“It’s something of a fraternity,” I said, feeling ridiculous saying it. I didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count the times I’d grumbled about Martin Holman “playing cop,” even though on an equal number of occasions, I’d been the first to admit that he’d had a hell of a steep learning curve. If I wanted to be fair to him, I could readily admit that he’d earned the awful tribute of a long line of patrol cars, all their lights winking as they idled to the cemetery.
“What would you like, Janice?” I asked. “There is starting to be some evidence that he died doing departmental work. We’re beginning to see several reasons why he wanted to fly over that area.”
“I’ve gathered that already,” she said with acid that surprised me. “And that was something I wanted to mention to you, too. In the press of things, I forgot to tell you that yesterday morning Maxine Boyd called here, trying to get ahold of Martin. He’d gone off somewhere with Philip, and when they returned for lunch, I forgot to tell him about it. About the call.”
“Do you know what she wanted? Did she say?”
“No, and it didn’t sound particularly urgent, either, if you can judge by the sound of someone’s voice over the telephone. I just told her I’d give Martin the message and that he’d call her. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there may have been some reason for him to want to fly over the Boyds’ ranch. Maybe she got ahold of him at the office.”
“That’s apparently what happened. Estelle and I are going out to the Boyd ranch later tonight.”
“You be careful,” she said.
“We always work best at night,” I said lightly. “But listen. Do you want me to call Sheriff Burkhalter for you?”
“Will you?”
“Of course I will. What do you want me to tell him?”
“Well…”
“Janice, you can do whatever pleases you. Don’t worry about what people think.”
“Neither Martin nor I were particularly religious. I guess you know that.”
“Yes.”
“He did tell me once that if anything ever happened to him, he’d like his cremains buried in the family plot with his mother and father.”
“That’s in Iowa, I believe,” I said.
“Drew’s Ferry, Iowa. I guess what I’d like is a quiet family memorial there. The girls said that would be fine with them.”
“All right. Is there any kind of service you want here in Posadas? Martin lived here for a long time…since he was in high school, as I remember. Thirty years or more. In fact, he went to at least one grade here with my oldest daughter. I’m sure there are many folks who would like the opportunity to pay their respects.”
“Something small and private,” Janice Holman said. “Just friends from the community. Maybe at the First Baptist Church. I like Jeremy Hines, the pastor there. No one else. And nothing ‘fraternal.’”
“If that’s the way you want it, it’s fine.”
“I don’t know why this is so important to me,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter why, Janice. It’s your call. You don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. Least of all, to me.”
She paused again and then said in a rush, “No uniforms, please. Can you promise me that?”
“Yes.”
“Will you say a few words?”
“Yes. Of course.” I chuckled. “That might not be the wisest decision you’ve ever made.”
She actually laughed, and the laugh ended in a short, gulping sob. “Bill, Bill, Bill,” she moaned, and then she found her solid self-control again. “Martin would probably have been concerned that you’d offend one of the politicians.”
“I’ll try not to disappoint,” I said.
“Tuesday at ten, then,” she said. “That will be all right with all of you?”
“Of course,” I said. “And I’ll call Sheriff Burkhalter right now, before I forget, or before he makes plans that are difficult to change.”
“Thank you, Bill. And please keep me posted.”
“Count on it. What are your sister’s plans, by the way? Has she decided on anything yet?”
“We’ve just now begun talking about it. She really doesn’t know. She’ll be flying back to Calgary, of course, and I suppose there will be some sort of service there. I just don’t know yet. Neither one of us is very good at this.”
“I don’t think anyone is,” I said, adding silently, “least of all myself.”
“I’ll tell her about the preliminary cause of the crash,” Janice said. “But you’ll remember us if you find out anything else?”
“Sooner rather than later,” I promised.
Leo Burkhalter was puzzled, but finally I could hear the shrug of surrender in his voice.
“Whatever Mrs. Holman wishes,” he said. “You don’t want me to call her?”
“If you want to make a brief call expressing condolences, that’s fine. You might tell her that you talked to me and that whatever she decides is fine with you.”
“Well, it isn’t fine with me, but I suppose I can do that. What I meant was, do you think I could talk her into something appropriate?”
I laughed. “What’s appropriate, Leo, is what Janice Holman wants. Not what you and I think she should want.”
“Did she say why she wouldn’t go for any formal contingent of officers?”
“No. And I didn’t ask. It’s none of my business. Or of yours, either.”
“God, I’d forgotten how grouchy you can get, Bill. All right, that’s the way we’ll play it, then. By the way, is the commission going to appoint you as interim sheriff?”
“I guess. They say that’s what they’re going to do. I told the chairman that I’d fill the spot until November.”
“They didn’t ask Detective Guzman?”
“Nope. They should have, though.”
“Damn right. No offense, but your county government’s got the brains of pissants. And while I’ve got you on the line…you’re listed as a supervisor on an application that we received not long ago, so I don’t see the harm in asking. Tell me about an officer of yours. One of your sergeants. Edward Mitchell.”
“Well, son of a bitch. He applied with you?”
“Uh-huh. He lists June first as a date he’s available.”
“He’s one of our best, Leo. And right now, I can’t spare him. Do me a favor and stall on that application for a while. Are you shorthanded?”
“Aren’t we always? Anyway, he’s my top choice. I got a bunch of applications, but they’re all either misfits, rookies just out of the academy, or halt, lame, and blind. I could use somebody with Mitchell’s experience and training.”
“So could I, Leo. At the rate things are going, we’ll have two people working come fall—me and the dispatcher.”
“You’ll survive. What the hell happens in Posadas, anyway?” Burkhalter said.
“Well, for one thing, the coroner dug a chunk of high-velocity brass out of the gentleman who was flying Holman’s plane. That’s why they went down.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“What, did Holman shoot him? As I remember, you did something like that once, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Nothing like that. The bullet came from the ground.”
“Christ. Just a stray shot, eh?”
“Looks like it.”
“What a goddam waste. Well, if there’s anything I can do to help, you just holler.”
“Stop pirating my best and brightest, for a start.”
Burkhalter laughed. “He’s the one that applied. I didn’t recruit him. Do me a favor and cut him loose as soon as you can, all right?”
I promised all kinds of cooperation I didn’t feel like delivering, and when I hung up, I damn near cracked the plastic of the phone. With a curse, I pushed myself out of the late sheriff’s chair. “This is a really fine week,” I muttered, and yanked open the office door.
The darkroom was down in the basement, a cool fortress full of dust-covered pipes and endless cartons of obsolete documents. Where plaster had fallen away, the walls showed the old, square-cut limestone that formed the foundations.
I rapped on the darkroom door with a knuckle and waited. After three minutes, I was ready to rap again when I heard the door bolt draw back. Estelle looked out around the black-rubber curtain that hung inside the door as extra protection against stray light.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“Linda still has a couple more to print, but let’s take the ones we’ve got,” she said.
“Do they show anything?”
“Well, that depends,” Estelle said, and I followed her back upstairs.
She spread the collection of eight-by-tens on my desk. With two exceptions, they were sharp and clear. “The camera moved on these,” Estelle said, handing me the first two. “From that distance, the focus would be set on infinity. Everything should be clear and sharp, but he couldn’t hold the camera still against the jouncing of the plane. They’re the first two on the roll, so he took them early in the flight and maybe didn’t use a high enough shutter speed. All of the others are clear. Like maybe he made some adjustments when he realized how rough the ride was.”
I picked up another photograph, a composition in muted shades of gray. “So what’s this? It looks like prairie.”
“It is,” Estelle said. “If you look right there, just to the west of the two-track, you’ll see a little area with what looks like livestock.”
“Sure enough. Pictures of cows.”
Estelle grinned and handed me another. “This is an enlargement of just that area, from the two-track west to the cows.”
“I’m surprised at the quality,” I said.
“A good camera and high enough shutter speed to compensate for most of the bouncing around,” Estelle said.
“And those aren’t cows, either.”
“No, sir, they’re not.”
“They’re antelope. See that one?” I pointed at one animal that had twisted its head around, probably at the sound of the airplane. “Nice set of horns, and its white butt stands out clear as can be. But so what? The range is full of them. Maybe Martin had decided to take up hunting and he was casing the place.” I handed the photo back to Estelle. “What else is there?”
“Several shots of open prairie, with a fence running east-west. The fence is so clear you can almost see the barbs on the wire.”
“And the range is full of fences, too.” I turned the photo this way and that. “And that looks like sheep fencing. There’s a grid pattern. Maybe it’s just the light.”
“And finally this photo, taken looking west. There’s some glare from the side window.”
“That’s the Boyd place?”
“Yes, sir. I think so.”
I sat down, still holding the last picture. I looked at Estelle. “Huh,” I said. I wagged the photo at her. “This is what we’ve got. Maxine Boyd tried to reach Martin yesterday morning at home. He was out, and Janice offered to take a message. Mrs. Boyd apparently didn’t think it was important enough, or she didn’t want to tell a third party. She called Martin’s office sometime later and did talk with the sheriff.”
Estelle nodded and slid the photos into a bundle. “And the sheriff tried to contact Doug Posey, of Fish and Game. He wasn’t successful, but Posey later returned the call.”
“And then Martin talked his brother-in-law into going for an airplane ride,” I said. “All of the other photos just show prairie? You got fences and antelope, probably cattle, too. No other features?”
Estelle separated one photo from the pack. “This one has a windmill, fences, cattle, and trees.” She handed it to me. The windmill’s shadow was stark against the soft background.
“Did Linda do a blowup of this?”
“She’s going to,” Estelle said.
“The windmill’s not in operation,” I said and pointed. “See how its rudder is turned over to the side? And it looks like the tank is dry.” I squinted and tried to pick out detail. “The cattle really stomp the ground to nothing around those water holes, don’t they?” I said. “And what’s this?” I pointed at a dark outline, partially obscured by a rock outcropping north of the windmill.
“It looks like the remains of an old building,” Estelle said. “Linda was going to try for an enlargement of that and the windmill area.”
“And then these pointless pictures of prairie. Open land and fences. That’s all that’s here.” I leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. “Martin, what the hell were you up to?”
Estelle Reyes-Guzman tricked me into a few hours of fitful rest. As an enthusiastic insomniac, regular sleep had eluded me for years. Over time, I’d stopped fighting the fashion that said sixteen hours awake followed by eight hours unconscious was the norm. And I didn’t do those nifty little “wolf naps” of fifteen to thirty minutes that some folks use to recharge their batteries. Instead, I tended to plod along, working as best I could until I fell flat on my face from complete exhaustion. It was a system that seemed to work for me.
Unfortunately for others around me, I often made the mistake of thinking they wanted to partake of the same schedule.
When I suggested again that we drive up and talk to Johnny and Maxine Boyd, Estelle looked at her watch, an uncharacteristic hesitation that prompted me to look at mine.
“We’d be up there at about nine-thirty,” I said, and Estelle grimaced.
“I need to go home for a few minutes, sir. We were up all last night and I haven’t seen
los niños
since yesterday. They’re going to forget I’m their mother. And if she doesn’t get some time off, Erma is apt to go insane.”
She grinned. “And much as she adores them, I don’t think Mama would last long with those two all by herself.”
“Let me holler at Linda, too,” I said. “She’s got to be dead on her feet.” I followed Estelle out of Martin Holman’s office. Ernie Wheeler was still working dispatch, and he was leaning forward, his fingers poised over the mike’s transmit bar.
“Posadas, three-oh-seven.” Eddie Mitchell’s voice was quiet and crisp.
Ernie tapped the bar. “Three-oh-seven, be advised that one-eight-niner Baker Mike Nora is registered to Patrick Salazar, Three-twenty East Bustos, Posadas. No wants or warrants.”
“I knew that,” Mitchell muttered, a rare departure for him from standard airwave protocol. “Three-oh-seven is ten-eight.”