About that time, Subcommandante Carlos Rivera and the crime scene unit arrived. Liz waited while the inspector studied the corpse and conferred with the uniformed officer. Finally he turned his attention to her. Slowly and methodically, he went over every word of her statement. Such as it was.
“You say you do not know the identity of the man who has been shot?”
“No, I don’t.”
“What about this Americano? The one you say appeared out of the darkness?”
“I don’t know his identity, either.”
“Yet you spoke with him.”
Liz had done more than speak with the guy. She’d responded to the laughter in his voice and that damned grin and let the man get close enough to touch her. Worse, she’d wanted him to touch her. Okay, more than touch her. She’d actually entertained notions of rolling around in the surf with him. How stupid was that?
Too stupid to admit to Subcommandante Rivera.
“We only exchanged a few words,” she muttered.
The inspector nodded, his face grave beneath the visor of his cap. “Perhaps you will be so kind as to explain again what brought you to such an isolated spot at this late hour.”
Liz dragged a hand through her cropped hair. She’d gone through this with the first officer on the scene. It didn’t sound any better the second time around.
“I received news that upset me. I needed to vent.”
“And you could not do this in Piedras Rojas, where you live?”
After receiving Donny’s e-mail, Liz had thought about stopping by her favorite cantina in town and drinking herself into a stupor. But she had a flight tomorrow morning. Her training and professionalism went too deep to climb into a cockpit hung over. Since the small, sleepy village of Piedras Rojas offered no other outlet for her anger, she’d headed for the beach some miles south of town.
Piedras rojas. Red stones. When the sun sank toward the sea and set the cliffs along this stretch of coast aflame, there wasn’t a more awesome sight anywhere in the world. The other twenty-three and a half hours of the day, dust swirled, trees drooped, and the locals baked in the unrelenting heat.
For all these months Liz had ignored the dust and the heat and the flies and socked away every peso she earned ferrying crews out to and back from the offshore drill site. She and Donny had talked about purchasing a fleet of helos and starting their own charter service. Anxious to make the dream a reality, Liz had used her savings as collateral and taken out a loan for deposit on their first bird. The sleek little Sikorsky single-pilot craft had a Rolls Royce turbine engine, a 2,000-pound load capacity and the best auto-rotational characteristics of any helicopter flying today.
Now her savings were gone, she’d have to forfeit the nonrefundable deposit and she still had to make good on the damned loan. Pissed all over again, Liz shoved her fists into the pockets of her cutoffs.
“No, I couldn’t work off steam in town. Look, Subcommandante, I’ve told you everything I know. Are we done here?”
“We are done. For now.”
“Fine. I’ll head back to town.”
With a curt nod, she turned and plowed through the dunes. Talk about your all-around crappy nights! This one ranked right up there with the night she’d said goodbye to Donny. Liz had dreaded another long separation. He’d seemed eager to return to Malaysia and finish out his contract. Too eager, she now knew. He wanted to get back to Bambang.
Bambang. God!
Liz shoved her Jeep into gear, slinging mental arrows at her former fiancé. To her surprise, she had trouble putting a face on the target. The tall, lanky American who’d appeared out of the night seemed to have crowded Donny out of her head. No wonder! The man had shaved a good five years off her life popping up like that.
If and when she met up with him again, Mr. No-Name would have to answer a few pointed questions. Like why he’d been out here at the beach so late at night. And why he’d disappeared. And whether he knew who had put a bullet into the dead man’s skull.
As Liz navigated the narrow road that led up from the beach and along the rocky cliffs, the questions buzzed around inside her head like pesky flies.
They were still buzzing the next morning when she pulled into the small regional airport that serviced the resorts springing up along this stretch of the Mexican Riviera.
The temperature was already climbing toward the predicted high of one hundred plus. Liz threw a glance at the wind sock drooping in the heat above the building that served as both terminal and tower and knew she’d be swimming inside her flight suit by the time she returned from her run. Sighing, she retrieved her flyaway bag from the passenger seat.
The corrugated tin Quonset hut that constituted Aero Baja’s hangar and operations center occupied a patch of rock-and cactus-studded red dirt to the left of the terminal. Liz was one of three Aero Baja helicopter pilots under contract to the American-Mexican Petroleum Company to ferry crews and supplies to the giant rig forty miles off the coast. All of the pilots were qualified in a variety of craft, but their platform here at Piedras Rojas was the Bell Ranger 412.
The Ranger sat on the red dirt pad, being prepped by Aero Baja’s chief mechanic. This particular model had been configured for over-water operations by a single pilot, could carry up to fourteen passengers and cruised at 120 knots. The aircraft was almost as old as Liz. Thankfully, it had been updated with two GPS receivers, a new altimeter and a marine band radio in addition to the usual UHF, VHF and HF radios. It looked and handled like a mosquito on a leash after the heavily armed, superpowered choppers Liz had flown in the air force, but she’d gotten used to its aerodynamics and thoroughly enjoyed taking it up.
The mechanic prepping the Ranger had seen as much service as the aircraft itself. Retired after thirty-plus years with the Mexican air force, Jorge Garcia could take the Ranger apart and put it back together in his sleep.
Liz had formed a close friendship with the affable, mustachioed mechanic during her months in Mexico. She couldn’t count the number of beers they’d shared after work or the meals his wife, Maria, had fed her. Hefting her flight bag, Liz joined him on the pad.
“Buenos días, Jorge.”
“Buenos días, Lizetta.”
His pet name for her usually produced a smile. Liz had to work to dredge one up this morning. She was gritty-eyed after the late-night session on the beach and still steaming over Donny’s betrayal.
“Is the Ranger ready to fly?”
Grinning, Jorge patted the helicopter’s fuselage with a callused palm. “She is.”
Stowing her bag in the cockpit, Liz did a careful walk-around. The American-Mexican Petroleum Company was paying her serious bucks to ferry its cargo and crews. She took her responsibilities to AmMex and to her passengers seriously. Before transporting anything or anyone out to the patch, as they referred to the monster rising up out of the sea, she made sure her craft was airworthy.
Jorge followed, marking off the checklist items as Liz completed them. They had worked their way from the rear rotor to the main-engine driveshaft before Liz dropped a casual question.
“Did you hear any rumors about some trouble last night?”
There hadn’t been any mention of a shooting in Piedras Rojas’ morning newspaper. Probably because Piedras Rojas didn’t have a newspaper, morning or otherwise.
“What kind of trouble?”
“Gunshots down at the beach just after midnight. A dead body, maybe.”
The mechanic’s eyes rounded above his bushy black mustache. “Are you saying you go to the beach after midnight?
“Yes.”
“Alone?”