“Yes, sir. That’s correct.”
Lars nodded at the corpse. “And is this the body of the man you pulled out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you know Lieutenant Adair?” Lars asked.
The lieutenant paused. “Yes, sir. I’ve met him.”
“Did you realize it was Lieutenant Adair when you recovered the body?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Because someone told you who it was?”
“No, sir. I recognized him.”
“But you didn’t get there until after he’d already been burned in the fire,” Wes said. “How the hell could you have recognized him?”
“I didn’t recognize him from his face, sir. It was his scar.”
“Scar?”
Lieutenant Truax nodded. “On his arm.”
“Here,” Dr. Handler said.
He lifted the sheet and pulled an arm out from underneath. He twisted it ninety degrees, and there, in a diagonal slash across the side of the corpse’s arm, was a three-inch scar.
“Told me he got that cutting wood when he was a teenager,” the lieutenant explained. “Said a bow saw slipped.”
Dr. Handler placed the arm back under the sheet.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Lars looked at Wes. “If there’s anything else you want to ask, now is the time.”
Wes shook his head. “No. You’ve been very thorough. Thank you.”
The doctor led everyone back through the building and outside. There he first shook Wes’s hand and then Lars’s.
“I hope this helped,” the doctor said.
Lars and Wes got into the truck. Once they were back on the road, Wes said, “I don’t know. Maybe you were right. Maybe it was him who I saw.”
Lars let out a low, exasperated laugh and shook his head. “Maybe?”
“I’m saying I could have been wrong … I just … Look, if you say that was the guy who was in the cockpit, then I guess I believe you.” He didn’t know what else to say. Seeing the dead man had kind of knocked him sideways.
Lars said nothing for nearly a minute. “I want to make one more stop.”
THE HOUSE WAS IN THE SECTION OF THE BASE reserved for high-ranking officers. If Lars hadn’t been living in town, this was probably the area he would have called home.
“So who lives here?” Wes asked once they were both out of the car.
“Follow me,” Lars said.
The home was on a small hill that rose above the street. A set of seven steps led up to a walkway that split the green front lawn into two on its way to the front door.
Lars pushed the doorbell, and it was only a few seconds before a man in his mid-forties answered. He was dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt, and looked very familiar to Wes.
“Lieutenant Commander Andersen,” the man said.
“Commander Forman,” Lars replied.
Forman? This was the guy who had questioned Wes at the crash site. Without the uniform, Wes hadn’t made the connection.
“Hello, Commander,” Wes said.
“How are you doing, Wes?” Forman said with a smile.
“Fine, sir.”
“It’s good to see you again, despite what I assume are the circumstances of your visit.” He glanced at Lars. “I take it there are still questions.”
“I don’t think he’s completely convinced, sir.” Lars’s tone sounded almost like an apology.
Wes looked at his friend, surprised. “I said that I believe—”
“Why don’t you come in?” Forman said, cutting him off. “Can I get either of you gentlemen something to drink?”
“No, thank you, sir,” Wes and Lars replied in unison.
“Please, follow me.” He led them to an office near the kitchen. Door shut, they all sat down—the commander behind the desk, and Wes and Lars on the sofa in front of it.
“Wes, I trust that you recall my task is to find out exactly what caused one of our F-18s to belly flop in the desert and kill its pilot.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve been doing nothing but working at finding those answers since immediately after the incident. I take my job very seriously. Kind of like your old man did when he was stationed here.”
Wes sat up a little, caught off guard by the mention of his father. “I’m sorry, sir?”
“When we first met, you mentioned that your father worked on the base when you were younger, so I looked him up. Dennis Stewart was a good man. Hell of an officer. Died much too young.”
Wes frowned. “I’m not sure what this has to do with why we’re here.”
Forman leaned forward. “Lieutenant Commander Andersen tells me that you claim the man flying the plane was not Lieutenant Adair. I can’t for the life of me figure out why you would say that.”
Wes shot a look at his friend. “I was only raising a question, sir. He’s already—”
Again, Forman stopped him mid-sentence. “Now don’t go getting all upset. Lars came to me asking if there might have been a mistake when we ID’d the pilot. He was very concerned.”
Wes relaxed a bit. Of course Lars would have gone to Commander Forman. Wes himself had asked his friend to check things out.
“As you can imagine, I was also concerned,” Forman continued. “Even more so once Lars explained the information was coming from you, the last man to see the pilot alive. So trust me when I say I’ve made it my personal mission to make sure there’s been no mistake. I ordered my team to go above and beyond in IDing the body. Interviews with the ground crew, DNA testing, triple-checking identifying marks, talking to the search-and-rescue teams.” The commander switched his attention to Lars. “Were you able to connect with Lieutenant Truax?”
“Yes, sir,” Lars said.
“Good.” His gaze returned to Wes. “Then you know that Lieutenant Truax was one of the responders who removed the body, and that he also positively ID’d Lieutenant Adair.”
“Yes, sir,” Wes said.
“Then you must believe me when I say there were no mistakes here.”
Wes said, “I understand a lot of care was taken.”
After a few more seconds, Forman said, “Yet you still have doubts.” It wasn’t a question.
Wes lowered his head for a moment, uncomfortable. He was unsure what to say, because, quite honestly, he was unsure what he thought. He’d seen what he’d seen at the crash site, but he’d also seen the body Lieutenant Truax had identified as Adair. He chose to remain silent.
The commander leaned back in his chair, a contemplative look on his face. From somewhere outside came the distant squeal of a child playing.
As the silence in the office lengthened, there was a second squeal, this one followed by laughter.
The commander suddenly pushed his chair back and stood up. “Wes, if you have a moment, I’d like to introduce you to my wife.”
“Uh, sure,” Wes said, surprised by the change of topic.
Forman came around his desk. “She’s out back. Lars, please join us.”
“Yes, sir.”
Forman led them to a sliding glass door off a family room at the back of the house. Outside, Wes saw a woman, maybe a few years younger than the commander, sitting on a patio chair, shielded from the sun by a large umbrella stuck through the center of a patio table. She was looking toward a part of the yard Wes couldn’t see.
As the commander pulled the door open, a child’s voice yelled out, “My turn!”
The commander motioned for Wes and Lars to go first, then he followed.
A rectangle of cement served as a patio, but the rest of the yard, like the front, was lush and green. In the area Wes hadn’t been able to see from inside was a wooden play set complete with slide, swings, and monkey bars. There were two girls standing at the bottom of the ladder to the slide, pushing each other.
“Darla, let your little sister go first this time,” the woman in the chair said.
“But she went first last time!” the taller of the two girls complained.
“And you went first the two times before that,” the woman reminded her.
Reluctantly the taller girl stood to the side and let her sister go up the ladder.
“Sweetheart,” Commander Forman said, “I want you to meet someone.”
With a smile, Mrs. Forman stood up, but was careful to remain in the shade.
“You know Lieutenant Commander Andersen, I believe,” Forman said.
“Of course. It’s good to see you again.” She held out her hand. “We met at the Everts’ party, if I’m not mistaken.”
Lars took the offered hand and gave it a gentle shake. “Yes, ma’am. That’s correct.”
“And this is Wesley Stewart,” the commander said. “Mr. Stewart, this is my wife.”
“Glad to meet you, Mrs. Forman,” Wes said.
She laughed as they shook. “Please, call me Shelly.”
“Wes grew up here,” the commander said. “He and Lars went to high school together.”
“You grew up here, too?” she said, looking at Lars.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And now you’re stationed here. You must be a glutton for punishment.”
“Shelly’s not the biggest fan of the desert,” the commander explained.
“When you think Navy, you think oceans and beaches, not tumbleweeds and rattlesnakes,” she said.
One of the children screamed, and all the adults turned to see what had happened. The older girl was sitting on the ground at the base of the slide, tears in her eyes.
“Excuse me.” Shelly headed toward the play set. “What happened, sweetie?”
“Two daughters,” Wes said. “That’s going to be fun when they’re old enough to date.”
“They’re not ours,” the commander said. “We also have two kids, a boy and a girl. But they’re both in college.”
Shelly returned, the older girl in her arms and the younger one tagging along behind them.
“Came down too hard on her backside,” Shelly explained, rubbing the girl’s hip. “Lieutenant Commander, Wes, this is Darla and her sister, Rachel.”
Wes bent down so he was at Rachel’s height. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” Rachel said.
Darla tucked her head into Shelly’s shoulder and said nothing.
“Who wants a juice box?” Shelly asked.
“Oh, me!” Rachel said.
“Darla?” Shelly asked.
The older girl nodded.
“Come on, then. Into the kitchen.”
Rachel ran ahead and made a valiant yet unsuccessful attempt to open the door. As soon as Shelly got there, she applied the extra help needed, and then they all went inside.
“Cute girls,” Wes said. “But if there’s nothing else, Commander, maybe we should go.”
“They’re Lieutenant Adair’s.”
Wes blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Darla and Rachel. They’re Lieutenant Adair’s children.”
Wes looked toward the sliding door the girls had just disappeared behind.
“No matter what you think you saw,” the commander said, “those girls lost their father. It’s bad enough he made an error that caused the crash. Don’t you see? If you start raising these questions, giving them false hope, the ones you’ll hurt most in the end will be them. Their father was on that plane, Wes. Whatever you think you saw, you were wrong.”
“DO YOU BELIEVE ME NOW?” LARS ASKED.
They were parked in his truck next to Wes’s rented Escape outside Tommy T’s Sports Bar. Wes was staring out the window at nothing.
“It was a mistake,” Lars said. “Understandable, given the circumstances, but still a mistake.”
Wes reached for the door handle, but he stopped and turned to look at his high school friend. “You know, for a little bit there I was starting to think that maybe I had been wrong. Maybe the face I remembered wasn’t the one I really saw.”
“But you don’t believe it now? You just met his children, for God’s sakes.”
Wes let out a snort and shook his head. Perhaps if Lars had taken him home after seeing the body, he would have been convinced enough to drop it. But then Forman and the kids coupled with everything else? Lars had tried a little too hard to convince him. And that just pissed him off.
“Goodbye, Lars,” he said, then opened the door and climbed out.
“Wes, goddammit!”
Wes crossed over to the SUV and got in without answering.
Lars watched him for a moment, then pulled his truck out of its parking spot and sped off.
Wes started the Escape and pulled out of the lot. He ended up two cars behind Lars’s truck at the corner of Ridgecrest and China Lake Boulevard. Lars should have continued straight and not turned right until he got to Norma or Downs, but instead he turned onto China Lake, so he was still a few cars ahead as Wes drove toward the motel.
As they neared the Desert Rose, Wes considered turning into the parking lot, but instead he decided to stay on the road, suspicious about where his childhood friend might be headed. Soon they passed the hospital and most of the handful of businesses strung between there and Inyokern Road.
When Wes got in sight of the intersection, he made a quick left at the triangle cutoff in front of the movie theater and immediately pulled to the curb. Lars’s truck approached the stop. Then, as Wes already knew would happen, Lars turned right, toward the base.
Wes waited until he was sure Lars had gone through the gate, then he made a U-turn and headed back to the motel, certain now he was being conned.
“SO?” COMMANDER FORMAN ASKED.
Lars frowned for a moment, then shook his head.
“Dammit! Your job is to make this problem go away.”
Lars frowned. “I’m aware of that, sir. But—”
“Being aware of it and doing what you’ve been ordered to do are not the same thing. I expect you to deal with this problem.” He stared at Lars, then said, “I want to show you something.”
Forman picked up a remote control off his desk and popped on the TV that sat on a cabinet in the corner of the office. The screen was blank for a few moments, then video began to play. It was of the downed F-18, only minutes after it had crashed. The footage Danny DeLeon had shot. Lars watched Wes struggle to get to the cockpit, then lean over the pilot. Forman paused the image.
“A goddamn action hero,” he said. “This is the kind of stuff the media would love. Since he already works in that business, it would be easy for him to get someone interested. You need to stop this now. We’re all in the line of fire on this, but you, Lieutenant Commander, are dead center and the first to go down.”
Lars sat back. “Why me, sir?”
“Need I remind you that you are the one who wrote the protocols that were to be followed on the flight? Those protocols were a very tight map. If someone were to examine them closely, they would see that certain tests that would have been logical next steps were not included.”
“But you’re the one who instructed me to—”
“And you’re the one who signed off on them. If anything comes down, your neck will be more exposed than most. So it’s in your best interest to get this done. Am I clear?”
Lars’s mouth suddenly felt dry.
“Well?”
Lars nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll do what I can.”
“Do more.”
It was an obvious dismissal. Lars got up, but then hesitated at the door.
“Yes?” Forman asked, impatient.
“Sir, I understand that you felt it was necessary to get Wes’s computer and hard drive.”
“Is there a question?”
Lars hesitated. “Was it also necessary to break in and take them?”
The commander stared blankly at Lars. “What do you think?”
“He would have given me that material if I had asked him.”
“He gave us the material once before, but he failed to tell us about the copy. What makes you think he wouldn’t
have done that again?”
“But breaking into his room?”
“Are you trying to sound like a fool? We do what we must. Now, if you will excuse me.”
This time the dismissal was final.
WES WAS SURPRISED TO FIND ANNA AND ALISON waiting in his room when he came back.
“Did you find one?” Anna asked.
“One what?” he asked.
“Backup drive.”
“Had a change of plans.”
“Then you’d better call Dione,” she told him. “She’s called here twice looking for you. Said she tried your cell, but it went straight to voicemail.”
He’d forgotten Dr. Handler had had him turn it off. He pulled it out and pushed the power switch.
“So where did you go?” she asked.
“I was with Lars,” he said, giving her a look he hoped would convey his desire not to get into it with Alison in the room. “Were you guys waiting for me?”
Anna glanced at Alison. “It’s Tony.”
“He’s still not back,” Alison said.
“You’re sure?”
“I tried his cell and he wasn’t answering, either,” she snapped.
“Well, maybe he had it off like me,” he shot back. He took a breath. “Look. It’s our day off. He probably just wanted to get away from all of us. God knows I’ve felt that way on shoots before.”
Alison bit her lip, her face tense.
“What?” he asked.
When she didn’t answer right away, Anna said, “We ran into Danny. He told us he saw Tony at Delta Sierra last night. Said Tony was heading back to the motel around one a.m.”
“Alone,” Alison added.
Wes sat on the bed next to her. He put a hand on her back, expecting her to flinch, but she didn’t. “Think about it. Would you have told Danny you were going home with someone?”
Her gaze flicked away, then at him again, a bit of doubt in her eyes.
“Yeah, neither would I,” he said. “Tony strikes me as pretty smart, so I’m sure he wouldn’t have, either.”
“But that doesn’t mean he did go with someone.”
Wes nodded. “You’re right. It doesn’t.”
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