Out of Season (17 page)
“I’m guessing twenty-two caliber,” Torrez said. “Maybe twenty-five.”
“Is that just a hunch, or do you know something we don’t?” Costace asked.
“On the fragment that Mitchell and Abeyta are working up,” Torrez said, “there’s a small portion of rifling marking. Just enough that it can be measured. It’s real narrow, like you’d find on something of that caliber.”
“You’re not talking twenty-two rimfire like in a kid’s gun?” Hocker asked.
“No. Two-twenty-three. The sort of bullet fired in any of the high-performance center-fire rifles. The M-16 is a two-twenty-three. So is the Mini-14. Or the twenty-two two-fifty. And a whole bunch more. And if it’s twenty-five caliber, it opens up a whole world of possibilities—the twenty-five-ought-six, two-fifty-seven Roberts, and on and on.”
“And then there’s the whole world of foreign cartridges, too,” Costace added.
“Robert, let me ask you something,” I said. “If you’ve got a good clear sample of the marks left by rifling, can that be compared to other samples?”
The sergeant grimaced. “Really tough,” he said.
Hocker frowned. “The answer is yes, Sheriff. They can be compared under a good microscope. But you’re not going to get the
points
of comparison that you’re going to need in court. Not unless you’re really, really lucky.”
“But it gives us someplace to start,” I said. “And that’s what we need now.”
A truck drove up to the hangar door and I looked outside to see the dark blue Dodge four-by-four with the “New Mexico Department of Game and Fish” decal on the door.
“Finally,” I said.
Doug Posey appeared in the doorway and hesitated. He stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the collected remnants. He saw me and shook his head, a grimace on his face as he walked over. As tall as Bob Torrez’s six-four, Posey was so thin that he looked as if he’d break in the middle in a stiff breeze.
I introduced him to the federal agents. “Officer Posey has been with the State Department of Game and Fish for four years,” I said. “If we could steal him away from them, we would.” Posey tried to smile and he tugged nervously at all the junk on his Sam Brown belt. He looked more like nineteen than the twenty-nine that he was.
“I sure was sorry to hear about the sheriff,” he said. “God, look at this. The crash just tore it to bits, didn’t it?” He bent down and touched one of the twisted propeller blades. “It’s on the television, even.”
“You know it’s big when news from Posadas hits the airwaves,” I said, and then reflected privately that all the publicity would have made Martin Holman nervous. He wouldn’t have liked this at all—being the center of federal, state, and local attention. And sure as could be, now that the preliminary reports had leaked out, we’d be targeted by the news crews.
“They’ll descend like vultures when they find out it was no accident,” Neil Costace said. “I’m surprised they’re not knocking on the door now.”
“It wasn’t an accident?” Posey looked up, startled.
“Looks like it wasn’t, Doug,” I said. “The pilot caught a bullet that we think was fired from the ground.”
“No shit?”
I nodded. “Keep it under your hat for now, all right?”
“Sure. Frank Dayan was at the office when I stopped by. Gayle was giving him the official story, from what it sounded like.”
“Which means she was giving him zilch,” I said. I had nothing against the editor of the
Posadas Register
. In fact, there had been times when I’d orchestrated events—or at least news releases—so that they benefited the
Register
’s Wednesday/Friday publication days, giving them a local scoop over the big-city papers. But we needed some peace and quiet now. “Look,” I said and took Posey by the elbow.
“You want some privacy?” Hocker asked.
I waved a hand in dismissal. “No. In fact, you might be interested, too. Doug, our call logs show that Sheriff Holman was trying to get ahold of you yesterday. He tried several times.”
“Yesterday?”
I frowned. “What the hell is today? Sunday? Not yesterday, then. Friday. On Friday, he was trying to reach you. Did you get those messages?”
Posey nodded. “I was stuck down in the eastern part of the state with a little operation we had going there. I got his message on my machine when I came in just a little while ago.”
“What did the sheriff want, do you know?”
Posey rested his hand on the clip pouches on the front of his belt. “The crash wasn’t an accident? You’re sure of that?” he asked, and he glanced across at Hocker and Costace. I liked the kid even more.
“No, it wasn’t,” I said. “The firing of the bullet might have been. At this point, we don’t know if the bullet that struck the pilot was fired intentionally or not. None of us know for sure which direction we should be going with all this, but we’re trying to track down each loose end. There’s the question of Martin’s calls to you and we need to know where those lead, if anywhere. It’s conceivable that the flight he was making was somehow related to what he wanted from you. We don’t know.”
“Well,” Posey said, “about two weeks ago, he stopped me downtown as I was coming out of the bank. He asked me what I knew about the legalities of impounding wildlife. Game animals.”
“Impounding?”
Posey nodded. “That’s what the sheriff said. He told me that someone had asked him about it and that he didn’t know what the regs were.” Posey looked pained. “We both had places we needed to go, and he told me that he’d get back to me on it with more specifics if there was a problem. I got busy with other things and didn’t follow up on it. I guess he didn’t either, until last week.”
“When you say ‘impounding,’ you mean fencing in wildlife so it can’t roam outside of a given area?” Estelle asked.
“Sure. Mostly it’s done with fish. You dam up a waterway with a real restricted intake and overflow sluice so the fish can’t go upstream or down.”
“I don’t think we’re talking fish,” I said.
“I sure don’t know what you’d impound around here,” Posey said. “Antelope, I guess, maybe deer, although there’s enough of them out on the open that I don’t see what sense it’d make. Up in the northern part of the state, there have been a few ranchers who got into trouble restricting the movements of elk. The big-game ranches do that all the time. They manage herds, the whole bit—but they have the proper permits for it.” He shrugged. “I just don’t know. We didn’t talk again after that, so I don’t know what he was up to.”
I looked at Estelle thoughtfully. “What do you think?”
“I just don’t know either, sir.”
“Let’s go talk to this Boyd person,” Hocker said. “See if he was out shooting at prairie dogs on Friday.”
“You ready for it to go public?” Costace asked quickly.
Hocker shrugged. “Hell, why not? Maybe somebody’ll call in a hot tip.”
I beckoned to Estelle. “Come along,” I said. “If you get a chance to talk to Maxine Boyd, go ahead. Find out what’s eating her.”
I turned and nodded at the FBI agents. “We were just out there at the ranch before you came to the office. The Boyds haven’t had so much company in a long time. And they’re going to be really pleased to see you folks.”
Hocker caught the tone of my voice. “I bet,” he said.
When I turned around and saw the dust plume as we turned south from Newton, I was glad that Estelle Reyes-Guzman was driving the lead vehicle. The two agents had elected to follow us, taking Costace’s Suburban. The monstrous truck would have held the four of us plus luggage for a month.
“It’s a back-seat thing,” Estelle said with a hint of a grin. “If they rode with us, one or both would end up sitting in back.”
“Can’t have that,” I said. To avoid traffic, we drove the loop around Newton, guaranteeing that if the two agents weren’t feeling lost before, they would be now. Neither Costace nor Hocker had visited the crash site, and we planned to go there afterward…not that there would be much left on the ground to see.
As we neared the Boyds’ ranch, Estelle slowed, forcing the pace down to little more than an amble. I knew exactly what was going through her mind.
Two big four-by-fours, spiraling vapor trails of dust, sliding to a stop in the middle of someone’s yard and then spewing out all kinds of strangers wearing dark glasses—it was enough to make anyone uneasy, especially folks whose list of monthly visitors rarely broke single digits. And especially well-armed folks who harbored an almost irrational distrust of things federal.
We idled into the Boyds’ front yard. I could see Edwin over by one of the trucks, a one-ton GMC fitted with a flatbed and a large feed hopper. Johnny Boyd came out from behind the rear of the truck and watched our progress toward the house. When we pulled to a stop, he tossed his gloves onto the back of the truck bed and started toward us, head down, fingers of his right hand groping in his shirt pocket for the habitual conversational smoke.
The dogs started yapping, but at a word from Johnny, all but the shepherd retreated to the workshop behind the truck. The dog trotted along beside Boyd, tongue lolling, ears toward us.
Boyd grinned wearily and extended his hand. “Sheriff, you still out and at it, eh? I keep thinking of how nice a long afternoon nap would go right about now. Don’t get too many nights like the last couple, that’s for damn sure.”
I shook hands and nodded. “That’s about it. Johnny, these two gentlemen are with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Walter Hocker from Oklahoma City, and the one who looks carsick is Neil Costace from the El Paso office.”
He shook hands with each in turn and then touched the brim of his cap. “Detective,” he said to Estelle. “Nice to see you again. It’s been a couple of hours.” Edwin remained by the truck, leaning against the front fender, weight off his bad knee.
“Two visits in one day, I don’t guess this is a social call. What can we do for you?”
I took off my Stetson and ran a hand across the stubble of gray hair. “Well, we’ve got some things that sort of puzzle us and thought that maybe you might have some answers. Or some ideas.”
Boyd sucked hard on his cigarette. “Do what I can. You know that. You want to talk in the house? No point in standing out here in the dust if we don’t have to. Got cold beer. Hot coffee. The worst water you ever tasted. What’s your pleasure?”
“Actually, a cup of hot coffee would be wonderful,” Walter Hocker said. He’d been surveying the ranch setting, both hands shoved into his pockets, rotating at the waist as if his feet were cemented in place. “Water a problem out here? That’s a good-sized windmill you’ve got there.”
The contraption hadn’t drawn my attention before, but the windmill
was
big, its blades spanning at least twelve feet, maybe sixteen, the pumping motor supported on a tower that must have been forty feet high.
“That well’s three hundred and thirty feet deep,” Johnny said.
“That’s a fair lift,” Hocker mused.
“You a farm boy?”
Hocker grinned at Boyd and tilted his head. “I’ve done my time. You ever been up on one of those rigs with a storm brewing?”
I looked over at the windmill’s steel tower again and saw it for what it so easily could be—a massive lightning rod. I could picture the young Finnegan boy scampering up the steel ladder with the speed and coordination that only the young enjoy. And then…a flash and a thunderclap all in one as a couple million volts shot through the angle-iron structure. The boy would never have known what hit him.
“Nope,” Boyd said. “Had a cousin killed on one, though. Over in eastern Kansas. And the neighbors here lost their boy that way. So it happens.”
“What do you do when the wind doesn’t blow?” Neil Costace asked. He had craned his head back to look up at the blur of blades.
“That don’t happen much,” the rancher said. “We got an electric auxiliary pump for those few times. But I don’t guess you came in to talk about my windmill.” He started toward the door and then turned to frown at me. “This about that picture you had earlier, Sheriff?”
“We haven’t been out to the block-house site yet,” I said, and that vague answer seemed to satisfy Boyd for the moment.
“Come on in,” he said, and we followed him into the house. He led us to the kitchen and gestured at the white table in the center of the room. “Have a sit-down,” he said. “Maxine!” he shouted, and added, “Excuse me a minute.” We heard him off in another part of the house and in a moment, he returned with his wife.
“She’ll get us fixed up,” Boyd said. He quickly introduced Maxine to the two agents, calling them “these federal boys,” and even before he’d finished, I heard the front door open and in due course, Edwin Boyd appeared, his face in a grimace and one hand reaching down toward his knee. He nodded at us and drifted off toward the easy chairs in the living room. He left no doubt in my mind about who was ranch boss.
“So,” Boyd said and clasped his hands together in front of him. “What brings the Federal Bureau of Investigation out to these parts?” At the mention of the agency, Maxine murmured something and almost lost her hold on the coffee urn. She shook her head and poured water into the machine, then turned to find the coffee and a filter. She shot a glance first at me and then at Estelle, but otherwise, her face was impassive.
Estelle hadn’t settled in a chair yet, and she took a step over to Maxine Boyd, setting a light touch of the hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Mrs. Boyd, would it be too much trouble to use your rest room?”
“Well, of course not,” the woman said. “It’s right around past the living room, that little doorway on the left. Let me show you.”
She flipped the power switch on the coffeemaker, smiled warmly at the rest of us and said, “Give it about five minutes. Johnny, use the mugs in the cupboard over the sink.” Johnny Boyd was already seated, well into the process of finding another smoke, one thin, long leg hooked over the other. I got the impression that he didn’t fetch his own coffee cups on a regular basis.