Somehow I-and Canada Dry-had won grouchy Amos Hinsdale over. I’d been promoted from “lady pilot” to just plain “pilot”!
From the FAA’s Internet site, I found the Cessna whose number Hinsdale had noted down belonged to a flight service in Fresno. I called the service, got a machine. By then it was nearly eleven. Hy hadn’t called today. No one had, except for Patrick and Ted with terse reports they’d left on the machine. Hy’s silence didn’t bother me; I could sense him urging me on.
I flipped the TV on to the national news. The recent happenings in Mono County had become a major story. Apparently they had been for nearly two days, when the media smelled links between the murders. Come to think of it, I’d seen a CBS van in town the previous afternoon, but had been too distracted to take much notice. Tonight’s follow-up said the sheriff’s department was searching for both Bud Smith’s boat trailer and the keys to his Forester, so far with little success.
After watching the weather report-more snow-I poured myself a glass of wine and sat down to think.
Trevor Hanover-wherever he was-would be monitoring the news. He’d be aware of the interest the cases had generated. But would he suspect someone had also linked the events to him?
Maybe, maybe not.
I began to construct my view of what had happened.
Hanover had been intimidated by his brother Bud’s threat to tell the truth about Miri’s rape to the Nevada authorities. He’d retained the attorney for Hayley and probably put the half million dollars he’d offered Bud in trust. When Hayley returned to Vernon and took out the life-insurance policy, Bud gave her her mother’s letter. After reading it, she asked Bud to set up a meeting with her father; again the threat hanging over Hanover had worked, and he’d agreed. Perhaps he’d expected some kind of trouble, since he’d flown his jet to Fresno and rented a small plane that wouldn’t be recognized as belonging to him.
Still, I couldn’t believe even as cold and calculating a man as Hanover was reputed to be would have planned his own daughter’s murder.
An accident, then. Hanover refusing Hayley’s demands for money and recognition as his child. Hayley taking out Boz’s.32. A struggle, and the gun going off and killing Hayley. Happens all the time when irresponsible people untrained in the use of firearms have access to them.
Hanover left the scene, taking the gun with him. And someone saw him leaving…
Tom Mathers. T.C. had told me her husband had a woman friend in that trailer park-a woman friend who’d left to care for her supposedly ailing mother shortly after Hy and I found Tom’s body. Mathers could have heard the shot and followed Hanover. After that, he did some checking and made a phone call to the ranch, thinking he had a big deal going.
Blackmail-the fool’s crime.
From this point on, my thinking became more speculative.
Bud Smith knew as soon as he heard the news of Hayley’s death that his brother had killed her, but for some reason he didn’t go to the authorities. Lack of proof? Shock? The habit of lifelong loyalty and protectiveness? The hope he could persuade Davey to turn himself in? Family ties could be that strong: I’d seen it over and over again, in my own life and those of others.
Did Bud try to talk with his brother, but found himself unable to because Hanover had forted himself up at the ranch?
No way to tell.
On November second, a meeting between Hanover and Mathers at the lava fields. More demands on Hanover. His financial empire is crumbling, his wife has left him, he’s killed his daughter, and now this. He snaps, and when Mathers turns away from him, he shoots him in the back with Sheppard’s.32.
Premeditated? Yes. Maybe he wasn’t expecting the meeting to turn out that way, but the possibility must have been in the back of his mind, or he wouldn’t have brought along the gun.
Now he’s panicked. He’s in the lava fields with a dead man and two vehicles. He doesn’t want to leave the body there-the proximity to his ranch. He can put the body in its owner’s truck, drive it to some remote place, and dispose of it, but then how the hell does he get back?
The answer is the same as it always has been with the former Davey Smith: he calls on his big brother Bud for help.
Bud comes to the ranch in response to Davey’s plea, not even taking time to unhitch his boat trailer from the Forester. But when Davey tells him what he wants done, Bud flat-out refuses. Davey’s killed his own daughter as well as Tom Mathers, and Bud confronts him with the facts, threatens to call the sheriff’s department. Maybe he even goes to the phone.
It’s the first time Bud has ever refused Davey a way out. Davey snaps again, shoots his brother in the back.
Now he’s got two bodies on his hands. The one in the desert-which he’s zipped into a sleeping bag from the victim’s own truck-doesn’t matter, he decides, since the only other people who knew he was at his ranch are also dead. And the boat trailer provides a perfect solution for hiding his brother’s corpse: put Bud’s body into his-Hanover’s-own car, the car onto the trailer, drive the Forester up to a remote spot in Toiyabe National Forest, dispose of both. Hitch the trailer to his car-because a vehicle with a boat trailer and no boat would attract a lot more attention when found in the forest than the SUV of a hiker who apparently went astray-and return to the ranch. Then get the hell out of there.
If that was what happened, the trailer might still be at the ranch. Maybe the keys to Bud Smith’s Forester, too. Since Hanover had driven it into the woods, he might have pocketed them.
And the ranch house was a probable crime scene. There could be material evidence-blood, fibers, fingerprints…
So?
Check out the property from the air, make sure it was deserted. And then get onto it and into the house. Look for something that would give Lark probable cause to obtain a search warrant.
Of course, those actions were totally illegal. Trespassing, breaking and entering. I could lose my private investigator’s license, go to jail. And I didn’t want to hinder the authorities in building a case against Hanover. While Lark was willing to bend the law when circumstances merited it, no way she’d be able to get a warrant based on information gleaned during an illegal search.
Well, what if my plane’s engine went out, and I had to make an emergency landing on the ranch? Wasn’t able to make radio contact with anyone? Was forced to hike to the house to ask to use the phone? Found no one there, but looked through the windows and saw something suspicious? Left and reported it to Lark?
Lark didn’t know enough about planes to realize that when you had an engine out, it didn’t suddenly start up again. She’d assume it was like a car’s flooded motor. And the roughness of the landing could explain the loss of radio contact.
Thin, but Lark wouldn’t be inclined to ask too many questions if a multiple murderer was brought to justice as a result.
Okay. I’d sleep on it. But first I’d run a search for the license plate number of Bud Smith’s boat trailer.
Saturday
The morning air was crisp, the sky clear. The projected snowstorm had blown past in the night and was currently blanketing parts of Tuolomne County.
Amos Hinsdale arrived at the UNICOM shack as I was preflighting Two-Seven-Tango. “You leaving?” he asked, genuine disappointment in his voice.
“No, just going out to take a look around.”
“At that ranch, you mean.”
I hesitated. Could I trust him? Yes, I could: in Amos’ world there was a brotherhood of pilots, and last night he’d allowed me to join it.
“That’s my approximate destination.”
The lines around his eyes crinkled. “Be careful. You got plenty of fuel?”
“Yes. I filled up at Independence yesterday.”
“Stop in when you get back. I’ve still got a couple of Canada Drys on ice.”