browser and typed in the search parameters: “China Lake pilots.” Over one million hits came back. He started flipping through the thumbnail pages quickly, scanning for the face he remembered from the crash.
A few minutes later, the icon for his email program began bouncing on his toolbar. It was a response from Casey.
The best site is called Drew’s Military Action Site. You’ll need a user ID and password to get in. Try BAN4KOOL, password onit47.
Wes typed in a quick reply.
.
Drew’s Military Action Site was basically a database of military history. Wes went immediately to the Photos section. Depending on what search parameters he put in, Wes could access photos tagged “pilots,” “Navy pilots,” pilots assigned to China Lake, or pilots assigned to any other post by branches, divisions, groups, and the like.
He did China Lake first, but found nothing useful, so he widened his search to all Navy pilots. He moved rapidly through page after page of shots-some solo, some group. Then he stopped suddenly, his index finger a mere fraction of an inch above the forward arrow key, and stared at the screen.
It was a group shot. Twenty people, mostly men. And in the middle row, third from the left, was the man from the crash.
He was sure of it.
He looked for any information associated with the picture, but there was none.
Scrolling back, he checked other group shots. Most had information and names listed below them.
He tried to move the picture to his desktop, but the image was locked and could not be dragged off. A problem, but not nearly as annoying as not finding any information with the picture. He took a computer snapshot of his screen, then opened the new image in Photoshop and cropped out everything but the group picture itself.
Once he’d saved that, he blew the picture up until the resolution deteriorated and the man’s face became unrecognizable. He was only able to magnify the picture a couple of times before this happened. He backed it down until the man’s face was clear again and saved it as a separate file, then stared at the image.
He wasn’t crazy.
He hadn’t been seeing things.
The man he knew he had tried to pull from the crash had been real.
He didn’t have the guy’s name, but he had his picture.
This he could show to Lars. The picture in conjunction with the video loop should be more than enough to prove he was right. At the very least, it would be enough to convince Lars he should look into it a little deeper. And once he did, he’d find out that Wes wasn’t the one who was making things up.
There was one other thing he could do, too. A backup, just in case.
He opened a new email and attached the photo to it. In the message body, he wrote:
Casey,
Trying to identify third man from the left in the middle row. Any chance you can help? Best if you keep this on the sly, and not just from the company. Will explain later.
Wes
After he hit Send, the knot of frustration that had been gnawing at the back of his mind began to unravel. The situation had worked him up more than he’d expected.
But now he knew the truth. Now he’d be listened to.
21
The day had turned out to be the hottest one yet. Wes guessed it had to be just below one hundred degrees as he and Anna got out of the SUV at the self-storage facility. It was almost enough reason to climb back in and return to the hotel.
Almost.
They got directions from the woman in the office, then walked between the one-story buildings until they found the unit they were looking for.
There had been no shoot to put it off today, nothing that would make Wes too busy to carry out his mother’s request. She had initially asked him to do it years ago, and when he’d told her he was coming up for the shoot, she reminded him again.
“Your father still had a lot of the old photos,” she had told him over the phone before he’d left L.A. “I’d really like to get those. Everything else, well, whatever you don’t want we’ll donate to Goodwill.”
He still wasn’t sure he felt up to it, but he was here. And it was time.
“Wes?” Anna said.
He blinked and glanced over.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”
He gave her a halfhearted smile, then slipped the key into the lock. It was stiff from the dry, dusty climate, but it didn’t put up much of a fight and was soon off. Now the only thing separating him from what remained of his father’s possessions was a metal roll-up door. He grabbed the handle and raised it out of the way.
The unit was about the size of a small, one-car garage, but much of it was hidden by a wall of cardboard boxes that filled the entrance. Someone had written short descriptors on the outside of each:
Wes and Anna began moving them out of the unit and setting them on the asphalt to either side of the door, working slowly in deference to the temperature.
“How long has all this been here?” Anna asked after several minutes.
“About fifteen years, I guess.”
“And you’ve never come to look through it before?”
He shook his head as he grabbed a box and carried it outside. “This is the first time I’ve been back.”
Anna stopped and looked at him. “You mean since you moved away during high school?”
“Yeah.”
They worked in silence for another minute.
“Didn’t you see your dad after you left?”
“Of course I saw him,” Wes said. “I just didn’t see him here. He’d come down to San Diego.”
Removing several more boxes revealed a second wall of them behind the first.
“Whoa,” Anna said. “It’s not all like this, is it?”
“If it is, we’re stopping now.”
Wes hopped up onto a couple of the boxes marked
“I don’t know if this is a good thing or not,” he said, “but it looks like it’s furniture after this.”
Once he’d climbed back down, they finished off enough of the outer wall so they could get at the second one, then took a break to drink some of the water they’d brought along.
“Thanks,” Anna said as he handed her a bottle. “I guess I don’t understand why you never came back up here.”
Wes uncapped his and took a long sip, then said, “He died a couple weeks after I graduated high school. Before that, it was always just easier for him to come to me.”
“What about your friends? That guy Lars. Didn’t you come back to visit them?”
He raised his bottle to his lips. “No,” he replied, then tilted the bottle back.
He could feel her looking at him, waiting for more.
