When Ghosts Come Home(12)
“Maybe ‘diapers’ is the coloreds’ code word for ‘cocaine,’” Englehart said. He laughed and looked around at the gathered group, but no one showed any sign of thinking his joke was funny.
“Knock off the jokes, Englehart,” Winston said. He looked over at Kepler. “Y’all get back to processing this scene.”
Englehart’s face went flat as he finished winding the yellow tape. Winston had never liked the man, but he needed deputies, and he’d overlooked Englehart’s laziness and off-color jokes for as long as he could. He wanted to snatch the tape from the man’s hands and embarrass him by sending him home, but he knew that dark humor was how some men on the force dealt with death and uncertainty; they laughed at it because there was just no other way to make sense of its randomness, and this death felt particularly random, and there was a lot Winston had to make sense of. It was bad enough that Rodney Bellamy was Ed Bellamy’s son, but now he’d also be breaking the news to a wife who’d be left behind with a baby. He knew Englehart could laugh about a thing like this only because he’d never get any closer to it than he was right now, but Winston would only grow closer. He dreaded it, dreaded calling Ed at the high school, dreaded breaking the news to him and asking him to meet him over at Rodney’s house so his widow wouldn’t be alone when Winston told her.
Winston looked past his three officers and saw two men walking down the runway toward them. “Shit,” he said. It was Leonard Dorsey, chair of the county commission, and Hugh Sweetney, the airport manager.
He’d known Hugh Sweetney for several years. Sweetney had served as a pilot in World War II, and he’d come back to the North Carolina coast after the war was over and worked odd jobs until the county had built the municipal airport before deciding they needed someone to run it. Sweetney was quiet and reserved, but Leonard Dorsey was just the opposite: a loud, sweaty, nervous man from Raleigh who’d followed his elderly parents to the coast when he was in his thirties. He was past fifty now, and he’d made his money selling insurance and knowing everyone’s business, and that money and knowledge had given him political power.
“Morning, Sheriff,” Dorsey said. “Looks like somebody almost ran out of runway last night.” He smiled an awkward smile, the kind of smile somebody smiles when they know they’re interrupting something they shouldn’t be interrupting. He walked past Winston and the other men and looked at the plane, and then he looked back at Sweetney. “What are we working with here, Hugh?”
As Sweetney passed, he nodded and smiled at Winston by way of Good morning, and then he stood beside Dorsey, crossed his arms, and looked at the plane, its mirrored body reflecting the early morning light. Sweetney freed one hand and rubbed at the gray stubble on his cheek.
“That’s a DC-3,” Sweetney finally said. “Been modified with those cargo doors. They stopped building them in 1950. It’s a good aircraft.” He looked behind them where the runway rolled toward the waterway. “Didn’t have no business on a runway this short, though. Whoever flew it in knew it too, but it’s a good landing, considering.” He turned his head and stared at the place where the back wheel had collapsed. “It’s a tail dragger, and they snapped the rear landing gear trying to turn it around here at the end. Lucky they didn’t ground-loop it.” He looked at Dorsey and then at Winston. “Plane seems okay, though, and that landing gear shouldn’t be too hard to fix.”
“Well, good,” Dorsey said, as if something had been settled. He looked at Sweetney, spoke only to him. “We can get it out of here today, right?”
“Hell, no,” Winston said. He stepped forward to stand in front of Dorsey. “We can’t move this thing.”
“Why not?” Dorsey said. He folded his arms and looked from Winston to the gathered group of officers.
“This is a crime scene,” Winston said. He pointed to Bellamy’s body beneath the tarp. “And you’re standing right in the middle of it. That’s a dead man right there, Dorsey. And who knows where this plane came from. We’ve got a lot of questions that need to be answered before we move it.”
Dorsey turned and took a step toward Winston. He lowered his voice as if speaking to a child. “Look, Sheriff, you solve whatever mysteries you need solved. The only thing I know for sure is we got a plane stuck on the end of this runway and an airport that can’t be used until it’s gone.” He looked over at Sweetney. “Right, Hugh?”
Sweetney lowered his eyes and looked at the plane. He sighed. “It needs to be gone before we can reopen the runway,” he said. “That’s for certain, but I’m not flying this aircraft from this airport. It needs at least thirteen hundred feet for takeoff roll. We barely got two thousand. It ain’t near long enough if something goes wrong. A damn miracle somebody landed it like they did.”
After making their notes, Winston and Glenn walked across the grass toward the parking lot. Winston hadn’t talked to Marie since he’d left in the middle of the night, and he figured she was awake and either scared or frustrated—maybe even angry—by now. But he was angry too. She had no business calling Glenn in the middle of the night and asking him to check on Winston, which was what Winston thought Glenn’s trip out to the airport amounted to. Winston didn’t need to be checked on. Most often, he just needed to be left alone.