“Could. But what’s on that prop isn’t something that sifted down from the ceiling in here,” Turner said doggedly.
“Eleven hours of flight time in a month.” She leaned inside again, examining the instrument panel. “Which one of these is the Hobbs?”
Turner reached across the seat and tapped a small, black-ringed clock. “Right there. Hobbs meter gives true time, and the tach records engine hours.”
“They’re not the same thing, then?”
“Ah, no,” Turner said indulgently. “They’re not the same.”
“You have a record of what the Hobbs read when you flew last time?”
“Sure. The logs are in the pocket behind the seat. Lemme come around.”
Estelle pulled back and let Turner rummage. He flipped open a black book and leafed through the pages. “When we came back from Cruces, and that was on April fourteenth, the Hobbs read 2134.6 hours. And now, it reads…” He paused as he squinted at the dial. “It looks like 2145.9. That’s-” and he looked upward as he did the math in his head “-a little more than eleven hours.”
“How far could you fly in that time?” Torrez asked. “Or half that time. You gotta come back.”
“To keep it simple,” Bergin explained, “a hundred and forty miles an hour gets you seven hundred miles in five hours. But that’s not counting fuel stops or anything like that.”
“Seven hundred.”
“That’s right. Hell of a ways from here to Los Angeles, or Dallas, or Denver. Or a hell of a ways into Mexico.”
“And back,” Estelle added.
“You have any ideas?” Turner said, looking first at Estelle and then at Torrez.
“A couple or three,” Torrez said. “It wasn’t just pleasure flyin’.”
“We could be looking at five trips of two hours each, more or less. Or three trips, or whatever,” Bergin said.
“Yep.” Torrez nodded. “Interesting that they went to the trouble of bringin’ the airplane back when they were done.”
“Pretty darn thoughtful,” Bergin said.
“Oh, yeah,” Torrez grunted. He turned to Estelle. “You ready to have Linda go over it? Then we can let the dog out.”
Turner looked even more uncomfortable. “You think somebody used my plane to run drugs, or what?”
“We’ll find out,” Torrez said.
Chapter Ten
Sebastian stood beside the airplane, his leash hanging relaxed from the State Police officer’s hand, tongue lolling and eyes looking expectantly from human to human. Neither luck nor his phenomenally precise nose had located any trace of the fragrant little red ball with which he had been so meticulously trained.
Estelle knew that it often came as a surprise to drug dealers that the dogs didn’t know hashish from hot dogs, or blood from grape juice. Find the source of the smell for which they had been trained, whether it was the real thing or the essence smeared on a rubber ball, and win a treat. It was as simple as that.
The trick was keeping distractions to a minimum. As soon as he had been released from the backseat of the State Police car, Sebastian had caught sight of Bob Torrez. The dog did a little dance, uttering a girlish yelp of greeting.
“He loves you, Bobby.” Lieutenant Adams laughed. Aloof with other human beings except his handler, Sebastian went to pieces with Bob Torrez-no one, including the sheriff himself, knew why.
Socializing turned to work in short order. Keeping Sebastian on short leash, Lieutenant Adams led him into the hangar. For the next ten minutes, he guided the dog’s efforts, covering the perimeter, the exterior of the plane, and finally the inside.
Tail wagging furiously, Sebastian leaped through the large door of the aft baggage compartment, eager to please. No matter how thoroughly he thrust his nuzzle into dark corners, even wedging his wet nose into the seat pockets, he found nothing.
After several attempts, Adams led the dog out of the hangar, where he collected a single pat on the head from Sheriff Torrez.
“Nothing,” Adams said. “Absolutely nothing. If this aircraft has been hauling freight, it wasn’t coke or grass or any of that shit.” He looked approvingly at Turner, as if somehow the cell phone salesman’s reputation had been at stake.
Fifteen minutes later, they had another answer-another negative one. The black light wand produced nothing. The interior of the airplane hadn’t been splashed with bodily fluids-certainly not blood, anyway.
A perceptive businessman, Jerry Turner watched the circus with nervous interest. At one point, he sauntered with exaggerated calm over to where Leona Spears waited by her county truck. Leona had stayed well back from the crime scene, but her natural curiosity-especially since the airport was county property-kept her from leaving.
“What do you think?” Torrez asked.
“I want to know where the gasoline came from,” Estelle said.
“That shouldn’t be too hard. How many places in town sell gas? Six?”
“About that. And I would think that they’d remember someone filling multiple cans.”
“And it don’t have to be gas stations,” Jim Bergin offered. “Any rancher that has a storage tank. Probably another half a dozen outfits in town have tanks.”
“It still ain’t that many,” Torrez said. “Let me get someone started on that.”
“Eddie’s still out at the airstrip?”
“Far as I know. Him and Jackie. I’m going to leave her out there, get the rest combin’ the area for gas sales.”
Estelle shook her head slowly. “Ay,” she whispered. “If this is the plane…”
“Then it’s somebody local,” Torrez finished the thought.
“Or somebody who knows the community as well as a local.” She reached out a hand to Bergin, taking him by the left shoulder. “How many pilots do you know in Posadas who fly well enough to do something like this?”
“Oh, shit,” Bergin said. “You mean steal an airplane and bring it back? Just about anybody with a pilot’s license, Estelle. Now, if they’re flyin’ at night, that’s different. And if they’re dodgin’ border security, that’s something else again. I don’t know anybody who’d be crazy enough to do that.”
“Well, taking the plane is the least of it.” She drew him several steps farther away from Jerry Turner’s hearing. “Jim, we think that this plane was used to fly in from somewhere-maybe Mexico, maybe not-with at least four people.” She released Bergin’s shoulder and held up four fingers, then bent one down. “One was the pilot. The other three were murdered. Shot to death.”
Bergin looked at her in silence.
“The sheriff found the bodies out at the west end of the gas company’s airstrip, off County Road Fourteen.”
“Jesus,” Bergin murmured.
“We don’t know who they are, but we think they may be from Mexico, maybe somewhere else south of the border.”
“You’re tellin’ me that somebody took this airplane, flew down south, picked up passengers, brought ’em back into the country, then killed ’em?”
“Yes.”
“Then returned the airplane. Just parked it back in the hangar and walked away.”
“That’s the possibility we’re looking at, Jim.”
“Well, I wondered why all the fuss. I don’t guess you’d have the whole department out lookin’ for a stolen car-or airplane. Least of all a borrowed one. Unless there was something else goin’ on.”
“There is. Three homicide victims. Maybe a family. We don’t know.”
Bergin held up a hand. “I don’t need to know no more,” he said. “Does Turner know any of this?”
“No. He’s going to need to know, though. I want to borrow the plane. With you flying it.”
Bergin cocked his head incredulously. “Now what? What are we talkin’ about here?”
“I’m going to repeat my original question: how many pilots do you know of around here who fly well enough to pull this off? For the sake of argument, let’s say, fly deep into Mexico, pick up passengers, fly back, and land at the airstrip-all, I’m going to guess, at night. Daytime is too risky. He lands, shoots the three, then piles back into the plane, and returns to Posadas. Again, at night. If you’re not here, he’s going to be able to slip in without anyone noticing.”