“That the only picture the sheriff managed to take?” he asked.
“No,” Estelle replied. “There are others, but they don’t show much of interest.” She paused and then said, “Fence lines, that sort of thing.”
“Huh,” Boyd said. He slapped a hand on the fender of his wife’s Wagoneer. “Well, if you need anything, you folks just holler. There’s almost always someone to home. I guess maybe you talked to Edwin already.”
“Yep,” I said and glanced at Estelle. “He was in Drury at the time of the crash, so that’s not going to help much. And who knows,” I said, pushing myself away from my leaning spot on the Jeep’s fender, “we may never know just what happened, or why.”
Boyd chuckled. “I’ll tell you one thing that’s for damn sure true. If you keep those feds around here long enough, they’ll make up a story that fits, whether it’s anywhere close to what actually happened or not. You know how that goes.”
“They’ve got a job to do, like everyone else,” I said.
“Yeah, well,” Johnny said, then shook his head with disgust and dropped the subject. Estelle had turned and apparently said something to Maxine, because the woman nodded briefly before Estelle walked back to the patrol car.
“You just keep ’em away from me,” Johnny said, and I regarded him with interest.
“They’ll talk to you if they think it’s necessary, Johnny. That’s just the way things go,” I said.
The last thing I wanted was to enter into an argument with Johnny Boyd about federal agencies. When it came right down to it, what he thought one way or another didn’t matter much. So I settled for, “Thanks, folks,” and a tip of my hat. As I settled into the car, Estelle was rummaging around in the back seat. Both Boyds had pulled out and left Baca’s parking lot by the time she slid back into the front seat.
She held the clipboard out to me. On it, in inch-high letters, she’d printed neatly: Do you need to talk to me privately?
“She nodded that she did, twice,” Estelle said. “So she knows something that either she doesn’t want her husband to hear or that he already knows and doesn’t want to tell us.”
“Maybe so,” I said.
“And one other thing,” Estelle said as she tucked the clipboard back under the stack of paperwork that filled the center section of the front seat. “No one told him that we’d been talking to his brother.”
“Lucky guess,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got a scanner in that rig of his. Half of the ranchers do, along with CBs, cell phones, and God knows what else. If he heard my estimate of how long it was going to take us to get back to the office and then saw us coming in on the state road, he could have put two and two together.”
“I wish we could,” Estelle said and slapped the steering wheel in frustration.
“So how are you going to arrange to meet with Maxine Boyd?”
“First I’ll try the obvious thing. I’ll give her a phone call.”
“That’s not too private.”
“It’ll work. The phone’s in the kitchen. I’ll call right at dinnertime.” She lowered her voice an octave. “Hubby at table, eating steak.” She turned to me and grinned. “He won’t get up to answer the phone. She will.”
I grimaced. “You read too much psychological stuff.”
“It works, though. Watch.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Neil Costace was leaning against the counter in the dispatch room, idly reading the daily call log, when Estelle and I entered the Public Safety Building. He turned and saw us, and his lips came close to a smile. But the rest of his face was sober, even grim.
As I approached, the FBI agent straightened up and extended his hand. His grip was firm. “Bill,” he said, and nodded at Estelle. “Walter Hocker, one of our special agents who works out of Oklahoma City, is up here with me.”
I looked around. “Fine. Where is he?”
“He’s using the telephone in the sheriff’s office.”
I nodded and said to Gayle Sedillos, “When he’s finished, tell him to join us.” I indicated the door to my own office, and as Estelle and Costace filed past me, I turned back to Gayle. “And I need to see Linda Real, Eddie Mitchell, and Doug Posey.” I smiled at her. “In any order.”
“Linda’s working downstairs, sir,” Gayle said, and made hand motions to indicate a camera.
“As soon as she can break free,” I said, and walked into my office and closed the door. I’d worked with Neil Costace several times before on cases that interested the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He had a law degree, but never let it get in the way.
“Bring me up to speed on this fine Sunday morning,” he said, and sat down on one of the straight chairs. “I understand from Buscema that the pilot of the aircraft was killed by ground fire.” He made it sound like an incident in a war zone.
“That’s correct. It appears that one bullet struck him low in the back, traveled upward and unzipped his aorta. It also appears that the bullet was fragmenting when it struck him, so it’s going to be interesting to see just where it struck the airframe of the Bonanza. That should tell us something.”
“No ground witnesses?”
“Maybe one,” I said. “We have a woman…come here and let me show you.” I stepped to the wall map of Posadas County. “She and her husband live right here. The Finnegans. She’s the woman who made the initial call reporting an aircraft in trouble. She told us that she saw it flying in big circles in this area here, and then she claims that she heard sounds that were like an engine backfiring.”
“Backfiring?”
“Right. And that’s what the sounds, if she heard them at all, might have been. So far, there’s no obvious evidence of mechanical failure in the aircraft’s engine, but we won’t know definitely for some time.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Costace said with impatience. “They’ll have to tear it down. Weeks and weeks. But you’re saying the sounds that the witness said were of backfiring could have been the gunshots responsible.”
“Yes.”
“Weather?”
“Windy, gusting out of the west-southwest at twenty knots or more.”
“So regardless of the source of the ‘backfires,’” Costace said, “that noise had to have been fairly close to the witness in order for her to hear it, even downwind.”
“I would guess so.”
“And no one else was seen on the ground?”
“No. We’ve had people scouring the mesa, the forest roads, everywhere. But remember that we didn’t locate the crash until nearly dark, and we didn’t arrive at the scene until well after dark.” I stopped and took a breath. “And we didn’t know about the bullet fragment until yesterday around mid-morning. So the odds of the shooter still being in the area are slim to none.”
Costace crossed his arms over his chest. “And the wounds that killed the pilot were such that you don’t think he could have flown for any great distance after being struck?”
I shook my head. “If what Mrs. Finnegan tells us is correct, the plane was flying normally, then she heard the noises, followed immediately by erratic flight patterns. Then it disappeared from view behind a mesa, so she didn’t actually see the crash.”
“How reliable is she, do you think? You just sounded like her version of events might not be the most accurate.”
“If she’s not actually mentally ill, Charlotte Finnegan is a hairsbreadth from it. I’m not sure how much of what she actually sees is real or what she imagines.”
“Husband? Other members of the family?”
“Only her husband, and he wasn’t home at the time.”
“Huh.” Costace rubbed a hand through his close-cropped hair. “And Buscema says that…” He let his voice trail off as the door opened. A short, stumpy man in jeans, knit golf shirt, and a light blue jacket stepped into the room. He didn’t bother to knock, and he pushed the door shut behind him. He carried a slender black-leather folder.
“Bill, this is Special Agent Walter Hocker. Walt, Undersheriff Bill Gastner. And this is Detective Estelle Reyes-Guzman.” Hands were pumped, and Hocker regarded Estelle with interest.