Burn Out Page 8

  “He got Hayley off on a few charges of prostitution.”

  “Hard to imagine how she could afford that firm. They’re corporate lawyers for some of the bigger casinos.”

  “One other question, Mr. Buckle, and then I won’t take up more of your time: what is it you do for a living?”

  “I’m chief counsel for the Northwest Council of God.”

  “The . . . ?”

  “Northwest Council of God.”

  “. . . Oh.”

  He laughed. “I said chief counsel, Ms. McCone. I’m not a member, and I don’t abide by their beliefs, nor do they expect me to. They simply want good legal representation and they pay me a significant retainer.”

  “I see.” The pragmatic approach to faith, or lack thereof. “The Mono County Sheriff’s Department will be in touch with you shortly.”

  “I’ll cooperate in any way I can.”

  Immediately after I ended my call to Jack Buckle, my phone rang. Lark.

  “We’ve designated the cabin at Willow Grove as a possible homicide scene,” she said. “We’re asking local pilots to help us out with an air search for a body tomorrow. Would you be willing to join in?”

  I wanted to tell her she’d do better with cadaver dogs. It was unlikely a killer would have placed Amy’s body out in the open where anyone could see it, and to a pilot flying at legal altitude over that thickly wooded terrain, a concealed corpse would be damned near impossible to spot.

  But to keep on her good side I said, “Sure. Hy’s coming up this afternoon: we’ll both join in. One more thing: this Tom Mathers—I’d like to talk with him.”

  “No problem. He’s at Tom’s Wilderness Supplies and Vacations, about five miles out on the Rattlesnake Ranch Cutoff.”

  The terrain off Rattlesnake Ranch Cutoff was barren, like Mineral County over in Nevada. A few volcanically created formations stood out in the distance, but otherwise the land was flat and covered by coarse grass and sagebrush. Tom’s Wilderness Supplies and Vacations, an orange-and-purple-trimmed stucco building with racks of rowboats and canoes at the back of the parking lot, was a bright, if gaudy, spot in the surrounding bleakness. A pair of dune buggies were pulled close to the building on the other side from the parking lot.

  The building’s interior was fairly large and crammed with all sorts of outdoors gear: backpacks, tents, stoves and lanterns, life jackets, fishing equipment, heavy-duty clothing—if you needed it, it was there. Tom Mathers was also a weapons dealer: guns gleamed in locked cases, in others knives glittered evilly under the fluorescent lights.

  Guns I know, understand, and respect for their lethal potential. Knives scare the hell out of me.

  The man behind the counter was in his mid-to-late twenties: sandy-haired, sun-freckled and -tanned, with wide shoulders and biceps that bulged beneath his T-shirt. A bodybuilder, I guessed, as well as an outdoorsman. A cheerful one, too: he smiled as if his best friend had just walked in.

  “What can I do you for?”

  “Are you Tom Mathers?”

  “The one and only.”

  I went through my friend-of-the-Perez-family, cooperating-with-the-sheriff’s-department routine. Mathers’ smile faded and he shook his head.

  “Hayley. What a shame.”

  “Do you have any idea who might have killed her?”

  Something moved deep in his eyes. He looked down at the knives in the case between us. “No idea at all. Everybody loved Hayley.”

  Bad body language; I didn’t believe him. “Tell me about you and her.”

  “We went together all through high school. She never even looked at another guy. I thought we’d get married, have kids. Then this older guy shows up at a party, and a week later she’s gone.”

  “I understand she left the party with him because you were passed out in the bathroom.”

  He shrugged. “That was no reason to run off with him. We partied pretty hard in those days. But she knew I would’ve straightened up. I mean, I’ve got a great business here, I’m married, own a house on the property.” He jerked his thumb, indicating the house was behind the building. “No complaints from the wife, either—”

  “A wife who was second choice and you’re never going to let me forget it,” a voice said from behind me.

  I turned. A woman with long reddish-blonde hair had come inside. She was trim and well muscled, wearing only a short-sleeved T-shirt and running shorts. Not pretty, as Hayley Perez had been, but strong-featured. Her mouth was bracketed with lines of disappointment—and she must have been all of twenty-five.

  No complaints from the wife. Right.

  “T.C.,” her husband said, “this is a private conversation.”

  “Not if you’re talking about me.” She came over and extended her hand to me. “T.C. Mathers.”

  “Sharon McCone.”

  Tom Mathers said, “Ms. McCone’s cooperating with the sheriff on Hayley Perez’s murder.”

  T.C. rolled her eyes. “The sainted Hayley Perez. What I wonder is why somebody didn’t shoot her years ago.”

  Tom’s face reddened. “Theresa!”

  She winked at me. “When he gets mad, he always calls me by my given name. Knows I hate it. When he’s really mad, he calls me Theresa Christina. Gets to me because it reminds me of my goddamn reactionary Christian parents who saddled me with it.”

  I was not at all pleased that I’d walked into this situation. I looked at my watch. Nearing two-thirty, I hadn’t had a bite to eat all day, and Hy’s ETA was four.

  I said, “I’d like to talk with both of you again, but there’s someplace I have to be soon. May I call you here or at home?”

  “We’re in the book. Call or drop in. Just keep following the driveway to the house.” Tom Mathers was trying to regain his former composure, but his stance radiated fury at his wife.

  “I’ll be in touch,” I said, and walked away from their domestic conflict.

  In town I bought a sandwich and a Coke before I made the drive to Tufa Tower Airport at the northwest end of the lake. It wasn’t much: a single runway, a dozen or so planes in tie-downs, a hangar that hadn’t housed a resident mechanic in years, and a shack where the manager—a garrulous septuagenarian named Amos Hinsdale—monitored the UNICOM and hoped that some fool would come in and rent one of his two dreadful planes. Normally I tolerated Amos, but today I wasn’t in the mood for one of his monologues about the good old days when flying took a real man’s skill. Forget Amelia Earhart; forget the Powder Puff Derby participants and the women who ferried planes for the military during World War II. Forget the fact that many women, including myself, frequently flew into Tufa Tower. In Amos’ mind, aviation was a man’s world—although he also thought that the current crop of male pilots, who used up-to-date computerized equipment, were “a bunch of sissies.”

  I parked behind the hangar where I couldn’t be seen from the shack and ate my late lunch. Thought about the case—my absolute last one—and where it was going, where it might lead me. I came to no conclusions about either.

  After half an hour I began watching the hills to the north. Hy’s and my beautiful red-and-blue Cessna 170B appeared above them; soon I heard the drone of its engine. The wings dipped from side to side, then he executed a barrel roll—showing off, knowing I was waiting for him. Afterward he angled into the pattern, took the downwind leg, and turned for final. I was at our designated tie-down when he taxied over.

  He shut down the engine and got out. As always, I felt a rush of pleasure.

  This man is my husband; we’ll be together the rest of our lives.

  Silly thought, because we’d already spent years together before we impulsively flew to Nevada and were married by a judge in Carson City. But those years hadn’t been easy. Neither had the past one. I’d had many moments of doubt, and a recent serious crisis that I wasn’t sure the union could survive. But through it all, he’d been steady and true and honest. No more doubts. Not now, not ever.

  I ran over, threw my arms around
him. Kissed him and held on tight. When I stepped back he smiled, even white teeth showing under his swooping mustache. He wasn’t classically handsome, with a hawk-like nose and strong, rough-hewn features. His unruly dark-blond hair was now laced with gray. But his loose stride and long, lean body drew the attention of women as he walked through a room. And he possessed one of the finest asses I’d ever seen.

  He raised an eyebrow at me and said, “Jesus, McCone, you must’ve missed me.”

  “Let’s tie down this plane and I’ll take you home and show you how much.”

  “Now, that’ll be pure heaven.”

  That night I did not dream of being trapped in a pit.

  Saturday

  NOVEMBER 3

  Numerous official choppers and private planes from surrounding counties were available for the air search. Hy and I flew together in our Cessna. The morning was crisp and clear, and we’d bundled up in down jackets, jeans, and fleece-lined boots. Hy had brewed an extra pot of coffee, and we took it along in a thermos. I piloted, since he’d had that pleasure on the trip up here.

  It had been a while since I’d flown, and on liftoff I’d felt a tremendous rush. It made me realize how important not being earthbound was to me. My depression—these days always a background to whatever I was doing—slipped away, and I settled happily into what felt like a cocoon that only Hy and I could inhabit.

  “You realize,” I said through our linked headsets as we lifted off, “that this is an exercise in futility.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t tell that to the sheriff’s department. And it makes people feel like they’re doing something to help. Besides, maybe somebody in one of the choppers’ll spot something.” Helicopters are authorized by the FAA to fly at lower altitudes than fixed-wing aircraft, and thus are better for searches.

  Hy removed a pair of binoculars from their leather case, and I set course toward the area we’d been assigned to search—a barren plain southeast of Rattlesnake Ranch, some ten miles from where Tom Mathers had his wilderness-guide business. The thousand-plus acres, Hy had told me, used to be a working cattle ranch, but had been sold off a decade or more before to a family from the East Coast, who tore down the existing buildings and put up a luxurious vacation home.

  As we flew over the ranch, I saw a sprawling house—had to be a minimum of twenty thousand square feet—with a tile roof, various outbuildings, an airstrip, a tennis court, and a swimming pool.

  “Who the hell are those people?” I asked.

  “Don’t know their name or much about them. The property sale was handled by a law firm, and the local real-estate agent who represented the sellers is mum on the subject. They fly in on a private jet, don’t come to town at all, hire local staff who’re sworn to secrecy about what goes on there. It’s rumored that they’re anything from exiled royalty to Mafia. I say they’re just rich people who value their privacy.”

  “Very rich people.”

  “Well, sure.” Hy was scanning the place with the binoculars. “Nobody in residence today—too chilly for them. They’re probably off at a similar retreat on St. Bart’s or Tahiti this time of year.”

  “By the way, that trip to Tahiti my travel agent wants to book us—”

  “Will happen as soon as I get RI up and running properly. And after you decide what to do about your future.”

  We’d talked late into the last night about both subjects. Hy was committed to seeing Ripinsky International through the reorganization and then remaining at the helm. I’d told him I still didn’t know what to do about my life or McCone Investigations. Maybe wouldn’t know for quite some time. He’d reassured me: as long as the agency was running properly in my absence I had no problem.

  “You know,” he said after a moment of scanning the land beyond Rattlesnake Ranch, “a killer would have to be an idiot to abandon a body out here in the open.”

  “Exactly what I’ve been thinking.” I switched the radio to the frequency designated for the search. Negative reports on all fronts.

  I let the plane glide to a lower altitude, following a southeasterly course, to an area where snow-like volcanic ash covered the ground, peppered with small obsidian outcroppings and Jeffrey pines. Ash and glass, relics of an ancient conflagration; stubborn pines, reminders of nature’s life force. Hy and I had often flown over here—

  “Take it lower,” he suddenly said.

  I pulled back on the throttle, raised the nose to slow the plane. “You see something?”

  “I’m not sure. Bank left.”

  I dipped the wing to a medium angle.

  “Over there.” He gestured, handed me the binoculars.

  I peered through them, made out a brownish mass. “Dead pine. Or maybe a large animal.”

  “Pines and animals aren’t shaped like that. Besides, look over there, behind that outcropping. It’s a white truck.”

  I studied the terrain some more. “Right.”

  “Can you put down someplace nearby?”

  “Not too far from the truck, yes. It’ll be a rough landing, but—”

  “We’ve made them before.”

  It was a rough landing, the wheels bumping over rocks and uneven ground—the kind that makes your heart race and your adrenaline surge, knowing that you’ve got whatever it takes to be a good pilot. As I braked to a stop, I thought, So aviation’s a man’s world, Amos? Hah!

  We got our bearings and started off, boots crunching on the ashy, pebbled ground. The watery fall sunlight bore down, but the day hadn’t warmed much; I wished I’d brought along some gloves. We topped a slight rise, where Hy raised the binoculars and looked around. “Over that way.”

  At first all I recognized was a sleeping bag. Olive drab—which had looked more like brown from the air. Then I made out the shape inside it. A large one.

  I said, “It’s not Amy. She’s much smaller than whoever that is.”

  Hy moved toward it, and I followed. The bag was zipped to the top. I squatted and pulled the zipper down.

  Sandy hair, a freckled face—formerly tanned, but now bluish white in death. No marks marred his features; he looked as if he’d crawled into the bag, zipped it up, and gone to sleep.

  Tom Mathers, Hayley Perez’s former boyfriend.

  The man who, the last time I’d seen him, had been engaged in bitter conflict with his wife, T.C.

  Hy stayed with the body while I went to the plane and contacted the search team’s headquarters. They said they’d have a chopper there in ten minutes.

  “When was it you last saw Mathers?” Hy asked when I returned.

  “Around two-thirty yesterday afternoon.”

  “Well, he must’ve been here since last night or early this morning. There’s no odor; the cold’s pretty much preserved the body.”

  “Rigor?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to disturb the scene any more than we already have.”

  I looked around at the ground: faint tire tracks, no drag marks near the body. Of course, the ash had either drifted in the persistent winds or was hardened by thousands of years of exposure to the elements.

  Hy said, “I’ll check out that truck. Why don’t you wait for the sheriff’s people?”

  “Okay.” As he walked away, I stared down at the shrouded body. Tom Mathers had been a big man; in death he would have been hard to move.

  I pictured T.C. Mathers. She’d appeared very strong. And then there were all those guns and knives gleaming in their cases at the wilderness supply. What if the argument I’d triggered by asking about Hayley Perez had spun out of control . . . ?

  The drone and flapping of a chopper came from the north. It hovered, then set down nearby. Kristen Lark got out and, ducking her head, ran toward us.

  It was after six when we finished giving statements to Lark at her office in Bridgeport, nearly seven when we got back to Vernon. We’d had no lunch, so we headed to Zelda’s, where a country band whose members must’ve been tone deaf were playing. Bob Zelda, who had heard about our discove
ry via the small-town grapevine, gave us a table in the bar area, as far from the noise as possible, brought us complimentary glasses of white wine, and took our orders.

  “They turn up any traces of the Perez girl?” he asked.

  “No,” Hy said, “the search was called off at dusk.”

  “Bad enough what you found. Tom Mathers was a good kid.”

  “Somebody didn’t think so. He was shot in the back.”

  “God.” He turned toward the kitchen.

  Hy swirled the wine in his glass, breathed in its aroma, sipped, and made a face. “I’d rather have paid for a really good vintage,” he muttered.

  Being one who had spent much of her life opening screwtop bottles, I shrugged.

  “Come on, McCone. You’ve got a better palate than that.”

  I sipped, and my lips puckered. “You’re right. Any potted plants we can pour this into?”

  “We’ll have a bottle of Deer Hill with dinner.”

  Deer Hill—my favorite chardonnay, which would go perfectly with the golden trout we’d both ordered. Then my mind flashed back to the night last February when RKI’s building on Green Street in the city had been bombed; I’d walked out with a bottle of that particular wine to take to a dinner at my half-sister’s place in Berkeley just seconds before the former warehouse blew up, killing three people.

  Hy studied my face, accustomed by now to my sudden shifts in mood. He put his hand on mine. “It’s over, McCone.”

  “That threat, yes. But what about the next? I still have nightmares—”

  “About that and lots of other things, I know. I have them too. Things like that leave scars, but if you don’t have scars, you haven’t really lived. Someone like you needs to put herself out on the line.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true any more.” I picked up my water glass, drank half, and dumped the sour white wine into it. “You order us a bottle of Deer Hill, and let’s forget about crime for tonight.”

  Sunday

  NOVEMBER 4

  In the morning Hy slept in and I went to visit Lear Jet, a few carrot pieces in my pocket. Ramon apparently hadn’t been there, and the horse was hungry: he took the first carrot eagerly. I offered another, then gave him his morning’s ration of mixed hay. While he ate, I watched him. This gentle creature bore no resemblance to the one that had charged me Wednesday night.