No Return

On the schedule were interviews with a geology professor and an area historian. Dione always liked shooting experts in an academic setting. Said it made the show look more important.

By nine-thirty, the professor was already done and gone, a whole half hour ahead of schedule. While the crew waited for the historian to show up, Tony set out a box of pastries and a bag of fruit in the open back of the Escape.

Monroe pulled a banana out of the bag, then grimaced. “Who taught you how to pick produce?” Before Tony could say anything, she tossed the banana back in the bag and said, “I can’t eat that.” Then walked off.

Tony glanced at Wes, a look of genuine concern on his face.

“Don’t worry about it,” Wes said. “She won’t starve.”

Tony looked only partially relieved. Then he brightened. “Your muffin’s in the box.”

Wes glanced inside and smiled. “You just earned yourself an after-lunch lesson.”

He grabbed the muffin and headed over to where Alison was leaning against the grille of the Escape, a newspaper spread out in front of her on the hood.

“That the local paper?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Alison replied, eyes not leaving the paper.

“Today’s?”

“Yeah again.”

“Can I take a look at it?”

She glanced at him, a mock smirk of annoyed superiority pushing up the left side of her mouth.

“When you’re done, I mean,” he said.

“That’s what I thought.” She flipped the page. “Ah, the comics. This might take a while.”

Wes rolled his eyes and started to turn away.

“Fine,” she said, folding the paper and holding it out to him. “Here. There’s no Dilbert, so what does it matter?”

Wes set his muffin on the car and took the newspaper from her. “Thanks.”

She leaned close and said softly into his ear, “If you’re looking for the mention of you, it’s in the article on the front page.”

Wes put on a smile as he took a casual step back.

“Dione made it, too, but no one else,” Alison continued in a normal voice. “Well, except for Monroe. They even have her quoted about how horrible it was. If I recall correctly, she was with me, nowhere near the crash for most of the time. Whatever.” She gave Wes an exaggerated shrug. “Are there any chocolate old-fashioneds?”

“One left, last I saw.”

“You checked? Isn’t that sweet.”

“Just happened to notice.”

“Right.” She winked, then called out, “Hey, the old-fashioned’s mine,” and made her way to the back of the Escape.

Wes watched her go, then picked up his muffin and unfolded the paper.

A picture of the crash site took up nearly half the space above the fold. It had been shot not too far from where Wes and the others had been when the plane had flown past. There were at least a half dozen more helicopters than Wes remembered being there. The gray distant lump that had been the F-18 seemed to be swarming with people. Wes guessed the photo had been taken after Commander Forman released them.

JET CRASHES NEAR TRONA PINNACLES

Wes started reading. The pilot’s name was Lieutenant Lawrence Adair, age twenty-seven, native of Michigan. According to the article, the plane had experienced a catastrophic but unknown problem during a routine training mission. After a moment Wes reached the part Alison had mentioned:

The incident was witnessed by a crew of the cable show

Close to Home,

who were at the Pinnacles filming a segment for an upcoming episode.

“I’ve never been so scared,” Monroe Banks, host of Close to Home, said. “

For a few seconds I thought it was actually going to crash right in front of us. Thankfully that didn’t happen, but that doesn’t take away from the tragedy.”

Banks said she and the other members of the production

team could only watch as the disabled jet plowed into the earth, creating a scar across the ground at least a quarter mile long. “

One of the people in our crew was closer to our vehicles than the rest of us,”

Monroe said. “

I yelled at him to do what he could.”

That person, identified as former China Lake and Ridgecrest resident Wesley Stewart, raced out to where the plane had come to rest. Soon he was joined by other members of the crew, including show producer and director Dione Li. But they were too late.

An unnamed source tells the High Desert Tribune that Lieutenant Adair had most likely died on impact. He-

Not true, Wes thought. But he got why the paper had been told the pilot was already dead. The public didn’t really need to know the gory details. The article did clear up one thing, though. Monroe must have been the one who had given the paper his name.

He flipped the front page over so he could read the rest of the story, but his attention was drawn to a picture next to the text. It was a head shot of a young man in a naval uniform.

Wes read the caption below the picture:

Lieutenant Lawrence Adair, killed in a crash at the Trona Pinnacles, twenty miles southeast of Ridgecrest.

Wes looked at the picture again, then reread the copy beneath. Confused, he flipped through the paper, searching for any more pictures that went with the article. But there were no others.

He returned to the photo on the front page.

No matter how hard he stared at it, the image of the pilot didn’t change. Whether he was Lieutenant Lawrence Adair or someone else, Wes knew one thing for sure.

He was not the man Wes had tried to rescue from the cockpit.

8

“Maybeit’s an old photo,” Dione said.

She, Danny, Tony, and Alison were standing with Wes at the back of the Escape. Anna was touching up Monroe’s makeup inside the college.

“I’m telling you, this isn’t the guy,” Wes said. “Can’t you tell?”

“You’re the only one who got close enough to see him,” Dione said. “But if you’re saying it’s not him, okay, I believe you. It’s not him. Maybe the paper just ran the wrong picture.”

Wes paused. That possibility hadn’t crossed his mind.

“Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened,” Alison remarked.

Wes chewed at the inside of his lip. “Okay, you’re probably right. Just an error. Sorry. Guess this thing’s got me more worked up than I thought.”

“Of course it has, but you gotta give yourself a break. You did everything possible,” Dione told him. “In fact, you did more than most people would have.”

“I’d have never jumped up there,” Danny said.

“Yeah, you would have,” Wes told him.

“If it helps,” Alison said, “I woke up dreaming about it in the middle of the night. I think it’s pretty much affected all of us. Well, except for Monroe. Unless you count seeing it as a PR opportunity.”