Estelle shook her head, gazing off into the distance. “How long had you folks owned that airplane?”
Vivian flinched, and I saw the muscles working in her jaws. “We bought it new in nineteen eighty-four. Phil was proud of the fact that in fifteen years, he was the only pilot who had ever flown it.”
“It was like new, then.”
“‘Pampered’ would be a good word,” Janice said, and I was surprised at the lightness that she could force into her voice. Vivian didn’t disagree with the assessment.
“And you’ve been down here before on different occasions?” Estelle asked. “Visiting family?”
“At least once a year,” Vivian said.
“So there was no particular reason why Phil would want to show Martin anything about the plane. No new paint job, no new special avionics, nothing like that?”
She shook her head, and Estelle added, “The sheriff had been up in that airplane on other occasions?”
“Yes. Several times. Last year we flew to Phoenix for a weekend.”
“I remember that,” I said.
“Did you have any trouble of any kind with the aircraft on the flight down from Canada?” Estelle asked.
“None,” Vivian Camp said quickly. “Not for an instant.”
I looked down at the porch floor and frowned.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, Bill,” Janice said.
“I don’t know what to think,” I replied and took a deep breath. “Janice, the NTSB people will want to talk to you both, too. I’ll make sure they call first. But it’ll be helpful if each of you can think back to the conversations you had in the past day or two. Anything at all that can give us a clue.”
“God,” Janice Holman said heavily. “What I’d give to be able to tell you something.”
“I know,” I said, and squeezed her hand. “It’s going to be rough. But we’ll do all we can. I’ll be by off and on, but you call me at any time if there’s anything I can do.”
Estelle and I drove away a few minutes later, leaving Janice Holman and Vivian Camp to cope with their houseful. Thinning the numbers by two was probably the most helpful thing we could have done for them.
Estelle’s dark face was set in a frown, her black eyebrows furrowed, as we drove out of the neighborhood.
“I think we need to find out why they went sightseeing late in the afternoon of a rough day when they had no need to do so, when there wasn’t the attraction of a new plane, or of a first-time ride or anything like that. When Martin didn’t even particularly like to fly,” I said.
“And the feds will be looking into Phil Camp’s record, too,” Estelle said quietly.
“Sure. I’m no crash investigator, but it’s obvious to me that the plane hit the ground at a shallow angle, traveling at high speed. Maybe the sort of thing that would result from buzzing the ground. Hotdogging.” I glanced over at Estelle. She was still frowning.
“Do you have time now to run by and talk with Jim Bergin?” she asked.
“That’s where I was headed next,” I said. I glanced at my watch.
But the airport manager had no magic answers for us. Although he hadn’t talked to either man before the Bonanza departed on its last flight, he had watched from the far end of the big hangar while Phil Camp did his preflight inspection.
“I’ve met Phil Camp a number of times,” Bergin said, leaning back in his swivel chair, his left hand resting on top of the radio console. “He’s always impressed me as a careful, considerate pilot. I watched ’em when they took off, because it was so bouncy. Camp didn’t do anything fancy. No steep climbs, no turns out of the pattern halfway down the runway, none of that shit that we see all the time.”
“Could the crash have been caused by engine failure, do you think?” I asked.
Bergin grunted. “That was a good, strong airplane. But things break. The crash could have been caused by one of ten thousand things. But if the engine had quit out there over the prairie, someone as experienced as Camp would have had ten dozen places to pick for a landing spot. And even if he miscalculated his approach and dumped it into a bar ditch or something, that airplane still would have been traveling at only eighty or ninety knots when it touched down. On top of that”-he waved a hand as he groped a cigarette out of his pocket with the other-“the wind was kickin’ and he’d have been headed into that. So subtract twenty knots, and his actual touchdown speed would have been fifty, sixty knots.” He took a deep drag and exhaled. “And that Bonanza was flat humpin’ when it hit the ground. It wasn’t mushing in for a landing. Nosiree.”
“I can’t see Phil Camp or Martin Holman wanting to chase coyotes,” Estelle said.
Jim Bergin shot her a quick glance. “That’s the usual way pilots get in trouble,” he said. “Too low and too slow. He wasn’t slow. How old a man was he?”
“Camp? I think fifty-two or three, maybe. He was older than Holman by a bit.”
“Heart attack, maybe,” Bergin said. “Who the hell knows? That plane had one of those swing-over control yokes. If Camp had died suddenly, he could have fallen forward on the yoke, maybe. Holman would have had hell trying to get him off and swinging the yoke over so he could use it-assuming that he knew how.” Bergin shook his head and gazed out the tinted window at the asphalt. “The feds will find some answers for you. It’s probably something so simple we’ll be surprised we didn’t see it.” He grinned. “They’ll take their own sweet time, of course.”
His telephone rang and he twisted to pick up the receiver. I was about to say something to Estelle when Bergin said into the phone, “Yes, he’s here. You want to talk to him?” He grunted something else and then handed me the phone. “Sam Carter,” he said.
I took the receiver. Carter had seen me at Holman’s only moments before and could have talked to me then.
“Gastner,” I said.
“Bill, Sam Carter. Listen, can we get together sometime today for a few minutes?”
“Well,” I started to say, but Carter interrupted me.
“It’s really important. I know you’re busy, but if you can spare just a handful of minutes, I’d appreciate it.”
“I guess,” I said without much enthusiasm. “Estelle and I are about wrapped up here.”
He said something I didn’t catch, then added, “I mean, can I meet with just you? I need to talk to you personal-like.”
“I’ll be at the sheriff’s office in a few minutes. You want to stop by?”
“How about my office in an hour?” he said quickly, and I didn’t see the point of arguing.
“See you then,” I said and handed Bergin the phone. “Jim, thanks. I’m sure this place is going to be the center of the storm for a few days.”
“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.
CHAPTER EIGHT
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.