No Return (21 page)

Burroughs was basically an outdoor campus—long, rectangular buildings separated by wide areas of dirt and the occasional bit of grass. Wes drove the bike up a handicap ramp and onto the sidewalk, then slowly moved in and around the different halls. When he’d covered everything, he stopped near the administration building and called Anna.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Not a sign. How about you?”

“Same. Where are you now?”

“Just checked out a place called Lucky Liquor. Showed them a picture Alison had on her camera of Tony, but no one recognized him.”

He frowned. “Let’s give it another hour, then meet back at the motel. We should be able to cover most of the likely spots by then.”

“All right.”

Wes looked around at the school. Tony wasn’t here, had never been here. It had been a long shot at best. Anna and Alison were more likely to find a lead at Lucky Liquor than he had been riding around Burroughs.

He sped away from the high school and turned back onto China Lake Boulevard, passing the McDonald’s he’d worked at the summer before his junior year, then turned left on Ridgecrest Boulevard.

He checked the bar where he’d found Lars that morning, then two more before he ended up on the road to the fairgrounds at the eastern edge of town. These were the grounds used by traveling carnivals that, when Wes lived there, had come to town twice a year. He drove slowly along the west side, but saw no one.

Just as he was about to head back toward town, a sign at the far end of the facility caught his eye.

RIDGECREST MEMORIAL CEMETERY

At the bottom was a large black arrow pointing left down an intersecting road.

Wes checked the time, hesitated, then took the turn.

There were a few scattered houses off to either side, but the desert between them grew wider and wider the farther he went, until only the space between remained.

It was another few minutes before he reached a wrought-iron gate built into the middle of a five-foot-high cinder-block wall. He pulled to a stop in the small, empty parking area and cut the engine.

Beyond the gate, the graveyard stretched outward for several acres, surrounded on all sides by more wall. It was mostly covered with green, but there were more than a few spots of brown where the grass had lost the battle against the relentless heat and sun.

All the markers were embedded in the ground, the majority white marble. Because of the fierce winds in the spring and the fall, old-fashioned vertical markers would never have lasted for long.

Wes spotted a small enclosure against the wall near the gate. Above the doorless entry a sign read direc
TORY
. Wes flipped through the pages, finding the name he was looking for about a third of the way through. The grid number was E68. He consulted the map at the front of the book, then set off across the cemetery.

When he got to the correct area, it took him a few moments to find the marker he was looking for.

Amanda “Mandy” Johansson

Beloved Daughter

Cherished Sister

Below that were the dates of her birth and death.

If Lars hadn’t gotten the job first, Mandy would have been Wes’s best friend. As it was, they had been close since meeting in Mr. Raef’s English class at Murray Junior High.

“It wasn’t your fault, Mandy,” Wes said. He removed a couple of stray blades of grass from her marker. “I should have come back … I’m … I’m sorry.”

THE ONLY PERSON WHO SAW THEM LEAVE WAS
Michael Dillman.

“Don’t tell me you’re going home already?” Dillman had asked.

“Beer run,” Lars announced.

Dillman grinned. “Cool. Bring me back a couple, huh? Something good.”

“You got it,” Lars shouted over his shoulder.

Dillman wandered back toward the path to the party while Wes, Lars, and Mandy climbed into the VW van.

They rode down the hill in silence, both Wes and Lars stealing glances at Mandy and at each other. Mandy, though, had withdrawn into herself and was staring blankly at the dashboard.

“It’s going to be all right,” Wes said, just before they reached the highway.

She mumbled something, then shook her head.

“It’ll be fine,” Lars said, trying to sound upbeat.

“It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have been … I shouldn’t have …”

“Mandy, there’s no way it’s your fault.” Wes looked over at her. “You can’t think that way.”

“It
is
my fault! Who else’s could it be? Oh, God, I can’t believe it.”

Wes veered the van to the side of the road and stopped. He turned to her and grabbed her hands. She jerked back slightly, but he didn’t let go. “You did absolutely
nothing
wrong. Not a damn thing. You are
not
to blame for what happened.”

She looked up. In her eyes Wes could see fear and helplessness and despair.

Her hands began trembling in his. “Someone’s going to find out,” she whispered. “And when they do …” Her gaze started to dart around, panicked. “I need to get out.” She pulled her hands away, and grabbed at the door handle, but missed. “I need to get out!”

Wes reached for her shoulder. “Hold on.”

She screamed, “No!” Then she shoved the handle downward. The door opened and she all but fell outside.

“Mandy!” Wes yelled.

She stumbled away from the van, into the darkness.

Without a word, both Wes and Lars jumped out and ran across the desert after her. When they finally reached her, she was on the ground, retching and crying. For the next thirty minutes, they could do little but watch that she didn’t hurt herself as she sobbed. Finally they tried to coax her back to the van.

It was the pact that finally did it.

“How can you be sure?” Mandy said, her tears finally subsiding.

“We’re sure.”

“Say it again.”

“We’ll never tell a soul,” Lars said.

“We’ll never tell a soul,” Wes repeated. “I promise, no one will ever find out.”

She stared at the two boys for several seconds as if she was waiting for one of them to take it back.

When they didn’t, she nodded. “Okay. I promise, too.”

WES’S PHONE RANG, BRINGING HIM BACK TO
the here and now. He pushed himself up off the ground next to Mandy’s grave and pulled his cell out. It was Anna.

“We can call off the dogs,” she said.

“You found him?”

“Not exactly. But Dori saw him this morning. Said he was heading up to Mount Whitney for the day with some friends he’d met.”

“Thank God,” Wes said, relief washing over him. “Where are you?”

“We’re back at the hotel.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

As he drove away from the cemetery, he passed a sedan pulled to the side of the road. Thinking someone might have broken down, he slowed, but it appeared to be empty, and he didn’t see anyone around. He also didn’t remember it being there before, but of course his focus had been on other things. Tony. Mandy.

The past.

Half a minute later, he’d forgotten all about it.

LARS SPENT THE REST OF SUNDAY AFTERNOON
in his office on the base. No one else was in, so he was completely undisturbed.

He was a party to the events that had taken the life of an F-18 pilot. He’d written the protocols per the commander’s instructions. These were the procedures the pilot was to follow as he used the system that had been specially installed on the aircraft. They’d been organized in a way that, if followed, everything would go fine. But two sequences had been left out, ones that would have made sense given the nature of the test flight. Lars had known it was a problem at the time, but with the commander’s assurances, he’d convinced himself that everything would be fine.

But everything had not been fine. Most pilots would have stuck to the protocols and followed orders. But not this pilot. For some reason, Adair had decided on his own to test the missing sequences. And, predictably, the plane had gone down, and a naval officer was dead.

Those damn protocols. If only he had listened to his instincts and refused to issue them. If he had, he wouldn’t be caught in a cover-up, ordered to do whatever it took to keep a friend quiet, just to keep his naval career from imploding and avoid spending the rest of his life in prison.

He could hear the distant echo of a voice in his head. Wes’s.

No, not quite Wes’s. It was a combo of Wes and Wes’s dad.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do—

He shut it off. He didn’t want to hear it.

Pulling his computer keyboard forward, he hit the space bar and woke up the screen. He brought up the website for the
High Desert Tribune
and searched for all articles pertaining to the crash. There were two more, both follow-ups to the original article. Nothing he didn’t already know. A wider Web search revealed that several national outlets had picked up on the initial crash story, but there had been nothing new since. If Wes had plans on leaking what he had to the media, he hadn’t done so yet.

Lars took a moment to think about what to do next, then logged on to the China Lake operations system, and used his clearance to access personnel records. In the search section, he typed in “Adair, Lawrence” then hit Find.

The name came up, but when Lars tried clicking on the link that should have taken him to the pilot’s personnel file, nothing happened.

He reloaded the page in case there’d been an error, but the result was the same.

He was just about to switch over to the Pentagon site when his desk phone rang.

“Lieutenant Commander Andersen,” he said.

“Sir, this is Lieutenant Tyler,” a woman on the other end said. “We’ve just received a notification that someone has tried to access restricted information from your computer.”

“Who is
we
, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Cyber Command, sir,” she said. “Are you attempting to access information concerning a Lieutenant Adair?”

Cyber Command?
“Yes, I am. What’s the problem?”

“May I ask, sir, why?”

“I’m working with Commander Forman,” Lars told her. “The investigation into last week’s crash.”

He heard computer keys clacking, followed by a short pause.

“Sir, I’m sorry, but you’re not on the list of those with approved access.”

“Lieutenant, I’m on special assignment for Commander Forman. I’m sure he has access. Call him. He’ll confirm I should be allowed to view the file.”

“Please hold the line.”

Click
.

Lars rubbed his fingers across his chin. Okay, yes, restricting Lieutenant Adair’s file made sense. It was standard during an investigation. But what was with the heavy-handed response?

The line clicked again.

“Thank you for your time, Lieutenant Commander.”

Before Lars could respond, the woman hung up.

He set the handset back in its cradle.
What the hell was that all about? Did he have access or not?

Before he’d even removed his hand, the phone rang again. He jerked in surprise, then picked it up.

“Lieutenant Commander Andersen.”