Stone Barrington 27 - Doing Hard Time

trench he had dug.
    After another fifteen minutes of digging, he had exposed the entire bottom of the vehicle. He switched off the backhoe. “Take a look at this,” he shouted to the man behind him. He didn’t get a reply, so Fields turned and looked. The man was gone. Fields walked back to the filling station and checked out front. The man’s car was gone, too.
    Fields went to the office and dialed Billy Burnett’s number.
    “Is that you, Tom?” Billy said.
    “That’s right, Billy.”
    “What’s up? You and the wife and Bobby okay?”
    “Yeah, we’re okay. I found something pretty weird out behind the airstrip, though.”
    A moment’s silence. “What did you find, Tom?”
    “Well, this feller came by here looking for a couple of friends of his driving a Lincoln Navigator. He found this indentation in the ground out back, so I got the backhoe out and did some digging, and sure enough, there’s a car buried out there, upside down.”
    “I see,” Billy said. “Can you describe the man for me?”
    “I’d say about thirty-five, six-two, well built, sandy hair. Had an accent of some kind—I couldn’t place it, but his English was good.”
    “I see.”
    “You want to tell me about this, Billy?”
    “Tom, to tell you the truth, I don’t think you want to know.”
    “What do you think I ought to do? Should I call the sheriff or the state police?”
    “Anybody in the car you found?”
    “I haven’t looked.”
    “Tom, you could call the police, but if you do, your life and your business are going to be disrupted for weeks, maybe months to come. My best advice is to fill up the hole, walk away, and put it out of your mind.”
    “Who were those two fellers, Billy?”
    “They were very bad people who followed that boy and his friends I ordered the tire for. They were going to hurt them. They tried to kill me.”
    Fields thought about it for a minute. “Well,” he said, finally, “I don’t reckon they’re worth digging up, then.”
    “Thank you, Tom. My best to your wife and Bobby.”
    Fields hung up, went outside, and started up the backhoe.
    •   •   •
    Teddy had no sooner hung up than his phone rang again. The caller ID said PRIVATE NUMBER . “Hello?”
    “Is this Billy Burnett?” An accented man’s voice.
    “I’m sorry, you’ve got a wrong number.” He broke the connection, but the phone immediately rang again.
    “Hello?”
    “Billy? It’s Charmaine.”
    “Hey, there. Can I call you right back?”
    “Sure.” She gave him the number.
    Teddy hung up, opened the cell phone, and removed the SIM card, then he broke the card in half, stomped on the phone several times, and put the pieces in the wastebasket. He got another throwaway phone from his briefcase and called Charmaine back.
    “I thought I might come down to L.A. tomorrow,” she said. “Would you like that?”
    “I certainly would. What time will you arrive?”
    “Let’s see, I guess around six-thirty or seven.”
    “Well, meet me at a restaurant called Michael’s, on Third Street, in Santa Monica. You can Google it for the exact address.”
    “I’ll do that,” she said. “Can you put me up for a night or two?”
    “You betcha,” Teddy said. “Oh, let me give you a new phone number, the old phone broke.”

Igor sat in the parking lot of the Gallup airport. He got out his cell phone and called the Albuquerque Flight Service Station. He was connected to a briefer by an automated system.
    “Gallup Flight Service.”
    Igor filed an IFR flight plan to Phoenix Sky Harbor, and when he was done, the briefer said, “Anything else I can do for you?”
    “Tell me, is there any way you can look up a tail number and tell me if there was a flight plan filed, say, a week ago, for that number?”
    “What’s the number?”
    “November one, two, three, tango, foxtrot. A JetPROP.”
    “Hang on a second.” The sound of typing could be heard. “Where from?”
    “Probably a VFR takeoff and he opened his flight plan in the air.”
    “I’ve got a couple of flight plans for that number: one from Las Vegas, New Mexico, to Albuquerque Golden Eagle, then another one from there to Santa Fe, then one from Santa Fe to Gallup, but he canceled in the air short of Gallup. That’s it.”
    “Thanks so much,” Igor said, then hung up. He got on his laptop, went online and to a program called FlightAware. He typed in the tail number, and a message said that no aircraft with that number was currently in the air. He