by R. R. Irvine
“Not quite. They missed something, the navigator’s diary. The names of the crew were in it.”
“Attagirl, Nick. Not only are there personnel files somewhere, but wartime insurance had to be paid out and next of kin notified. Before we do anything else, though, you’d better decide how far you want to go with this. Some of my friends aren’t talking to me.”
“Technically speaking, without an artifact, an archaeologist is out of work. Which means if I had any sense, I’d cut my losses and go back to schlepping for my father. Only there’s something else in that diary. Hold on a minute while I get my notes.”
Nick had left the original diary with her father, stored among his Anasazi artifacts, an unlikely place for anyone, sniffers included, to go looking for it. As she retrieved her notebook from the nightstand, she shivered. Her towel suddenly felt cold and clammy. Quickly, she exchanged it for a dry one before going back to the phone.
“What I’m going to read looks hastily written, probably by the navigator, Ross McKinnon. There was a stain on the paper that could have been blood. If I’m any judge, these are the last words he wrote before he was killed. Quote. „Our own planes are shooting us down. P-38s. Me and Howard survived the crash. They’re still strafing. Hiding this—’ ”
“Jesus Christ. It sounds like we shot down one of our own planes by mistake.”
“Do you really think something like that could happen?”
“In a combat area, maybe. But over New Mexico? It hardly seems likely.”
“It makes me mad,” she said. “Those men deserve a decent burial, and I intend to see they get one.” And maybe deliver his love letter, too, she added to herself, “All eleven of them.”
“If someone was hitching a ride, they got more than they bargained for.”
“Maybe.”
“Okay,” Drysdale said. “I’ll do some more leg work. Maybe I can dig up something on this man McKinnon. But if I pick up more sniffers, we’re in trouble. You watch for them, too, Nick.”
“The military has no jurisdiction over me.”
“Just keep looking over your shoulder, that’s all.”
Nick dressed and headed for the Zuni Cafe to join her father and Clark Guthrie for dinner. Even outside, in the eighty-degree dregs of the day, she continued to feel cold. The chill followed her into the cafe.
She ordered coffee, something she seldom did after dark because caffeine kept her awake, and wrapped her hands around the cup as soon as Mom Bennett put it on the table. When the Monday night special arrived, Nick dug into the food, hoping calories would dispel her chill.
“Has anyone seen a copy of the Journal?” she asked when she came up for air.
“I checked the general store before you got here,” Elliot said. “Someone bought up all the copies as soon as they arrived, or so the mayor said.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
Nick shivered and noticed that the food hadn’t helped.
CHAPTER 20
Leland Hatch ground his teeth as the front page of the Albuquerque Journal rolled off his fax machine. The data, originating from cellular equipment inside Ellsworth Kemp’s van in the New Mexican desert, was being routed through the CMI satellite and directly into Hatch’s RISC System/6000 computer.
As he read the article, Hatch absently ran a hand over the computer’s processing unit. As a home computer, the RISC was strictly overkill, providing him with more power than NASA had had available for its Apollo moon shots.
He studied the photograph of the B-17, still partially buried in the sand at the time the picture was taken. Grounded the way it was, the plane looked nothing like the bomber in his dreams.
The lady archaeologist, seen squeezing herself through the pilot’s side windshield, showed too much breast outlined against her tightly stretched shirt to be credible. Or so he hoped.
When he picked up the phone, his hand trembled. He wanted to shout but an act of willpower kept his voice calm. “Kemp, why the hell didn’t you tell me there was a reporter on the scene? I was acting under the assumption that you’d wrung that prospector dry. I took you at your word.”
“I had no reason to question the old guy on that subject.”
“Surely you talked with people around town enough to know the cast of characters.”
“Initially, you requested that I keep a low profile,” Kemp said.
Hatch paused for breath. Power had its drawbacks. People, especially employees, tended to take his every word as gospel and were afraid to use their own initiative. More than once an offhand remark, spoken inside the CMI building, had been acted upon as if it were carved in stone. Even his son, Lee, had been guilty of such overreaction on occasion. Maybe now was the time to brief him on the situation? Hatch shook his head. There’d be time enough later to end Lee’s innocence.
Hatch said, “Are you certain that the site is absolutely clear?”
“I guarantee it.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“There is one thing,” Kemp said.
“Let’s hear it.”
“A man named Clark Guthrie, a retired professor, borrowed one of Elliot Scott’s cars and is driving to Santa Fe.”
“Who’s covering him?”
“Wynar.”
“That’s as far as it goes. If action becomes necessary, I want you to take care of it personally. I don’t want anyone else knowledgeable. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely.”
“Now, what do you think this man Guthrie’s up to?”
“We’re monitoring his cellular phone. He put in a call to the governor’s office and made an appointment for tomorrow morning. No subject was discussed.”
Jesus Christ. There it was again, lack of initiative. Hatch took a deep breath and spoke precisely. “I don’t think we can risk that. You’d better replace Wynar immediately.”
“What about the Scott woman?”
Hatch had given her a lot of thought during the past twenty-four hours. His first impulse had been to remove her immediately and be done with it. But her reputation had to be considered. At the moment, it was still intact. She was a recognized expert in her field. Killing her would make headlines, and might necessitate a move against her even more famous father. So, for the time being, he’d take other countermeasures.
He said, “She’ll be leaving Cibola soon enough. Once you’ve finished in Santa Fe, you can pick her up again in Berkeley.”
“And the newspaper?” Kemp said.
Hatch sighed. Sometimes he wondered if anyone besides himself had the brains to think ahead. “That’s already in the works. And when you get to Berkeley, don’t lose her. I want to know her every move.”
CHAPTER 21
When Nick drove into the desert the next morning, thunderheads hovered along the eastern horizon. The air smelled vaguely of rain, though she felt it was a false promise this time of year.
She’d already marked the ranches nearest the B-17 crash site on her plat map of the area. There were four in all. She wasted nearly three hours checking out the first two ranches, both of which had been abandoned years ago. The third ranch was occupied, but by a couple who’d recently moved to New Mexico for their health and had never heard so much as a rumor about airplanes in the desert.
Number four could only be reached on a rutted trail that was fighting a losing battle against encroaching tumbleweeds. Soon after leaving Highway 371, Nick braked gently to a stop to avoid raising any more dust than necessary, then checked her map against the surrounding landscape. If anything, this particular area looked even more bleak than Gus Beckstead’s claim. The track ahead of her, like the road to Gus’s, rollercoastered through flash-flood channels that had been eroded deeply into the red soil.
Despite having topped off the fuel tank before leaving town, Nick tapped the gauge with her fingernail. The needle didn’t budge from the three-quarters mark. The temperature gauge was well below the red. She shook the water can to make certain it
was full, then felt under the seat for her rifle.
Finally, after zeroing the trip counter, she drove slowly north, staying in first gear. The map said the ranch site was three point two miles from the highway. If she didn’t find it by the time the counter hit three point five, she’d give it up and drive back to town.
At the two-mile mark, an abandoned truck, rusted and scavenged, reminded her of one of those wistful Depression photos. Add graffiti—Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here—and it would have been a New Mexican version of Dante’s gate to hell.
Nick clenched her teeth at the thought. Reading Dante had been one of her mother’s obsessions, though she read only in Nick’s presence, never Elliot’s.
“Education can be a curse, especially when it comes to catching a man,” Elaine said each time she took Dante from its hiding place. “Good cooking and sex, that’s what they want. Never let them know you’re smarter than they are.”
“Then why do you read it to me?” Nick had asked.
“Because I don’t want you to have any of my illusions.”
Nick shook her head. The squat adobe farmhouse straight ahead was no illusion, and the well-kept truck parked in front said the ranch was inhabited.
The man who came out to meet her looked much like Gus Beckstead. He was old yet somehow ageless, wearing jeans low on his hips, a checkered shirt, a straw cowboy hat, and a sun-wrinkled face that rivaled the eroded landscape.
He waved away her introduction. “I’ve seen you in town,” he said. “You’re the one causing all the trouble.” He snorted. “More power to you, I say. It’s about time Mayor Ralph came down off his high horse. My name’s Van Harris, by the way. Come on in out of the sun and I’ll give you a beer. It must be a hundred and ten out here.”
By comparison, the inside of the farmhouse felt almost chilly.
“My daddy built this place back in the thirties,” Harris said. “The walls are two feet thick. When I was a boy he used to tell me that you had to have that much wall between you and the Indians. Of course, the Indians were long gone by then and so was my mother.”
“Do you know why I’m here, Mr. Harris?”
“I have a good idea.”
“I found an old airplane not far from here, as the crow flies anyway. Out on Gus Beckstead’s place.”
“That’s what I heard, but the mayor says otherwise. He told me himself when I was in town earlier. He said the whole thing was nothing but a mirage.” Harris smiled wide enough to crinkle his face. “You don’t look like the kind of woman to imagine things.”
“Were you living here during World War Two?”
He nodded. “As soon as I saw you drive up I said to myself, „Van, she’s looking for witnesses.’ But I didn’t see a thing, if that’s what you’re asking.” He winked. “You don’t have to look so glum, because I heard it all right, the sound of gunfire. It wasn’t no thunder neither. I know the difference. It could have been practice strafing, I guess, but then you wouldn’t have found any wreckage, would you? I think it must have been late afternoon, getting on toward dark maybe when we heard it, because my father didn’t go out to investigate until the next day. He ran into some kind of roadblock and came back empty-handed. Since it was wartime, that was the end of it.”
“What about you? Did you ever go looking on your own?”
“Being a kid, I snooped some, but my father never would say exactly where he hit that roadblock. Besides, I had school and work to do around the ranch here. Of course, looking at this place now, you wouldn’t think anyone had ever put a lick of work into it. But it paid for a while, back during that war, when we could sell our range beef. Nowadays, nobody wants anything raised this close to Los Alamos, not that I blame them, considering what the fallout did to this state. It wasn’t so bad around here, but upwind, let me tell you. That’s a wasteland.”
By the time Nick returned to the motel, her father and his student archaeologists were there ahead of her. The hot water had run out and her cold water shower did nothing to revive her spirits. More than ever she was convinced that the B-17 was part of a military cover-up. Probably Ken Drysdale was right. Real-life logic didn’t apply to the military. Maybe they’d been so paranoid about the possibility of invasion that they really did shoot the Scorpion down by mistake. If so, they sure as hell wouldn’t have admitted it during wartime.
She said as much to her father, once she’d pried him away from his students at the Zuni Cafe. Their conversation was made difficult by the overexcited discussions following the discovery of another cannibalized bone and what appeared to be an old well.
“On top of everything else,” she said, “the mayor’s telling people I’ve been imagining things.”
Elliot held up a finger before beckoning to Mom Bennett, who came over to their table, wiping her hands on her apron and smiling. “When’s that nice Mr. Guthrie coming back for seconds?”
“Tomorrow, we hope,” Elliot said. “He had to drive into Santa Fe. In the meantime, we’re looking for a copy of yesterday’s Albuquerque Journal. It has proof of my daughter’s airplane.”
“You and everybody else.” Mom shrugged. “Good riddance, I say. All you read in the papers is bad news anyway. I’ll be back with your dinner in a minute.”
Nick rolled her eyes, longing for a green salad instead of Mom’s home cooking.
“I know that look of yours,” Elliot said. “Your mother used to get the same one whenever she was about to explode. Take a deep breath and relax. All we’ve got to do is call the paper and order a copy. Better yet, you can call Mark Douglas and ask him to read his article to you.”
“You’re right, and now’s as good a time as any.”
She left the table and headed for the old-fashioned phone booth at the back of the cafe. Information gave her the direct number to the Journal“s news desk.
“Mark Douglas, please.”
“He’s gone for the day.”
“I’m calling about his airplane article in yesterday’s paper,” she said. “Could someone read it to me?”
“I’m the only one on the desk, ma’am, so I can’t tie up the line. But I’ll give Mark a message, if you’d like.”
Nick left her name and asked for a callback as soon as possible.
By the time she got back to the table, her dinner plate was waiting, with no sign of a salad.
“The best I could do was leave a message,” she told her father.
She was toying with her food ten minutes later when the pay phone rang.
“That was fast,” Elliot said.
Nick held her breath until Mom verified that the call was for her.
She hurried to the phone. “Mark?”
“Nick, it’s Ben Gilbert. I called your motel. They gave me this number.”
She looked back at her father, shook her head, and closed the phone booth door. Gilbert, though only in his early forties, was her department chairman at Berkeley. The last time they’d spoken had been on one of those colleague dates where they both went Dutch. Instead of rousing her passion, he’d spent the evening complaining about getting stuck with paperwork while envying her Anasazi hunt.
“It’s bad news,” he said. “I need you at a special meeting of the tenure committee.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m only following orders, Nick. This comes directly from the chancellor’s office. He asked me to contact you personally.”
She felt stunned. As far as she knew, the tenure committee wasn’t expected to meet until late in the fall semester. Even then her tenure was only a formality, or so Gilbert had promised. She’d taken him at his word. After all, in the small world of archaeology, he too had studied under Clark Guthrie at one time, and later with Elliot, who had helped Gilbert latch on to his job at Berkeley.
“It’s out of my hands, Nick,” Gilbert added.
“I don’t believe this is happening.”
“There’s more. The meeting’s tomorrow afternoon in Sproul Hall. On
e P.M.”
“I’m in the middle of New Mexico. You know that. I don’t know if I can get there by then.”
“My instructions are clear, Nick. If you don’t appear, you miss your chance for the year. I’m sorry.”
“That’s unheard of. What the hell’s going on?”
“That I couldn’t say,” he replied, and hung up.
She checked her watch against the Zuni’s wall clock, 7:15 P.M. She’d have to drive to Albuquerque tonight and hope to catch a flight to the coast, though she doubted if any would be leaving until morning. A morning flight would be cutting it close. Panic tempted her to start calling the airlines now, but suddenly she was hungry.
She was halfway to the table before she saw the stricken look on her father’s face. Standing beside him, head bowed, was Jay Ferrin from the motel.
“What’s wrong?” Nick said as soon as she reached her father.
“Nobody ever calls my motel this time of the year,” Ferrin said. “Then suddenly we get two emergencies in one night.”
Shaking his head, Elliot took Nick by the arm and led her out of the cafe and into the middle of Main Street. There he stopped to stare up at the stars. “Clark died a few minutes ago of a heart attack. I have to leave for Santa Fe immediately to start making arrangements. It’s something I promised him years ago when he named me as his executor. I hate to dump my students on you like this, but I don’t have any choice.”
“I can’t do it, Dad. You’re going to have to put one of them in charge temporarily. I have to appear before a tenure meeting tomorrow afternoon. If I don’t, I lose a whole year.”
“What?”
“That was Ben Gilbert on the phone just now with the news.”
“That man owes me, for God’s sake. I’ll call him right back.”
Nick shook her head. “Leave it alone, Dad. Something’s going on. You know it and so do I.” She hugged him.
“Come on, Nick. You’re being foolish.”
She might have believed him if she hadn’t felt him shaking almost as badly as she was.
“You know what I keep thinking?” he said. “That Guthrie would have loved to have been there today when we found the well. It means my site wasn’t as dependent on surface water as we once thought. It also explains the location of ES Number Two, which I intend to rename Guthrie Number One. What do you think, Nick? Would he like that?”
