Steven Havill: Out of Season

“Let’s look at the other one,” Dr. Guzman said, and he waited for me while I made my way down off the rock pile.

One hundred and four paces later, we reached the remains of the pilot’s seat. The frame was broken and the entire seat splayed out flat on the ground like a book facedown, its back broken. Thirty steps away lay most of Philip Camp’s remains.

Headlights swept the area, and the cavalcade from the west pulled up in a vast cloud of dust. I could see Bob Torrez’s county vehicle, along with one of the Posadas Emergency Rescue squad’s four-wheel-drive Suburbans. Bringing up the rear was a pickup truck with a rack of lights across the roof, a spotlight on the driver’s door pillar, and a large feed bin in the back. A dog perched on top of the feed bin, barking and dashing from one side to another.

The mutt was either well trained or tied, because when the truck jarred to a stop, it didn’t leap off.

Doors slammed, but Sergeant Robert Torrez was the only person who left the group of vehicles and approached.

“Over here, Robert,” I called and waved the flashlight. Torrez angled toward me, sweeping his own light from side to side as he approached.

“It is the sheriff,” I said when he reached me. “Apparently just the two of them. Holman and his brother-in-law. Both dead.”

“Well, my God,” Torrez muttered and waved a hand back toward the vehicles. “The Boyds have a generator in the back of the truck if we need more light. Edwin said we’re welcome to it.”

“Light isn’t what we need right now, Robert,” I said. “We can take the bodies back, what’s left of them, but beyond that, we’re going to be waiting on the feds. Did Estelle say anything to you over the radio on your way out?”

“No, but I can’t imagine that they’ll be able to get investigators here much before mid-morning.”

“Then all we can do is to secure the scene until they arrive,” I said. “The first thing we need to do is to walk the crash track and locate the body parts.”

Torrez made a little sigh, tucked his light under his arm and thrust both hands in his pockets. “That ain’t going to be pretty,” he muttered.

“Nope,” I said. “But we don’t want the coyotes, or the Boyds’ dog, for that matter, making off with parts of the sheriff, either.”

Torrez let out something that might have been a chuckle. I added, “And everything else stays untouched until the feds get here. Don’t move a thing.”

“Let’s get to it,” Torrez said.

“I want to use the radio in your truck first,” I said. “Estelle needs to be tracking down what information she can from her end. The feds are going to want some answers when they get here…like what Philip Camp and Martin Holman were doing flying at this time of day, in weather like this.”

“I didn’t think the sheriff even liked to fly,” Torrez said.

“He didn’t. And his brother-in-law should have known better.” I took a deep breath and turned back toward the wreckage. It was going to be a long night.

The sun cracked over the prairie to the east of us, cutting hard shadows across the scrub, arroyos, and rocks.

To the south, a herd of cattle had gathered, thinking in their own dull way that all the vehicular traffic during the night had been for their benefit, bringing in feed.

The livestock belonged to Johnny Boyd, and it was one more complication Boyd didn’t need just then. Like everyone else, he was gaunt-faced and tired. He’d done more than his share during the night, moving with the rest of us as, like dark ghosts, we searched through the crash site, lights flicking this way and that.

Even his wife had returned half a dozen times with coffee, food, flashlight batteries. She had stayed near the truck each time, not wanting to venture out into the darkness. She knew what we were doing, and the last thing she wanted was to catch a glimpse of the contents of one of the black-plastic bags from the medical examiner’s office.

I saw the cattle before Boyd did. He, Bob Torrez, and Donnie Smith were working carefully near the first point of impact a hundred yards to the east, getting ready to sweep their way along the strike path again now that the sun was far enough over the horizon to provide some definition for objects on the ground.

Watching my step on the rough terrain, I approached Boyd. A cigarette dangled from his mouth and he occasionally coughed short, choppy little spasms. He looked up and saw me.

“Those yours?” I asked and gestured toward the cattle.

“Sure enough,” Boyd said and sighed. “This part of the prairie normally belongs to them.” He grinned wryly and removed the cigarette.

“Are they going to move in closer? I’d hate to have them in here.”

He coughed again. “Nah. I’ll keep an eye on ’em. As soon as my brother and his boy get back, I’ll have ’em drive ’em over beyond the windmill. There’s a section fence there. We’ll put ’em behind that.” He stretched and put both hands on the small of his back.

“What happens now, you reckon?” he asked.

The smoke from his cigarette wafted past my nose. It smelled good. I hesitated, and even considered bumming one.

“The remains will go to the medical examiner,” I said. “We’ll get a preliminary report back in just a few hours. The details will take several days. Maybe a week. Maybe longer.” I looked at Boyd. “Bob Torrez tells me you never heard the plane.”

Boyd shrugged helplessly. “Never heard a damn thing.”

I turned my back to the sun and looked across the swath cut by the wreckage. In each spot where a fragment of human being had been recovered, a small orange flag had been stabbed into the ground. Somewhere there was an expert who could tell me exactly what had happened-someone who could look at the trashed aluminum, steel, and plastic and tell me why the Bonanza had exploded itself and two occupants into fragments.

“The feds will be out later today. They’ll pick through this bit by bit. It’ll take time to reconstruct what happened, that’s for sure.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Johnny Boyd said. “I meant what happens with your department. Something like this throws a wrench in it, don’t it?”

“I hadn’t even thought about that,” I said. “But I guess it will.”

“Old Holman’s been sheriff for quite some time now, hasn’t he?”

“Going on his ninth year,” I said. “And I don’t know what we’re going to do. I suppose the county legislators will appoint someone until they get around to holding a special election.”

“Hell of a note.”

“Yes, it is.”

“He leave much of a family behind?”

“Wife and two daughters. Both of the kids are in college.”

“Hell of a note. Makes a man wonder sometimes. Here you are, goin’ along just fine, thinkin’ the sun’s going to come up tomorrow like it always has.” He lit another cigarette from the butt of the first, then fragmented the butt between his thumb and index finger. “And then it don’t.”

I grunted something that Johnny Boyd could construe as agreement and let it go at that. Behind us, the sun was a full ball above the horizon, too bright to look at. And Martin Holman was pieces, flung through the rocks and cactus. For no constructive reason, the image of the Post-it note on Linda Real’s application came to mind.

When Martin Holman had written that note, he’d been forty-three years old, happily married, well-thought-of in the community, and facing what he most loathed-making decisions that might create hard feelings within his department or within the community-or worse yet, create headlines in the Posadas Register . Sheriff Holman’s decisions had involved personnel-some major realignments before summer’s end.