Out of Season

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.

“So, what do you think?” I asked Estelle. She started the Bronco and levered it into gear.

“I want to see what Linda was able to piece together,” she said. “And then we need to finish what we started earlier. We need to sort through Martin Holman’s files. There’re pieces missing, sir.”

“Many, many,” I agreed, and braced myself for the first cattle guard. “And I’d be interested to find out what our friends from the FBI spent their time doing. If anything.”

“Oh, I’m sure they’ve been busy,” Estelle said, and the tone of her voice brought my head around.

“We’re not in competition here,” I said.

“Of course not, sir.”