, we think that this plane was used to fly in from somewhere-maybe Mexico, maybe not-with at least four people.” She released Bergin’s shoulder and held up four fingers, then bent one down. “One was the pilot. The other three were murdered. Shot to death.”

Bergin looked at her in silence.

“The sheriff found the bodies out at the west end of the gas company’s airstrip, off County Road Fourteen.”

“Jesus,” Bergin murmured.

“We don’t know who they are, but we think they may be from Mexico, maybe somewhere else south of the border.”

“You’re tellin’ me that somebody took this airplane, flew down south, picked up passengers, brought ’em back into the country, then killed ’em?”

“Yes.”

“Then returned the airplane. Just parked it back in the hangar and walked away.”

“That’s the possibility we’re looking at, Jim.”

“Well, I wondered why all the fuss. I don’t guess you’d have the whole department out lookin’ for a stolen car-or airplane. Least of all a borrowed one. Unless there was something else goin’ on.”

“There is. Three homicide victims. Maybe a family. We don’t know.”

Bergin held up a hand. “I don’t need to know no more,” he said. “Does Turner know any of this?”

“No. He’s going to need to know, though. I want to borrow the plane. With you flying it.”

Bergin cocked his head incredulously. “Now what? What are we talkin’ about here?”

“I’m going to repeat my original question: how many pilots do you know of around here who fly well enough to pull this off? For the sake of argument, let’s say, fly deep into Mexico, pick up passengers, fly back, and land at the airstrip-all, I’m going to guess, at night. Daytime is too risky. He lands, shoots the three, then piles back into the plane, and returns to Posadas. Again, at night. If you’re not here, he’s going to be able to slip in without anyone noticing.”

“Sure he is. And I’m not here all the time, either.”

“Just so.”

“Who could do that? Well, I could. Jerry, there. He could. He wouldn’t, but he could. There’s maybe half a dozen at most.”

“In Posadas.”

“Here in town. Now, you include Deming and a few other towns, there’s more. But if what you’re sayin’ happened the way you think it did, that’s…well, I don’t know.” Bergin groped for words. “That’s something kind of different.”

“Yes, it is. Very, very different. That’s why I want the ride.”

“That’s not one of your better ideas, Madame Undersheriff,” he said.

She regarded Jerry Turner’s Cessna 206 critically, trying to push commonsense agreement with the airport manager out of her mind. “There’s nothing that says this isn’t the plane that landed out on the gas company’s strip, Jim,” she said. “The wheelbase measurement is consistent.”

“Hell, that could change,” Bergin said. “Loaded heavy, your tire track is going to be one thing, empty and it’s going to be somethin’ else. I don’t see how you can measure that close.”

“May we can’t-but it’s close enough to suggest a match.”

“Look,” Bergin said, and his fingers groped for a cigarette. It was half out of the pack before he remembered that he was standing near an aircraft hangar, in close proximity to a full load of volatile fuel. He thrust it back and patted his pocket closed. “I don’t think anybody ought to be flying this airplane until we have a chance to really go over it, nose to tail. If she’s got auto fuel mixed in with avgas…and I realize that ain’t no big thing. But just the same…”

“Whoever used it didn’t have any qualms,” Estelle said. “Would he necessarily know the difference?”

Bergin laughed dryly. “Yes, he’d know. And we ain’t him. Havin’ a few of those qualms keeps us alive. Not to mention that it’s the middle of the goddamn night, with a short unlighted airstrip that has a fence at either end. Besides, what’s the difference? Maybe this is the plane…maybe it is. So what? What’s flyin’ it out there in the dark going to tell you?”

“I don’t know what it’s going to tell me,” Estelle said. “It’s just helpful. What I know is that it’s a link we need to explore-the sooner the better.”

“Helpful,” Bergin repeated. “Seems like it could at least wait till light.”

She nodded, not knowing how to explain what she felt. “It could. But they landed at night. I’d bet on it.” In her mind’s eye, she could see the Cessna sinking downward, with the apprehensive eyes of the passengers glued to the windows, staring out into the inky blackness of the desert. The landing lights would cut a swath, making the desert seem all the more ominous. The plane had touched down solidly, no bounces, no swerving-a perfectly executed landing followed by a long, straight rollout. And then the drift to the right, slowing more, swinging hard left perhaps with a burst of power-and then the first sign of a miscalculation, so out of place with the rest of the command performance.

“We can’t jump to easy answers,” Estelle said. “We’re so far out of the loop it’s pathetic, Jim. We don’t even know for sure where the three victims are from-most likely someplace south of the border, but we’re not sure. We haven’t found any paperwork, no personal belongings. The plane could have flown five hours south, and that would have put it pretty deep in Mexico, but where the passengers were actually picked up might just be a staging area.” She shrugged. “If I can put myself in the same situation, it might tell me something about the pilot. About the way he thinks.”

“You think the pilot is the killer?”

“I don’t know. He would almost certainly be involved somehow. He would have to know. And if the pilot did the shooting himself, that means the plane had to be parked for a few minutes untended while he got out to do his business. Right now we have no way to tell if that’s what happened. If the victims had any personal belongings, those stayed in the plane-we didn’t find anything scattered in the desert. I’m hoping you can help me with that.”

“Huh,” Bergin grunted. “And parked is parked, Estelle. When he stopped to let out passengers, he was parked. Whether for thirty seconds or five minutes don’t matter much.” He looked at the floor thoughtfully. “This airplane don’t have any seeps. No oil puddle from bein’ parked. So you can’t tell from that.” He heaved a sigh. “Tell you what. You want to fly out that way, let’s take my plane.”

“There’s no point in that.”

Bergin almost smiled. “I was afraid you’d say that.” He fumbled with his cigarettes again and laughed. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things.” He sighed. “Okay, tell you what. If Turner says it’s okay, fine. You got to give me a couple hours to check this bird over real good. Maybe even drain out the gas, if that’s in question. I don’t want any surprises.”

“Done. I’ll talk with Jerry.”

The big man turned a shade more pale as Estelle recited a short version of events to him. As she described the victims and how they were found, she saw his shoulders slump and his weight sag onto the fender of the BMW.

“Why would someone do something like that?” he asked finally. He looked quickly first at Bob Torrez and then at Estelle. “I hope to heaven you folks don’t think I had something to do with all this.”

“Someone used your airplane, sir. That’s what we think. If we can have your cooperation, we’d appreciate it. We’ll fill it up when we’re finished.”

“With avgas,” Turner said, trying to smile.

“You bet.”

“I don’t want to go, if that’s all right. For one thing, I’d have to put the seats back in.”

“That’s fine, sir. We won’t be gone long.”

She checked her watch. “Midnight straight up?” she asked Bergin.

“That’ll work. It’s crazy, but it’ll work.”