Out of Season

CHAPTER TWENTY

As we arrived at Posadas Municipal Airport, Robert Torrez, Tom Pasquale, Vincent Buscema, and another FAA official whom I hadn’t met were in the process of lifting a large portion of the right wing off a small flatbed truck.

The shield on the truck’s door read “Posadas Electric,” and I wondered briefly which of Torrez’s relatives had donated the use of his vehicle. The sergeant was related to half the town and knew the other half.

I watched as Deputy Pasquale operated the forklift and for once, he drove the machine as if he had a Ming vase on the forks.

Inside the cavernous and cool hangar, I surveyed the litter. In the hours since dawn that Sunday, Vincent Buscema had been able to work miracles. The hangar floor looked as if someone were arranging a display of landfill art. As the wing settled to the cradle of two-by-fours that Buscema kicked under it, I walked around the back of the forklift, staying well clear when Pasquale threw the thing into reverse.

With no load, he spun the lift around in its own length and charged back outside to the apron, operating once more at his normal pace.

Buscema approached and shook hands with the two FBI agents. “We’re making progress,” he said.

“I would never have guessed that a small aircraft could make so many pieces,” I said.

He nodded. “What we’re going to do as we bring more and more down is to arrange everything we’ve got so it makes sense, nose to tail, wingtip to wingtip. That helps us understand what we’ve got.”

I stepped over to the engine block. The propeller hub was still in place, but even my unpracticed eye could see the bend in the crankshaft and imagine the tremendous forces slammed against the hub and shaft as the prop hit the ground. “I’ve seen pictures where the plane was basically reassembled,” I said, “actually put back together, patched together. They did it with that airliner that blew up back East didn’t they?”

“Sure,” Buscema said. “But we won’t have to do that here. We’re ninety-nine percent sure of what happened. I mean, that engine you’re looking at tells most of the story. It was turning at least cruise RPM when the blades hit the ground. Two of the blades were sheared off, and we’ve got the tips. The third blade looks like a pretzel.” He nudged the engine with his toe. “There was nothing wrong with that engine when the plane hit the ground. You can bet on that.” He put his hands on his hips and turned, surveying the collection.

“We could spend days and days trying to decide if there was a mechanical control failure of some kind, but I think that’s going to be a waste of time, too. What you want,” he said as Hocker bent down and examined a chunk of white-painted aluminum roughly the size of a large grocery bag, “is to find a small hole that doesn’t belong.”

“Or holes,” Hocker said.

“Or holes, yes,” Buscema pointed off to the left. “We’re putting the fuselage right in here.”

“So show me the seats,” I said. “If the fragment hit the pilot low in the back, it had to go through the seat first.”

“Exactly, and the hole is exactly where we thought it might be. Look.” I grimaced as he stepped over and beckoned me to one of the brightly upholstered seats, now twisted and looking so out of place amid the scraps on the floor.

Hocker and Costace were quicker than I was, kneeling beside one of the seats as Buscema turned it slightly. A small piece of red survey flagging had been tied to part of the seat’s framework.

“It’s such a small cut that at first glance, it doesn’t show,” Buscema said. He slid his hand under the seat cover from the bottom and spread the fabric. “Entry,” he said. “Of course that little cut in the fabric could have been caused at almost any time by somebody careless with a ski pole, fishing rod”-he shrugged-“even with the latch of a briefcase, I suppose.” He slid his hand out of the seat.

“But higher up on the front side, we’ve got a companion tear, a little bit larger.”

“A really steep angle,” Estelle murmured.

“For sure,” Buscema said. “The angle fits. There’s blood on the seat, but that’s consistent with the crash trauma.”

“The wound from a small, high-velocity fragment isn’t going to cause much bleeding,” Bob Torrez said, and Hocker glanced at him.

“All right,” Hocker said. “We’ve got holes in the pilot. We’ve got holes in the seat. Then it shouldn’t be hard to find where the bullet pierced the belly of the plane, ripped up through the flooring, whatever that’s made of, zipped through the carpet, then through the seat and into the pilot.”

“That’s what we plan to do,” Buscema said. “The next truck down will have the majority of the fuselage’s remaining pieces, including the major cabin structure.” He glanced at his watch. “I expect that within the hour. Sheriff, I really think that you’ll have something solid to go on in just a short while.”

I nodded. “What we need to do,” I said, “is to start the process of matching the fragment with other fragments. What are the odds that when you take that seat apart, you’ll find more of the bullet?”

“Maybe,” Hocker said. “And maybe inside the cabin floor structure too, if the bullet hit a frame member and shattered.” He turned to Estelle. “There were no exit wounds on the body?”

“No, sir.”

“Any calculated guesses on the bullet caliber?”

“That’s going to be a tough call,” I said. “Maybe when we see the first entry hole that it made in the plane, we can make a guess.”

“I’m guessing twenty-two caliber,” Torrez said. “Maybe twenty-five.”

“Is that just a hunch, or do you know something we don’t?” Costace asked.

“On the fragment that Mitchell and Abeyta are working up,” Torrez said, “there’s a small portion of rifling marking. Just enough that it can be measured. It’s real narrow, like you’d find on something of that caliber.”

“You’re not talking twenty-two rimfire like in a kid’s gun?” Hocker asked.

“No. Two-twenty-three. The sort of bullet fired in any of the high-performance center-fire rifles. The M-16 is a two-twenty-three. So is the Mini-14. Or the twenty-two two-fifty. And a whole bunch more. And if it’s twenty-five caliber, it opens up a whole world of possibilities-the twenty-five-ought-six, two-fifty-seven Roberts, and on and on.”

“And then there’s the whole world of foreign cartridges, too,” Costace added.

“Robert, let me ask you something,” I said. “If you’ve got a good clear sample of the marks left by rifling, can that be compared to other samples?”

The sergeant grimaced. “Really tough,” he said.

Hocker frowned. “The answer is yes, Sheriff. They can be compared under a good microscope. But you’re not going to get the points of comparison that you’re going to need in court. Not unless you’re really, really lucky.”

“But it gives us someplace to start,” I said. “And that’s what we need now.”

A truck drove up to the hangar door and I looked outside to see the dark blue Dodge four-by-four with the “New Mexico Department of Game and Fish” decal on the door.

“Finally,” I said.