When Ghosts Come Home(6)

He only raised his gun when the bouncing beam of a flashlight caught his eye. Someone was coming across the grassy field from the parking lot on his right. Winston turned in that direction, and that’s when his eyes fell on the body of a Black man lying on the grass alongside the runway. In the scattered beam of the approaching light, Winston saw that the front of the man’s shirt had been blown wide open and his chest was dark and damp with blood. The man’s eyes were open, but it was clear to Winston that he was dead.

He trained his pistol on the approaching flashlight, and he wondered who had shot the man on the ground in front of him, wondered if that same person was approaching him now. He was surprised by the night’s turn of events, but in that moment nothing in him was scared. He was simply ready.

Behind the beam of the flashlight, Winston was able to make out the darkened face of thirty-four-year-old Captain Glenn Haste. He’d worked for the sheriff’s department for almost thirteen years, and during that time Winston had never seen Glenn’s face reveal an ounce of fear, but now his eyes were struck with panic. Winston lowered his pistol, allowed himself to exhale. He realized that his hands were shaking.

“Jesus, Glenn,” he said. “I almost shot you.”

“Well, Sheriff, I’m glad you didn’t.” Glenn lowered his eyes and his flashlight to the dead man on the ground between them, and Winston suddenly understood that the fear on Glenn’s face had not come from a fear of his being shot, but from the shock of stumbling upon what appeared to be a shooting in the line of duty. Glenn kept his beam on the man’s chest, the blood so fresh as to glisten in the light. He raised his eyes to Winston.

“Sheriff?” he said.

Winston, understanding the look on Glenn’s face and the implied question in his voice, took an unconscious step away from the body. He looked down at the dead man, and a long-buried shame and terror washed over him.

“No,” Winston said, nodding his head toward the body. “No, this wasn’t me. I found him here. He was down when I got to him.”

He tried to slip his pistol back into its holster, but he discovered that his hands were still shaking, and he had to reach across his body to hold the holster with his free hand so the pistol’s barrel could find it. He looked down, saw that Glenn’s flashlight gleamed in the dead man’s open, unseeing eyes.

“No sign of a weapon,” Glenn said. “Know who he is?”

“I think so,” Winston said. “I had Rudy run the plates on that Datsun in the parking lot.”

Winston knelt down beside the body and checked for a pulse. He didn’t find one. He patted the man’s pockets, and then he turned him slightly at the hips and felt his back pockets until he found his wallet. He slipped it out and removed the man’s driver’s license.

“Yep,” he said. He looked up at Glenn. “Rodney Bellamy.” He looked at the license again. “Twenty-six years old. Lives over in the Grove.”

“Ed Bellamy’s son,” Glenn said.

“Yep,” Winston said again. He looked inside the wallet, found a couple of twenties and a few smaller bills. Bellamy didn’t seem to have been robbed. He slipped the driver’s license back inside and stuffed it into Bellamy’s front pocket.

He didn’t know what it would mean to find Ed Bellamy’s son shot dead on the runway in the middle of the night, but he knew it would mean something. Winston respected Ed Bellamy, and he feared him a little too. Both were reasons to dread making the phone call to tell him what had happened to his son.

“You okay, Sheriff?” Glenn asked.

Winston looked up at Glenn, and then he looked down at his hands. He clenched them into fists to hide their trembling. “Yeah,” Winston said. “Yeah. You just surprised me coming up on me like that.” He peered over Glenn’s shoulder as if he were looking for anyone else who might be coming across the field. He looked back at Glenn. “What even made you come out here? Rudy get ahold of you?”

“Marie called,” Glenn said.

“Marie called you? At home?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“She said you thought a plane might’ve crashed.” Glenn looked away as if what he was about to say next was going to embarrass both of them. “She said she didn’t want you out here by yourself. I told her I’d come have a look around.”

Winston sighed and shook his head. He wanted to be angry with Marie for calling Glenn, for overstepping and making Winston look like he couldn’t handle his job on his own, but everything that had happened—the plane crash, almost shooting Glenn, finding Rodney Bellamy’s body—crowded out his anger so that he had hardly conjured an ember of rage before it snuffed itself out.

Glenn smiled as if the embarrassment were behind them both. “I also wanted to come out because I’ve never seen a plane crash before.”

Winston turned to his left and pointed at the end of the runway. “Well, it’s your lucky night, I guess.”

Glenn raised his flashlight and aimed the beam past Winston. “There it is,” Glenn said.

Winston’s eyes followed the beam of light where it shone on the plane’s body, the open cargo doors, the frozen propellers. “Yep, there it is,” he said. “Not much of a crash, but it’s a whole lot of plane.”