Final Payment

Chapter Eighteen

She hadn’t stayed at the airport after the flight to make sure that Jim Bergin and Jerry Turner had locked everything up. She could only hope. Jim had said that he planned to stay at the airport, but he might not have meant that very night. And Turner? Hopefully, he had taken the Cessna’s keys with him this time-but for an enterprising repeat burglar, that didn’t pose much of a problem. Several places in town could duplicate keys for a buck. How handy it would be to have a spare ignition and a spare door key.

Although there was inadequate personnel to have a deputy sitting at the airport full-time, the airport was under close patrol. Several times each shift, deputies cruised by, checking locks, checking for illegal access. That didn’t prevent much. With the prairie whisper-quiet, a patrol vehicle could be heard a mile away-certainly easily enough when its tires crunched the gravel of the airport’s driveway. Anyone could step into the shadows and wait until the cop was gone.

And Estelle grimaced to herself as she realized that they had all made a fundamental mistake, thinking from the beginning that the killer was long gone after the three homicides.

She found herself wondering how long it would take to push the big doors open, jump into the Cessna, crank it up, and flee. Less than a minute without checklists and careful run-ups?

The county car rocketed down a state highway thankfully devoid of traffic at that early hour. Three miles east of the airport, she overtook a diesel pickup, and caught a glimpse of a startled Jim Bergin as she blew past at nearly twice his speed.

“Three-ten, PSO.”

She picked up the radio mike. “Go ahead.”

“Three-ten, be advised the license number you requested is one-eight-three, Tom Kilo Lincoln. It should appear on a blue 1978 Chevrolet half-ton. Registration expired eleven of oh-six.”

She acknowledged.

“Three-oh-four copies,” Jackie Taber’s quiet voice said. “Negative contact at the border crossing.”

A quarter mile east of the airport, a large RV with a pudgy SUV in tow was parked at the scenic area pull-out, a spot that afforded a view of the sweeping prairie and the San Cristóbal Mountains beyond. So massive was the vehicle that Estelle almost didn’t see the second vehicle parked so that the RV was between it and the highway.

She stood on the brakes, swung wide, and executed a U-turn with tires squealing, then pulled into the west access for the parking area. The RV carried Wisconsin plates, as did the vehicle in tow. Estelle regarded the pickup as she reached for the mike.

“PCS, three-ten.”

“Go ahead, three-ten.”

“I’ll be out of the car with one-eight-three Tom Kilo Lincoln at mile marker one-oh-six on State Seventy-eight. I don’t see an occupant.”

“Three-oh-four will expedite up that way,” Taber said.

“Negative. Cover the border crossing until I see what’s what, Jackie.”

“Three-oh-eight’s ETA is about ten,” another voice said, almost inaudibly soft. Bob Torrez hadn’t been able to sleep, either.

Estelle stepped out of the county car and circled the truck. It was empty, with no keys dangling from the ignition.

“You with the cops?”

She turned at the voice, and saw an enormously fat man standing beside the door of the RV, the huge inner tube of belly hanging out beneath his white T-shirt. He supported himself on two aluminum crutches.

“Sheriff’s Department,” Estelle replied. “Was this vehicle here when you stopped?”

“Sure was.”

“How long ago?”

“Oh.” He grinned, looking at his watch. “I guess we’ve been here about thirty seconds, the wife and me. Gonna have us some breakfast.”

“Did you see anyone around this pickup?”

“No, ma’am. Who are we looking for?”

“We’re just checking,” Estelle said.

“Fair enough. And by the way, I think we’re lost. Is this the highway down to the border crossing?”

“No, sir.” She pointed east as she strode back toward her own vehicle. “Go east to the caution light, turn right. Head south through Posadas and catch State Fifty-six. That’ll take you to Regál and the crossing. You folks have a good day.”

Before the man had a chance to reply, she was back in the car and accelerating out of the rest area, beating Jim Bergin’s truck by a hundred yards. As soon as she turned into the airport access road, she could see that the hangar door had been run out, the door rail framework extending well beyond the corner of the building.

The car slithered to a stop in the loose gravel, and Estelle dashed to the gate, stabbed in the key to the county lock, and snapped it open. The long, heavy chain-link gate rolled easily. As she slammed the gate open, Bergin’s truck pulled in behind her county car. She held up a hand to stop, and then ducked back in her car. As she drove in around the office building, she heard the powerful engine.

Accelerating around the gas pumps island as hard as the police cruiser would go, she looked down the row of hangars and saw the Cessna outside, its back already turning to her. It trundled along smartly, headed for the west end of the runway.

The plane did not have rearview mirrors, and if the pilot concentrated on watching over the cowling, he might never see her. She kept the accelerator flat to the floor, and by the time she reached the end of the last hangar, closing in behind the taxiing airplane, the Crown Victoria was rocketing along at close to a hundred.

Just a few feet behind the plane’s stabilizer, she braked hard and swerved left, shooting obliquely across the smooth median between taxiway and runway. Not touching the brakes until she had careened back onto the asphalt of the runway, she managed to slow enough to take the turnaround donut at the end of the runway, racing toward the Cessna head-on.

She saw the astonishment on Hector Ocate’s face. He had three choices: charge his airplane head-on into Estelle’s patrol car, try to swerve past her to the runway, or spike the brakes and turn around. The heavy airplane was no ballerina on the ground, and Estelle saw that she could run the nose of her patrol car into the prop if necessary.

He chose the third course, and Estelle saw the Cessna 206 dip its nose as he braked. He telegraphed his intentions with a swing first to the right, taking all the asphalt possible, then started to swing left. Estelle punched the gas and cut him off.

For a moment, the big snout of the Cessna, its three-bladed prop a menacing blue, approached within a yard of the Crown Victoria’s driver’s door. Hector braked so hard that Estelle saw the front gear collapse the oleo strut to its stops. Without a handy reverse, Hector was trapped. If he rammed the car-if he so much as kissed it-the propeller would be destroyed.

He stood on the left brake and the engine roared in one last desperate effort to lurch around and clear the car, but Estelle pulled the sedan forward and to the left, cutting the plane’s maneuvering distance to a hairsbreadth. She released her seat belt at the same time, ready to dive to safety when the prop started chopping the Ford.

She rammed the gear selector into park and clawed across the clutter between the seats, digging her knee painfully into the corner of the computer. Diving out the passenger-side door headfirst, she pushed away from the car and came to her feet with the stubby.45 automatic in hand.

Hector Ocate was caught, and knew it. He slumped back in the seat as Estelle rounded the front of the patrol car and ducked under the left wing, advancing as far as the strut. Without being told, the boy reached forward to the dash, and in a few seconds, the engine ran rough and then died.

Jim Bergin’s truck slowed to a stop twenty yards away on the taxiway, but he stayed inside.

“Step out of the airplane,” she commanded. The door popped, and she moved to her left, putting the strut and door between her and the boy. “Put both hands where I can see them.” He did so, hesitantly, one foot showing below the door. Estelle held the gun in both hands, watching the boy over the sights. “Step out of the airplane with your hands on top of your head, Hector.”

The second foot appeared, and the youth slid down from the cockpit. He closed the door gently with both hands, and then turned to face Estelle. He laced his fingers on top of his head, and stepped to one side to avoid the wing strut.

“Stop there,” she ordered. Hector was dressed in blue jeans and a colorful short-sleeved shirt, and he looked smaller than she remembered. His knees quaked and he almost staggered before regaining his balance. “Face down on the ground,” Estelle ordered, and when he hesitated, she commanded in Spanish, “¡Al suelo, boca abajo!” Instantly, he sank to his knees, one hand reaching out toward the Cessna’s wing strut for balance. “¡Al suelo!” she repeated, and he sagged forward on his stomach on the cold concrete. “¡Extiende los brazos!” When he was down and spread-eagled, and she could see both hands and both feet, Estelle moved toward him, shifting the gun to one hand.

“I speak English,” Hector shouted, his voice now shaking.

“I know you do,” Estelle replied. “No te muevas.” Not only would he speak English, but he would be familiar with police tactics in his home state. There were only two alternatives to obeying police commands-a savage beating or a bullet. She had seen his fear in his quaking knees.

Slipping the cuffs out of her belt, she advanced on him from behind. “Pone una mano detrás de la espalda,” she ordered, and seeing the speed at which he complied, wondered if he had considerable practice. In deft movements, she snapped the cuffs on his wrist. “La otra,” she said, and secured both hands.

“Up now,” she said, and applied some force while he scrambled awkwardly to his feet. She let him lean against the aircraft’s fuselage behind the wing.

“Mr. Ocate,” she said, her tone softening from the standard felony-stop commands. “Shopping for an airplane?”

He ducked his head and she saw his eyes flick toward the sound of an opening car door. Jim Bergin had stepped out of his vehicle, but he stayed well back.

“I…” Hector started to say, then fell silent. She waited for a full minute before he added, “I was deciding.” He started to shift his weight forward, but Estelle reached out and with three fingers against the center of his chest pushed him back against the airplane, keeping him off-balance.

“Deciding what, joven?” Estelle glanced at her watch. The boy had had plenty of time to make good his flight. Something had made him hesitate. Had he been sitting in the hangared plane with the door open, he could have heard her car hurtling toward the airport, hitting the gravel so fast she had almost slid into the fence. He had hit the ignition just about the time she had been fumbling with the lock on the gate.

The teenager took a long shuddering breath and closed his eyes for a moment.

“Three-oh-eight is thirty out,” Bob Torrez’s voice crackled from Estelle’s handheld radio. Estelle pulled the radio off her belt.

“Three-ten copies. We’re at the end of the taxiway. One juvenile in custody.”

“Ten-four.” Torrez sounded almost disappointed. Even as he spoke, they could hear his county vehicle approach on the state highway, then slow and turn onto the gravel access road.

As if the arrival of reinforcements was what he had been waiting for, Hector Ocate looked plaintively at Estelle. “I had decided that I could fly home,” he said. He turned and nodded toward the cockpit of the Cessna. “He must have insurance, no? I thought to fly to the airport at Culiacán. Do you know of that place?”

“And then?”

“I could leave the airplane there. Perhaps it could be recovered. It is easy. I fly right down the highway.” He looked out the door toward the San Cristóbal Mountains to the southwest. “Just there. That’s all. No one would care.”

“And then?” Estelle repeated.

“Just home,” Hector said.

“Where’s that?”

“A small village…some distance south of Acapulco.”

Hector stood a little straighter, and his voice took on an urgency that hadn’t been there before. “You must help me,” he said, and Estelle looked at him in surprise. “Please.”

“Help you?”

“That is what I decided. That you must help me.”

“Ah. It didn’t look that way, joven. Flying away in someone’s airplane isn’t asking for help.”

“I know now,” he said, nodding vigorously. “If I go home, he will find me again. And there, no one will help me.” The white Expedition roared down the taxiway, and for a moment it appeared as if Sheriff Robert Torrez was planning to rear-end Jim Bergin’s pickup. He swerved around it at the last minute, took to the grass, and stopped a dozen feet in front of Estelle’s sedan.

Estelle reached out again, hand on the boy’s chest. She saw Ocate’s eyes flick first to Bergin, then to the sheriff, and then back again. “It is possible that you can help me,” he said with finality. “And you must. That is the only way. That is why I didn’t take this airplane just now.”

“You didn’t take it because you would have crashed into my car, Hector. Don’t take us for fools. Who are you running from?” Estelle asked, and once more she saw Hector Ocate’s eyes flick back down the taxiway, past the airport manager and the sheriff, to the open hangar door as if he expected someone else to appear.

“Please,” the teenager pleaded.

“We won’t let anyone hurt you,” she said. “Will you talk with me?”

“Not here, please,” Hector said. The boy’s eyes were those of an injured rabbit watching the coyote circle ever closer. Sheriff Torrez approached without a word, grabbed the boy by the collar, and spun him around, pushing him hard against the airplane’s fuselage.

“Spread,” Torrez said, kicking his feet apart and back. The pat-down was anything but gentle or perfunctory. The boy looked back toward her, and she felt a stab of sympathy. To plead with police for protection had to be counter to all of Hector Ocate’s instincts, coming from a “guilty until proven innocent” culture where fairness was more often a function of the ability to pay the right people. Torrez’s rough handling was more familiar, and perhaps expected.

“Keys,” Torrez said, holding up a set of keys that included three-perhaps to the old man’s pickup and house. He pulled the boy’s wallet out of his back pocket and thumbed it open. “Well now,” he said, and held it so Estelle could see the hefty wad of bills. Satisfied that there was nothing else, he spun the boy around. Hector shrank back against the plane. Torrez was a head taller, fifty pounds heavier, and ferociously calm. He held out the keys and wallet to Estelle. “You want to keep track of these?” He then thrust his hands in his pockets, regarded the shaking boy dispassionately. “How many times have you used this airplane?” he asked, his skepticism heavy.

“I caused no damage to it,” Hector said.

“Oh, and that clears everything up,” Torrez muttered.

“Please,” Hector said again, and he looked past Torrez to Estelle. “I have this.” He twisted, digging one of his thumbs behind his belt and pulling at the leather.

The belt looked expensive, with basket-weave tooling and a silver buckle. What was tucked inside the belt was far more valuable, no doubt.

“Yeah, I saw that,” Torrez said.

“Tell us what happened to your passengers,” Estelle said.

“Please, you must help me.” It sounded as if the boy was beginning to panic, odd behavior for a kid with steely nerves who could pilot a stranger’s overloaded aircraft across desert and mountains at night, landing on a narrow, unlighted strip of macadam.

“Help you?” Estelle asked. “Help you how?”

“Please-I will tell you what I know.”

“Let’s get him out of here,” Torrez said impatiently, and he turned to the airport manager, who waited quietly beside his truck. “Jim, will you make this thing secure?”

“You bet,” Bergin replied. “He leave the key in it?”

“Yes. Can you find a way to button up that hangar so this doesn’t happen again?”

“Bigger lock is about all I can do,” Bergin said.

“Well, we’ll find somebody to sit the place until we know what’s what,” Torrez said. He reached out and took Hector by the elbow. “Let’s go,” he said, and the boy looked to Estelle beseechingly. It seemed clear to her that the youth wasn’t going to talk to the brusque sheriff-if Torrez gave him the chance in the first place. But the sheriff was right. There was something to be said for keeping Hector Ocate off-balance and apprehensive.