path: root/CH-5.txt

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 all stared up at her from the coffee table, the couch and the floor where they were scattered. Chase curled her legs ander her and leaned back on the couch. Steven had come through, though he seemed to be harboring some sort of a grudge about her behavior earlier in the week. She'd decided to ignore it at least until he had finished tracking down her images, that way, even if he did have some sort of male emotional blowup she could just walk away until he cooled down again. Though perhaps that was a bit cold she thought, after all he did probably ut his job at risk to get her these photos. 

She had managed to match the service photos Steven had sent her to the men in Norm Canton's squadron christmas photo. In the end she found her mystery man. Twice.

She had already resigned herself t the fact that nothing about this case was going to be easy, but the two unidentified men troubled her. It almost would have made more sense to not be able to find half a dozen, or to find them all. Narrowing to two raised as many questions as it answered. Though she was pretty sure, just based on looking at them, which one was Lt. Lawrence.

One of the men in question was a short, stocky, dark haired man sitting on the wing of a P29, legs dangling in the air above the others in the photo. He was one of five that had climbed on the plane which at first had led Chase to think perhaps he was her man, since she considered it unlikely that enlisted men, squardon 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 exentions of themselves, whereas for the mechanics they were typically birds, or girls, in other words external things. Chase considered that perhaps she was over braining the question, but in the end it made sense, pilots sat in cockpits, mechanics sat on wings. Since most of the men int he image were not in uniform, and even among the handful that were she couldn't see their insignia and ranks, there was no way to tell for sure who the man on the wing might be. 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. There wasn't, unless you considered dots to the detail. She called up a friend of Steven's in the tech department and sent him a scan to see what he could do, but he acted like she was crazy. She was pretty sure she could hear him laughing as she hung up the phone. 

So she had put the image away for a while and went for a walk down the road to Tk's place where she had been invited in for a cup of coffee and recounted to Tk her mother's adventures in Las Vegas. Thus far, since Chase still thought there was pretty good chance she wasn't coming back sunday night. She sat out on the TK's deck and watched the sun sink down over the mainland. Eventually she wandered back down the road in the dwindling Firday evening light and went back to her pictures. 

The other unknown man in the image was squatting down in the very front, sandy hair swept back with pomade. His smile leaped out of the photo in a way that made Chase seriously doubted he was the sort of man anyone would forget. There did seem to be something mischeivus in his eyes though, or perhaps, she thought, I've been spending way to much time staring at this photo. She flung the image across the table and closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose. "Damnit" Her voice startled her in the quiet of her apartment. She got up and opened the fridge looking for something to eat. There was some week old chinese and half a bottle of Rose. She grabbed the wine and flopped down on the couch. She pulled out the cork with her teeth and drank from the bottle. The only way to drink Rose she thought with a giggle.

The note inside the file proved to be from a medium size legal pad varieties of which had, according to Steven's extensive searching, been manufactured for over thirty years. At first she considered this no help at all, but Steven pointed out that while it was unlikely she'd ever know who had put it there she did know that apparently the DPMO had at most started looking into Lt. Lawrence in the early to mid 1970s. In other words it was unlikely any family had been pestering the department after the war. It was unlikely that anyone had missed Lt. Lawrence.

Chase was restless. She opened the back door and went out to the balcony. It was a lovely night, crisp and clear. She stared up at Big Dipper, followed Orion's belt down the horizon were the faint purple of the distant sunset still lingered. She drank more of the wine, sat down in the white pastic chair left by the previous tenant. She could smell the Potomac, she thought about the river, running by somewhere down the hill, running down to the Cheasepeake, join the bay anbd heading out the sea. All that water disappearing into so much more water. All those people disappearing somewhere, disappearing into so much water, so much time.

The chime of her phone broke the peaceful still of the night. She shivered and went inside. It was a number she didn't know.


Peter calls her drunk and leaves a message saying he needs to talk to her. 

Use this chapter to flush out more about the man in the photo, set up the trip to Annapolis and then work in the second scene with Ed Wald and perhaps even the scene with the man at dinner, so that she actually has information that the nerd cabal does not when they give her their information in chapter 6. Then Chapter 7 sees her head down to San Deigo and someone, not John follows her there. That's the mystery man, the other person who picked up Sil's broadcast.

In the explanation of radio for espinoge work in something to point out that radio is not networked, not prone to network failure, all it requires is a bit of power to broadcast and someone with an anttane to recive, which to this day makes it considerably more reliable than any networked for of communication.