Had he glanced out the window of his bedroom, likely in the back of the house where bedrooms always were, he might even have seen the gathering of vehicles at Matt Grider’s room. It wouldn’t be rocket science to put all the numbers together. Knowing that something might be amiss, Hector Ocate would know that safety lay just minutes south of the border.
Chapter Eighteen
She hadn’t stayed at the airport after the flight to make sure that Jim Bergin and Jerry Turner had locked everything up. She could only hope. Jim had said that he planned to stay at the airport, but he might not have meant that very night. And Turner? Hopefully, he had taken the Cessna’s keys with him this time-but for an enterprising repeat burglar, that didn’t pose much of a problem. Several places in town could duplicate keys for a buck. How handy it would be to have a spare ignition and a spare door key.
Although there was inadequate personnel to have a deputy sitting at the airport full-time, the airport was under close patrol. Several times each shift, deputies cruised by, checking locks, checking for illegal access. That didn’t prevent much. With the prairie whisper-quiet, a patrol vehicle could be heard a mile away-certainly easily enough when its tires crunched the gravel of the airport’s driveway. Anyone could step into the shadows and wait until the cop was gone.
And Estelle grimaced to herself as she realized that they had all made a fundamental mistake, thinking from the beginning that the killer was long gone after the three homicides.
She found herself wondering how long it would take to push the big doors open, jump into the Cessna, crank it up, and flee. Less than a minute without checklists and careful run-ups?
The county car rocketed down a state highway thankfully devoid of traffic at that early hour. Three miles east of the airport, she overtook a diesel pickup, and caught a glimpse of a startled Jim Bergin as she blew past at nearly twice his speed.
“Three-ten, PSO.”
She picked up the radio mike. “Go ahead.”
“Three-ten, be advised the license number you requested is one-eight-three, Tom Kilo Lincoln. It should appear on a blue 1978 Chevrolet half-ton. Registration expired eleven of oh-six.”
She acknowledged.
“Three-oh-four copies,” Jackie Taber’s quiet voice said. “Negative contact at the border crossing.”
A quarter mile east of the airport, a large RV with a pudgy SUV in tow was parked at the scenic area pull-out, a spot that afforded a view of the sweeping prairie and the San Cristóbal Mountains beyond. So massive was the vehicle that Estelle almost didn’t see the second vehicle parked so that the RV was between it and the highway.
She stood on the brakes, swung wide, and executed a U-turn with tires squealing, then pulled into the west access for the parking area. The RV carried Wisconsin plates, as did the vehicle in tow. Estelle regarded the pickup as she reached for the mike.
“PCS, three-ten.”
“Go ahead, three-ten.”
“I’ll be out of the car with one-eight-three Tom Kilo Lincoln at mile marker one-oh-six on State Seventy-eight. I don’t see an occupant.”
“Three-oh-four will expedite up that way,” Taber said.
“Negative. Cover the border crossing until I see what’s what, Jackie.”
“Three-oh-eight’s ETA is about ten,” another voice said, almost inaudibly soft. Bob Torrez hadn’t been able to sleep, either.
Estelle stepped out of the county car and circled the truck. It was empty, with no keys dangling from the ignition.
“You with the cops?”
She turned at the voice, and saw an enormously fat man standing beside the door of the RV, the huge inner tube of belly hanging out beneath his white T-shirt. He supported himself on two aluminum crutches.
“Sheriff’s Department,” Estelle replied. “Was this vehicle here when you stopped?”
“Sure was.”
“How long ago?”
“Oh.” He grinned, looking at his watch. “I guess we’ve been here about thirty seconds, the wife and me. Gonna have us some breakfast.”
“Did you see anyone around this pickup?”
“No, ma’am. Who are we looking for?”
“We’re just checking,” Estelle said.
“Fair enough. And by the way, I think we’re lost. Is this the highway down to the border crossing?”
“No, sir.” She pointed east as she strode back toward her own vehicle. “Go east to the caution light, turn right. Head south through Posadas and catch State Fifty-six. That’ll take you to Regál and the crossing. You folks have a good day.”
Before the man had a chance to reply, she was back in the car and accelerating out of the rest area, beating Jim Bergin’s truck by a hundred yards. As soon as she turned into the airport access road, she could see that the hangar door had been run out, the door rail framework extending well beyond the corner of the building.
The car slithered to a stop in the loose gravel, and Estelle dashed to the gate, stabbed in the key to the county lock, and snapped it open. The long, heavy chain-link gate rolled easily. As she slammed the gate open, Bergin’s truck pulled in behind her county car. She held up a hand to stop, and then ducked back in her car. As she drove in around the office building, she heard the powerful engine.
Accelerating around the gas pumps island as hard as the police cruiser would go, she looked down the row of hangars and saw the Cessna outside, its back already turning to her. It trundled along smartly, headed for the west end of the runway.
The plane did not have rearview mirrors, and if the pilot concentrated on watching over the cowling, he might never see her. She kept the accelerator flat to the floor, and by the time she reached the end of the last hangar, closing in behind the taxiing airplane, the Crown Victoria was rocketing along at close to a hundred.
Just a few feet behind the plane’s stabilizer, she braked hard and swerved left, shooting obliquely across the smooth median between taxiway and runway. Not touching the brakes until she had careened back onto the asphalt of the runway, she managed to slow enough to take the turnaround donut at the end of the runway, racing toward the Cessna head-on.
She saw the astonishment on Hector Ocate’s face. He had three choices: charge his airplane head-on into Estelle’s patrol car, try to swerve past her to the runway, or spike the brakes and turn around. The heavy airplane was no ballerina on the ground, and Estelle saw that she could run the nose of her patrol car into the prop if necessary.
He chose the third course, and Estelle saw the Cessna 206 dip its nose as he braked. He telegraphed his intentions with a swing first to the right, taking all the asphalt possible, then started to swing left. Estelle punched the gas and cut him off.
For a moment, the big snout of the Cessna, its three-bladed prop a menacing blue, approached within a yard of the Crown Victoria’s driver’s door. Hector braked so hard that Estelle saw the front gear collapse the oleo strut to its stops. Without a handy reverse, Hector was trapped. If he rammed the car-if he so much as kissed it-the propeller would be destroyed.
He stood on the left brake and the engine roared in one last desperate effort to lurch around and clear the car, but Estelle pulled the sedan forward and to the left, cutting the plane’s maneuvering distance to a hairsbreadth. She released her seat belt at the same time, ready to dive to safety when the prop started chopping the Ford.
She rammed the gear selector into park and clawed across the clutter between the seats, digging her knee painfully into the corner of the computer. Diving out the passenger-side door headfirst, she pushed away from the car and came to her feet with the stubby.45 automatic in hand.
Hector Ocate was caught, and knew it. He slumped back in the seat as Estelle rounded the front of the patrol car and ducked under the left wing, advancing as far as the strut. Without being told, the boy reached forward to the dash, and in a few seconds, the engine ran rough and then died.