Out of Season

CHAPTER SIX

The sun cracked over the prairie to the east of us, cutting hard shadows across the scrub, arroyos, and rocks.

To the south, a herd of cattle had gathered, thinking in their own dull way that all the vehicular traffic during the night had been for their benefit, bringing in feed.

The livestock belonged to Johnny Boyd, and it was one more complication Boyd didn’t need just then. Like everyone else, he was gaunt-faced and tired. He’d done more than his share during the night, moving with the rest of us as, like dark ghosts, we searched through the crash site, lights flicking this way and that.

Even his wife had returned half a dozen times with coffee, food, flashlight batteries. She had stayed near the truck each time, not wanting to venture out into the darkness. She knew what we were doing, and the last thing she wanted was to catch a glimpse of the contents of one of the black-plastic bags from the medical examiner’s office.

I saw the cattle before Boyd did. He, Bob Torrez, and Donnie Smith were working carefully near the first point of impact a hundred yards to the east, getting ready to sweep their way along the strike path again now that the sun was far enough over the horizon to provide some definition for objects on the ground.

Watching my step on the rough terrain, I approached Boyd. A cigarette dangled from his mouth and he occasionally coughed short, choppy little spasms. He looked up and saw me.

“Those yours?” I asked and gestured toward the cattle.

“Sure enough,” Boyd said and sighed. “This part of the prairie normally belongs to them.” He grinned wryly and removed the cigarette.

“Are they going to move in closer? I’d hate to have them in here.”

He coughed again. “Nah. I’ll keep an eye on ’em. As soon as my brother and his boy get back, I’ll have ’em drive ’em over beyond the windmill. There’s a section fence there. We’ll put ’em behind that.” He stretched and put both hands on the small of his back.

“What happens now, you reckon?” he asked.

The smoke from his cigarette wafted past my nose. It smelled good. I hesitated, and even considered bumming one.

“The remains will go to the medical examiner,” I said. “We’ll get a preliminary report back in just a few hours. The details will take several days. Maybe a week. Maybe longer.” I looked at Boyd. “Bob Torrez tells me you never heard the plane.”

Boyd shrugged helplessly. “Never heard a damn thing.”

I turned my back to the sun and looked across the swath cut by the wreckage. In each spot where a fragment of human being had been recovered, a small orange flag had been stabbed into the ground. Somewhere there was an expert who could tell me exactly what had happened-someone who could look at the trashed aluminum, steel, and plastic and tell me why the Bonanza had exploded itself and two occupants into fragments.

“The feds will be out later today. They’ll pick through this bit by bit. It’ll take time to reconstruct what happened, that’s for sure.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Johnny Boyd said. “I meant what happens with your department. Something like this throws a wrench in it, don’t it?”

“I hadn’t even thought about that,” I said. “But I guess it will.”

“Old Holman’s been sheriff for quite some time now, hasn’t he?”

“Going on his ninth year,” I said. “And I don’t know what we’re going to do. I suppose the county legislators will appoint someone until they get around to holding a special election.”

“Hell of a note.”

“Yes, it is.”

“He leave much of a family behind?”

“Wife and two daughters. Both of the kids are in college.”

“Hell of a note. Makes a man wonder sometimes. Here you are, goin’ along just fine, thinkin’ the sun’s going to come up tomorrow like it always has.” He lit another cigarette from the butt of the first, then fragmented the butt between his thumb and index finger. “And then it don’t.”

I grunted something that Johnny Boyd could construe as agreement and let it go at that. Behind us, the sun was a full ball above the horizon, too bright to look at. And Martin Holman was pieces, flung through the rocks and cactus. For no constructive reason, the image of the Post-it note on Linda Real’s application came to mind.

When Martin Holman had written that note, he’d been forty-three years old, happily married, well-thought-of in the community, and facing what he most loathed-making decisions that might create hard feelings within his department or within the community-or worse yet, create headlines in the Posadas Register. Sheriff Holman’s decisions had involved personnel-some major realignments before summer’s end.

Estelle Reyes-Guzman had announced several months earlier that she and her husband were moving to Minnesota-to a wonderful opportunity for Dr. Guzman and a major loss for us. Estelle carried the title “Chief of Detectives,” but that was laughable. She was the only detective, the only person working in plainclothes except for the sheriff and myself.

Sergeant Robert Torrez was marrying our head dispatcher, Gayle Sedillos, and who knew what their future plans were. We all had expected them to live in Posadas until they were old and gray-but that was wishful thinking, and we knew it.

On top of that, September first was approaching-the date I’d set as my official retirement. I’d been undersheriff for the better part of twenty years, but my leaving was the least of Martin Holman’s problems. The department had three sergeants-Eddie Mitchell, Howard Bishop, and Robert Torrez. Any one of them could fill the position in a heartbeat, and any of the three could accomplish more in their sleep than I did in a day’s work.

I was sure that Linda Real didn’t consider herself a problem, but her application was in my folder, awaiting action. And Martin Holman’s Post-it note was still lying on my desk blotter back at the office-perhaps the last thing he ever wrote before deciding to take an air tour of Posadas.

“Hell of a mess,” I said, and patted Johnny Boyd on the shoulder. I walked back toward one of the department vehicles, deep in thought. If Martin Holman had wanted an air tour of his county, he could have asked Jim Bergin any day. He could have picked a nice, cool morning, when the air was silk.

I reached the Bronco and saw Tom Pasquale sitting on the back, the tailgate down and the spare tire swung wide, out of the way. His shoulders slumped, and he started to get up when he saw me. I waved a hand and shook my head. “Relax, son. There’s coffee over in Boyd’s truck, if you want it.”

“No, sir,” he said quickly. “Coffee and I don’t agree.” He wiped his mouth and looked off into the distance.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, sir.” The light wasn’t really good yet and I couldn’t see the expression in his eyes. But I knew that if Tom Pasquale had been “all right,” he’d have been in motion, his natural state of affairs. “I guess I need to hook a ride back to the office before too long and do something about my unit, sir.”

“Your unit?”

“The other Bronco. It’s still out in the arroyo.”

I chuckled and leaned against the vehicle. “That’s the least of our problems, that’s for sure. Forget it. I’ll have one of the county wreckers go out and haul its sorry carcass out of the sand. Don’t worry about it.”

Tom Pasquale nodded, relieved that he didn’t have to move just then. Another pair of vehicles had arrived, sending up dust plumes from the new road that had been cut across the Boyd property. Most of our department was accounted for. Estelle was back at the office, and if someone robbed a bank, she and Gayle Sedillos would have to handle it, with Linda Real lending some unofficial help.

“Do you know what he was doing out here?” Pasquale asked. He pushed himself to his feet. He was a head taller than I am, forty years younger, and he outweighted me by forty pounds. As bad as he felt just then, I could see he was hungry for answers, and that was a good sign.

“No idea, Thomas.”

“I don’t understand why he and his brother-in-law would be flying over this place, anyway. There’s nothing here.”

“Just sightseeing, maybe.”

Pasquale shook his head in disbelief. “What’s there to see? The sheriff hated to fly almost as much as you do.”

I looked at him sharply. “How do you know that?”

He ducked his head. “Well, that’s what everybody always says. If he wanted to tour, I can’t imagine him choosing to do it in the weather we had yesterday.”

“So what else comes to mind, son?”

“His brother-in-law just got done flying all the way down here from Canada. And Sergeant Mitchell said that Camp had been flying planes for twenty-five years. I can’t imagine he’d be so eager to jump in a plane and tour Posadas County just before dinner. He’d be tired. The weather was bad.” He shook his head doggedly. “It just doesn’t make sense, is all.”

“So Camp was a veteran pilot?”

“Sergeant Mitchell said the two wives were talking about that. That’s why they couldn’t believe that anything bad could have happened.”

“Well,” I said, “something did happen. It’s that simple.”

Pasquale nodded and looked off toward the horizon. He took a deep breath and hitched up his Sam Brown belt. “Sir, when the feds get here, may I ask to be assigned to them?”

“I’ll mention it to Sergeant Torrez, Tom.”

He turned and looked at me. “I screwed up a lot over the years, and it was Sheriff Holman who finally gave me a chance and hired me on. I’d like to be a part of finding out what happened out here.”

“I’ll talk with Torrez,” I repeated, and didn’t bother mentioning that the single biggest roadblock to Pasquale’s hiring had been myself. When the kid finally had proved to us that he had a head on his shoulders, I’d approved his application.

Sheriff Martin Holman had been willing to give Tom Pasquale a chance; he’d sounded willing to do the same for Linda Real. He’d had good reasons for both, I was sure, since no man that I knew hated the thought of making an incorrect decision more than Marty Holman.

There were dozens of reasons that should have kept Martin Holman from sliding into that Bonanza on that choppy, blustery afternoon at Posadas Municipal Airport. Tom Pasquale was right. We needed to know the one compelling reason that had pushed Martin Holman and his brother-in-law into the air.