“So what the hell happened?” Richard Finnegan asked. He shook hands with me, and his grip was enough to make me flinch. His skin was hard and rough. He dug a cigarette out of his shirt pocket, and the mannerism was a perfect replica of Johnny Boyd’s habit.
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Buscema said. He disengaged his hand from Charlotte’s. She and Estelle stood side by side, hand in hand, like two old friends. “Ma’am, when did you first see the aircraft?”
“Let me show you,” Charlotte said, and she started off around the end of the trailer, dropping Estelle’s hand only when they reached the deep shadows near the hitch.
“You ain’t going to be able to see anything from there, Charlotte,” Richard said. But his wife ignored him. Standing at the end of the trailer, Charlotte indicated what was apparently a small flower bed, tucked between the aluminum of their home and the limestone of the rocks behind.
“It’ll be cool enough here during the summer,” she said with considerable delight. “I’ve never been able to have a nice garden, but I really think this will work. Don’t you?”
I realized she was talking to me, and so I replied, “I’m sure it will. Is this where you were when you first saw the plane yesterday?”
“No,” she said. “I was standing out by the car.”
“Maybe you’d show us,” Buscema said.
We walked back around to the front of the trailer, and Charlotte turned and started for the front door. “How about some coffee?” she asked, with the satisfaction of the habitual coffee drinker who knows that the time is perfect.
“Sure,” I said. Vincent Buscema stopped in his tracks and looked back at me. He held up a hand as if to say, “Well?”
“Charlotte,” Richard Finnegan said gently, “they want to know about the plane yesterday.”
“Oh,” Charlotte said. She reached out a hand to Estelle again, and the detective wrapped an arm around the woman’s shoulders.
“Do you remember how high up it was when you first saw it?” Estelle asked quietly, and Charlotte frowned.
Estelle turned her around so that they were facing southwest. “When you first saw it, was it up like so?” Estelle lifted her free hand and held it at a steep angle, pointing at an imaginary aircraft well above the horizon, then dropped her arm down so she was indicating a level just above the distant trees on the back side of Cat Mesa. “Or down low?”
“It came along from that way,” Charlotte said, sweeping her hand from the west. “And right over there”-she pointed to a spot in the sky as if we would be able to return to that particular bit of air space at will-“it turned right up this way, then went back to the west.” She frowned and ducked her head. “And you know, it did that four or five times. Just great big circles like that.”
“When you called the sheriff’s office, Charlotte, you said something about the plane having trouble. Do you remember that?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Now Richard tells me that it was the sheriff who was in that airplane.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, that’s horrible,” she said, and I agreed.
“Could you tell that the plane was in trouble?” Buscema asked.
“It just reminded me of the county fair,” Charlotte said and nodded firmly, diving her hand down and then up sharply.
“That’s what the airplane did?”
“That’s what it did. Just like one of those rides at the fair. Swoop. And almost over on its back. Swoop. And that’s when I went in and called town.”
“The pilot was doing stunts, like?” I asked.
“And then he swooped right down behind that little mesa there.” She pointed almost due west.
“She told me that it was backfirin’ pretty bad,” Richard Finnegan said. “You tell ’em about that, Char.”
But Charlotte just seemed puzzled. She turned to look at Estelle, and the detective joggled her shoulders as if she were holding a sleepy child. “Did you hear something?” she asked the woman.
“Backfiring, as in engine troubles?” Buscema asked. “Or backfiring like maybe something else?”
“She ain’t going to remember,” Richard said. “Maybe it’ll come to her. If it does, I’ll holler to you.”
“Richard,” I said, “did you see anything? Did you ever see the plane?”
He took a deep, final drag of the cigarette, dropped it beside his boot and ground it into the sand. “Wish I had,” he said. “I got home about six from Belen.” He turned and gestured toward the rolls of black pipe. “Man could spend a fortune on that stuff. Went downtown earlier today and that’s when I heard what happened. Quite an uproar. I was going to drive on over there today and see for myself, but then I got to seein’ all the cars and such and figured it’d be better just to stay the hell out of the way.”
Buscema drew a business card from his wallet and handed it to Richard Finnegan. “We appreciate your help, folks. If you think of anything else, give me a call, will you? You can reach me either through that number there or at the sheriff’s office.”
Charlotte Finnegan was reluctant to have us leave, and she’d forgotten about the offer of coffee. I felt a pang of sympathy for her as she flustered, but Estelle gave her another hug and promised to come visit again when she had time.
As we thumped across the cattle guard, Buscema said, “She’s been around the block a few times, hasn’t she?”
“Yep,” I said. “They had two kids, a boy about sixteen and a daughter who was twenty-one or so. They lost ’em both within two weeks of each other about five or six years ago.”
“Nineteen-ninety,” Estelle prompted.
“Nine years ago, then,” I said. “Time flies. The boy was working on a windmill and got hit by lightning. The daughter was working as a counselor at a church camp and drowned during an outing over at Elephant Butte Lake.”
“Christ,” Buscema said. “No wonder she’s come un-glued.” He rolled down the window. “She saw something, though. Maybe it’ll come to her. But no matter. She’s not what I’d call a credible witness.”
“And it won’t be the first time gunshots have been confused with the backfiring of an engine,” Estelle said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Vincent Buscema caught a ride up to the crash site, and Estelle and I went to my office. With the flurry of activity nonstop since the crash, we hadn’t had time to find a quiet corner to sit down and take stock.
As I walked past the front desk, Ernie Wheeler lifted a hand and then beckoned to me with a clipboard.
“Gayle Sedillos wanted your okay on this, sir,” he said, “but I haven’t been able to catch you since I came on shift. I’ve penciled Linda Real in to sit this shift with me.” He extended the clipboard toward me.
“Fine,” I said. “Where is she now?” It was six forty-five, and thirty-six hours or more without a catnap were beginning to take their toll. My temper was short and my belly was screaming for a long, quiet dinner at the Don Juan.
“Tom Mears needed a matron for a few minutes. Aggie Bishop wasn’t home, so I asked Linda if she wanted to do it.”
“A matron for what?”
“Mears did a routine traffic check and it turns out the driver-Bea Kellogh, remember her?” I nodded. “She was about passed-out drunk. Apparently she had stopped just off MacArthur Street and was parked in an odd sort of angle, and Mears happened by. She had her thirteen-year-old daughter with her. Mears figured it’d just be easier to take them home, but you know how it is. Linda was handy, so it seemed okay.”
I handed the clipboard back. “It’s not okay on several counts, Ernie,” I said, and he frowned. “First of all, Linda doesn’t work for us.”
“Oh. I thought she was hired on.”
“No. We’re talking about it.” Before he had a chance to bring it up, I added, “She filled in on the airport radio earlier yesterday because it was just a relay job. Any civilian could have done it.” I turned to walk back toward my office. “And second, we don’t have time to run a taxi service for goddam drunks right now. If you’re going to use her, use her here.”