Out of Season by Steven F. Havill

feds will be looking into Phil Camp’s record, too,” Estelle said quietly.
    “Sure. I’m no crash investigator, but it’s obvious to me that the plane hit the ground at a shallow angle, traveling at high speed. Maybe the sort of thing that would result from buzzing the ground. Hotdogging.” I glanced over at Estelle. She was still frowning.
    “Do you have time now to run by and talk with Jim Bergin?” she asked.
    “That’s where I was headed next,” I said. I glanced at my watch.
    But the airport manager had no magic answers for us. Although he hadn’t talked to either man before the Bonanza departed on its last flight, he had watched from the far end of the big hangar while Phil Camp did his preflight inspection.
    “I’ve met Phil Camp a number of times,” Bergin said, leaning back in his swivel chair, his left hand resting on top of the radio console. “He’s always impressed me as a careful, considerate pilot. I watched ’em when they took off, because it was so bouncy. Camp didn’t do anything fancy. No steep climbs, no turns out of the pattern halfway down the runway, none of that shit that we see all the time.”
    “Could the crash have been caused by engine failure, do you think?” I asked.
    Bergin grunted. “That was a good, strong airplane. But things break. The crash could have been caused by one of ten thousand things. But if the engine had quit out there over the prairie, someone as experienced as Camp would have had ten dozen places to pick for a landing spot. And even if he miscalculated his approach and dumped it into a bar ditch or something, that airplane still would have been traveling at only eighty or ninety knots when it touched down. On top of that”—he waved a hand as he groped a cigarette out of his pocket with the other—“the wind was kickin’ and he’d have been headed into that. So subtract twenty knots, and his actual touchdown speed would have been fifty, sixty knots.” He took a deep drag and exhaled. “And that Bonanza was flat humpin’ when it hit the ground. It wasn’t mushing in for a landing. Nosiree.”
    “I can’t see Phil Camp or Martin Holman wanting to chase coyotes,” Estelle said.
    Jim Bergin shot her a quick glance. “That’s the usual way pilots get in trouble,” he said. “Too low and too slow. He wasn’t slow. How old a man was he?”
    “Camp? I think fifty-two or three, maybe. He was older than Holman by a bit.”
    “Heart attack, maybe,” Bergin said. “Who the hell knows? That plane had one of those swing-over control yokes. If Camp had died suddenly, he could have fallen forward on the yoke, maybe. Holman would have had hell trying to get him off and swinging the yoke over so he could use it—assuming that he knew how.” Bergin shook his head and gazed out the tinted window at the asphalt. “The feds will find some answers for you. It’s probably something so simple we’ll be surprised we didn’t see it.” He grinned. “They’ll take their own sweet time, of course.”
    His telephone rang and he twisted to pick up the receiver. I was about to say something to Estelle when Bergin said into the phone, “Yes, he’s here. You want to talk to him?” He grunted something else and then handed me the phone. “Sam Carter,” he said.
    I took the receiver. Carter had seen me at Holman’s only moments before and could have talked to me then.
    “Gastner,” I said.
    “Bill, Sam Carter. Listen, can we get together sometime today for a few minutes?”
    “Well,” I started to say, but Carter interrupted me.
    “It’s really important. I know you’re busy, but if you can spare just a handful of minutes, I’d appreciate it.”
    “I guess,” I said without much enthusiasm. “Estelle and I are about wrapped up here.”
    He said something I didn’t catch, then added, “I mean, can I meet with just you? I need to talk to you personal-like.”
    “I’ll be at the sheriff’s office in a few minutes. You want to stop