The Underground Lady (27 page)

Shack positioned his backhoe at the eastern end of the rectangle, or at least where we thought the east end would be, judging from the satellite photo and the GPS coordinates. Shack had one of those hand-held Garmin GPS receivers mounted on the panel of the backhoe. I did not ask why, but it was there. He anchored the machine to stabilize it and made the first drag with the bucket across the rectangle, rather than parallel. If the airplane was in the area, we figured to hit the engine or tail first.

Rose, Sunny, and I stood near the creek. Hebrone was beside the backhoe, observing Shack. There was a cool, dank smell of water-soaked bottomland. A cold fog drifted in and began to wet the trees and grass. The air started to turn bitter. To the west, the tops of the oaks and pines drifted in and out of the uncertain light of scudding clouds like ghosts of mountains.

Sunny watched intently as Shack moved bucket loads of dark soil into a pile. She unconsciously drew her ponytail to one side, draping it over a shoulder.

Rose looked at me. In the dim light, her face, though middle-aged and weatherworn, was her face returning, as some women's faces do, to its original girlish likeness.

Looking across the land, I thought, money, power, memory, blood, food, and finally a grave. That's what land was, everything.

After a half hour, and digging to a depth of almost four feet, Shack had found nothing. He repositioned the backhoe further to the west. On the first scoop, I heard the engine suddenly go to idle. Shack motioned to me and pointed at the dig. Hebrone and I grabbed shovels and jumped into the hole. There was metal showing. Scrapping and digging, we moved enough dirt away to recognize the framework of a horizontal stabilizer of a small airplane. The fabric covering the frame had long ago been eaten away by the elements. We had, in fact, found the tail of an airplane. Now, we had to work our way along the fuselage to the cockpit.

I stood by the bucket, instructing Shack how much to dig and where. Hebrone moved dirt with a shovel. It was slow going, but inch by inch we made progress along the left side of the airplane. One of the wings was detached from the fuselage and now lay parallel with it as we had thought it would be and this made for difficult going. With the fabric eaten away, dirt filled in between the metal framework.

An hour later, we were at the front cockpit. The Plexiglas side windows and windshield were intact, but the roof was gone and the interior of the cockpit was filled with dirt. Now, we were forced to move dirt a handful at a time. Uncovering the instrument panel, I saw the small metal placard that read: N1HW. This was Hadley Welch's Piper Super Cub. Avis Shaw's suspicions had been right. Then we found what we most feared, but expected. Hebrone brushed the dirt away. A human skull emerged, gray and soiled, after twenty-five years buried underground.

Hebrone carefully removed the skull, including the lower jaw. Rose and Sunny remained near the creek, a hundred yards away. I looked at the woman whose mother's skull Hebrone held in his hands. For some reason, this got to me. I've seen it all – mangled and burned bodies in airplane crashes, people shot, cut, stabbed, witnessed autopsies – but this one nailed me to the wall. I thought I'd felt it all, nothing could get to me again. This must have struck some hidden cord in my own psyche, and I hated it. If our hearts weren't filled with greed and anger and lust and selfishness, our conflicts would vanish and our wars would cease. But they are filled with these evil thoughts and the inevitable result is conflict. My belief in the fundamental goodness of man was much put upon.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, it just seems such a waste."

"There's a bullet hole." He held the skull for me to examine.

"She was shot in the back of the head."

"Front, back, she's still dead. Dead is dead."

"You callous bastard."

"Hell, Jay, we all begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is probably linked to the beginning."

Gripping my shovel handle, I looked into Hebrone Opshinsky's eyes. Studying his face I saw that we were truly not friends anymore. We had chosen different paths, and his burning eyes told me that the break was as final as the death he held in his hands. I felt no sorrow inside myself. Then from his eyes came something different, and all of a sudden I knew – he was simply trying to get me through this. At the right time, I would tell him I was sorry for thinking otherwise. "Thanks, old friend."

"I've been there. You'll be okay."

"I'm going to tell Rose and Sunny."

"I'll keep digging. Ask Shack to come down and help me."

Sunny stood among the cold trees for a long time, not moving. Rose and I left her alone in her thoughts and walked to the dig. A spattering of rain swept across us then was gone, leaving a damp chill.

We had to work fast to recover any other remains before the rains came. Shack would cover the plane back over to prevent the hole from filling with water. John Quincy Adams had to be notified, along with the FAA and NTSB.

By noon we had found more bones and a few scraps of clothing, all of which we placed in plastic garbage bags, hoping dental records and DNA could positively identify the remains. Shack finished covering the hole and we all gathered back at the cottage.

***

We were all subdued, quiet, thinking our own thoughts, listening to the wind pick up, the clouds lowering and becoming thicker. Finally, Shack said he was going to take the backhoe to his barn before the storm hit. Rose said she was going to check on Pussy Galore. Sunny decided to accompany her, as she wanted some time alone to reflect on her mother.

After they left, I called the sheriff's office in Decatur, and asked to speak with John Quincy Adams. "We found the airplane and a skeleton. Looks like you have a twenty-five year old murder on your hands."

"If it was a crash, why do you think she was murdered?"

"It wasn't a crash. Someone buried the airplane. There were skeletal remains, and the skull has a bullet hole in it. We need to get a positive ID on the remains, and the bullet may still be inside the skull, there was no exit wound."

"I'm familiar with the process. Will the daughter furnish a DNA sample for comparison?"

"Yes. We've bagged the remains. I'll bring them to you in the morning."

"Okay. I cut Henderson loose today. He won't be a problem to you."

"Good. I'll see you in the morning."

Hanging up, I immediately called Earl Sanders. Annie answered at the office. "We found the airplane, Annie." There was a long silence. "Annie…"

"Oh, my God, Jay. Earl looked so hard for that crash site. I don't see how he could have missed it. This will crush him. I worry about how he will take the news. What if she had survived the impact and lay there suffering? He will blame himself."

"Annie, Hadley Welch did not crash. She was murdered, shot in the head. The airplane buried on my farm."

"Oh, Jay, Gerald VonHorner…?"

"We don't know that yet, but we're working on it. You want to tell Earl, or you want me to do it?"

"I think it would be better coming from you."
Soon Earl came on the line. "Jay, why is Annie so upset? What did you say to her?"

"We found Hadley Welch."

"Oh no – I missed finding the crash."

"Earl, listen to me very carefully. You did not miss the crash site. Someone shot her in the head, then took the wings off and buried them, along with the fuselage and body. They covered the dig over with debris from a recent clearing off of a creek bank. You would not have noticed it from the air."

"But how? Where did they get equipment? Took the wings off?"

"The wings lay alongside the fuselage. It made for a much smaller hole."

"Where? I want to come see."

"We covered everything up. There's a storm due this afternoon. We didn't want the hole to fill with water. The sheriff, NTSB, and FAA will want to excavate the site."

"You covered Hadley back over?"

"No, we removed the remains. They will be sent for forensic analysis. Earl, there were only a few bones left after all these years."

"Yes, I understand."

"I thought you'd want to know."

"Gerald VonHorner did this, and I think I may know why."

"You have a motive? Tell me."

"You remember meeting the mechanic that came with me to check out your Stearman after the water in the oil tank thing?"

"Sure, Aaron Crosby, old guy, seemed like he knew what he was doing."

"On the flight back to Meridian the other day after we'd worked on your Stearman, he told me a strange story about VonHorner. Crosby was working for us when we hired VonHorner. The two never got along. Seems he found out VonHorner was selling Annual Inspections."

"I don't understand."

"He was signing off maintenance logs on aircraft for inspections that were never done. Crosby heard he charged a thousand dollars, saving an owner three to five thousand on the cost of an Annual Inspection. For a price, he was also signing off fifty and one hundred hour inspections."

"That's scary, and potentially deadly. Who would endanger their lives like that?"

"Crooked cargo haulers wanting to save money, crop dusters, flight school operators, and individuals who don't want to spend the dollars to comply with Federal Regulations."

"I've heard of Flight Instructors signing off flight checks in bars, but never anyone taking risks with lives by looking the other way on required maintenance checks. How does this relate to Hadley Welch?"

"I think he offered to pencil in inspections on her PA-18. For someone like Hadley who approached flying like a religion, this would be an affront she couldn't or wouldn't ignore. If she threatened to expose him, he'd not only lose his mechanic's license, but he'd be stripped of his pilot's license. American Airlines would have immediately terminated him. He'd lose everything. It's a powerful motive for murder."

"But we have no proof this occurred."

"We may. She approached Aaron Crosby one day and asked him if it was appropriate to skip a fifty-hour oil change. He told her she could do it, but that it would be stupid, could lead to more expensive engine costs at overhaul and, not only that, but good mechanics look at a lot of things during oil changes that could reveal a problem early enough to prevent a failure or real disaster. She walked away muttering something about VonHorner being a fool."

"She never said anything to you or Annie about this?"

"No, but she did ask me one day, out of the blue, who in the FAA would someone report a violation of the FARs (Federal Aviation Regulations). I assumed she was talking about some infraction she'd seen a pilot commit. It never occurred to me this was about maintenance. Now, in hindsight, it probably was."

"Talk to Annie again. See if she remembers anything about this. You may be on to something."

After we hung up, Hebrone was sitting on the couch, looking at me. "You have an Aviation Mechanic's license. Listen to this…"

When I was through explaining what Earl Sanders told me, he said, "I've heard of operators, who are trying to save a buck, pressure mechanics to make shortcuts, use old parts, or sign off discrepancies that were not flight critical, but never penciling in inspections in maintenance logs without ever seeing the airplane. That's simply criminal."

"It seems VonHorner was doing exactly that, and Hadley Welch discovered it and was going to turn him in."

"You think that's why he killed her?"

"If he's the one that did in fact kill her, it's a strong enough motive."

"Yes, he would lose everything."

"Why would a person gamble with not only the lives of fellow pilots, but his profession, for a lousy few bucks?"

"If you figure there were a hundred to, say, a hundred and fifty airplane owners and operators in the surrounding area, and word of mouth gets around that he's doing this, at a thousand dollars a log book…not bad for the nineteen-eighties. The man was on furlough, and he had a single-person's lifestyle to maintain."

"Yeah, but murder? It's a big step from being a crook to pulling the trigger and putting a bullet in the brain of someone you know, then burying them in a hole. Looks like we've got our work cut out for us."

My phone rang.

"She's gone."

"Rose? Who's gone?"

"Miss Galore. The lawyer picked her up. She left a note saying she'd called him and he apologized for beating the shit out of her and asked her to marry him."

Holding my hand over the mouthpiece, I looked at Hebrone. "The lawyer picked up the girl. Wants to marry her. What do you think?"

He thought for a minute. "Yes, I think it's a good thing. It won't last, but it will be okay for now."

"Rose, Hebrone thinks it's okay. We'll wash our hands of her. Not our concern anymore."

"Fine. One of you going to stay with us tonight?"

"Hebrone."

"Okay, you can come to dinner."

"Thanks, old sled."

"Piss off, Leicester."

Chapter Twenty-two