Out of Season

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

By the time we reached the next gate, we had ghosted our way through three more herds of antelope-and one small group of thin, uninterested cattle. This time Torrez didn’t stop at the gate, but swung to the right, driving along the fence line, the hummocks of close-cropped bunchgrass jarring his vehicle this way and that.

We followed. I noticed that whoever had strung the fence had done a workmanlike job. The four barbed-wire strands were tight and uniform, and the sheep fencing was taut and smooth, its top wire laced to the barbed-wire strand behind it.

“He knows where he’s going?” Costace asked as we jounced over a hummock of rotting vegetation that had once been a yucca. The flower’s hard stalk cracked under our tires.

“I certainly hope so,” I replied.

Costace grunted something that told me he wasn’t too happy with my answer. “If he’s been out here before, didn’t he see the wire?”

“You’d have to ask him,” I said. “I’m not sure he’s actually been in this particular spot.”

“He said he knew where the corner was.”

I laughed. “I think he looked at the map, Neil. Sergeant Torrez is one of those rare people for whom a topographical map holds no mysteries. And in this part of the country, most fences follow section lines-or at some point, connect to them. It’s all very logical, most of the time.”

“I know all that. And in ten minutes-no, make that two-I’d be so goddam lost I’d have to sit and wait for the sun to come up to figure out east from anything else.” We jounced over another hummock and Costace added, “You people have forgotten what the hell headlights are for.”

“They make you go blind before your time,” I said, then held up a hand that Costace probably couldn’t see anyway. “Hold it.”

Torrez had stopped, and I could make out the looming structure that blocked his path. He walked quickly back to us and leaned down. “This is it.”

I picked up the radio. “Three-oh-three on channel three.”

Silence followed. “Three-oh-seven, do you copy?” When Mitchell didn’t answer, I dropped the handheld on the seat. “Out of range. Robert, give them a try from your unit on the main frequency. I want to know where they are.”

The blast of light when we opened the doors made me flinch. As I got out of the Suburban, I took along my heavy flashlight and the folder that included the photo of the fence corner.

“Mitchell says that he’s just on the outskirts of town. Boyd stopped at the American Legion Hall on Pershing. Pasquale is parked behind the hospital down the street, with a clear view of his truck. Boyd’s been inside now for about three minutes.”

“Good. Let’s see what we’ve got here.” The walking was mercifully easy. The ground had been beaten flat over time by the countless hooves of cattle. The windmill tower loomed in front of us, rising thirty feet above the abandoned well.

“This didn’t show in the photo,” Costace said.

“Nope.” I held the folder against my leg and fished out the print. “If we’re in the right spot, this tower is just out of the picture-by no more than a dozen or so feet.” I handed the photo to Costace and stepped away, flashing my light up the tower. The mechanical head of the mill had been removed, as had the steel stock tank at the bottom, and the sucker rods that would have hung down in the middle. Only the old weather-scarred wood of the tower remained.

The ground was slightly dished on the north side of the tower, where the tank probably had been at one time, and where Boyd said Finnegan had thought briefly about digging a dirt tank. I swept the light in an arc. “Nothing,” I muttered. The beam reached out to the corner of the fence, and sure enough, another fence took off to the north, this one a four-strand barbed-wire line without the sheep fencing.

I walked over to it, fifty yards of dusty, hoof-rumpled dirt. At each step, the aroma of prairie sod and old manure wafted up. Costace followed, sweeping his flashlight this way and that.

“So we’ve got a three-way corner here,” he said, and put a hand on top of one of the steel posts, rocking it. “So what?”

“This is the northwest corner of the antelope enclosure,” Torrez said. “That’s what it looks like to me.”

I turned the flashlight on the eight-by-ten photo. “And this is the corner in the picture. Holman didn’t catch the windmill tower in it. Maybe he intended to, maybe he didn’t.” I slapped the print against my thigh in frustration. “Goddam it, why the hell didn’t he tell us what the hell he was doing?”

“The sheriff, you mean?” Costace asked.

“Yes, the sheriff. It’s almost like he was trying to make this big coup…lay all the pieces out in front of us when he had it all figured out. Do it all by himself.”

“That may have been exactly what he was doing,” Costace said gently. “Ego’s a wonderful thing,” he added. “Reyes-Guzman is leaving. You said that Sergeant Mitchell has a standing job offer. This guy here”-he reached out and touched Bob Torrez on the elbow-“is getting himself married off, or so I’m told, and who the hell knows where he’ll end up? And you’re rumored to be retiring. You think it’s unusual that Martin Holman felt just a little bit pressured, Bill? What was the last major case he worked by himself? Or even led the way?”

“None,” I said.

“Well, there you are, then. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a psychiatrist to figure out Martin Holman’s motivation. The brainstorm hit him that he could get aerial photos-and that’s a pretty good idea in itself. The chance came up when his brother-in-law arrived for a visit. Martin just ran out of luck.”

“All this goddam tragedy for a handful of goddam mangy antelope,” I said. “Somebody told him that there were impounded antelope somewhere around here. He could have just asked where the antelope were and then driven out to the Finnegans and asked, ‘Are you impounding wildlife on your property?’ If the man said no, then he could have driven out here with Bob Torrez or any of the other deputies and taken a million photos from the ground and-

Costace interrupted my diatribe with a wave of his flashlight. “Bill…that’s what you would have done. And in retrospect, that’s what Holman should have done, or just turned the complaint over to the Game and Fish folks-and there’s some evidence that he might have been trying to do that. But the opportunity came along to fly over the site. That’s not so unreasonable. I don’t guess he thought about the possibility of being shot down.”

“There’s still a problem,” Torrez said calmly. “The antelope are over in this area. The aircraft was two miles north of here when it was hit.”

I shrugged. “There are a couple of ways to explain that,” I said. The cellular phone in the Bronco rang shrilly before I had a chance to proffer even one explanation. It continued to ring while Bob Torrez jogged the considerable distance back to the truck.

“Whoever fired the shot could have watched the plane making passes and just gotten nervous. When it passed overhead, he let fly.”

“He, meaning Richard Finnegan,” Neil Costace said.

“Odds are good,” I replied.

“Sir!” Torrez shouted from the vehicle, and I turned. He waved his flashlight urgently. By the time I reached the Bronco, Torrez had already turned the unit around and was waiting with his foot on the brake pedal, passenger door open.

My first thought as I approached the truck was, “What the hell has Pasquale done now?”

“They’ve got a man down at the Pierpoint,” Torrez said as I slid into the seat. He pulled the Bronco into gear, and Neil Costace just managed to sidestep the door.

“Now what the hell-” I started to say.

“Richard Finnegan got himself stabbed,” Torrez barked, and Neil Costace turned with an oath and sprinted toward his own vehicle. “Follow us on down.”

I yanked my shoulder harness around me and snapped the buckle, pulling the belt very, very tight. The Pierpoint Bar and Grill was in downtown Posadas, twenty winding miles away.

In a handful of half-airborne seconds, we reached the gate and Torrez slid the Bronco to a stop, leaping out the door before I could even find my seatbelt buckle. He tore open the gate, sprinted back to the truck and we shot through, leaving the range etiquette of gate closure to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.