“Looks like a two-twenty-three,” I said, and she nodded. She turned her back to the wind and held the casing to her nose for several seconds. “Recent?” I asked, and she grimaced, then shrugged.
“It’s hard to tell,” she said quietly.
“One of yours?” I asked Finnegan, and he looked at me with surprise.
“No,” he said. “Last coyote I shot was over by the springs. And I sure as hell don’t use one of those little things. That looks like something from one of those military jobs.”
Estelle turned the casing this way and that, frowning at it, no doubt wishing it could talk. “It’s clean,” she said, “so it’s been here since the last rain.”
Finnegan laughed. “And that’s been a while, young lady.” Estelle only grinned.
“You want a bag?” I asked, but she was far ahead of me. She produced a plastic evidence bag from her back pocket, slipped the casing inside and marked the tag. Richard Finnegan watched her with interest. She jotted a note to herself on the bag’s tag, then looked up at me. “I think it’s important that we grid this area, sir. I want to mark where each casing fell. If the rifle was an autoloader, it will make a difference where the casings were ejected.”
“Assuming there are others,” I said, and surveyed the ground.
“There’s one by your left foot, sir,” Estelle said, “and another two behind Mr. Finnegan.”
Finnegan jerked like he’d been goosed. He cranked around at the waist to look at the ground without moving his feet. He pointed and chuckled. “By God, sure enough. And there’s another one over there.” He pointed at a spot not three feet from my right foot, a spot obscured from Estelle’s view by a large chunk of limestone. “What I’d give for a set of eyes like she’s got,” he said.
“Amen,” I said, and then to Estelle, I added, “I’ll go get my briefcase.”
By the time we had finished, we had a collection of twelve .223 shell casings and a remarkably neat rendition on graph paper that marked where each had fallen and the distance between them. The pattern they formed on the ground was roughly fan-shaped.
I eyed the paper critically. “If a person stood in one place and fired all twelve rounds, then we would expect them to all group fairly close.” Estelle was busy packing her camera after shooting an entire roll from every imaginable angle. “And if we draw a line that is roughly of the same length to each casing, then the point of origin is somewhere around here,” I said, indicating a spot just off to my left. I held up my left hand and made throwing motions away from it with my right, trying to visualize the casings being spewed out of the rifle’s ejection port.
“It’s possible, sir,” Estelle said in that exasperatingly noncommittal tone that I had come to know so well.
Finnegan put his hands on his hips and regarded me. “So, you’re sayin’ that airplane was shot at? Actually shot down? Or what?”
“We’re not sure yet, Richard,” I said, and Finnegan wasn’t so quick to accept my fabrication.
“What, you can’t find holes in the airplane? If you ain’t got holes, then you wouldn’t know about its being shot at, now would you?”
I took a deep breath. “Yeah. We’ve got holes,” I said. “At least one round struck the pilot and killed him. They went down so fast that the passenger—Sheriff Holman—didn’t have time to react and try to save himself.”
Finnegan just stared at me, and I stared back. Finally he dug out another cigarette and lit it. “Well, Jesus,” he said. “Who’d do a thing like that?”
“Interesting question,” I said. I hefted the bag with the twelve brass casings. “Maybe this will get us a little closer. And maybe not.”
Despite our best search efforts, the side of the mesa produced nothing else of interest—no identifiable marks, no more casings, no handy piece of torn fabric, no lost wallet full of identification papers.
I realized the day was catching up with me, and I wasn’t so eager to trek back up the mesa. Estelle didn’t mention the need again, so we worked our way back down to the vehicles. On the way, she took several more photos of the block house and the area around it, particularly of the spot where we thought someone had been standing.
But the rough walls produced no convenient threads of fabric, and there were no readable footprints that I could see. Maybe Estelle had her own theories, since she expended a fair-sized film budget taking portraits of the ground, especially east of the structure.
One of Finnegan’s blue heelers greeted us with rapid-fire yapping as we approached the trucks, but it didn’t jump out of the back. The rancher’s rig wasn’t for show, that was for sure. The truck itself was battered and dented, the sort of scrubbing I could imagine it received every time Finnegan pulled to a stop and the livestock mobbed around, looking for the feed.
The ATV in the back, once bright red and ready to charge out of a television commercial, was equally battered and bent. It was crowded between various boxes of pipe fittings, oil cans, and other bits and pieces.
I put a foot on the back bumper and regarded the dog, which strained to the end of its light chain, bicolored eyes eager to figure out who I was.
“That’s your rifle, I assume,” I said, indicating the bolt-action inside the truck. It hung upside down from the window rack.
“Yep,” Finnegan said. The rifle was as battered as everything else.
“May I see it?”
“Sure.” He reached inside the Ford and slipped the rifle off the rack. I took it, surprised at its weight. The scope was worn but expensive, just like the rifle.
“I’d hate to lug this during a day of deer-hunting,” I said.
He grunted. “So would I. Most of the time, it rides right there, in the truck.”
I opened the bolt just far enough to see the extractors draw the long, brass body of the cartridge partway out of the chamber.
“Two-sixty-four Winchester mag,” Finnegan said.
“Antitank,” I grinned, and out of habit, I closed the bolt while I held the trigger back, uncocking the rifle. I handed it back to him.
“Nah,” he said and turned back toward the truck. With just a flick of his wrist, he pulled the bolt handle up and then thrust it down again, cocking the weapon. He hung the rifle back in the rack. “But it’s hell on coyotes. I busted one last week at almost five hundred yards.” He clapped his hands together. “Never knew what hit him.”
“I can imagine,” I said. I glanced around and saw that Estelle was standing at the opposite side of the pickup, putting her camera back in the bag.
“Well, you need anything else, you just let me know,” Finnegan said.
“Expect some traffic the next few days,” I said. “Other than that, I don’t know what to tell you.”
He nodded and hoisted himself into his pickup. The diesel started instantly, and he pulled away with a final lift of his hand in salute. The dog dashed back and forth on top of the toolbox, excited to be going back to work.
“So, what do you think?” I asked Estelle. She started the Bronco and levered it into gear.
“I want to see what Linda was able to piece together,” she said. “And then we need to finish what we started earlier. We need to sort through Martin Holman’s files. There’re pieces missing, sir.”
“Many, many,” I agreed, and braced myself for the first cattle guard. “And I’d be interested to find out what our friends from the FBI spent their time doing. If anything.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ve been busy,” Estelle said, and the tone of her voice brought my head around.
“We’re not in competition here,” I said.
“Of course not, sir.”
The Bronco thumped over the last cattle guard, and Estelle steered onto County Road 43, taking us back to Posadas. We drove in silence for the first couple of miles.
During those infrequent moments when Martin Holman was feeling his administrative oats, he would gently jibe me about my habits—one of which was an aversion to the continual squawking and static of police radios. I routinely left them turned off…leaving the airwaves to the regular road deputies.
Cellular phones in each unit had been one of his solutions, and I suppose it made sense, unless an officer crashed into a tree while trying to punch in a number on one of those tiny pads.
I reached forward and turned on the two-way radio, keyed the mike and said, “Posadas, three-ten.”
Gayle Sedillos was on the air, and from the tone of her voice, I couldn’t have guessed the sort of afternoon that she had had with the federal contingent breathing down her neck.
“Three-ten, Posadas.”
“We’re ten-eight,” I said. “Ten-nineteen.”
She acknowledged without requesting elaboration, explanation, or ETA, as if it were a Sunday afternoon with blooming roses the only source of noise and excitement.
“What?” Estelle asked. She glanced my way and caught the grin on my face as I hung up the mike.
“Just passing thoughts,” I said. “Remember when J. J. Murton worked for us? The Miracle?”
“Sure.” She smiled but kindly refrained from comment.
“The man who actually asked, ‘Do you know what your ten-four is?’ over the air.”
“I remember that.”
“The Miracle was one of Holman’s greater triumphs,” I said. “I could never make either one of them understand that people other than the police listen to radio conversations.”
“You’ll miss Gayle if she and Bobby end up moving away somewhere.”
“I’m hoping they don’t,” I said. “I’m hoping they stay right here and continue the endless Torrez-Sedillos dynasty. Between the two of them, they’re related to half the county.”
“Nearer to two thirds,” Estelle said. “And we’ve got company.” She indicated the rearview mirror, and I turned around to see the dark Suburban coming up behind us. I recognized Neil Costace’s blocky shape behind the wheel. The lights flashed, and Estelle slowed the Bronco and pulled off on the wide shoulder.
“Where did they come from?” I asked.
“Parked in the turnoff to the boneyard,” Estelle said, referring to Consolidated Mining’s access road.
The Suburban slid in behind us, and when Walter Hocker stepped out, his face was grim. He stalked toward us, a manila folder in hand. I rolled down the window and waited. He appeared at the door and nodded at Estelle.
“What did you find out?” he asked without preamble.
“About what?”
A brief flash of irritation crinkled his forehead and then he leaned on the doorsill like a rancher looking for conversation.
“About anything at all, Sheriff.”
I could feel Estelle’s gaze boring into my skull. No doubt she remembered my exact words as we’d left the windmill.
“We just chatted with Richard Finnegan,” I said. “His wife is the one who saw the aircraft and heard the ‘backfiring.’” Hocker nodded impatiently. “We went out there primarily because of this photograph.” I turned, and Estelle snapped open her briefcase and handed me the folder. I handed the blowup of the block house to Hocker, pulled the pen out of my pocket and pointed. “That appears to be a shadow,” I said. “We think it’s of a person standing behind the building.”
Hocker pushed his dark glasses up onto his forehead and bent close, squinting at the photo. “Finnegan?”
“I don’t know. He says not.”
“You believe him?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Hocker turned his head and looked off into the distance, then tapped the photo. “Where’s the negative for this?”
“In our darkroom with our deputy,” I said. “She’s been working most of the day on this.”
“And so what did you find out there?”
“No footprints. Nothing to indicate that someone was there. But the ground is rocky and it’s harder to leave a trace than not. So I’m not surprised.” I reached over and pulled the evidence bag of .223 casings out of the briefcase.
“And these. Twelve rounds.”
“Son of a bitch,” Hocker muttered. He handed the photo back to me and took the bag by the closure. By this time, Neil Costace had ambled his way over to join us, preferring the view on Estelle’s side of the Bronco. “Two-twenty-three,” Hocker said, and nodded toward Costace. “Show those to him. And the picture.”
“The position of the casings is kind of interesting,” I said. I pulled Estelle’s briefcase across my lap like a desk and spread the field drawing she had prepared. “The location of the casings suggests a fan. If the rifle was anywhere near consistent in the way it ejects spent cases, the shooter would have been standing uphill from the block house. Thirty, forty yards or so.”
Hocker shook his head. “There’s no way to tell by that what direction the shots were fired from.”
“That’s true. I’m saying there’s a suggestion there. Nothing more.”
I watched Costace roll the casings this way and that. “South Korean,” he said. “Some of that surplus stuff.”
“You’re sure there weren’t more?” Hocker asked.
“Not that we found. And we swept the area thoroughly.”
He pursed his lips and regarded Estelle. “You’re very quiet,” he said. “What’s your take on all this?”
“Those cases weren’t fired recently,” she said. “They’re reasonably clean, but you can see traces of dirt in the crease around the primer. They’ve been on the ground for a while.”
“So they weren’t involved with this shooting?”
Estelle shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Convenient location, then,” Hocker said.
“Yes, sir.”
He grinned. “You think someone put them there to frame Finnegan? That someone figured we’d find them and put two and two together for the wrong answer?”
“No, sir.”
He looked surprised. “Why not?”
“Because if that were so, it would assume that the person who planted the cases knew what was on that film. It assumes that he would know we’d be out here, looking around in that very spot. It would assume that the person who fired the shot knew that the occupant in the airplane was taking photographs.”
“A lot of assumptions,” Costace said and handed the bag of casings back to her.
“Yes, sir.”
“So, just a hunter firing half a clip at a coyote?” Hocker persisted.
“Who the hell knows?” I said.