“I’ll be here. You need anything, you just holler.”
As we got back into the car, I said, “I wonder what Sam Carter wants.”
Estelle shrugged and left it at that. I added, “That’s going to be an interesting conversation.” One corner of her mouth twitched just a bit, and the crow’s-foot by the corner of her left eye deepened for an instant.
“I can tell you right now what he’s going to say,” she said.
“I’d rather wait and let it be a surprise,” I told her. “We’ll compare notes later. Keep the heat on the medical examiner’s office for some preliminary results. And then you and I have to find a quiet corner and do some serious talking ourselves.”
She nodded, and we drove the rest of the way back to the Public Safety Building in silence.
The electronic eye saw me and snapped open the big glass doors of the Trust SuperMarket. The place was quiet and smelled of bleach and floor wax, and then, as I took a few steps in, the other odors—most of them from a display of baked goods off to my left—wafted over to greet me.
The first in a line of four checkout registers was to my right, and Taffy Hines was working there, bent over a large bound volume of computer printouts splayed over the conveyor.
“Is Sam around?” I asked, and Taffy looked up quickly. She was fortyish, a bleached blonde, and had the sort of facial wrinkles that hinted at too many cigarette breaks.
“He’s out back,” she said and gestured down an aisle.
I walked between chips, soft drinks, and bottled water for several yards, heading toward the dairy case and the white, windowless door beside it.
Before I reached it, Sam Carter rounded the corner, his lean face set in grim lines.
“Glad you could come by,” he said, shaking my hand. His grip was dry and limp. “Let’s find us a quiet corner.”
He led me through the door by the dairy case and then up a short flight of stairs. His office was cramped, with only enough room for a single large folding table, two chairs, and the junk that made his business go. He pushed a pile of papers out of my way so I had a place to prop an elbow.
He stopped fussing finally and settled into his old-fashioned swivel chair. What would appear to customers to be the polished mirror over the meat-display case was actually his office window. He had a good view of the place, and I could look out and see, fifty yards away, Taffy Hines still mulling over the computer readout.
“So,” I said.
Carter leaned forward with both forearms on his knees. He cocked his head at me, one eyebrow up. “Did you ever imagine something as terrible as this?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“God,” he said, and leaned back in the chair, gazing out the window at his customerless store.
He turned his head and regarded me. The index finger of his left hand strayed to his mouth and he bit the nail. “I talked to Tobe this morning,” he said, “and to Hewitt earlier.”
Hewitt Stewart was a third county commissioner.
“We’re calling a special meeting for Monday afternoon at one. We’d sure like for you to be there.”
I nodded slowly. “I can do that, I guess. It’s going to be an awkward time, Sam.”
“Federal boys be in town sometime today?”
“Yes.”
“And no telling how long they’ll be involved, is there?”
“No.”
He nodded quickly. “That’s really no concern of mine, or anyone else’s outside of your bailiwick. And that’s not why I asked you to drop by. Let me get right to the point.”
He leaned forward again, brow furrowed. “This goes no farther than this room,” he said. I raised an eyebrow and didn’t reply.
“The county commission wants to appoint you in Sheriff Holman’s place until elections.”
I looked at Carter quizzically and then asked, “Why would they want to do that?”
Surprise flickered across his face, and the fingernail went back between his teeth. “It’s the only thing that makes sense to us just now,” he said.
“I’m retiring in September,” I pointed out. “And the department has three good sergeants. You could appoint any one of them and you wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep over your choice. Bob Torrez is senior, and he’s smart, steady, and a good leader. Howard Bishop is no ball of fire, but he’s honest and thorough. Eddie Mitchell’s got his rough edges, but he’d do the job.” I shrugged. “The last thing the county needs is a sixty-eight-year-old warhorse with enough health problems to keep the county hospital solvent.”
“I can’t imagine Bob Torrez would take it any too kindly if we passed him by for one of the others,” Carter muttered.
“He’d get over it. And if he’s got any political ambitions, he keeps ’em to himself. But he’s your natural choice.”
“What about Estelle Reyes-Guzman? You don’t think she’d jump at the chance? Hell, she didn’t lose that last election by too much. If you didn’t want the job, wouldn’t she be next in line? And the way you two work together, you’d probably recommend her.”
The tone of his voice told me what his real worry was, and I took a deep breath.
“If she were staying in Posadas, sure. And a better sheriff you couldn’t have. But her husband has taken a job in Minnesota. It’s a hell of an opportunity for them. I don’t think she’s about to stay behind just so she can be appointed to fill in until the election. I think one stab at politics was enough for her, anyway.”
Estelle had run against Martin Holman in a surprisingly genteel and civil race, and the loss she’d taken at the polls had told both of us that Posadas County wasn’t ready for a female Mexican sheriff.
Carter leaned back again, relaxing. He held up both hands. “Let me tell you what the others have in mind. And I agree with ’em. This all hit us pretty fast, you understand. But it’s a concern. The commission wants you to fill in until November. That gives everyone who wants a shot at the office time to run through the primaries this June, and to go about it without rushing into something they might regret.”
“And gives you folks time to find a candidate you like,” I said with a smile. I wondered who he and his political cronies had in mind, but I didn’t care enough to ask. Martin Holman had certainly been a good, straight-arrow Republican, a member of all the right service clubs. On top of that, he’d turned out to be a quick study. I knew I was going to miss him, and I knew I didn’t have the energy left to train a replacement.
Carter shrugged. “Politics is politics, Bill. The county sheriff’s position is one of the most important ones there is. With all the civil litigation and so forth, we’ve got to have someone in there who knows the ropes.”
“If you want my advice, Torrez is your first choice. Then Bishop. Then Mitchell.”
“If one of them wants to run for the office, then that’s fine,” Carter said. “But until that time, the county commission wants to appoint you. You know Martin Holman’s policies better than anyone else. You know what he was trying to accomplish. Nothing else makes sense.”
“I’m no administrator, Sam. I’m a cop. I don’t even do the civil legwork for the department. Holman always did that, along with Sergeant Bishop and Deputy Mears.”
Carter leaned forward, reached out and touched my knee. “Then think of it this way if you want to get right down to cases. Who does more road patrol work, you or Bob Torrez?”
“He does, of course.”
“And who does more road work, you or Eddie Mitchell?”
“Mitchell, hands down.”
“You supervise them, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Does it make sense, in a county as strapped as this one is for both personnel and funds, to take one of those two boys off the road and tie him behind a desk? To ask one of them to learn the ropes of a job he’s never done before? Hell, you’ve filled in for Marty Holman before, when he went on vacations and such. And a decade or so ago, you filled in for Eduardo Salcido, when he had his heart attack.”
I frowned. “All right, so I’m the expendable one.”
“That’s not what I said,” Carter snapped, “but if that’s what it takes to talk some sense into your head, think of it that way. The young kids belong out on the road. You’ve got twenty-five years’ experience, and hell, you’ve been undersheriff for fifteen or twenty years. Do the county a favor and fill in for us. Just until after the November elections.”
I shrugged, seeing no reason to play coy. If Carter and the other commissioners had an ulterior motive in moving so quickly, before Martin Holman’s shattered bones were even off the autopsy table, that was their affair.
“All right,” I said.
Carter nodded vigorously. “Just for the sake of continuity, if nothing else. I’ll sleep a lot better, that’s for sure.” He smiled and stood up. “I know you’re busy. But come Monday, if you can break away for a few minutes, we’d appreciate it. If there’s anything we need to do, you be sure to tell us at the meeting Monday.”
We shook hands and I left the Trust SuperMarket Grocery. Maybe Sammy Carter would sleep better. But after the previous twenty-four hours, I’d have cheerfully traded any possibility of early retirement for one decent night’s sleep. Now I wasn’t going to get either one.
A gust of wind drove sand into our faces, and Vincent Buscema tucked his head and closed his eyes.
“Wonderful,” he muttered. To his left, a piece of torn aluminum began a slow, easy roll toward the east. “Secure that, son,” he said, and Tom Pasquale jumped like he’d been shot. Buscema looked at me out of squinting eyes. “This is going to be holy hell,” he said. Wind tore at his jacket, snapping the nylon around his waist and flattening the large NTSB letters across his back…I could see the curve of his shoulder blades and spine through the fabric.
He turned and looked off to the southeast, where a small party of federal investigators and two Posadas County sheriff’s deputies were working. “At least we know something,” he said. “We’ve got the exact initial-impact spot, and the markings on the prop tell us that the engine was putting out power at the time of impact.” He hitched up his collar. “If they can find the missing propeller blade tip, we’ll know a little more.”
“You’ll tear down the engine?” I shouted over the wind.
Buscema nodded. “That’s going to take some time.” He thrust his hands in his pockets. “Compared to a jumbo jet or something like that, a Bonanza is a pretty simple airplane, Sheriff. It’s usually not hard to pinpoint a problem if mechanical failure was to blame. What we’re going to do”—he pivoted at the waist to look back into the wind and the sun—“is make as thorough a survey of this site as we can before we move anything. Establish the angle of impact, probable direction of flight, all those simple things.”
He grinned at the expression on my face. The jumble of junk in front of me didn’t look “simple,” even if the wind stopped shifting it around, but I was willing to take Buscema’s word for it.
“And then we take a look for the obvious things.” He held up an index finger. “Number-one cause of all crashes is pilot error, Sheriff. That’s number one. It’s a good bet that Philip…what was his name?”
“Camp. Philip Camp.”
“It’s a good bet that Mr. Camp made a mistake. That’s what the statistics tell us. If the weather had been really bad, with low ceiling, crap like that, I’d be willing to bet next month’s wages on pilot error. But this is a bit more complicated. It was clear and windy—not perfect flying weather, but still, not so bad. What we know for sure is one big, fat, humongous fact.” He paused and I raised an eyebrow to prompt him.
“He was flying too goddam low. The airplane hit the ground at a shallow angle. Not enough to skip like a rock across water, but pretty shallow nevertheless.” He shrugged and tucked a hand in his pocket. “If he’d been cruising along at ten thousand feet above the ground, this kind of violent scatter crash wouldn’t have happened.” He made a corkscrew motion with his other hand. “Let’s say something really bizarre happened. Let’s say he was trying to show his brother-in-law how he could do a barrel roll. He gets all crossed up, and the end result is that the plane sheds a wing. Or a serious chunk of empennage. What comes down is a ball of junk. Not smithereens like this.”
Buscema turned his back to the wind and pulled his cap down tight on his head. “I’ll be willing to bet that they were flying fast and low. You know why?”
“Because the sheriff wanted to look at something. That’s the only reason I can think of that explains why they’d be over here. Philip Camp had no reason to be curious. The sheriff might have.”
“That’s right. You know Martin Holman and his work better than anyone, Mr. Gastner. You told me that he didn’t like to fly. He didn’t like to spend county money. So he could have driven out here, couldn’t he?”
I nodded. “He could have,” I said, “but my guess is that time was a factor. He saw an opportunity and decided to con a free ride out of his brother-in-law. They could do in a few minutes what would take most of the day by ground vehicle.”
“And what the hell was there to see, anyway? Dust, open prairie, and an occasional herd of cattle. Hell of a thing to die for.” Buscema paused. “And you said he had a camera with him?”
“Yes. It’s been recovered. One of our deputies is processing the film.”
“Well,” Buscema said in dismissal, “don’t hold your breath.” He wrenched the bill of his cap down again. “Now, a lot of people will fly low to get out of mountain chop. You get down a little closer to the ground, right over the tops of the trees, and there’s better visual reference.” He grinned. “It’s more like riding in an old freight wagon on a bouncy road. But you’ve got stuff in your visual horizon and you’re less apt to get airsick. Way up high, you get to feeling sort of detached when you’re bouncing around. See what I mean? And it still doesn’t tell us why they were over here, or what they were doing.”
He took a couple of steps to his left and knelt down to look at a tangle of instrumentation and engine controls. “What we need to do is stick with what we do know. The remains of the cockpit controls make a few things pretty clear.”