“Will you?”
“Good night, Dori. It was nice meeting you.”
She regarded him for a moment. “Bye, Wes.” She disappeared back into the crowd.
As Wes turned for the door, something on the wall behind the bar caught his eye. He stepped closer to get a better look. It was a framed photograph of Lieutenant Lawrence Adair, the same shot that had been in the paper. There was a black ribbon around the frame and several candles burning below it.
That’s when it dawned on Wes. The missing photos on the walls, they must have also been of Adair. Taken down out of respect.
So
He frowned to himself, then straightened up. It had been worth a try.
After a quick glance back at the bar, he started to turn for the door, but paused. Someone had been looking in his direction. He turned back to see who it was, and was surprised to find Lieutenant Jenks, one of the pilots from the previous evening, staring back at him. The lieutenant smiled and raised his glass, tilting it in Wes’s direction.
With a nod of acknowledgment, Wes turned back toward the door and left.
15
Anna was asleep when Wes returned, but stirred when the start-up tone rang out as he booted up his laptop.
“What are you doing?” she asked, barely able to keep her eyelids open.
“Go back to sleep. I just want to check something.”
“You did understand what I said about no sex, right?”
“Right, if you’re asleep. I promise to wake you first.”
A pillow flew across the room, landing near his feet. “Not what I meant.”
He put his computer on the small motel-room desk, then walked over to the bed.
“Get away from me.” She giggled as she pulled the covers over her head.
He started to pull them down, but she held on tight, putting up a fight.
“I’ll scream,” she said.
“So will I,” he said. “I’ll claim you snuck in here and surprised me. I’ll say that you’ve been stalking me, then we’ll have to get a restraining order, and that’ll just make this relationship thing all the more difficult.”
She struggled with him some more, but he was able to inch the blanket down below her chin. He leaned in and kissed her. Her lips remained pressed tightly together for several moments, then they began to soften and part.
Finally she whispered, “You never told me what your mother said when you told her.”
Wes kissed her again. “She said no woman is good enough for her son.” Another kiss. “Of course, I told her that you were already aware of your inadequacies.”
“Oh, really.” She kissed him deeply. “Maybe you can detail them for me.”
“Happy to.” He smiled. “Just give me a few minutes to check something.”
“Ugh,” she said, pushing him off. “You really know how to kill the mood.”
“Not kill it,” he said, standing up. “Just put it on ice for a few minutes.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s all about anticipation.”
As he sat back down at the desk, a second pillow sailed through the air and hit him in the back.
Wes accessed the footage from the camera auto-backup drive. He wanted to see what Danny had shot of the crash. The night before, there had been no real reason to look at it. But now, after the picture in the newspaper, and his fruitless search of the pictures at the bar, he wanted to make sure he
The first shots were just B-roll stuff of the Pinnacles. Then there was the wide shot of Monroe standing next to the unusual rock formations. This went on for nearly thirty seconds before the image swung quickly to the left, then down at the ground.
Suddenly the picture whipped up and focused on the sky. Center frame was the plane. The image held for five seconds, then cut off.
The next shot started with a jolt. Shadows. Car mats. Shoes. Then the dash of the Highlander, and the desert outside. The picture bounced and jerked with the movement of the car.
Another shot. Still inside the SUV, this time with burning vegetation on all sides. In the distance was the back of the Escape Wes had been driving, and beyond that the cloud of dust and smoke that enveloped the plane.
The final shot started in the car, but the chaotic motion was gone. Suddenly the door opened and the picture moved outside. The frame moved up and down as the image quickly approached the downed jet, then steadied once it was in position.
It spun to the right and focused on Wes trying to get up to the cockpit, then caught his miscalculation as he nearly fell off. The image stayed on Wes while he pulled himself back up and leaned into the cockpit. Unfortunately, Danny had positioned himself so that Wes blocked the view of the pilot from the camera.
“Dammit,” Wes whispered.
Danny sped forward, keeping the pace just slow enough so he could get an idea of what was going on. But the whole time there was no clear shot of the pilot.
Then Danny had followed him with the camera as he’d made his dash for the knife.
“For God’s sakes, Danny,” Wes said.
“What’s wrong?” Anna asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”
Wes watched himself race past burning brush for the SUV. Anna ran out to meet him, handing him the knife. Then, as he turned to go, Dione stopped him.
As Wes pushed past her and headed back toward the plane, the image panned quickly to the cockpit, then swung back to pick up Wes again.
Wes rewound to the cockpit shot, then hit Pause.
The image of the man’s face was there for only a few frames before he turned his head to look back at Wes on the wing. Wes clicked through, frame by frame. Five total. NTSC, the video format used in the United States, ran at approximately thirty frames a second, which meant the man’s face was on camera for only one-sixth of a second.
Wes studied each frame separately, but they were too blurry to distinguish anything. He then looped them so that they’d play over and over. In motion, unlike still images, there was just enough to get an idea of what the pilot looked like.
He did have to admit that it didn’t definitively prove it wasn’t Lieutenant Adair, but to his eyes, he was sure the man in the shot wasn’t the same man whose picture had run in the paper.
“I thought you said you were only going to be a few minutes,” Anna said.
“I am.”
“It’s already been twenty.”
“No it hasn’t.”
“You’re right. It’s actually been twenty-three.”
Wes glanced at the clock on his computer and was surprised to see she was right.
“Look, if you’re going to work all night, I’m going back to my room.”
There was the rustle of blankets and sheets.
“No, don’t go,” he said. “I’m just finishing up.”
He saved the file to both the hard drive and his portable thumb drive. Behind him, he could hear Anna shuffle across the floor, then felt her lean over his shoulder and look at the screen.
“What are you doing?”
