bad cargo though.” Tom pointed at Don.
Tom jumped to the ground, shook Elam’s hand, and then walked around to Don’s side of the plane.
With the canopy completely behind him, Don found it relatively easy to stand up. He lifted his right leg over the side, took his cane from Tom, and stepped onto the wing. It only took the support of Tom’s hand to help him to the ground.
Don, buoyed by his triumph over the plane, shook Elam’s hand and grinned. “Whew. Pretty damn hot for December.”
“Sure is.” Elam slapped the fender of his Cadillac. “But Betsy’ll cool you off real quick.”
Elam, briefcase in hand, led the two brothers toward the waiting Betsy. He spoke out loud to himself. “Got both the Seiler boys with me. What an honor.” He transitioned right into the events for the day. “We’ll grab some coffee at Buchanan’s. I’ll bring you up to date on what I know about Juan. I talked to the Luling police, and they’ll let us see the preliminary investigation around noon. They called me because my cell phone number was in his wallet. We’ll head to City Market for lunch.”
Buchanan’s coffee was piping hot and only five minutes old. Delicious. Wooden tables and chairs sat on top of wide, 1890-vintage pine floorboards. The walls were painted in vertical stripes of red, white, and blue, and the long counter parallel to the east wall of the café easily handled ten round, swivel-top stools. Buchanan’s still offered fountain Cokes and black cows for a quarter; milkshakes were a buck.
“He died from a fall off that transmission tower north of town just off of 128,” said Elam as he swallowed hot coffee. “Been drinking and tried to climb the damn thing and fell.”
Don said, “I’ve done stupid shit like that many times, but I never did it alone.” He took a quick breath, his face showing an unsure thought. “Who was with him?”
“Can’t say anybody. At least, nobody’s reported anything. All I know is a rancher saw Juan’s car and thought it strange. Checked it out and found him sprawled out on the concrete.”
Unpleasant images formed in Tom’s mind. “What kind of injuries did he have?”
Elam thought it an unnecessary question, but let it go. “Don’t know that either. I did hear one of the cops mention his skull was broken. Like I said, they’ll let us see the report around noon.”
Tom asked, “Can we take a look at his body?”
“Shit, I guess so, if you want to. Who wants to see a dead body?”
“It’s something I do if I get involved before a body has been disposed of. Doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it helps me sort things out.”
Tom looked at his watch. He wanted the morning coffee social ended and sorting out Juan’s death started. He thought, five more minutes and we need to go.
Elam changed subjects mid-stream. He leaned forward, both hands squeezing the sans-handle coffee mug, and smiled at Don. “Got a new girlfriend. Early forties and the prettiest one I’ve ever dated. Very nice woman.”
Don shook his head. “Elam, how does someone your age stay so preoccupied with women? You’re one beat up SOB, but your dick is always raring to go.”
All three laughed.
“Well, yeah, could be. But this one, she’d be a keeper if I weren’t such a vagabond. Still, I might be bad merchandise, but I do know class from the feminine side. She’s got it.”
Don swallowed and leaned forward, looking Elam in the eye. “Elam, compared to you, a water buffalo has class. I hope she didn’t see you in that crap.” He sat up and finished his coffee.
Before Elam could rebut Don’s accusation, Tom interrupted. “Coffee’s gone and I’ve got a trial on Thursday. We need to wrap this up today. Before going to the police station, let’s check out where Juan died. I’ve got the bill.”
Tom placed seven dollars on the table and led his partners into the street.
They drove out on County Road 128. Small homes and businesses comingled with the pumpjacks dotting the countryside. The sweet smell of crude oil, reaching back to the glory days of the 1920s, filled their nostrils.
“That’s it.” Elam pointed toward their right front.
Elam turned right on the dirt road and drove toward the tower. Fine dust billowed behind them. He pulled up some twenty feet from the tower base, stretching and cocking his neck to gaze up the length of the thin steel pyramid.
Once out of the car, each man studied the tower, with both Don and Elam juxtaposing personal thoughts of climbing oil rigs against Juan’s death.
“I fell off some scaffolding on an ocean rig in Alaska. Fixing me up was when the docs ran into my MS.” Don returned in his mind some twenty years.
“Crazy son of a bitch. At least when I got tore up on the derrick I was doing what I had to do.” Just as Don did, Elam retreated into memories. “Never did I go up on a rig for fun.”
Tom ignored the conversation and walked toward the nearest concrete footing. Don and Elam followed.
Tom stopped at the edge of the concrete and looked upward. Rising nine hundred feet above the men, the tower, marked by triangular patterns of steel trusses, stretched into the bluish-white haze of the late morning sky. Slowly tracing the near leg from its pinnacle to the ground, Tom visualized from where someone might have jumped or fallen. At the terminus of his gaze, directly at his feet, was a small, circular spot on the concrete. Tom bent over, hands on his knees, and studied the spot.
“Looks like blood.” Tom lowered himself to his right knee. He leaned closer to the dark spot, his face no more than twelve inches away. “Not much, though. Strange. It’s dry but pretty fresh.” He turned his head toward Don. “This must be where your worker hit the ground.”
Tom pulled a camera from his stuffed shirt pocket and started taking photographs.
“Damn shame. He was a good kid,” Don sighed dejectedly.
Tom stood up and took a mechanical pencil and small spiral notepad from his shirt pocket. He sketched a rough site plan of the tower footprint, including the dirt road terminating at the base. He added the location of the blood found on the concrete footer and made a note concerning the amount of blood found. On a second page he made a two-dimensional sketch of the tower.
Elam was confused at Tom’s attention to detail. This isn’t a fucking murder case, he thought. It was simple to Elam. A worker gets killed playing around—get a new worker.
The Luling police station was on East Pierce Street. On the way, Don and Elam discussed the status of their invention and the interminable delays in obtaining a patent. Tom studied his notes in the back seat.
“You don’t look much like next of kin, but what the hell, he’d be glad somebody cared about him.” Sergeant Archie Hamblen stapled the copied three-page incident report and handed it to Elam. “The medical examiner said no to releasing a post-mortem to you. If you want, you can see the body at Breuner’s Funeral Home on South Laurel.”
Tom asked, “Have you got the yellow pages? I’d like to call them first.”
Archie, notwithstanding the look of a junkyard dog, was one friendly cop. “I’ll do you better. I’ve got the number right here. Only had to call it a few times, but you remember funeral home numbers the first time around. Hang on, I’ll give them a call for you.”
“Let’s eat first,” said Elam with a twinge of urgency. “I won’t be hungry after seeing the kid.”
Tom and Don agreed. They left the police station shortly before noon and headed for Davis Street and City Market.