“Probably doesn’t surprise you that my son’s a history major, does it?”
“And I assume that the fully automatic weapons follow the same pattern? That’s a hell of a collection.”
“It will be. What he wants is a collection of all the major light arms that were issued to soldiers during the major conflicts of the twentieth century.”
“That’s ambitious.”
“Damn near impossible, but he’s got a start. I told him that if that’s the kind of collection he wanted to make, he’d best get at it. Some of that material is going to be pretty dear in a few years. Or illegal. I admit, I found out that it’s easy to get caught up in all this.” He laughed, the first real humor I’d heard from him in days. “I even put off buying a new pickup truck this year. That’s how bad it gets.”
“And your wife hasn’t divorced you yet,” I said.
Boyd looked puzzled. “He’s her son too. That’s how we look at it. I just didn’t expect this kind of trouble, that’s all.”
“One last thing,” I said and opened my briefcase to find the photographs I’d brought along. I found the one of the intersecting fence lines and handed it to Boyd. “Where’s this spot?”
He looked hard at the photo and then squatted down in front of the Bronco so that the headlights gave him daytime.
“Huh,” he said and turned the picture over. “That’s got to be over by what we call William’s Tank. There used to be a windmill there years ago, but it went dry, hell, back in the seventies. Dick Finnegan took it out and put it over near his trailer.”
“So this is on Finnegan’s property?”
Boyd nodded. “Yeah. I recognize this fence line now. And this here is where he thought about digging a new dirt tank. He borrowed my little dozer for a day or two, then gave up. Said there wasn’t any bottom to the gravel.”
“So if I wanted to get there, how would I do it?”
Boyd stood up. “Just take this road back toward the highway. When you hit the trail that heads down south into the back of the mesa-where he’s working on that spring-you go about a mile on that. This is off to the west there a little bit. There’s what’s left of a two-track that will take you over that way.” He looked at the photo again. “Why this?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and then took a calculated risk. “Martin Holman took that photo on the day of the crash.”
A slow smile spread across Johnny Boyd’s face, but he just shook his head and handed the photo back to me.
“You don’t want to tell me?” I asked.
He looked sideways at me as he drew on his cigarette, assessing just what I might be thinking.
“It’s just a fence,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“If that’s the case, how about a guided tour?” I asked.
Johnny Boyd looked off into the night sky and blew smoke at the stars. “Oh, I think I’ll pass on that, Sheriff. That’s Dick Finnegan’s property, and whatever those fellas in the airplane were interested in, that’s their business, and maybe his. Sure as hell ain’t mine. Matter of fact, what makes sense to me right now is to go home and get a good night’s sleep. You ever do that?”
“Not often,” I said. “But you have the right idea. We wouldn’t have much chance of finding the place in the dark anyway. Even at the best of times, one windmill looks just like another to me.”
Bob Torrez started to say something but thought better of it. I knew what was running through his mind, and probably Eddie Mitchell’s too. Most of the time, darkness was a powerful ally for us. Either one of them could find the most remote nook and cranny of Posadas County at any time of day or night.
“We all could use some sleep,” I added. I heard the faint jingle of brass and saw that Torrez held several casings. “The FBI is going to want to run some ballistics tests, you know that,” I said, and Boyd nodded. He didn’t look at Neil Costace, and the FBI agent seemed perfectly content at the moment to let me either run the show or hang myself.
“You want to keep the rifle until such time, you can,” Boyd said, dead serious in his belief that we were just asking nicely if we could run ballistics tests on his weapon…as if it were a special favor between old friends.
He evidently saw the expression on my face, and shrugged. “That was a damn-fool thing I did,” he said. “I know that. I just lost my goddam temper.” He pushed himself away from the truck and started toward his own. “The feds can do all the testing they like if it’ll satisfy ’em. And if they think they need to look at the other weapons, most of them are stored in a safety deposit box at Ranchers’ Trust in Posadas. If they want to examine ’em, I’ll fetch ’em out of there.”
“We’ll see,” I said. We watched him climb into his truck without further comment, and he backed out far enough that he could turn around.
The taillights of his pickup disappeared in the distance. Bob Torrez started to say something, but I held up a hand. “Wait a minute,” I said, and the four of us stood there, grouped around the Bronco, letting the silence of the prairie return. I frowned and half closed my eyes as I listened to the sound of Johnny Boyd’s truck retreat. I kept my hands poised in the air like a choral director’s.
“He didn’t turn toward his house,” Eddie Mitchell said a moment later.
“Nope, he didn’t,” I said and reached for the mike on the dash of the Bronco.
“Three-oh-three, three-ten on channel three.”
“Three-oh-three,” Tom Pasquale snapped in instant reply. He must have been sitting there by the highway, mike in hand.
“Three-oh-three, Johnny Boyd is driving a blue Ford pickup truck. He’s turned your way. If he shows up, make yourself scarce, and when he hits the pavement, keep an eye on him. I want to know where he’s headed.”
“Ten-four. You want him stopped?”
“That’s negative. I do not want him stopped. I want to know where he’s headed.” I glanced at Torrez and Mitchell. They both were grinning. “Do I speak French or something?” I muttered.
“Watching isn’t as much fun as stopping,” Mitchell said wryly.
“That’s what scares me,” I said. “I want you to give Tommy some backup. I don’t know what Boyd plans. Maybe he’s just taking the long way home. Maybe he’s going to do a little fence-hunting himself. If he does go on out to the main road, keep Tommy back, way back. We just want information right now, that’s all. And if he turns off before he reaches the highway, just go on by, the way he’d expect you to do. We’ll be on channel three if you need to talk to us. We’ll be right behind him.”
Mitchell nodded without comment and turned on his heel. We could hear the crunch of his boots on the gravel and for a moment, I just listened, getting my thoughts in order.
“You know where that fence line is?” I asked Torrez.
“I think I can find it with no trouble, sir.”
“Then let’s go. Neil, you game?”
“Sure,” he said. “If you’re not too tired.” He said it with good humor.
I laughed. “I’m comatose. But you and Bob are driving, so I can kick back and sleep. In fact, I like the seats in that rig of yours. I’ll ride with you.” I turned to Torrez. “Lead the way.”
Neil Costace and I settled into the federal agent’s Suburban, and for a fleeting moment, I had the impulse to recline the seat and irritate Costace with my sonorous snoring. But he didn’t give me a chance.
“So, what’s perking in that nonstop mind of yours, Buddha?” he asked.
I looked at him in surprise. “Buddha?”
Costace pulled the truck into gear and we followed Torrez’s Bronco out of the arroyo. Between bounces and wrenching of the steering wheel, he said, “That’s what Hocker calls you.”
“Buddha.”
He nodded. “Don’t ask me why,” he added. “And let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t wrestle with Mitchell.”
“Are you all right?”
“Nothing a chiropractor can’t fix, given time,” Costace said and shook his head.