Pasquale walked toward us, head down against the wind and the treacherous footing. Mitchell joined him as he approached. “No survivors,” the young deputy said when we were within earshot. “The pilot’s over there, just a few yards from where the engine block ended up.” Pasquale held up a wallet. “If this is his, then he’s Philip Camp, out of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I don’t know who the passenger is. I didn’t want to touch anything there.”
“Philip Camp is Martin Holman’s brother-in-law, Thomas,” I said. “As far as we know, he and the sheriff were the only two on board.”
Pasquale ducked his head. “The sheriff? You mean Martin Holman?”
I nodded and took Pasquale by the arm. “Let’s go see.”
Even as we walked the short distance toward the main chunk of fuselage, I could hear vehicles in the distance. Four sets of headlights appeared around the bottom of the mesa to the west.
“Make sure they park behind the helicopter,” I said to Mitchell, and then Dr. Guzman, Pasquale, and I continued toward the wreckage.
In the thirty years that I’d worked for the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department, I’d visited the scene of three air crashes. That certainly didn’t make me an expert. Within the next twenty-four hours, investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board would arrive and begin their methodical sifting of the scene. Maybe they’d have some answers for us.
I stood on a jumble of rocks, taking care to avoid the cactus. Within the range of my flashlight beam, the pieces of the Beechcraft Bonanza spread out like confetti, making a crescent-shaped scar at least a hundred yards long, maybe more.
Ahead of us, the chunk of the central fuselage was a tangle of metal and tubing roughly the size of a small, imported sedan that had been torn in half lengthwise. Neither wing was attached, nor the tail aft of the rear cabin window. It would take someone far more expert than I was to make sense of the mess that remained. The windshield and its entire framework, including all of the cabin roof, were missing, as was everything from the firewall forward.
“Christ,” I muttered, and stepped closer so I could sweep the flashlight beam over the wreckage. What was left of Martin Holman was belted to the right front seat, and the seat was twisted and bent backward, mangled with the rest of the cabin’s right-side framework.
I felt a hand on my sleeve. “Let me do this, Bill,” Francis Guzman said. I nodded and held the light for him, then turned my head so I didn’t have to watch.
“Thomas,” I said, “did you walk over to the east to find the first point of impact?”
“No, sir,” Pasquale said. His voice was shaking. “You told me to stay right here, and that’s what I did.”
“Good man.” I stood quietly and gazed off to the east. If Philip Camp had been trying to land, the Bonanza would have been traveling in the neighborhood of eighty to a hundred miles an hour when it struck the rugged prairie. If it had hit flat, it would have been badly torn up. But it still would have been recognizable as an airplane.
If the plane had plowed straight in, or at a steep angle, the wreckage would have pulverized itself in a “smoking hole,” as military pilots were wont to say.
As I stood in the dark and listened to Dr. Guzman’s ragged breath behind me, I could imagine only one scenario that would have resulted in this kind of crash scatter: the Bonanza had struck the earth at a glancing angle, perhaps one wing down, at full speed—perhaps upward of two hundred miles an hour, maybe more. If that was the case, there could be a whole handful of explanations that were obvious, even to me. And an experienced pilot could provide far more, I was sure.
I had never met Philip Camp, and certainly had no idea of what kind of pilot he was—careful, careless, a hotdogger, a man who flew by the numbers, or a man who didn’t pay much attention to detail. Martin Holman had mentioned in the previous week that his wife’s sister and brother-in-law were planning a visit, but that had been the extent of our conversation. I didn’t even remember the context of the discussion that had prompted the sheriff to mention the upcoming occasion.
“Let’s look at the other one,” Dr. Guzman said, and he waited for me while I made my way down off the rock pile.
One hundred and four paces later, we reached the remains of the pilot’s seat. The frame was broken and the entire seat splayed out flat on the ground like a book facedown, its back broken. Thirty steps away lay most of Philip Camp’s remains.
Headlights swept the area, and the cavalcade from the west pulled up in a vast cloud of dust. I could see Bob Torrez’s county vehicle, along with one of the Posadas Emergency Rescue squad’s four-wheel-drive Suburbans. Bringing up the rear was a pickup truck with a rack of lights across the roof, a spotlight on the driver’s door pillar, and a large feed bin in the back. A dog perched on top of the feed bin, barking and dashing from one side to another.
The mutt was either well trained or tied, because when the truck jarred to a stop, it didn’t leap off.
Doors slammed, but Sergeant Robert Torrez was the only person who left the group of vehicles and approached.
“Over here, Robert,” I called and waved the flashlight. Torrez angled toward me, sweeping his own light from side to side as he approached.
“It is the sheriff,” I said when he reached me. “Apparently just the two of them. Holman and his brother-in-law. Both dead.”
“Well, my God,” Torrez muttered and waved a hand back toward the vehicles. “The Boyds have a generator in the back of the truck if we need more light. Edwin said we’re welcome to it.”
“Light isn’t what we need right now, Robert,” I said. “We can take the bodies back, what’s left of them, but beyond that, we’re going to be waiting on the feds. Did Estelle say anything to you over the radio on your way out?”
“No, but I can’t imagine that they’ll be able to get investigators here much before mid-morning.”
“Then all we can do is to secure the scene until they arrive,” I said. “The first thing we need to do is to walk the crash track and locate the body parts.”
Torrez made a little sigh, tucked his light under his arm and thrust both hands in his pockets. “That ain’t going to be pretty,” he muttered.
“Nope,” I said. “But we don’t want the coyotes, or the Boyds’ dog, for that matter, making off with parts of the sheriff, either.”
Torrez let out something that might have been a chuckle. I added, “And everything else stays untouched until the feds get here. Don’t move a thing.”
“Let’s get to it,” Torrez said.
“I want to use the radio in your truck first,” I said. “Estelle needs to be tracking down what information she can from her end. The feds are going to want some answers when they get here…like what Philip Camp and Martin Holman were doing flying at this time of day, in weather like this.”
“I didn’t think the sheriff even liked to fly,” Torrez said.
“He didn’t. And his brother-in-law should have known better.” I took a deep breath and turned back toward the wreckage. It was going to be a long night.
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.”