Steven Havill - Final Payment

“The wind, maybe,” Estelle said. She lifted her head and let the soft air play against her face. “What little there is feels like it’s from the southwest. If the pilot landed into the wind right now, right this minute, this is where he’d end up. But we don’t know what the wind conditions were when this all happened.” She thumped the side of the bucket. “If there was no wind, why didn’t he land eastbound, so the passengers could get off close to the road?”

“Or turn around and taxi back to the gate,” Linda said. “I think the killer was on the plane. For one thing, I don’t think someone intent on bumping off three people would walk across the desert for miles and miles, then hope he had the right spot. I think he was on the plane.”

“And that leaves us wondering, doesn’t it.” Estelle looked through the wide-angle lens of her camera again and for a moment watched Sheriff Torrez, Coroner Alan Perrone, and State Police Lieutenant Mark Adams working the area around the third victim. “If the killer did his business and then got back on the plane, was he the pilot?” She turned and looked at Linda. “Were there four on the plane originally, or five? Or more?”

The photographer shrugged carefully. “And if he didn’t get back on the plane, where is he now?”

“It’s a big desert out there,” Estelle said, and she sighed. How large the desert must have seemed for the three victims, how incomprehensible for a few awful minutes. None of this fitted the usual pattern-no plastic bags stuffed with cheap clothing, no plastic water jugs, none of the trappings of a desperate trudge across the desert for migrants seeking American minimum wage, a fortune for them.

“Are there any other angles you want before we go back down?”

“Ah, no,” Linda said. “I have the whole thing six ways from Sunday.”

Estelle nudged the control and the bucket sank to earth with a faint hydraulic sigh. Bucky Sanchez, the county worker who had driven the bucket truck out to this lonely spot, met them as they stepped off.

“You guys done with me?” he asked hopefully.

“We are,” Estelle said. “And thanks, Bucky.”

“Anytime,” he said, glancing nervously to the west. He managed a weak smile. “And I don’t really mean that, either. You think you know what happened out here?”

“No,” Estelle said. “But every little bit that we can learn is bound to help.”

“Worst thing I ever saw,” he said. “When I drive out back to the county road, do you want me to stay over to the side of the runway, same way I came in?”

“Perfect.” Estelle nodded. “And if someone asks you what’s going on out here, just plead ignorance.”

“That ain’t hard,” Sanchez said. “Why somebody’d do a thing like this is beyond me. Way beyond.”

She turned at the approach of Tom Mears. “We’re finished,” she said to the sergeant.

“Inspiration from above?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” Estelle said. “But it’ll give us some overview pictures to ponder.”

Mears looked down at the trowel in his hand as if the answers might lie there. “One of us needs to run out to the airport to talk with Jim Bergin. I’m kinda curious to see if there’s a standard wheelbase measurement that’s of any use to us.” He pointed across the pavement. “We’ve got a good measurement between the main gear in any number of places. It’s right at ninety-seven inches- más o menos. It’s hard to be exact, but it’s a start. By the way, if you look right there,” and he pointed at where a small yellow plastic evidence marker rested beside the runway, “you can see where he cranked the nose wheel over when he knew he was getting hung up on the edge of the pavement. I’m guessing that’s what happened. That gives us an idea of the distance and geometry between the main gear and the nose gear. Again, nothing exact, but it helps.”

“It’s interesting that he did that,” Estelle said. “And you’re right. Jim might have some ideas. He might have seen a plane pass through that didn’t mean anything special to him at the time.”

“Sure enough. We’re not talking a large plane, I’m guessing. The footprint of even a light twin-engine plane would be substantially wider than a single engine, I’d think.”

“We have a starting point,” she said. “But you know, I’m curious why they walked where they did.” She looked off through the brush, her gaze following the trail of yellow flags that had been thrust into the desert. Why not just fly to Posadas and get off there , she wondered. Most of the time, Posadas Municipal was untended at night, even deserted. The facility was a comfortable six miles from town, far enough that a conservative landing wouldn’t even be heard except by a handful of folks who wouldn’t care about casual air traffic in the first place.

“The possibility exists that the three were brought to this spot to be executed,” Estelle said. “That simple.”

“Interesting,” Mears said cryptically. “That’s what Bobby thinks, too. And they were shot here, not somewhere else and dumped. Execution is the one scenario that explains a lot of what we’re seeing. There was no scuffle, no fight. Nothing that left any tracks, anyway.” The lift truck started and they watched it trundle back down the runway toward the gate and the county road beyond.

“Tomás, we need the long tape,” Mears said, and Pasquale held up the reel. “Let’s get some numbers.”

He hesitated and turned back to Estelle. “Apropos of nothing, are you ready for Saturday night?”

“I haven’t been so nervous in a long, long time.” She laughed. Her son’s first recital, in which he would be performing along with nearly a dozen other music students, added another dimension to an otherwise already hectic weekend. Tom Mears’ fifteen-year-old daughter Melody would also play, but she was a veteran of half a dozen such performances.

“This is a new experience for us,” she added.

Sheriff Torrez made his way carefully through the vegetation, walking back to the runway. He greeted them with a heavy sigh, and Estelle didn’t know if that was because of the ugly crime, or the nagging pain in his hip irritated by all the walking. During another magic moment two years before, his rump had gotten in the way of a.223 bullet, and the recovery had been long, slow, and painful. “Hey,” Torrez said.

Estelle held up her hands in frustration.

“I know what you mean,” the sheriff said. “Nothin’ except three bodies. All shot one time. Pop, pop, pop. Hey, look-do we need to cancel the race?”

“Cancel the race?” Estelle looked at the sheriff blankly. As if the young man going airborne into the rocks off the mesa rim had been from another lifetime instead of just hours before, Estelle hadn’t given the race a moment’s thought. In just a few days, 150 cyclists would be pounding down County Road 14 during the second half of the Posadas Cyclo-Cross 100. They would ride as far south on County Road 14 as Bender’s Canyon Trail, and turn east, the rough and broken two-track roughly paralleling the state highway. There would be no reason for the cyclists to ride another mile farther south to this remote place.

“I don’t think we can do that,” she said.

“The hell we can’t,” Torrez said.

“No, I mean there’s no reason to. We’ll have someone posted at the intersection of the canyon trail and the county road to make sure no one strays.” She glanced across to where Deputy Tom Pasquale was recording numbers from their measurements. “Tom will be one of the cyclists, and that’ll give us another set of eyes.”

“Bad time to be spread so thin,” Torrez said, then held up a plastic evidence bag containing three empty shell casings. “Niners,” he said. “I figured as much. It’s something, but it ain’t much.” He turned and waved at Linda Real. “Hey? Needja.” He lowered his voice. “Interesting thing is that it looks like the killer didn’t move much.”