Window to Heaven

IX

Read: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, VI, VII, VIII

Dispassionate Observer

A crashed airplane, its cargo hold packed full of marijuana, put Sandy out of the office and on the road before that critically important first cup of coffee. Exact nature of the mechanical failure was yet to be determined. A good guess, according to the deputies on the scene, might be that the failure had some relationship to the significant number of thirty caliber holes riddling its frame.

He asked about injuries. None of the bullet holes came near the cockpit. It could be the reason every hit landed too far back came to pure accident. Few had experience shooting at a moving target or understood the lead required. That could explain why the hits landed too far back and none touched the cockpit. If it explained it, it didn’t prove it. He had another idea.

The pilot or pilots were long gone. He had tracking dogs out looking but had little hope they hadn’t already been picked up by a local connection. His department would use the plane’s registration number to trace down owners, flight plan, that sort of thing, but he knew before his office did the grunt work that would lead to a dead end. Still, even without arrests, recovering this much contraband amounted to a public relations coup.

The Roanoke television stations on the way, he meant to meet them. He had an idea the flight hadn’t originally intended to touch down in this little field off Reed Creek. The place lacked the space for a safe landing in the dark, and it was too close to too many houses along the road. A report from one of the houses had tipped them. Instinct suggested where the flight may have meant to land. It’d be some hours before he found the time to check out his speculation.

A call on the radio from his Chief Deputy. “Number One, we think we may have discovered where the plane intended to land — ”

He cut in quick. “Don’t put that kind of information on the air. Text it to me, and the name of the deputy who turned it up.” Damn man, he wished he could drop the Star Trek jabber, or if he had to do it that he wouldn’t get it backwards. Number One was the way the executive officer was addressed, not the Captain. Was this taken from Naval tradition? He supposed. He didn’t know. This little mountain county was three hundred miles inland.

“Roger, acknowledged.”

Fat son of a bitch loved the radio too much. He’d like to fire him. He’d already worked out what he wanted to say: the CB posse needs you so much more than we do. He couldn’t, of course. The man had devoted his life to the sheriff’s department and loved it. It was just that he was stupid . . . and lazy.

The text directed him to a field near the New River where they’d found evidence of the plane landing on Hardin Rolf’s land, and it gave the name of the deputy: a clipped R. Model, with no elucidation. That was another thing his Chief Deputy didn’t like to do, credit another officer for information he passed up the line. The text gave less information than the son of a bitch would have put over the open air for every fool with a police scanner to hear. Part of the reason he was so terse was that his thumbs were too fat for the keys on the phone, that and he was damn near illiterate. He liked to hear his voice too much on the radio and his feelings were hurt that he had been denied. Otherwise, he could have picked up the phone.

R. Model. Damn, he’d warned her to stay away from Rolf and his land. He couldn’t say he was surprised. After he finished with the news station, he got on the radio and ordered her to meet him at the field. Rachel, that was her name, the name he never used.

It wasn’t her fault, but she was the kind of woman who made a man ache from a glance. If a man couldn’t have her, he wanted her to just go far, far away and leave those stirrings that could never be answered dormant. It wasn’t a right way to feel and after his divorce he didn’t want to be married again. She had a right to a life and a career, but, damn, why did she have to come into his life? The exact opposite of his chief deputy, she was anything but stupid and lazy. The gods must be punishing him. She was more trouble to manage than anyone in the department. She helped him appreciate the gift of stupid and lazy. Too many of his deputies had to commit forethought and work up the energy and deliberation to scratch themselves.

Only in this last instance with Hardin did he suspect that her raw physical beauty had helped him. Had the typical porcine jail matron he usually hired tried to put a baton in Hardin Rolf’s gut, he’d backhand them hard enough their teeth would have rolled to the ground. This girl was so beautiful he hadn’t even complained. He laughed. Hardin was his age. He may be old, but he wasn’t dead. Sandy wasn’t as sure about himself sometimes.

The gate was shut, but the lock was sawed off. These drug dealers weren’t likely to care whether Hardin’s cattle got into the road, although it wouldn’t matter in this case. The gate led only to a crop field. That the gate was shut might be an indication Hardin had already been by, but it was hardly proof he could use, if for some reason he needed that. He constantly found himself dividing information between what he knew and what he could prove. Hazard of the job, he supposed. Unlike Hardin, who acted on what he believed and didn’t give a damn whether he could prove it or not.

As soon as he stepped out to open and shut the gate, he saw rabbits everywhere, and the wall of blackberry bushes fronting the woods was alive with sparrows and deep woods birds swaying on the slender stalks. He noted that the little blue indigo buntings had come back, the first he had seen this year. It was as if part of him held his breath waiting. Why he didn’t know. They’d be coming back long after he was gone from this earth. He never told anybody he looked. A path with deer droppings tunneled into the heavy growth.

He wanted to fist pump. This was how farmland should be: rich with life. With too many farms in this county, a quail would have to carry its lunch to cross. And here he was, heading in to examine a scene that had the potential to ruin Hardin.

A conversation from a few years ago came back. Hardin had started an awful uproar against Federal agencies insisting they enforce laws on the books against the gas companies, a failed effort from the beginning. It was as if he refused to understand what a Federal energy agency was. A Muslim would take a pilgrimage to visit Mecca and Medina. An energy company employee would instead do a stint at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It was usually a two year or so thing, and they’d come back, dues paid, to an even higher paying position. If during the stint with FERC, the energy company employee on pilgrimage had an attack of conscience, and tried to hold a company accountable for dumping something in some river, his career was over, and any decision he made would be overridden anyway.

The lobbyists of these companies wrote the energy and environmental laws, and when those laws created an inconvenience, they ignored them, confident no agency would dare attempt to enforce them, yet they had good enough media relations to leave most of the public under the illusion that they operated under strict scrutiny.

As Chief Deputy then, it was his assigned role to smooth the way for these pipeline people. Instead, he had enforced a state law by making them clean up after minor incidents of leaving mud on a paved road, and it had cost him some severe push back. Those people believed they were bulletproof. And they damn near were.

He told Hardin over the phone, “I’m just a dispassionate observer.”

Hardin said, “When you see land destroyed that you hunted over as a young man, it’s going to hurt.”

He remembered pausing a long time as he considered whether he could afford to answer with his true feelings before he said, “Yes, yes, it will.”

Continue reading part X