Nodding toward the small travel bag at my feet, he said, “The cassette in the recorder there.” His eyes swung up to meet mine, and the crow’s-feet at their corners deepened with an irritating smugness.
“Ninety minutes.” I saw no point in trying to cover or apologize. Neither did Sprague, evidently.
“And what would you like me to say for the record?”
“Do you…” I started, then stopped. A small wave of nausea swept over me, and I blinked rapidly and licked my lips. “Do you have any information about the case?”
With an irritating casualness, Sprague said, “Which one?”
“Any. Do you know anything about David Barrie’s disappearance?” If I looked at the clutter of instruments, I got dizzy.
The blank blue of the sky was harsh, and I realized with an odd sense of detachment that my feet and hands were nearly numb. I knew damn well what was the matter…and as the Centurion climbed higher into thinner air, matters would only become worse. I closed my eyes for a second or two. Sprague was feeling confident, even cocky. He could tolerate the altitude far better than I…Maybe he even had a supplemental oxygen bottle stashed somewhere. But I couldn’t let the chance slide by. I opened my eyes and saw that Harlan Sprague was staring hard at me, his face set in a glacial, emotionless mask. The possibility of hypoxia was one I had discussed with my worried son, but now that I was caught in the trap, no brilliant options presented themselves.
“David Barrie,” I repeated, working to enunciate the words.
“I know approximately where Barrie is,” the doctor said quietly.
“Where?”
“Many places now, I’m sure.” Sprague looked out at the sky. “When he left the seat in which you are now sitting, he was lightly drugged and suffering from rather severe hypoxia. You know what that is?” He took a nod as my answer. “I imagine…I sincerely hope…that sometime during his rapid twenty thousand foot descent to the Mexican desert below us, he regained consciousness. I would like to think that.”
“You killed him.” I knew it sounded stupid, but that’s all I could think to say.
Sprague didn’t smile. “No. Actually, I just helped him out of the plane. It’s relatively easy, you know. Climb steeply to a near stall and there isn’t much slipstream to lock the door closed. You notice this aircraft has no wing struts.” He pointed as if he were a tour guide. “They call it a cantilever wing. Nothing for Mr. Barrie to hit on his way out. The sudden stop when he hit the desert killed him, no doubt. If not that, then the scavengers who keep the desert clean of garbage finished the job.” He raised an eyebrow. “Because that’s what he was, Sheriff. Garbage. He killed my daughter. And when he did that, do you remember what the good folks of Posadas did in return?”
“Tell me.”
“Nothing. They did nothing. I lost my daughter, and they did nothing.” His jaw set tightly and he looked away, out toward the clouds. The momentary euphoria of oxygen starvation had passed, and instead I felt miserable. I wiped my forehead. On the ground I had been fine, and I cursed my body’s crumbling resistance. I looked at the instrument panel. There was that conversation with my son again, replaying through my mind. There was an altimeter there somewhere, no doubt. Who knows where. Buddy had told me to pay attention to that. I found one dial whose needle pointed left, its white bar just past the numeral 5 above a horizontal line. On the dial face it said, in small, blurry letters I could just make out, “Vertical Speed.”
Buddy had said something about focus, too, I remembered. “You know your rights?” I said thickly.
“Oh, yes, Sheriff. I know them. But I’m not worried about me. Maybe about you. Not about me.”
“Turn back to Posadas,” I said.
“I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway.” He fingered the control yoke idly. “Don’t you want to know the rest? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? Tell you the rest?”
“The rest?”
“It worked well, too, until Barrie got clumsy. You see”-he settled a little like a good storyteller in front of the fire-”and I’ll make this quick, because I can see your concentration is limited…I decided that my first priority was revenge against Barrie. But the more I thought, the more I decided that it was the entire community.” He smiled at me. “I’m sure the whole world is to blame, but one must start somewhere. If it was drugs they wanted, it was drugs I would provide…until Barrie and all the rest knew what it was to lose, Sheriff. To lose everything. Barrie lost his daughter. That was a nice twist of fate. And justice, too. Unplanned, to be sure. His daughter stole the kilo from him. It was intended for sale up north, but she stole it. It was in the car, no doubt intended for a great party. An ‘all-nighter,’ as they say. I assume the boy who was driving panicked when he saw the lights of the police car in his rearview mirror. Your eager department helped considerably.”
“You can’t…” I said, but he interrupted me.
“Indeed I can. But enough of that. I would think you would be more interested in how we brought the cocaine into the country…since this trip is your idea, you must have some notions. I hate to admit that the idea was Barrie’s. But I’ll give him credit.” Sprague almost sounded wistful. “It was novel. It’s going to be difficult to replace him, and the others.”
Sprague was right…it was difficult to concentrate, but a large share of the sickness I felt was revulsion at listening to this man talk about multiple murder as if he were filing fingernails. I remembered Buddy saying that I would feel happy as a clam. I didn’t. Of course, Buddy had had no way of knowing what I would be hearing.
“A unique plan,” he continued. “I don’t know all the technical details. I just fly the big plane.” He reached out and patted the panel top. “This one. Perfectly legal flight into Mexico and back. I clear customs, usually at Nogales and Tucson, where they know me. After Tucson, I head for home. Except I make a little change. I change my plan, maybe for a little airport like Cochise. Buzz the runway. If anyone is watching on radar, it looks like I landed. I fly low and hot over the border, back into Mexico. No problem. Are you still following this? And there’s my contact point. Straight and level at eighty knots, fifty or sixty feet above the cactus. Up from the ground comes that magnificent little airplane, radio-controlled. My partner, flying with me, takes over from the man on the ground. They call it the ‘handoff.’ Just like in football. We fly in formation, Sheriff, the small plane just far enough away that it’s not affected by the wash from my wings. Nothing on radar, even if they could scan so low. He was good, my partner. Too bad the state police arrested him and a friend last week.” Sprague shrugged. “They got careless. But they obviously didn’t talk, or I wouldn’t be here, would I?” He tapped a dial directly ahead of him. “Anyway, we fly across the border together. No problem. In the radio-controlled model are two, maybe three kilos of uncut cocaine. Not bad. Nothing in my plane, should someone bark at me when I land. Once across the border, the model plane is passed off to another party on the ground with a third transmitter. We use a different location for that each time. He takes the plane and lands it. I fly on to the airport. Nice, huh?”
I shook my head slowly, no longer really caring what Sprague had to say.
“Barrie decided it would be cute to use the old Consolidated Mine. The security guard there, as you no doubt already know, is something less than bright, and was thoroughly enjoying some extra income. The last flight, we came in right at dusk. That’s a tricky time, as you are probably well aware. Barrie was on the ground, and took the handoff. I suppose the Salinger boy saw the radio-controlled plane, or heard it, and drove down the road to see it. For whatever reason, Barrie was not able to just ignore his audience. He caught the fence coming in and crashed the plane. Salinger, being the helpful soul that he was, rendered assistance and saw the wrong things. So Barrie shot him. You know the rest.”