I shook my head. “The odds of hitting a low-flying aircraft with an intentional rifle shot are pretty slim,” I said. “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but damn near. If someone wanted to kill either of the two men, there’d be easier ways to go about it. And who the hell would know where they were flying, in any case?”
Buscema nodded. “I agree. The books are full of all kinds of weird incidents that support this being an accident. Some hunter lets fly at a treed raccoon; the bullet misses the ’coon and connects with the Bonanza a thousand yards distant. Stranger things have happened.”
“There aren’t many raccoons up on that mesa,” I said, and as I spoke, both department pagers chirped. Estelle glanced at the display.
“I’ll get it,” she said and stepped across to the corner table to use the telephone.
“But there’s a witness to the plane in trouble, and we need to talk with her,” I said as Estelle made her call.
“You think we can be out there before dark?” Buscema asked, and I nodded at Estelle.
“Just as soon as she gets off the line.”
When Estelle hung up the telephone, she turned to me and said, “Bob Torrez said that they found one of the department cameras at the crash site. The sheriff had the camera with him.”
I frowned. “What was the other camera they said they found, then? One was sent down earlier with Tom Mears.”
“It belonged to the Camps. And there were no exposures on it.”
“And this one? Any film used?”
“Bob said the counter is on seventeen. And unless someone didn’t follow procedure, there’s always a fresh roll of film in the camera, ready to go. That means they took sixteen shots before the crash.”
“Lots of if’s,” I said, remembering Martin Holman’s tendency to let procedure slide. “The camera and film are on their way down?”
Estelle nodded. “They should have it processed in an hour. Then we’ll see.”
I started toward the door. “While we’re waiting, let’s use the time to pay a call on Charlotte Finnegan,” I said, beckoning Estelle.
Vincent Buscema jabbered on either the radio or the cellular phone most of the way north on County Road 43, organizing the logistics of the operation that would transfer the remains of the Bonanza to CMCO-2.
We supplied night quarters in the form of the departmental RV for the officers who would sit the wreckage overnight, one of the benefits from a drug bust the year before. The thirty-two foot motor home, ironically nicknamed “Holman’s Hilton,” would make for a far more comfortable second night for Tom Pasquale and the others who elected to remain at the site.
County Road 43 wound its way up past the village landfill, the remains of Consolidated Mining’s boneyard and headquarters, and then through a long stretch of bleak ranch land before turning eastward to link up, well outside of Posadas County, with the state highway to Glenwood and Reserve.
By the time we passed the intersection with the ranch road that cut west toward the Boyds’ place, the sun had set behind the bulk of Cat Mesa. I gestured off to the west. “All this land, up to the back side of Cat Mesa, belongs to Richard Finnegan. Either that or he leases it.”
“Bleak,” Buscema said. The road started its long curve to the east.
“The entrance to Finnegan’s ranch is just ahead,” I said. “There’s a cattle guard on the left.” Estelle slowed the car.
“What the hell is there for cattle to eat out here?” Buscema asked, and I laughed.
“Not much. I doubt they can support more than one steer on two hundred acres.”
The patrol car thumped over the cattle guard and we saw the small iron sign, pocked here and there with bullet dents, with the name “Finnegan” cut out with a torch.
“She says she saw the aircraft from somewhere around here?” Buscema twisted in the seat, looking south to the back side of Cat Mesa.
“Apparently. It wouldn’t take long to cover that distance in a plane.”
“A hundred eighty miles an hour gives you a mile every twenty seconds,” Buscema mused, then added, “No telling.”
The Finnegans’ ranch house was a well-worn mobile home, its paint baked to faded dust by the unrelenting sun. The roof was dotted with discarded tires, black donuts that kept the flimsy metal from peeling off when the wind started to howl.
The location was picturesque in a way that Dante might have appreciated. The mobile home was butted up against a rock slide from the small mesa behind it. It looked like it might be rattlesnake heaven, a great place for kids to play.
A single elm, still alive because its roots were probably wrapped around the septic system, grew scraggly by the front door, its thin, lacy limbs just starting to show some buds.
Other than that, the nearest vegetation was creosote bush and a few token specimens of bunchgrass. The predominant crop was sand, and even that was too coarse to be of any commercial use.
Scattered here and there around the homestead were outbuildings of various sizes, shapes, and stages of repair. Three enormous rolls of black-plastic pipe rested against an old Dodge four-wheel-drive pickup. The truck didn’t look as if it had moved in a decade, but the piping was new, no doubt part of the never-ending projects meant to move water across the bleak landscape to a spot where it might do some good.
One lean-to housed a late-model Ford Taurus. The slot next to it was empty. Estelle pulled the car to a stop behind the Taurus.
“This place in August must be something else,” Buscema muttered.
“Delightful,” I said. “It gets hot as a blast furnace, but at least”-I paused to turn to Buscema and grin-“it’s a dry heat.”
“That’s nice to know,” he said. We got out of the car, and only when the last of the three car doors had slammed did the blue heeler pup by the front stoop push itself to its feet and saunter out to greet us. As if to demonstrate that it really didn’t care who we were or what we wanted, it walked right past us to the right front tire of the car.
While I knocked on the door, Vincent Buscema stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the horizon. He stretched out an arm and pointed to the southwest. “So it’s about ten miles or so, as the crow flies, to the south rim of Cat Mesa.”
“That’s close,” I said.
“Huh,” Buscema said, and thrust his hands in his pockets.
I rapped on the door again, but heard no movements inside.
“This might be them,” Estelle said. I looked past her and saw a pickup truck. The light was too poor to distinguish the make and model, but its ubiquitous shape was silhouetted against the dust cloud it left behind as it followed in our tracks from the highway.
The dog pried itself away from our car tires and greeted its family as they got out of the truck, its tail practically slapping the sides of its face. I recognized Richard and Charlotte Finnegan by shape, if nothing else. He was squat, broad, and flat-faced, his ruddy skin cooked to blotches and scabs in places where the sun could sneak a peek around the shade of his Resistol.
Charlotte reminded me of the long-suffering schoolmarms in those old black-and-white photos taken on schoolhouse steps around the turn of the century. She had probably been pretty as a girl, but time had flattened and angulated her.
Richard Finnegan let his hand drift along the top of the Ford pickup’s front fender, as if he were fearful that he might stray too far from its company in the presence of strangers.
“Howdy,” he said.
Charlotte Finnegan beamed a radiant smile that thirty years before would have been a stunner. “Well, hi now,” she said and waved. She walked over to Estelle as if she were half an hour late for an appointment, extending both hands to the detective.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice dropping. “Just so sorry.”
Estelle nodded and held both of Charlotte Finnegan’s hands in hers. “We appreciated you calling us, Mrs. Finnegan,” I said. “This is Vincent Buscema, from the National Transportation Safety Board. He’ll be investigating the crash.” Charlotte reached out one hand and took Buscema’s, but she still held on to Estelle’s left hand.