Still need to tighten up the story in the second half.

The living room was covered in photos, 8x10 images of young men, most barely old enough to shave, hair recently shorn away, eyes looking innocent, unsure, some frightened. All of them stared up at her from the coffee table, the couch and the floor where they were scattered. Chase curled her legs beneath her and leaned back on the couch. 

She picked up the old squadron Christmas photo Norm Canton had given her. The men were arrayed around a P-29, the workhorse plane of Navy bombing squadrons in WWII as the web had informed her. This particular P-29 had been christened the Emma Jean and bore a stylized image of a woman in a modest, 1940s style bathing suit, presumably Emma Jean, astride a bomb. Someone had hung a Christmas wreath on one of the lower engine cowling flaps. The green and red of the wreath stood out against the dark blue plane, but struck Chase as odd since the rest of the photo made it clear the scene was int he tropics, miles from the nearest wreath-making pine or fir. When Chase looked closer with a magnifying glass, she realized the wreath was actually made from twisted reeds or perhaps banana leaves. 

The men in the photo were spread out along one side of the plane, stretching from the propeller in the front all the way along the wing, with a second row with about half as many men kneeling down. Most wore regulation khaki pants. What Chase took to be the officers tended to have on the matching khaki shirts, the rest wore simple white t-shirts, with a few of the men bare chested in the midday sun. Those with uniforms on had rings of sweat under their arms, in the background Chase could see the paltry patches of shade offered by palms and banana trees. 

She set the photo back on the table and shivered. The house was cold, Chase felt a long way from the tropics and for a moment she almost envied the men in the photo. She wanted to be with them just then, just for a moment, to warm herself and ask a simple question, *excuse me, which one of you is Lt. Lawrence?* The job would be so much simpler with a time machine.

Instead she had to content with forty some odd headshots of service men that might or might not be in the Christmas photograph. Thanks to Steven's willingness to bend some rules and call in a few favors around the department, Chase had enlistment photos for nearly everyone listed on the squadron roster in 1941. Of those she had managed to narrow the field to forty, based on service records. Steven had sent her the forty which she printed out and started comparing to the Christmas photos. She had twenty matches she was sure of, ten more that she considered highly likely and eight more that seemed to look like, but perhaps not as much as she would have liked. That left two for which she had no photo, meaning she had found her mystery man. Twice. 

She had already resigned herself to the fact that nothing about this case was going to be easy, nothing about it was going to make sense, but even she had thought for sure this would work. It had seemed so simple, a process of elimination that would finally lead to an image she could then show to survivors. Provided she managed to track down some survivors. But now she had two unidentified men and twice as many questions.

One of the men in question was a short, stocky, dark haired man sitting on the wing of the P-29, legs dangling in the air above the others in the photo. He was one of five that had climbed on the plane, the only one on the wing. At first his presence on the plane led Chase to think perhaps he was her man, since she considered it unlikely that enlisted men, squadron mechanics and like, would be climbing on the wings of the plane. But a bit of searching the net had set her straight. In fact the mechanics were more likely to be on wings than the pilots, who generally seemed to think of their aircrafts not as things, but as extensions of themselves, whereas for the mechanics they were typically birds, or girls, in other words, external things. One could climb on external things, one did not climb up on an extension of one's self. That would be perverse. Or at least that was how Chase had explained it to herself though she admitted that perhaps she was over braining the question. Whatever the underlying reasons, in most photos she found of the era, pilots sat in cockpits, mechanics sat on wings. She also liked this theory because an unidentified mechanic was easier to explain than another unidentified pilot. Steven had already run through all the names in the squadron and failed to come up with another case in the DPMO. That didn't mean there wasn't another POW/MIA case to the squadron, just that so far there was no paperwork. Which again dovetailed with the theory that her mystery man on the wing was a mechanic who perhaps had simply been on loan, or just wandered into the photo for some reason. 

There was no way to tell for sure the rank of the man on the wing. He was wearing only a strained white T-shirt and had no hint of insignia on him. Even on those men who did look to have lapel pins of some sort, it was nearly impossible to make out a specific rank. She'd even taken the photo down to the basement, dug up her grandfather's old microscope and tried to see if there were more detail to be found at that scale. There wasn't, unless you considered film grain to be detail. She called up a friend of Steven's in the tech department and sent him a scan to see what he could enhance it somehow. He had laughed hysterically and all but hung up on her, which she took as a no.

That was the point at which she had give up. She had put the image away for a while and went for a walk down the road to Duncan's place. Duncan had invited her in for a cup of coffee and she had recounted her mother's adventures in Las Vegas for Duncan and his wife Eileen. Thus far anyway, since, as Chase told them over a second cup, she thought there was a decent chance her mother wasn't coming home at all. She sat out on the deck with her neighbors and watched the sun sink down over the mainland. Eventually she wandered back down the road in the dwindling Friday evening light and went back to her pictures. 

The second unknown man in the image was squatting down in the very front. He had sandy hair swept back with pomade. His smile leaped out of the photo in a way that made Chase seriously doubt he was the sort of man anyone would forget. She certainly would not have forgotten him. He looked a bit older than the rest of the men and even in a white T-shirt he conveyed a sense of authority, whether or not that meant an actual rank Chase didn't know. Of the two though, this one struck her as a Reese Lawrence more so than the man of the wing.

Chase was suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. She had been doing nothing but poring over the photos for the better part of three days. She took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. She got up and opened the fridge looking for something to eat. There wasn't much, save the Chinese takeout she had ordered two days ago. For the most part she was subsisting on boiled eggs, spinach salad and wine. She pulled out the Chinese and a half-full bottle of Rose. She flopped down on the couch, pulled out the cork with her teeth and drank from the bottle. The only way to drink Rose she thought with a smile.

So there were two photo to pass around. That wasn't so bad she had told herself last night when she finally admitted she wasn't going to narrow the field any more. Unfortunately Steven had called her very excited at eight in the morning the next day, that was this morning she thought with a start. Steven had somehow managed to learn that the note in Lt. Lawrence's very skinny, unhelpful file had been written on a smallish lined yellow notepad manufactured for over thirty years by a paper company from Seattle. He was very vague as to how he had tracked it down, which made Chase suspect perhaps he was stretching the truth a bit, but she was nevertheless vaguely impressed. Initially she was inclined to dismiss the information since the thirty year window Steven had found did not help narrow down who might have once had the file. But then Steven pointed out that, while it was unlikely she'd ever know who had put the note in the file she did know that apparently the DPMO had not started looking into Lt. Lawrence until the mid to late 1970s. In other words, it was unlikely any family had been pestering the department after the war. In other words, it was unlikely that anyone had missed Lt. Lawrence. It was unlikely there would be many people to show her two photos to.

The wine began to warm her belly. She reached over and turned on the lamp by the window and watched her reflection in the dark glass. On one hand the absence of relatives made her job harder. There was no one to track down, no one to interview, no one to produce War Department telegrams with dates and other helpful information. There were fewer data point to place on the timeline. On the other hand the fact that no one appeared to have missed Lt. Lawrence made the case even more intriguing. Here, thought Chase, was a story that truly needed saving, a person who had vanished, leaving hardly a trace of their existence behind.

The wine made Chase restless. She opened the back door and went out on the deck. It was a lovely night, crisp and clear. She stared up at the Big Dipper, followed Orion's belt down, her eye draw to the faint purple hint of light and city on the far western horizon. She drank more of the wine, sat down in the white plastic chair she had previously pulled out of the basement. She could smell the Potomac, she thought about the river, somewhere further up the bay, running all the way from the Pennsylvania mountains, perhaps even further she reasoned, though she knew from a few camping trips as a child that river ran through the hills north of Pittsburgh. It ran all the way down to here, where it was swallowed up by the Chesapeake Bay and drug out to sea. All that water disappearing into so much more water. All these people disappearing somewhere, disappearing into so much water, so much time.

The chime of her phone broke the peaceful still of the night. She pulled out her phone and looked down. It was a number she did not know. She shivered and went inside to find her sweater. 



                                -------


It was still chilly the next morning when Chase packed her bags and threw them in the car. Her numbed fingers fumbled with the keys as she locked the door. And hour earlier she had managed to reach Norm and he had been kind enough to not only agree to see her, but invite her to brunch with the 'leven and lenny's as he had called it, which, from what she gathered was a meeting of eleven or so people at a Denny's on the outskirts of Annapolis, down by the bay. Norm suggested she come since there would several other men from the 234th there and his friend Ed Wald, not a regular member, would nevertheless be on hand this morning.

The Denny's was, as Norm had said, probably the nicest Denny's she had ever seen. The parking lot backed up against the highway, but inside the usually drab brown and yellow decor of Denny's was considerably improved by virtue of a spectacular view out over the north end of the Annapolis harbor where hundreds of ships were berthed in slips leading well away from the shore, a series of wooden dock that extended out as far as Chase could see. Once a fan of Denny's, back in her hard drinking, greasy food craving hangover days, Chase had, along with most everyone else under 65, realized that Denny's was incompatible with the figure she liked to keep. At some point though, to judge by the group of the men Norm introduced her to, one stops caring so much about the size of one's waistline and, presumably, re-embraces Denny's.

The 'eleven at lenny's group was ensconced in a giant booth in the back corner closest to the parking lot. Norm spotted her as she came in the door and waved her over, he was obviously quite proud of her, or himself for knowing her, Chase wasn't sure, and it was clear that Norm had upped his status with the group considerably by bring an attractive young woman to the table.

Chase tolerated some leering she might not have were she not trying to ingratiate herself a little bit, at least with Norm and Charley Shummaker, who, according the Norm, knew some of the older WWII era men in the squadron. Shoe, as Shummaker was universally known to his friends, was older than the rest of the men, but had retained more of his hair and, despite the weathered face, looked not unlike the instinctively trustworthy faces found in home loan brochures. His hair was a deep silver and was kept slicked back atop his head, a slight wave from a cowlick in the back. She wanted to compliment him on his hair, on his lucky genes, but doing so would require explaining why she knew what he looked like in 1954.

Shoe took it upon himself to explain the group to Chase. She settled in to the booth, wedged between Norm and Shoe and proceeded to travel back in time with Shoe whispering in her ear, guiding her around the table telling the unit info and background of all the men in the booth. Most had not been in the 234th, though two others had not come over to Korea until the end of the war. "All they ever did was eat Dim Sum and chase whores in TK," Shoe waved his hands dismissively, but good naturedly at the men, TK and Turner. "Least we could land our planes" shot back Turner.

What?" Chase asked in mock horror.

"It's nothing, nothing at all."

"Oh come on Shoe, tell her the story."

Shoe turned away and flagged down a waitress for some more coffee. "And maybe some bibs for my friends over here, this lovely young lady is causing excessive drool I believe." The waitress laughed, Chase smiled, but she pressed him because she knew he wanted to tell the story.

"Okay, well one day, now," Shoe paused and looked her over, "I don't know how much you know about the Korean War, most people these days don't even know there was a Korean War."

She nodded thinking about Norm's lecture. "I know the gist of it, North and South, divided still on what was the front right?"

Shoe nodded, "more or less I suppose. Did you know the war never ended? Most people assume there was truce or an armistice or something, but there wasn't, just a little cease fire agreement. That's why we still have a massive military presence in Korea. You go over there some time, go up to the DMZ and have a look. That war is still going on, you have to see to understand. Might be that no one is shooting right now, but the war is definitely still going." Shoe was staring at his coffee, appearing to drift off somewhere. "Where was I? Oh, right," he smiled and glanced around the table. "It was late in the war, maybe two weeks before the ceasefire. We never really knew what was happening on the ground, but for us it had been weeks since any serious anti-aircraft guns had been firing. Partly maybe because we had backed of the bombing so the diplomats would look better at the ceasefire talks. Maybe it was partly because the gunners knew the talks were happening too. If they don't fire no one knows where they are, no one calls in an air strike. The other guy wants to live too you see... not just me, that's what I learned over there, the only people that want a war are the people that don't have to go to it." Shoe laughed bitterly. Chase glanced around the table and noticed that the other conversations had stopped. The rest of the men were nodding along with Shoe. 

"Jets came in in Korea you know? We were still flying propeller planes, turbo props they called them at this point. But the jets were faster and those jet boys were pulling all the bombing missions late in the war. Toward the end, even before the ceasefire talk started we stopped doing any bombing, they had us dropping leaflets. You know, little propaganda flyers we'd spread all over the hills, try to convince them to throw down their weapons. Stupid assignment, god I hated those mail runs. Hell of a thing to risk your life for, some paper. Mind you, we knew that paper was just going to wind up shit smeared in woods anyway. I'da preferred the fuckers used leaves. Pardon my French. But I dunno, maybe it worked. Maybe it did something. I mean it's not like there was much else. Radio I guess, but the more isolated troops, the ones dug into the valleys, they weren't going to get any radio up in the mountains. It's not like we had all these phones and gadgets you kids have today. We didn't have all that see?" He leaned into Chase and gently elbowed her in the ribs.

"You're kidding?" Chase gave him a deadpan look.

"Oh, a smart one are you. Okay. Okay." Shoe laughed and nodded. "I suppose you know how to fly a plane too huh? You know it's not all grabbing a stick and yanking it around."

Chase raised her eyebrows. But Shoe seemed to have not even considered what Chase was thinking about. 

"The stick is important, but you have to work your feet too, see. There are two pedals down there for your feet, stomp on the right one you go right, stomp on the left one you go left. Pretty simple right? Well we're out this day flying somewhere over North Korea. Anyway someone took a potshot at me. Probably with a fucking hunting rifle or something, pardon my French young lady. Anyway this son of a, this--guy gets lucky and puts a bullet into my plane. Blasts into the engine, cuts some hoses and then ricochets back anbd blows right through my left foot. Well, actually they never could tell me if it was the bullet that went through my foot or some piece of metal it tore lose. Either way it hurt like a son of a bitch and all I know is one second I'm fine, headed home to the ship and then next I'm half blind for smoke and there's a hole in my foot. Not good. Truth be told, we'd all dropped our guards a little bit at this point because the talks were actually happening, rumor had it we would be out of there in a few days. I mean, that was the end right? Turned out that was true, but anyway... Still, flying is dangerous in and of itself, but shit, after you've been shot at while flying for three years flying with hardly anyone shooting at you seems like a piece of cake. Until someone decides to shoot at you again."

Chase instinctively glanced under the table, but he was, naturally, wearing shoes. "I take it you made it back okay?"

Turner and the man with the mustache were snickering, Shoe glared at them. "I did make it back just fine. My foot hurt like a son of a bitch."

"Is that why they call you Shoe?"

"No, they call me Shoe because Shummaker was too long for these hicks to figure out. Anything over four letters and they're lost."

Chase glanced around and noticed that everyone was nodding. Shoe's story was clearly not done, nor, apparently, was anyone tired of it.

"So then what happened?"

"Well, I have a hole in my foot at this point and that's making it very difficult to steer the plane. The engine is leaking oil, pressure gauges are spinning like tops and I've lost my radio. So Canton here, he's using hand signals, trying to find out what the hell is wrong with me. We drop back a bit and fly lower, heading into a cloud so we hide the smoke. It's one thing to fly over people that are tired of war, it's another thing to limp along trailing smoke. That draws fire from event he most uninspired troops. But I manage to fly her back, one-footed. I tell you what, I was never so glad to see a ship as that day. We dropped down out of clouds just off the coast and then there's the TK ship, turning into the wind... Man, I still remember that feeling, that feeling of wow, I'm going to make it. So then I have to come in on my own, no one to call the ball, nothing but flags, but I managed to hook the third wire, damn near perfect landing." Shoe broke into a smile and everyone at the table began laughing.

"What?"

"He never put the gear down on the plane," Canton leaned in to make himself heard over the laughter at the table. "He was so damn worried about steering he forgot to put the landing gear down." Canton slapped the table and began to laugh again. "He did do a picture perfect belly landing though. But of course command was furious about the plane." Canton lowered her voice, "squad commander at the time swore Shoe would never fly again on his watch."

"Did he?"

Norm took a sip of coffee. "squadron commander was shot down two days later in almost the same area." The merriment at the table had died down as the waitress cleared away their plates. "So yeah, Shoe flew again," said Norm quietly.

Chased listened politely to few more stories, most of which did not involve the war in any way. Gradually the men began to leave, all of them making sure to shake Chase's hand before they did. Eventually it was just Norm, Chase and Shoe. 

"I presume you didn't come here to hear about why I only have half a foot..."

"Well, actually I did. In part at least. Norm wanted me to meet you before I asked if you could help me."

Shoe guffawed, "well, you've met me. Still want my help?"

"Very much so." Chase drew the photo out of her purse and slid it across the new empty table. "I need to know who these men are, the one circled in the photo?"

Shoe fished his glasses from the pocket of his flannel shirt and slowly unfolded them, all the while looking at the photo. He flipped it over. "Christmas 1941," he read aloud. Shoe glanced over at her and then turned the photo back over and studied the image for a while before glancing up, over the rims of the glasses at Norm. "I don't recognize any of these men, hard to tell cause they're pretty small, but this is well before my time."

"Yes, I'm aware of that," The three of them had spread out in the booth after everyone else left, now Chase slide back across the both to Shoe's side. She looked down at the photo. "Norm told me though that you might know some of the men from the old days, men that were with the squadron in WWII..."

Shoe took off his glasses and set them down on the photo. He rubbed his eyes. "I do know a few of them. Or I did, most of them are dead now Chase, it's been over seventy years."

Norm excused himself to the restroom. The waitress filled Chase's coffee again. Shoe shook his head. "What's this photo to you anyway?"

Chase told him about the DPMO and what she did. She did not tell him anything about the peculiarities of the case. She was careful not to lie, rather she just omitted a few details. As with all the veterans she had met the idea that anyone cared enough to track down their comrades, even if they themselves had never known them, Shoe was soon agreeing to introduce Chase to Master Sgt TK TK, the only living member of the 234 that had served in WWII and still lived anywhere near Washington D.C. 

Chase agreed to pick up Shoe two days later and he agreed to accompany her down to the TK retirement home.