No Return (17 page)

No Lars.

The next few places—including a stop at Delta Sierra—produced the same results.

It was in the fifth place, a sports bar off Ridgecrest Boulevard called Tommy T’s, built on the site of the old bowling alley, that he found his friend.

Lars was sitting at a table with Janice and Bob from the pool party, his eyes so focused on the Steelers game he didn’t even see Wes walk up. Pittsburgh had the ball and was barely ahead of Cincinnati, 14–12.

“Close game,” Wes said.

“Hey, Wes,” Janice said.

Lars broke eye contact with the television and looked genuinely surprised to see his friend. “Wes? Hey, great. Pull up a chair, and we’ll make room for you.”

Bob smiled and nodded. “How you doing?”

Wes returned the nod. “I’m okay.” To Lars, he said, “Think we could talk for a minute?”

“Sure,” his friend replied, his gaze already back on the TV. “Don’t worry. I’m listening.”

“Privately.” Wes glanced at the other two. “No offense.”

Both Janice and Bob waved it off like they understood.

Lars, though, waited until the end of a play, grimaced, then glanced at Wes. “Halftime’s in about five minutes. Can it wait?”

“No.”

Lars looked back at the screen for a moment, then sighed and stood up. “Fine. But I swear, if something happens while I’m away, you’ll never hear the end of it.”

Wes led them out of the bar and over to a spot near the back of the building where he thought they wouldn’t be disturbed.

“So what couldn’t wait?” Lars asked.

“This.” Wes handed him the article.

Lars looked confused as he unfolded the paper. Then, as soon as he saw the picture, his eyes widened in surprise.

“Not very subtle,” Wes said.

“Subtle? What do you mean?”

“You almost blew it. I took the car and not the bike, so almost didn’t see it.”

“Are you trying to tell me someone left this for you?”

“You should have just slipped it under the door to my room. That way there wouldn’t have been a chance I could have missed it.”

“You think this is from
me
?”

Wes could contain his anger no longer. “Of course it’s from you! Who the hell else could have left it?”

“I have no idea. But I do know it wasn’t me.”

Wes grabbed the article out of his friend’s hand. “Wasn’t having your people chasing Anna and me all around town while you had others breaking in to my room and taking all our footage enough for you? Or did you think that maybe you needed to do something a little extra to convince me to back off?”

“Slow down,” Lars said. “Broke in to your room?”

“Like you don’t already know. Your people took my computer and our backup drive. Not the camera, though, and it was probably the most expensive thing in the room. They knew exactly what they wanted, because you told them, didn’t you?”

“Jesus, Wes.
I
had
nothing
to do with any of this.”

“The shot of the pilot from the crash? You were the only one who knew I had that. So yeah, I think you might have had something to do with it.”

“I don’t care what you think. It wasn’t me,” Lars shot back.

“And this?” Wes glared, raising the article a few inches. “Not you, either?”

“I would
never
have left you that. Never. So back off!”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Wes said, trying to keep his anger from overwhelming him, “but there are only three people on this entire planet who could have known what this article would mean to me. I didn’t leave it for myself. So if it wasn’t you, then it would have had to have been Mandy. And I can’t imagine her ever doing this.”

Lars glared at Wes. “That’s not even funny.”

“Of course it’s not. Mandy would never do something like that. And if she didn’t do it, then it must have been you.”

“Shut up.”

Wes pulled out his phone. “Maybe we should call her. Just to clear her name from the list of suspects. Bet you don’t want me to do that, do you? Do you know if she’s still in town, or did she move away somewhere?”

Lars said nothing for several seconds, then the confused look on his face started to fade. “You … you don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“I couldn’t believe it when you didn’t show up. Just run away, forget about all your old friends, and don’t even come back when … God, I thought you were an asshole. Then I thought
I
was an asshole for considering you a friend. But you never knew, did you? That’s why you didn’t come back.”

“What are you talking about, Lars?”

“Mandy’s dead, Wes. She died a year after you left.”

Wes stared at his friend, stunned into silence.

“I was sure your dad must have told you,” Lars said.

Wes shook his head. “He didn’t say a word.” He knew instantly his father would have said nothing, fearing Wes would have tried to come back. “How … did it happen?”

Lars looked off toward the hills. “Suicide. Senior year.”

How was that possible? Wes thought. Mandy dead?
Sixteen years
dead? That couldn’t be right. And by
suicide
?

“She wasn’t that kind of person.”

“It happened exactly one year after that night,” Lars told him.

He didn’t have to say which night.

As Wes leaned against the wall, his body began shaking slightly. Lars reached down and picked something up off the ground. It was the article. Wes hadn’t even realized he’d dropped it.

“I didn’t leave this for you,” Lars said. “I would never have done that.”

“But no one else knew,” Wes whispered. It was true to a point. His father had known. But he, like Mandy, was gone. “How … how did she do it?”

“She took sleeping pills, then climbed into a bathtub full of water and never got out.”

“That … doesn’t sound like something she’d do.”

“Well, I guess you didn’t know her as well as you thought you did.”

“Why? Did you think that was something she’d do?” Wes snapped.

Lars leaned against the wall next to Wes. “No. I didn’t.”

An image of Mandy Johansson flashed in Wes’s mind. It was Halloween, junior year. She’d come to school dressed as Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz
, and had spent most of the day teasing Wes about his attempt to look like Harvey Keitel in
Pulp Fiction
.

“I’m sorry. I really thought you knew,” Lars said.

Wes shook his head, his mind still in the past. He should have kept in touch. Maybe that would have helped. Maybe he could have pulled her through the darkness that must have overtaken her.

“Tell me about the break-in,” Lars said.

“Like you don’t know,” Wes said, but most of the fight had left him.

“No. I don’t. Tell me what happened.”

Wes told Lars about the chase, and then getting back to the motel only to find that he’d been robbed. By the end, Lars was staring at him, stunned. If he was acting, his performance was Oscar worthy.

“Jesus. And the article?”

“I found it tucked below the handlebars of the Triumph thirty minutes ago.”

“So it happened sometime between after you got home last night and then.”

“Obviously.”

“I just mean, it couldn’t have happened during the break-in, because you were on the motorcycle when that happened.”

“They could have come back,” Wes said, but Lars had a point.

“You think they were just after your footage?”

“What else?” Wes said. “The only things they took were the things that held our shots.”

“But why? What’s the value in that?”

Wes stared at his old friend for a moment, trying to get a read on him. Finally he said, “Okay, for the moment, let’s say you had nothing to do with it. But come on. Even you should be able to see they wanted to take any proof I had that the dead pilot isn’t who everyone said he is.”

“The crash again,” Lars said, shaking his head.

“Hell yes, the crash again. And I
did
have proof.” Still had it, in fact, on his thumb drive. But he’d keep that to himself for the time being.

Lars took a couple steps away, processing. “I don’t know what else to tell you about the crash. Whatever you had would not have proved anything but the truth.” He looked at Wes. “Why does this matter to you so much?”

“The pilot who was trapped in the cockpit when I got there was
not
the same man the Navy is saying died. I was just trying to get you to actually listen to me, but everyone’s just been trying to shut me up. Why? You’re
in
the service, Lars. This is one of
your
colleagues. The question is, why
doesn’t
it matter to you?”

Lars opened his mouth to speak, stopped himself, then said, “Of course it matters to me. Do you think I ignored what you were saying? We’re handling this internally, and your prodding isn’t helping.” He paused for a moment. “Look, what if I could prove to you Adair was the pilot? Would you accept that?”

“Prove how?”

“Hold on.” Lars pulled out a cellphone, then walked out of earshot and made a call.

Wes looked at the article again. Mandy. Dead. He figured she’d grown up, moved away, gone on to better things. Not this. Never this.

As Lars walked back up, Wes slipped the clipping into his pocket.

“Come on,” Lars said.

“Where are we going?”

“To show you that you’re wrong.”

“ARE YOU SURE WE’RE GOING THE RIGHT WAY?”
Mandy asked from the front passenger seat.

She was excited, and probably a little anxious. It
was
her first party at the Rocks, after all. Wes and Lars were pros compared to her.

“I’m sure,” Wes said from the driver’s seat.

The dirt road was really not much of a road at all—two ruts on either side, beaten down by the tires of those who’d passed this way before, and a narrow, deeper gouge running roughly between them, cut there by the infrequent desert rains.

Wes turned the wheel suddenly, barely missing a rock sticking out of the ground on the right side. In the backseat, he heard Lars tumble sideways and the sound of several bottles clinking together.

“Careful!” Lars said. “You don’t want me to break any of these in here, do you? Try explaining that to your folks.”

Wes eased off the accelerator. “You should be holding on to them.”

“I
am
holding on to them.”

“Dip!” Wes yelled out.

The van lurched downward, then jerked up just as quickly.

“Woohoo!” Mandy cried out.

“Holy crap,” Lars said.

When the road evened out, Wes said, “We need some kind of code phrase to let each other know we’re ready to leave.”

“Leave?” Mandy said. “We haven’t even got there yet.”

“Yeah, but if any of us gets to the point where they want to go, then we all go. That was the deal.”

“Right,” Mandy said, sounding less than happy. “I remember.”

“So the code word?” Lars said.

“Dip!” Wes yelled out.

The car bounced again.

“I’m not sure ‘dip’ would be a good word to use,” Lars said. “Hard to work into a sentence.”

“Very funny, jackass,” Wes said.

“Why don’t we just say we want to go?” Mandy suggested.

“Because that would be completely uncool,” Lars told her. “We want to sneak away so people think we’re still there. We don’t want them knowing we left early. They’d think we were a bunch of losers.”

“Even if they do, at least we won’t be the only losers there,” Wes said. “Tommy from the debate team said he’s coming with some of his friends from band.”

They all laughed.

“Some of the guys from the football team are going to be there, too,” Mandy said.

“Really?” Lars said. “That sucks.”

“How do you know that?” Wes asked her.

“Jack told me.”

“Jack?” Wes asked.

“Jack Rice.”

“Why were you talking to that jerk?” Lars asked.

“He’s not so bad once you get to know him.”

Wes rolled his eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Question number two,” Lars said. “Why would anyone want to get to know him?”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Wes said.

“You guys are idiots,” she said.

“
We’re
the idiots? Who’s the one getting all kissy-kissy with Jack Rice?” Lars said.

“I
never
said anything about …” Instead of finishing the sentence, Mandy punched Lars in the arm.

The VW swerved a few inches off the road, brushing the front fender against a creosote bush. “Hey! Careful. You want to kill us?”

“A little sensitive on the whole Jack thing, aren’t you?” Lars said, rubbing his arm.

Mandy groaned. “Just stop talking. Both of you.”

They drove in silence for nearly a minute before Lars said, “We, uh, never came up with our exit phrase.”

A wry smile grew on Wes’s lips. “How about ‘There’s Jack’?”

He was already ducking when Mandy’s fist slammed into his shoulder.