A twin-engine Cessna was on her belly more than a hundred yards off the road, across a field of creosote bushes, barrel cactus, and rocky sand. Clumps of brush had grown up around her like puppies nuzzling their mother. The props and windows were missing, the left wing and tail were crumpled, and her corroded skin had been a forty-year canvas for graffiti that served as a history for pretty much every local high school class and romance for the past forty years. Even after all these years, a dim outline where the land had been scraped to create a landing strip could be seen by how the brush grew.
“This is where you left them?”
“Yeah. We were by the plane. That’s where everyone hangs out, you see how it’s kinda clear where the old runway was? You can build a fire, cook if you want, just kinda hang. Jack left his car out here ’cause he has that Mustang, so Chuck and I drove over, and parked by the wreck. It gets dark, bro, it is black out here. I turn on the floods.”
Trehorn had a light bar bolted to the top of his truck.
“Where did Jack leave his car?”
“Couple of lengths behind us, I guess. Chuck went on to the plane, and Jack and Kris climbed in with me. He can’t drive his Pony over that stuff.”
I slid out of his truck.
“Let’s take a look.”
“We can drive.”
“Walking is good.”
A long time ago the United States Army taught me how to hunt men in wild places. People in black T-shirts with loud voices taught us how to move and hide without leaving signs of our passing, and how to find and read the signs left by others. Then they sent us to dangerous places and gave us plenty of practice. I got to be pretty good at it. Good enough to survive.
I did not go immediately to the airplane. I went behind Danny’s truck to see the tracks his tires left, then walked along the road until I found the same track leaving the road for the airplane.
“This is you. See? Let’s follow you.”
Six days after they were here, his tire tracks were still readable. We followed the trail he had left of broken creosote and manzanita, then left his trail for the airplane. It rested twenty yards off what would have been the landing strip, where it had slid sideways to a stop. Older tracks and ruts cut across the clearing were visible, too, along with discarded water bottles and beer cans that looked as if they had been there for years.
Graffiti covered every square inch of the wreck like psychedelic urban camouflage that was alien to the desert. It was a small airplane, and now, dead on its belly with missing engines and broken windows, it didn’t seem like much of a reason to drive so far.
The old airplane’s carcass had long been stripped of anything valuable by scavengers and souvenir hunters. The seats were gone, and eye sockets gaped from the control panel where the instruments had been removed. In the back, where the smugglers had probably strapped down bales of weed, were more crusty cans layered with dust.
We continued past the nose to a clear area, where Trehorn pointed out the black smudge that had been their fire, then made a general wave toward a break in the brush.
“We parked there, put on some tunes, and built the fire. See the cut wood? People come out, they scrounge shit from the brush, but that stuff makes a shit fire. Chuck brought real wood. It gets cold out here.”
“Was the fire still burning when you and Chuck took off?”
“Embers, maybe, but that’s all. It was pretty much done.”
I circled the plane, found nothing, and was thinking we had driven out for nothing when I saw a brassy glint in the dust ten feet in front of him. I walked over and picked it up.
Trehorn said, “Whatcha got?”
“A nine-millimeter shell casing.”
The brass casing gleamed brightly, indicating it had not been exposed to the elements long enough to tarnish. I held it up, but he wasn’t impressed.
“People shoot out here all the time. That old plane has more holes than Swiss cheese.”
I found two more casings a few feet away, and then a spent 12-gauge shotgun shell so new it looked like it had just come from the box.
Trehorn wandered off, searching along with me, then called from the center of the clearing.
“Shit. That’s a big sonofabitch.”
“What?”
He pointed at the ground.
“Tires. I run two-fifty-five-sixteens on my Silverado. These gotta be five-seventies. That’s a big honkin’ truck.”
I didn’t know two-fifty-fives from five-seventies, but the tracks he found were from a vehicle with two large tires mounted on each side. The double-tires suggested a large, heavy truck, but a large, heavy truck would have little reason to be in the middle of nowhere.
“These here the night you guys were here?”
Trehorn made a face as he shrugged.
“I dunno. It was dark.”
A confusion of footprints and smaller tire tracks crisscrossed the dirt. Some appeared fresher than others, but I couldn’t tell with any precision how recently they were made.
Trehorn said, “What do you think?”
“I think a lot of people were here. Which tracks are from your Silverado?”
“Back by the plane on the other side of our fire. I didn’t come out here. Neither did Chuck.”
Trehorn followed the large tracks toward the road, but I went in the opposite direction past the fire to the tire tracks he had left that night. When I found a clear example, I drew a large E in the sand, then noted the location relative to their fire and the airplane. I walked past the plane to continue searching the clearing when I saw a white shape caught in a creosote bush. I reached through prickly branches and found a California driver’s license. It pictured an Anglo male with short red hair, lean cheeks, and two bad pimples on his forehead. The name on the DL read M. JACK BERMAN.
I said, “Well.”
Trehorn was still on the far side of the airplane, so I pushed the branches aside. Three credit cards bearing Berman’s name and a worn leather wallet were caught in the lower branches. The wallet contained three hundred forty-two dollars in cash.
I glanced at Trehorn again, wondering if Jack Berman had put his wallet in the bush, and why. The discarded wallet and cash made no sense. If Krista and Jack had left voluntarily, they would not have abandoned the cash. If they were forced away at gunpoint, the person doing the forcing would still take the cash. Good, bad, or indifferent-anyone tossing the wallet would totally keep the cash.
I pushed deeper into the branches. A slip of paper with a handwritten note was caught on a twig near the bottom of the bush. The note read: Q COY SANCHEZ. A second DL was on the ground at the root of the bush, showing a pretty young woman with golden skin and raven hair named KRISTA LOUISE MORALES.
I stared at her picture, then studied the note. Q COY SANCHEZ, written in blue ink with a shaky hand that left the oversize letters uneven.
Trehorn was even farther away, searching the ground as if he hoped to find the Holy Grail. He was worried about his friend Jack Berman, but I did not tell him about the things I found in the bush. I read the note again.
Q COY SANCHEZ.
“Danny!”
He looked over as I tucked the note and the DLs away.
“Let’s go. There’s nothing here.”
I wanted to speak with Nita Morales first, and a man named Joe Pike.
Three minutes after Danny Trehorn dropped me at my car, I stepped into a cold, crisp Burger King and
