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.”
“Looks empty to me,” Glenn said.
“We’re still going to have to clear it,” Winston said.
Guns raised, the two men made their way toward the plane. They stopped at the open cargo doors in the middle of the fuselage, and Glenn knocked on the exterior with his flashlight. There was an echo as if he had banged on the bottom of an enormous, upturned metal canoe. The nose of the airplane, propped up by the wheels beneath either wing, loomed above Winston on his right, but the fuselage narrowed greatly toward the end where it rested on its tail, the rear landing gear having completely collapsed.
The aircraft seemed simultaneously powerful and frail, and Winston could not believe that something so large could take to the sky nor that something so powerful could be grounded so easily. He reached out and placed his open hand on the airplane’s body, nearly expecting to feel the rise of its breathing. He smacked it twice as if patting the belly of a horse before climbing into the saddle. “Hello,” he called out. “Brunswick County Sheriff’s Department.” He nodded at Glenn, who raised his pistol, pointed his flashlight into the darkness of the aircraft’s interior, and stepped up inside. Winston, his pistol also raised, stood by the door and listened to the creaking of the airplane’s body as Glenn’s footsteps shuffled around inside.
“It’s empty,” Glenn called out.
Winston holstered his pistol and stepped through the door.
The seats had all been removed inside the plane, and Winston stood in the middle of the fuselage and took in the scene: the pilots’ chairs in the front; the long empty expanse as the floor stretched back toward him; the faint moonlight dusting the windows.
“It’s empty now,” Winston said, “but I’d be willing to bet it wasn’t when it touched down.” He moved his flashlight around the inside of the plane, its beam passing over every surface.
“What do you want to do?” Glenn asked.
“Get back in the bed and go to sleep.”
Glenn laughed. “Me too.”
“Let’s go ahead and fingerprint everything up in the cockpit,” Winston said. “And the doors inside and outside too. And then we’ll call the morgue.”
“You got it,” Glenn said.
Winston stayed inside the aircraft and sent Glenn back to his patrol car for an extra flashlight and one of the crime scene kits they all kept in their trunks. While he was gone, Winston stood in the plane’s open cargo doors and stared out at Rodney Bellamy’s body. It was rarely the case, but everything that had happened that night had surprised Winston.