Out of Season

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I suppose Walter Hocker would have been happier if some grizzled veteran had emerged from the basement darkroom, perhaps wearing an eyeshade, perhaps muttering an acerbic, cynical reply to every comment. I don’t think that he was prepared for Linda Real.

Linda was excited, and an excited Linda bubbled. She nodded rapidly as Estelle told her what we needed to see, her excited, lopsided grin getting wider and wider. When she was introduced to the two FBI agents, she barked a quick, unimpressed, “Hi,” as if they were merely in the way, and turned to Estelle and me.

“You won’t believe what I found, sir,” she said.

“I’m waiting,” I said. “Let’s use the table in the conference room.”

“When Sergeant Mitchell arrives, do you want me to send him right in?” Gayle Sedillos asked, and I nodded.

“She been working for you long?” Neil Costace asked as he followed me into the new conference room-one of Martin Holman’s pride and joys. The fancy maple-veneer table was twelve feet long. The black fake-leather chairs were almost comfortable. Costace glanced after Linda’s departing figure.

“Linda? About thirty-six hours, give or take,” I said. “We tend to lose track of time around here.”

Costace barked a staccato laugh and glanced at Hocker. “She’s got all the negatives from the sheriff’s camera?”

“She’s got one roll,” I said. “That’s all there was. Just the one in the camera itself. A single twenty-exposure roll.”

“She processed it here?” Hocker asked.

“Yes.”

“Color?”

“No. Black and white.”

“Is that what you usually use? Black and white?”

“It depends,” I said. “Most of the time, yes. We can do our own processing, and we’ve found over the years that color didn’t add much. Her husband”-I nodded at Estelle-“does most of the medical photography for us in color. Bruises don’t look like much in black and white.”

“I’m aware of all that,” Hocker said impatiently.

“And now that Officer Real is with us, if we can afford a color lab in next year’s budget, we’ll get it. One step at a time.”

In less than two minutes, Linda Real returned with a hefty manila folder.

“Let me lay all these out in the order they appear on the negative,” she said, and like a card dealer, she snapped out a set of sixteen eight-by-ten photos. I was delighted that she was taking complete control of the show-and-tell, not waiting to be prompted, not deferring to authority.

That done, she pointed at the photos that corresponded to the film’s negative numbers one, two, five, six, eleven, and twelve. “These are blurred because the camera was jarred.” She swirled a finger over number five. “Everything is uniformly blurred, but it’s the kind of blur you get from motion, not from being out of focus.”

She moved over to number thirteen. “This is the windmill picture, and Estelle already has a copy of it. Number fourteen is a line of fencing, or what appears to be a line of fencing, and a bunch of open grassland. There’s a hint of a road, or path, here in the left corner.” She paused for breath and tapped the next picture. “Number fifteen is a photo of a small stone building. Estelle also has that one. And then number sixteen is another shot of fence and pasture, with a grove of trees. You also have that. And it’s the last photo on the roll.”

She straightened up and looked at me. “Then what I did was to blow up each readable negative into four quadrants. That seemed a logical next step…sort of a survey process.” She started to slide number three up and out of the way, but Hocker held up a hand.

“By ‘last photo on the roll,’ what do you mean?”

Linda glanced at him, her crooked left eyebrow dancing just a bit. “The last one,” she said. “The last photo that the sheriff took.”

“No exposures followed that one?”

Linda frowned, no doubt thinking that Hocker was simple. “The last time his camera blinked,” she said and smiled. “The end of the negative is clear, unexposed film. There were no more exposures after this one.”

Hocker nodded, satisfied. Linda waited for a couple of pulse beats, and when it was clear that Hocker was finished, she reached out and placed four eight-by-ten enlargements underneath the third photo.

“Huh,” Hocker muttered. I stood beside him, leaning over the table. Estelle and Costace went around to the other side.

“Right,” Linda said in response to Hocker’s grunt. “I don’t see much there, either. It looks like the top of Cat Mesa, if I had to guess. All trees, one stretch of roadway just visible in the center. Now, number four is looking off to the north, from somewhere over the top of the mesa.” She placed the four quadrant enlargements underneath the photo.

“In this enlargement, you can see what might be ranch buildings way off in the distance to the north.”

“Boyd’s ranch,” I said. “I recognize the way the buildings are grouped.”

“Okay,” she said and plunged on. “Photos seven, eight, nine, and ten are all of the same area, sir. I don’t know where it is, or what it is, but apparently Sheriff Holman was taking a picture of this fence line.” She touched one of the photos. “There’s a characteristic spot where three fence lines meet, and another spot that looks like it could once have been a small pond. No vegetation of any sort. It appears in each one of the four photos.”

“Huh,” Hocker said.

“What’s interesting is that in each of the photos, no matter what the angle was between the airplane and the ground, the intersection of the three fences is in the center. That’s where he was aiming the camera.”

“Fence fetish,” Costace chuckled as he watched Linda placing her sets of four quadrant enlargements under each master photo. “So where is that spot, anyway? I mean, what’s there, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and felt a bit foolish saying so.

“If the sheriff thought enough of that spot to make sure he had it recorded on film, then maybe someone should find out where it is,” Hocker said blandly.

“Now that we have the photos, we can do that,” I said. “Sergeant Torrez knows this country as well as anyone. Make sure he gets those pictures,” I said to Linda. “I suspect he’ll find the place for us within the hour.” Hocker nodded, satisfied.

“And here’s the windmill. Nothing unusual. But here”-Linda paused and beamed at me-“is that little stone house.” This time, with loving care, she placed the four enlargements below the original eight-by-ten, pausing after each one. When she was finished, she said, “And this is what I wanted you to see.” The eraser on her pencil touched the northeast corner of the building. “See that?”

“The shadow of someone standing beside the building,” I said, and Linda beamed even wider. What I really wanted to do was to give her a paternal hug, but there were federal agents in the room, and who the hell knew what federal guidelines there might be to cover such unprofessional behavior.

“That’s what I think. The sheriff was using pretty fine-grained film,” Linda said, “and it enlarges well. So I blew it up some more.” She pulled another eight-by-ten out of the folder, this one showing just the corner of the building. Although the resolution wasn’t able to sustain much quality, my imagination could actually make my bifocaled eyes believe that I was looking at the shadow of a human being.

“Sharp eyes,” Hocker said.

“Estelle-” I began to say, and checked myself. I had been about to say that Estelle had already started chasing that shadow and that we’d already discussed it with the two agents. But Linda didn’t need to be deflated just then. “Estelle, what do you think? Is that what we’re looking at?” I asked.

“Clearly the shadow of a person,” she said.

“We need to have this digitally enhanced,” Costace said, and his tone of voice said plainly that he thought the photo should have been on the express plane to Washington-or wherever their enhancing gadgets were.

To my surprise, Hocker shook his head, but Linda beat him to the punch. “You can’t enhance a shadow, sir,” she said, and I laughed out loud.

“She’s right on that count,” Hocker added. “You’ve got a shape, and that’s it. That’s all it ever was…a shadow. Nothing to enhance.” He took a deep breath. “All right. There’s a person standing there. And that’s where you went today?” I nodded. “But you already told us that you didn’t find any footprints or anything else beside that building.”

“That’s also true,” I said, and realized that Linda was looking sideways at me, frowning.

“But a few dozen feet uphill, you found a dozen rifle shell casings. Then the next step is pretty simple,” he said, and broke off as the door opened. Sergeant Eddie Mitchell entered the room, closing the door behind himself.

He stepped up to the table, scanned the photos and nodded. “This is what was in the camera?”

“Yep,” I said. “This is the most interesting one.” I indicated the shadow picture, and Mitchell bent over the table until he was a foot away from the photo.

“A person standing by the back corner,” he said. “That’s Finnegan’s property. Did you ask him if that was him? Was he standing there?”

“He says that he was in town when the plane went down.”

“That will be easy enough to check.”

“Set Tom Pasquale on that. He’ll enjoy doing something other than hiking through sand and picking up scrap aluminum,” I said. “And Agent Hocker has some questions for you about Johnny Boyd’s guns.”

Mitchell looked across at Hocker, and in the silence between my remark and the time it took Hocker to realize that Mitchell had said all he planned to without a direct question, Linda Real started scooping up photos.

“I’ll take these back,” she said, but I held up a hand.

“Wait a bit. Don’t be in a hurry.” She started to move away from the table, as if she didn’t really belong in our company. “Relax,” I said. “We may have more questions.”

“Sergeant Mitchell,” Walter Hocker said, “BATF records show that Johnny Boyd purchased a significant number of military-type weapons in the past year or so, including a number of handguns, long guns, and even several fully automatic weapons. You did the Brady check on the handguns?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that a fairly thorough check, Sergeant?”

Mitchell frowned. “It’s as thorough as is necessary to determine that the BATF’s guidelines are being followed.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we check to determine if the person has a record. Any felony convictions. Any convictions for spousal abuse. Any mental illness adjudication. Routine things like that.”

“How long does that normally take?”

Mitchell’s gaze was unblinking. “Are you investigating the way this department does background checks for firearm sales, or is there something specific you need to know?” His tone was calm, almost glacial. He was leaning one hip against the heavy table, his arms relaxed at his sides. Hocker wasn’t ready for Mitchell’s reply and flushed crimson.

“Just answer the goddam question,” he snapped.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Mitchell’s tone was wonderfully civil, about the way a rattlesnake is when it first twitches its tail, unsure if there’s a threat or not.

To his credit, Hocker read the signals right the first time. “How long does the check normally take, Sergeant?”

“The ‘normal’ time for a background investigation varies with the person who is being investigated, sir.”

“And for Boyd?”

“His file hasn’t changed since his first purchase when the Brady policy went into effect. If I had received paperwork a couple of days ago for a handgun purchase by Johnny Boyd, I would have just signed it off. It would have taken a few seconds.”

“That’s it? A few seconds?”

Mitchell nodded. “His file hasn’t changed any since the last time, so there’s no point in wasting time. His or mine.”

“You said if you had received it before the crash. What about now?”

“Well, sir, obviously I would want an ongoing investigation involving the Boyds, however tangential, to be resolved before I took any action.”

“Commendable,” Hocker muttered.

“I’m not sure what it is that you want me to say,” Mitchell said.

Hocker grimaced and glanced at Neil Costace as if to say, “Why didn’t you warn me about these people?”

“What I want is to find out what weapon fired those casings,” Hocker said. “Then I want a match with that bullet fragment. You said that you were working on the fragments?”

“I said he was,” I said quickly. “What did you find out, Eddie?”

“The fragment is too small for any clear measurements. We’re going to need help from these folks on that. It’s beyond any instruments we have here.”

“Any thoughts, though? Any gut feelings?”

“Bob thinks that it’s twenty-two caliber. I think it could be anything up to thirty.”

“But it could be two-twenty-three,” Costace said. “Like the shell casings.”

“It could be, sir. It could also be from a hundred other weapons.”

“If there’s even a trace of the rifling the lab can make a comparison,” Hocker said.

“The problem is that there are a lot of rifles like that in the county,” Mitchell said. “There’s a Mini-14 out in each one of our county units, as a matter of fact. I know that Johnny and his son have at least one. Lots of ranchers do. If you want casings from Boyd’s, I’m sure all you have to do is ask him.”

“We’re going to need a warrant for that,” Costace said.

“Or just go out to his range and pick ’em up. You don’t need a warrant for that. It’s almost within the bounds of the crash site, anyway.”

“Range?”

Mitchell nodded. “He’s got a place where he’s set up a small range. Just a couple of target supports, some silhouettes, things like that.”

“You’ll show us where that is?”

“Yes, sir. It’s not far from the crash site, actually.”

“Could a bullet have gone astray from there, do you think?”

“No. You’ll see why when we get there. It’s deep in a narrow arroyo. In order for a bullet to fly out of there, it’d have to be fired up in the air intentionally.”

“Did Boyd ever tell you why he was buying these guns?”

The deputy shook his head. “He’s not required to have a reason, sir.”

“But you weren’t curious?”

“No, sir. What he spends his money on is his business.”

Hocker grimaced again, and this time, he shot an annoyed look at me, as if it were my fault that my deputies listened to me when I lectured them on procedure. “Well,” he said, “let’s find out why he bought all those guns. Who’s the dealer that he uses? In a town this size, there can’t be too many…and anything he got mail-order has to go through a dealer as well.”

“The dealer for every transaction on that list is George Payton.” Mitchell glanced at the wall clock. “This time on a Sunday afternoon, he’ll be home in front of the television watching wrestling, if you want to talk with him.”

Hocker nodded. “Good. Maybe he can shed some light on the ammunition sales, too. I want to take that casing with me. And then, while we’re at it, let’s run out to Boyd’s private shooting range and pick up some of that brass you were talking about. Maybe we can tie together a whole bunch of loose ends.”

“Estelle and I will be here, ripping the sheriff’s files apart,” I said, and I reached out a hand to make contact with Mitchell’s shoulder. He had been headed toward the door, but stopped in his tracks and fixed his calm blue eyes on me. “When you’re out there, remember Johnny Boyd’s temper, Eddie,” I said. “That’s his property, so tread lightly.” The two FBI agents had already gone out the door, and I nodded after them and added, “And make sure that they do the same. Keep your radio on.”