Out of Season (11 page)
“Maybe we could blow up each negative, a little at a time. You’ve got a pretty good enlarger in the darkroom,” Linda Real said.
“Why don’t you do that,” I said. “That film is evidence, so make sure it stays in the department’s possession at all times. It doesn’t leave the building for any reason, and it doesn’t leave your possession unless it’s locked in the evidence locker.” I reached out a hand and took Linda’s in mine. It was tiny—and clammy with excitement. “Which means that as of now, your soul is ours, my dear. Welcome aboard.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You may regret it, but for now, you’re welcome. And I want to be able to see every grass blade by midnight.”
“I can do that.”
“I know you can. And while you’re waiting on the chemicals, cruise through a catalog and find a new drier.”
She grinned, gathered up the prints and folder, and shot out the door.
“And now,” I said, “let’s see if we can find out what Martin Holman was up to.”
No one had been in Martin Holman’s office since he’d left it sometime after three o’clock the day before. I didn’t know that for a fact, of course—it was just the immediate feeling I got when I opened the door and stepped inside.
I felt as if I were intruding. I stopped and took a deep breath, then felt Estelle’s hand on my shoulder.
“It’s always easier if it’s a stranger, isn’t it?” she said. She reached over and turned on the lights.
I grunted and shut the door. “I wish to hell I knew what to look for.” I walked across to Holman’s desk. He could have stacked a few more papers on it, but it would have been a trick.
“Maybe one thing we have going for us is the sheriff himself,” Estelle said, and I glanced across the desk at her. She had walked around and was standing by the empty chair.
“Meaning what?”
“Well, as far as I know, Martin Holman didn’t work on cases by himself. I don’t recall him ever mentioning a case to me where he had initiated the file. He routinely turned things over to deputies when he got calls personally.”
“True. Half the time he didn’t know what to do, anyway.” I waved a hand. “Yeah, I know, that’s unkind. But it’s true. It seems to me that a good place to start is to inventory every scrap of paper on this desk…his telephone logs, whatever is on that thing.” I nodded at the computer. Toasters were floating across the screen, patiently waiting for their owner to return.
Estelle tapped a key, and the toasters disappeared, replaced by a page of finances. She leaned close and read for a few seconds. “This is that federal grant he was working on to hire two full-time civilian employees.”
I scanned the desk. “An orderly avalanche,” I mused. I settled on three initial piles. The first included routine county documents like budget transfers, time sheets, and purchase orders, along with the myriad catalogs that vendors liked to send to law-enforcement agencies. One was for photography equipment, and I tossed it to one side on the remote chance that I would remember to give it to Linda Real.
In a second pile, I put the small messages that Holman routinely scribbled to himself. He had been an avid fan of Post-it notes. The little yellow things were ubiquitous throughout the county building.
A third pile was reserved for documents and papers that weren’t immediately obvious in nature—and there weren’t many of those.
I sat down in Holman’s chair and pulled myself close to the desk. Estelle still leaned over the computer, cruising down through the various file names. I picked up one of the pink “While You Were Out” slips.
“He had a call from Doug Posey at one-thirty.” I peered at the slip. “Apparently Marty was still out to lunch. Gayle has checked here that Posey was returning a call.” I put that slip down by my elbow. “Are you aware of any complaints we’ve had that might include the Department of Fish and Game?” Posey didn’t spend much time in Posadas. The village—even the county—wasn’t the center of a sportsman’s paradise, and the state critter cops had more productive hunting grounds elsewhere.
“The last time I can recall was when Posey asked our department for backup when he was busting those Mexican big shots who were hunting turkey down by Regal Springs. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been other activity.”
I picked up another slip of paper, also with Gayle Sedillos’ writing. “And a note to call Sam Carter,” I said. “Politics, politics.” I paused, resting my forearms on the desk. “You know what’s wrong with all this, don’t you?” I shuffled the remaining slips and laid them out on the desk like playing cards, and my eyebrows furrowed. I picked up a slip dated the previous day and read the message again.
I almost didn’t hear Estelle say, in response to my question, “We’re assuming there might be some connection between the incident that brought the plane down and the reason they were flying out there in the first place.”
I laid the slip down on top of the others. “And what if there isn’t? And the odds are all in that favor, by the way.”
“I don’t think there is any connection, sir.” She straightened up and regarded the index on the computer screen. “But this is what bothers me. There are a limited number of people who live anywhere near that quadrant of the county. The shot must have been fired in fair proximity to the crash sight. As Francis said, Philip Camp couldn’t have lived long with his heart pumping blood through a two-inch tear in his aorta. And there is no evidence that suggests that Sheriff Holman was able to grab the control yoke and do anything with it. He certainly didn’t swing it over to his side.”
“What a terrifying ride downhill that must have been,” I muttered.
Estelle walked around the desk and approached the big map of Posadas County that was framed on the wall. She placed her hand over the area north of Cat Mesa. “Charlotte Finnegan said that the plane was flying a repeating pattern in this area.” She traced with her index finger eastward along the back of the mesa to the blue line that indicated County Road 43, running north-south. “First this way, then circling north to within easy sight of the Finnegans’ place, then back to the west again…toward the Boyds’ place.” She put her hands on her hips and turned to look at me.
“Those are the only two ranches in that immediate area, sir. There’re federal lands scattered about, and some state sections. And then there’s Newton, that little settlement just out of the county, about eight miles north of the Boyds’. Maybe four or five houses there, at the most.” She turned and put one finger on the map over Finnegan’s ranch and another finger over Boyds’.
“Those two places mark the north boundary, on the east and west ends, of the pattern that Charlotte said the plane was flying.”
“And to the south is just the back side of the mesa,” I said. “That’s Forest Service land.”
“And so far, they haven’t found any sign of campers up there, or kids from town, or anything else. There’s a family right about here”—she tapped the map—“around by Parson’s Bench, cutting on a commercial firewood plot. Last night I asked Dale Kenyon and his staff to cover that area in case someone might have seen the plane go down. Dale says the folks cutting wood were the only ones up there as far as he knows. They didn’t remember seeing anything.”
“And if they were listening to a chain saw, they wouldn’t have heard anything,” I said.
Estelle frowned, regarding the wall map for a long minute. Her lower lip was pooched out in an expression that she must have learned from her two kids. “You know what bothers me?”
I grinned. “You’d be surprised if I said ‘yes,’ wouldn’t you?”
She shot a quick glance at me, and the right eyebrow went up. “What?”
I shook my head. “I was just sitting here thinking that if Charlotte Finnegan actually did hear what she said she heard—and that might be open to question, too—then the gunshots had to come from somewhere west or southwest of where she was standing. If what she calls backfiring was actually gunshots, that is. The wind was kicking hard and the sound wouldn’t carry against it much. I don’t know the physics of it, but it seems to me that wind noise would cancel a lot. The gunshots, if that’s what they were, couldn’t have been too far away.”
“Exactly,” Estelle said, and she turned back to the map. “If Charlotte heard them while she was standing here, then it makes sense that they came from somewhere over this way.” She drew her hand westward, stopping with her palm over the Boyd ranch.
“I talked to Johnny Boyd,” I said. “We spent most of the night and day together. He said he didn’t hear a thing.” I reached out and picked up the telephone message that had stopped me in my tracks. I held it out to Estelle. “Take a look,” I said, “and then let’s talk about coincidences.”
Estelle crossed quickly to the desk and took the slip.
“Maxine Boyd,” she said.
“Logged in at ten forty-six yesterday,” I said. I leaned back and clasped my hands behind my head. “Now we know what the odds are. The odds say that Martin Holman had a reason for what he was up to. It wasn’t just a joyride.”
“Well, sure he had a reason,” Estelle said, puzzled.
“No, not ‘sure,’ sweetheart. Martin had more than a few faults, like most of us do. One of those faults was that he occasionally got the bee in his bonnet that he was a cop. I’m sure you’ll remember that on more than one occasion, we all had cause to be nervous. The worst moments were when Martin took it upon himself to check out a patrol car and go public.” I smiled without much humor.
“You think he was acting on impulse?”
I shrugged. “It’s happened before. It’s a very human frailty.” I reached out and took the note from Estelle. “Let’s see if Linda has found anything and then look into this.” I opened the door and damn near collided with Ernie Wheeler.
“Sir,” he said, “Mrs. Holman’s on line two for you. She sounds pretty upset.”
When I picked up the telephone, Janice Holman was in the middle of an argument with someone else, and she wasn’t doing much of a job covering the receiver.
“I’ll do what he says I should do, and that’s it,” she said, and the vehemence of it surprised me. “I just don’t care. I really don’t. And neither should you.”
Uncomfortable with eavesdropping, I said, “Janice? This is Bill Gastner.”
“Oh, God, I’m glad I was able to find you,” Janice Holman said. “Hang on just a minute, can you? I need to find a private nook somewhere.” Her tone held an even blending of desperation and the old Janice Holman sense of humor.
Estelle mouthed something and made camera motions with her hands. “I’ll be in the darkroom with Linda,” she said, and I waved at her.
“I’ll be there directly,” I said.
I heard more voices, a couple of them shriller than they probably needed to be, and then the thud of a door.
“You still there?” Janice asked.
“I’m still here. How are you holding up?”
“It’s a nightmare, it really is,” she said, then paused for a moment, and I didn’t rush her. “I don’t know how we’re going to manage, Bill. I really don’t.”
“And I’m afraid I’m not going to make it any easier for you,” I said.
“Oh, there’s nothing you can do, Bill. There really isn’t. Just be a friend, that’s all.”
“That I’ll be, Janice. But there’s some unsettling news.”
The phone went silent, and then she said, “I don’t see how I can be unsettled any more than I already am.” She came close to a chuckle.
“Janice, Philip Camp was hit by a bullet fired from the ground.”
“He
what?
”
I took a deep breath and repeated myself. “It’s beginning to look like a single bullet struck the underside of the airplane. A fragment struck Philip and he died almost instantly.”
“My God…” Her voice trailed off.
“I haven’t called you because I wanted to come over and tell you in person.”
“I called you, didn’t I?” Janice sighed. “But I guess both Vivian and I needed to know. I appreciate knowing, Bill. I know it’s hard for you, too.”
“Most likely it was an accident of some kind. A careless shot by a hunter. There was nothing wrong with the aircraft, and no pilot error evident at this point. Nothing your brother-in-law did that caused the crash.”
“My God,” she said again. “Hit by a bullet…”
“He would have remained conscious for only a few seconds,” I said, wishing I could say the same for Martin’s final, desperate moments.
“Poor Martin,” Janice murmured.
“When we know more, I’ll be by. In the meantime, is there anything I can do to make it any easier?”
Her sigh was loud and heartfelt. “Do you know Leo Burkhalter?”
“Of course I know Leo,” I said. “He’s president of the New Mexico Sheriffs’ Association this year.”
“Well, he called not long ago. I think there’s something about the English language he has difficulty with, Bill.”
“How so?” Leo Burkhalter was sheriff of a county that actually included a couple of cities and a population that was both large and diverse enough to create some interesting crimes. He’d won his share of awards and had worked his way up through the ranks for twenty years before being elected sheriff.
There was another pause. “God, this is so hard to say,” Janice Holman said, her voice small.
“Take your time, sweetheart.”
“He called to tell me that he was taking care of all of the arrangements. For…”
She hesitated, and I said quietly, “For Martin’s funeral, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that should be a load off your mind.”
“Bill,” she said, and this time there was some steel in her tone. “I do not want some big, lavish, garish affair with a string of police cars ten blocks long and a bunch of young men all grim-faced with little black ribbons over their badges, and then someone, and it’ll probably have to be you, handing me a folded flag.”
I murmured something noncommittal. Janice had pegged it just about right. I hadn’t thought about the service yet; in fact, I might have been justly accused of avoiding the issue. A bunch of sleepless hours might have been an excuse, but the truth was that I didn’t do funerals well, especially those where I might be required to say something intelligent and heartfelt.