by David Freed
Gwen was a gaunt blonde gone gray with a world-class overbite and a pair of those shaded, prescription glasses that are supposed to lighten indoors but never quite do, leaving the vague impression that the wearer is either high or hung over. She’d spent nearly thirty years as a special education teacher in San Jose, she told Savannah and me, before budget cuts forced her to take early retirement.
“We’re just so pleased you chose to share your special occasion with us,” she said. “It’s just so awesome.”
Gwen said “awesome” a lot, a habit that I found less than awesome.
Johnny was even more pallid than his wife. Garbed in Mexican sandals, faded corduroys and a gray “Old Guys Rule” T-shirt, he rocked a wispy goatee and a shaved head that reminded me more than a little of a hardboiled egg.
Savannah complimented them on their selection of paint color for the parlor’s nine-foot walls.
“It’s called ‘fallen oak leaf,’ ” Johnny Kavitch said. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”
“Looks pretty much like tan to me,” I said.
Savannah gave me a look. There was a lull in the conversation. Being a whiz at small talk, I took note of the harp leaning in the corner.
“Musical instruments lend ambiance to a room,” I said, like I knew anything about home decor.
I should’ve said nothing.
Johnny dove into a ten-minute monologue on the ethereal qualities of the harp, its long history, and how he’d always wanted to take lessons, but waited until retiring from the IRS field office in San Jose and moving up to Lake Tahoe, for fear that his fellow auditors might tease him.
“I’d love to play you something,” he said.
“Johnny’s an awesome musician,” Gwen said, beaming at him.
My ex-wife embedded her burgundy fingernails in my forearm before I could say not just no, but hell no.
“That would be lovely,” Savannah said.
We sat through Johnny Kavitch’s rendition of Barbra Streisand’s “Evergreen,” which was followed by Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You,” replete with Gwen singing along. I was ready to start drinking after that. The only problem was, I stopped drinking years ago. I could tell by her thin smile that Savannah was in agony, too, but there’d be no alcoholic respite for her, either. She was pregnant.
Mercifully, the harp concert was cut short when a surly bean-pole in his mid-twenties garbed in saggy jeans, black combat boots, and a Def Leppard sweatshirt barged into the room.
“Who ate my pizza?” he demanded. “It was sitting in the refrigerator last night. Now it’s fucking gone.”
He was around twenty-seven, six foot three, and all of about 155 pounds. Dark, greasy hair fell to his bony shoulders like strands on a wet mop. Gwen ignored the beanpole’s outburst and introduced him pleasantly as their son and resident maintenance supervisor, Preston.
“Preston, these are our guests, Mr. Logan and Ms. Echevarria. They’ve come all the way from Rancho Bonita to get married—remarried, I should say. Mr. Logan’s a pilot. He flew them up here in his own airplane. Isn’t that awesome?”
Preston gave me a sidelong glance that was anything but friendly.
“Did you eat my pizza?” he demanded.
“Wasn’t me, dude.”
“Me, either,” Savannah said.
“I cannot tell a lie,” Johnny said, carefully leaning the harp back against the wall. “I ate your pizza, Preston, and, boy, was it tasty. But fear not. I’ll get you another one.” He tried to pat him on the back. Preston pulled away.
“That was my pizza—mine, OK? I paid for it with my own money.”
“It’s no big deal,” Johnny said. “I’ll get you another one.”
Preston fixed his father with a daggers-of-death glare. “Why don’t you do the world a favor and just die. I hate you. Both of you.” He swept a pair of brass candlesticks off the parlor’s ornately carved mantle and onto the oak floor, stomping out of the parlor. I heard the front door open and slam behind him.
Gwen smiled as she picked up the candlesticks. “He’s only like this when he forgets to take his meds. We never take it personally.”
“He’s really a total sweetheart otherwise,” Johnny said.
“I’m sure he is,” Savannah said sympathetically.
I was hardly sure. You don’t openly speak ill of your parents without having given the idea at least a little thought.
DINNER DID little to lighten my mood. The Kavitches recommended a little sushi place about a half mile up the road. “A bit on the pricey side,” Gwen said, “but the most awesome sashimi you’ll ever eat.”
She was right about the prices. She was flat wrong about the rest.
The restaurant was in a strip mall. Six tables. Posters advertising Kirin beer tacked to the walls. A few sorry koi kites hanging from the ceiling.
“Feels like we’re in Tokyo,” I said as we walked in.
“I’m sure it’s perfectly fine,” Savannah said.
The two chefs working behind the counter were white. Not that being born in Japan is a prerequisite for working with raw fish. But both of these guys looked like their only prior seafood experience was eating at Long John Silver’s. And both looked to be half drunk.
We ordered miso soup, which wasn’t terrible, and a few hand rolls, which were.
“I’ve had better sushi at Costco,” I said.
“What is it with you and Costco?”
“Costco’s the American way of life, Savannah. Americans will willingly stand in line for an hour if they think they’re saving a buck for a lifetime supply of Spanish olives, even if they hate Spanish olives. It’s what the founding fathers envisioned when they wrote the constitution: naked consumerism run amok in a giant metal warehouse.”
She picked at a piece of soy sauce-soaked ginger with her chopsticks and smiled one of those smiles where you can tell there’s not much happiness behind it.
“We’ll go get the license tomorrow morning,” Savannah said, “and tomorrow night, we’ll have a dinner to remember.”
I cleared my throat, sucked down the last of my soup and avoided eye contact. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I’d agreed to guide members of the sheriff’s search and rescue team into the mountains at dawn. They needed somebody to show them where the crash site was, assuming it was a crash site. Chances were good I wouldn’t be back until after the marriage license office had closed for yet another day.
“There’s something you’re not telling me, Logan.”
Her eyes demanded answers. With good reason. Much of our marriage had been tainted by the nature of my work, the deception inherent in how I once earned a paycheck. You can be a trained prevaricator of the highest order, a first-ballot inductee to the Liars Hall of Fame, as I was back then, and the woman you share a bed with will always know the truth on some subliminal level. Savannah had me dialed in. She always did.
I explained to her the obligation that compelled me to put off our exchanging vows for yet another day, the unspoken bond that compels one pilot to help another in crisis.
“Somebody could still be alive up there,” I said. “And even if there isn’t, there’s got to be family somewhere, relatives, wondering what happened to the people on that plane. They have a right to know, Savannah. If I were up there in those mountains, I’d expect the same effort to be made in your behalf.”
She nodded and told me I was doing the right thing. She said my conscientious nature was among the qualities she always found most attractive in me. And she apologized for being petulant without me having accused her of it.
“But I’d be lying,” Savannah said, “if I said that I wasn’t disappointed. I wanted this trip to be the beginning of the rest of our lives together, Logan. I wanted it to be romantic. All it feels like now is the way things always felt: you going off, doing your thing, regardless of me or my wants. Only in this case, I actually know where you’re going and what you’re doing.”
I apologized for disappointing her.
“Don’t worry about it,” Savannah said. “You’ll have plenty of time to make it up to me.”
She gave me a wink.
I wanted to kiss her. And did.
HAD I been able to see the ceiling that night in our bungalow at the B&B, I would’ve lain awake, staring at it. As it was, all I could see over my head was the gingham, rose-colored canopy of our poster bed.
Savannah rolled away from me, taking the covers with her. I was too hot anyway and she was always too cold—opening and closing the bedroom window was often a point of friction during our first marriage. That was before I discovered Buddhism and the duality of life. There can be no up without down, no joy without sorrow, no heat without cold. The sooner we embrace uncomfortable opposites, the more content we’ll be.
“I can shut the window if you’re chilly,” I said.
“I’m OK.”
“You sure? I don’t want the baby catching cold.”
“Babies don’t catch cold, Logan, not in the womb.”
“Good to know.”
Savannah rolled over to face me.
“What if it’s a girl?” she said.
“Makes no difference to me.”
“You wouldn’t be disappointed if we had a daughter?”
“I probably would be when she’s a teenager. Larry has a daughter in high school. He says it’s like trying to defend a box of raw chicken in a swamp filled with gators.”
“It’s the male who decides the gender, Logan. Your little swimmers. Sixteen years from now, you’ll only have yourself to blame. Just so you know.”
“We should be so lucky.”
She cuddled in closer. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“Tell me we’re gonna be OK, Logan.”
“More than OK.”
There was no response. A minute or so passed. I could tell by her slow, sonorous breathing that she’d gone to sleep. I always admired that, Savannah’s ability to simply turn off the day, its nagging disappointments, and drift off. My mind, meanwhile, raced in the darkness among myriad ruminations. What would it be like being married again, and responsible 24-7 for a life other than my own? How would I earn a viable income to support my child? What was up there, on that mountain? What if what I saw was nothing? Was I leading authorities on a goose chase?
I closed my eyes. Savannah was in my arms, her soft, warm breath on my chest. It’s possible I may have slept.
DEPUTY Woo picked me up before dawn. I’d rolled out of bed quietly, careful not to wake Savannah, and dressed in the dark. Through the front window of our getaway bungalow, I watched a jogger slowly plod the Lake Tahoe shoreline in Spandex leggings, stocking cap and a ski parka. The condensation of his breath clouded in his wake like steam from a locomotive. Definitely cold out there. Part of me toyed with the tantalizing prospect of crawling back under warm covers and snuggling with Savannah, but only fleetingly. Except for my spare boxers, I threw on every article of clothing I’d taken with me.
SUNSHINE STREAMED through the pines. The first light of morning.
Woo navigated his four-wheel drive Wrangler along the rain-rutted logging road he’d pointed out to me a day earlier. Other than exchanging a “Good morning,” and, a “Thanks, You’re welcome” for the cup of McDonald’s coffee he’d brought me, we’d said nothing to each other for more than twenty miles. He wasn’t unfriendly. He was merely a man of few words. I respected that. Many of the great writers whose works I had devoured at the academy believed that language is a perishable commodity, that we’re allotted only so many words in a lifetime. Once we’ve used them up, that’s it. Game over. Could be Woo read the same books I had. Hard to know. It was hard to know anything about the guy. His face gave away nothing.
We passed an old cabin on our left, its two front windows covered over with tinfoil, a rust-bucket Chevy pickup parked out front. The shingles of its steeply pitched roof were dappled at the joints by green moss. White smoke curled languidly from the chimney. Somebody was home and up early.
The higher we climbed up the mountain, the less road-like the road became. The steering wheel twisted and spun in Woo’s hands with each jarring furrow and rut. He maneuvered the Jeep expertly, like he’d negotiated many such roads before. A mule deer, a juvenile, given his immature rack, darted out from the trees to our right, no more than ten meters ahead of us, and flitted across the road back into the trees. Woo said nothing.
“Cold this morning,” Woo said after awhile.
“Yep.”
The “road” came to an abrupt end after another 400 meters or so, widening into a frost-dusted trailhead, about the size of a residential cul-de-sac, and rimmed on three sides by dense, dark forest. A Ford Explorer bearing El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department insignia and the words “Search and Rescue” was parked in the small clearing. Two graybeards in their late fifties and a squat, beefy younger woman, all wearing mountain climbing helmets and florescent orange, one-piece ski suits, were busy hauling backpacks and brightly colored coils of nylon rope out of their vehicle.
Woo pulled in beside the Explorer, got out, and exchanged curt greetings with the search team members. I stepped out—and set foot directly in a patch of cold, sticky mud.
“Careful of the goop,” the larger of the graybeards said. “It’ll get you every time.”
“Now you tell me.”
He grinned, which made his bulbous nose, scarred white from bouts of skin cancer, seem even larger.
“Tom Wood,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m team leader.”
Wood was six foot one, my height, but stockier than my 190 pounds. The other male member of the team was five foot eight and 150 pounds at most. He wore a faded Batman sticker on his helmet and wire-frame eyeglasses. Wood introduced him as Richard Wojewodski.
“And this lovely lady,” Wood said, “is Bree Kelly. Better mind your manners. Bree teaches tae kwon do.”
“ ’Preciate you helping guide us in,” Bree said. She had the grip of a professional wrestler.
I observed how none of them looked like cops. That’s because they weren’t, Wood said. They were unpaid civilian volunteers, he said, who coupled their love of the outdoors with passion for public service. Wood taught junior high math. Wojewodski designed software. Kelly was an electrician and part-time ski-lift operator at the nearby Heavenly Mountain Resort.
“I understand you’re a pilot,” she said.
“Flight instructor.”
“Where?”
“Rancho Bonita.”
If any of them were impressed by my occupation or city of residence, they hid it well.
“Good luck,” Woo said, climbing back in his Jeep.
“You’re not coming along?” Wood said.
“Too cold.”
The search and rescue folks, Woo said, would give me a lift into town after they’d completed their mission. I watched him turn around and head back down the road, brake lights glowing, the SUV bouncing among the furrows and over rocks, before the forest swallowed him from view and he was gone.
Wood spread out a topographical map on the hood of his SUV, along with various satellite photographs. He asked me to confirm the location where I’d observed aircraft debris. After I did, he punched some buttons on a miniaturized GPS strapped to his wrist. We were looking at a two-hour climb at the minimum, he said, excluding rest breaks.
“You didn’t bring any climbing gear of your own, obviously,” Wood said.
“I hadn’t planned on doing much climbing. I prefer flying over mountains.”
He looked down at my low-cut, mud-caked Merrell hiking shoes, the kind favored by many covert operators in the field, including those of us who’d served with Alpha.
“You’ll probably be OK in those,” Wood said of my choice in footwear. “We’ll take along an extra pair of crampons just in case. Might wanna lose some of that mud before we shove off. Your legs’ll start to get heavy pretty quick otherwise.”
He snapped open a fol
ding knife and handed it to me. I walked across the small clearing toward a large rock, where I intended to sit and clean the soles of my boots while Wood and the others squared away first-aid equipment and shrugged on their backpacks. That’s when I noticed fresh tire tracks on the frosty ground.
“Somebody’s been up here already,” I said.
Wood walked over and took a look at the tread marks. “Nobody was here when we showed up. And that was at five.”
“Then they were here before then.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Frost forms on clear nights, in early morning hours. Soon as the sun tops those trees, it’ll melt off, just like it would’ve yesterday, given the weather. If you got here at five, then that means they were here sometime last night.”
“How do you know we didn’t leave those tracks, backing in and out?”
I glanced at the tires on Wood’s Explorer, then at the marks left on the ground.
“The turning radius and wheelbase dimensions are different. Also, these tracks were left by smaller tires—a van or a small truck, would be my guess. Plus, you can see where the driver pulled in, put it in reverse, and headed back down the mountain.”
Wood squatted for a closer look.
“For a flight instructor,” he said, “you sure seem to know a lot about tire tracks.”
We learned all about tire tracks at Alpha, along with hundreds of other seemingly trivial topics of study. When you stalk terrorists across the globe in the name of national security, any knowledge, our instructors constantly reminded us, can become an all-powerful weapon, however inconsequential that knowledge might seem in the classroom. Tom Wood didn’t need to know all that, though.
“Tires are groovy,” I said.
He strained to laugh.
WHERE THE pine forest was thick and the sun could not penetrate the tops of the trees, the trail was hard packed and easily negotiated. Where the trees thinned, enough so that light could filter through, the path devolved into mud. You didn’t need to be Tonto to spot two distinctly different sets of man-size footprints embedded in the brown muck. One set of prints was left by heavy-soled boots; the other, what looked like basketball or running shoes. And there was something else: to the right of the boot prints, plowed the length of the trail, were two shallow, thin gouges in the mud, spaced about a foot apart, like someone had dragged something down the mountain.