path: root/missing-persons/CH-6.txt

Chase knew from the moment that Steven's car pulled up to the curb outside the United counter that something was wrong. Chase had returned her mother's car to the airport's long term parking lot and caught the shuttle into the terminal where she milled around for half and hour before Steven called and said he was entering the labryinth of Dulles International Airport.

She saw him from a distance, tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel at a signal light. He was watching the travelers wheeling luggage through the crosswalk in front of him, but also, she was pretty sure, talking to himself. 

He barely said hello when she climbed in the car. She could tell that something more than what could be accounted for by simply her strange behavior of the previous week was bothering him. She could see it in this eyes, the way they remained fixed on the road, glued to it even, as if looking away would reveal somethinng. Traffic was heavy as the car wound the beltway back toward Chase's apartment in TK. The sunset painted the sky red. Chase and Steven sat in silence, he staring ahead at the rows of red lights leading into the city and she out the side window thinking about the concrete monuments of D.C. and the rice paper walls of Tokyo, wondering if there might still be rice paper walls or bathhouses or if she'd ever be sent to Japan. She should she knew, be working on something entirely different, but somehow she couldn't let this go.

It didn't surprise her when Steven said he wanted to stop by his appartment first. She knew he had been prepping for something, had something to get off his chest and while she wanted to appease him, to get him back to the normal, friendy Steven she liked, she was beginning to feel a lot like they were dating and he was going to say at any moment, *we need to talk*. It wasn't a feeling she enjoyed.

Steven's apartment was surprisingly nice, much nicer than her own Chase thought, wondering just how much more the tech department was paying. But while nice it suffered from what Chase believed was the death of the air that happened in most male-only households, some combination of two many pizzas, discarded gym clothes and dirty dishes combining with a lack of open windows and sunlight to produce and effect that never failed to make her glad she was single. 

Steven's roommate was glued to the largest computer monitor Chase had ever seen, bigger in fact that most televisions she had been around. As if that weren't enough there were two other monitors, one on each side turned vertically. He mumbled a greeting, but did not turn around until Steven announced her name at which point the man froze, pounded out what seemed like an entire sentence on the keyboard that causeed all the monitors to go dark and spun around in the chair smiling at Chase.

"Miss Kevele," Hiroshi stood up and crossed the room toward Chase, arm extended. He took her hand in his, "it's so good to meet you, I've heard so much about you."

Chase glanced over at Steven who was blushing. "Just Chase please, otheriwse I think you're talking about my mother."

Steven pointed from Chase to his roomate. "Chase, meet my roommate, Hiroshi."

Hiroshi was still holding her hand, she gripped his slightly tighter, shook it once and then let go. Steven sat down on the couch, Hiroshi dropped the floor and sat cross legged, looking up at her expectantly. Chase dropped her purse into an arm chair and sat down in front of it, on the edge of the chair. "What's going on here exactly?"

"You did not tell her anything?" Hiroshi's voice revealed surprise. Steven shook his head.

Hiroshi let out a big sigh. "I am sorry to have to be the, how do say, bearer of bad news? But we have lied to you."

"Lied to me? About what?"

"About Lt. Reese Lawrence."

Chase wasn't sure what she had been expecting Hiroshi to say, but she certainly had never imagined that it would involve anything remotely related to Lt. Lawreance. She felt her jaw drop down involuntarily and her mind swam with confusion. "What? What do you mean? What do you know about Lawrence? She glanced at Steven.

"The paper we gave you, the paper the woman gave you... It was from us."

"Steven, what the hell is he talking about?"

Okay, look, now first, before you totally freak out, this started off as a very simple thing. We got the transmission, Eliot found the name and I was jsut going to ask you to look into it a bit because that's what you do Chase, there's no one else quite like you when it comes to tracking these things down..."

"It's mostly Elliot's fault," broke in Hiroshi. "He thinks that we shouldn't have any links between us and you for some reason which is known only to him and might not be a reason at all since we don't really know Elliot as well as we thought we did, or at least I dont." Hiroshi tooka deep breath and plunged forward. "Then that aweful hooker woman wouldn't mind her own business and just took the paper over to you and at that point it was too late, so we jut kept going with the plan, but the John messed up and you saw him and you freaked out and then it was a big mess and Steven felt aweful and we knew we had to tell you even if Elliot didn't like it." Hiroshi lowered his head and stared down at his lap.

Chase glanced back and forth between the two of them waiting for either or both to start making sense, btu neither of them would look at her. "Okay, wait, so you're saying that *you* two are the one's who want to find out what happened to some pilot in WWII?"

Steven nodded sheepishly.

"Okay," Chase took a sharp breath and exhaled slowly, willing herself to remain calm. "You're going to have to start at the beginning and tell me the whole story. Slowly."

They tell her the story about the radio signal 


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.

Need to work in a way to conveying Hiroshi's accent and adding something more human about this scen, more descripion of the house perhaps, something to make it come alive since theis is the meat of the setup.


And of course she has information that the nerd cabal does not -- everything that Shummaker has told her about Japan and the fight -- which she does not tell them.

After this we jump to the trip with Shoe to see O'Hearn, using what's below, but moving the scene and flushing out O'Hearn a bit. Then we need some rapid action I think, something to move the plot and action forward to Florida where she'll learn that her man disappears while they were stationed in Jamaica and then she gets the date from the records down there and cross references that with flight and boats in the area... nothing, save the Uboat spotting. Somehow Sil gets worked into this bit.









After she left Norm went back inside. No one would come tonight. It was Tuesday night, everyone went to Walt's house for poker on Tuesdays. Norm went inside and locked the door behind him. He went behind the bar and pulled out the bottle of Dewers and set it on the bar. He pulled the phone over from the wall and sat down. He poured himself a shot and slugged it back. He poured another and drank it. He picked up the phone and dialed the number he'd been thinking about all day. The connection was bad, the line warbled like it was underwater, but he recognized the voice. "We need to talk."








All of the below can be re-worked into the scene between Shoe, Chase and O'Hearn at the rest home.
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It took her four days in the DoD archives but she managed to match nearly everyone in the photo to their service records. In the end she came up two short. The photo Norm Canton had given her either included two men that were not part of the squadron or its auxiliary crews, or she had found her mystery man. Twice.

She was back in Annapolis by the end of the week.

This time Norm Canton wasn't around, but another former '34er by the name of Ed Wald let her in the office and, for what it's worth he said, after staring for a while at the photo said he did not recall either of her mystery men.

She spent half of the night poring over more photos, trying to find the men in any other photos, but there was nothing. By the time she gave up the bar out front was in full swing with Ed and several other men shooting pool and playing old Merle Haggart and Johnny Cash songs on the jukebox. Chase let them buy her a couple of drinks and listened to a few stories about Norm's efforts in organizing the archive. Eventually hunger persuaded her to leave and she followed their advice to an all-night diner down by the wharf. It was starting to rained when she pulled in and gathered up her things for an all-night retracing of her steps.

She found a empty booth by the window and watched the rivulets of rain run down the window while she waited on a patty melt and fries. She was just finishing the food when a man approached her booth and sat down without saying anything. It took her a minute, but she recognized him form the VFW. She was startled enough by his strange entrance that she didn't say anything, she just stared stupidly at him. he seemed nervous, as though he were in hurry, but unsure how to begin.

"Ms. Chase..."

"Just Chase."

"Sorry. Chase. This man you're looking for, is it all the same to you if you find him or you don't?"

Chase was taken aback, it wasn't a question she had been expecting. She thought about saying something about the family's right to know, but sensed that the man, Shummaker, she remembered Wald calling him, though she had never caught a first name, wasn't going to buy the family angle. "I guess it might be, but I like to think that everyone's story is worth being told, that we all live on a little bit as long as someone knows our story, knows something of us."

Shummaker nodded, rubbed his chin and said nothing for a moment. "Some stories have a lot of pain in them..."

"Almost all of them do."

"So why tell them?" 

Chase sighed, she had thought that Shummaker might have some helpful tidbit to pass along, but she was beginning to doubt that. "Avoiding the pain doesn't make it go away. You can't just bury it and hope that somehow no one will ever find it."

"Hmph. I think you might be able to do just that actually. A lot of things happened in the war, a lot of things that each of us who is there will take to the grave and story will be gone, the pain will be gone."

Chase didn't say anything.

He nodded some more, picked up the salt shaker and rolled it between his hands. "You don't think about it, but every day when you wake up you're glad you did. You should think about that because there might well come a day when you aren't glad you woke up when you realize that everyone you ever knew is already gone and you're just hanging around. The doctors tell me I'm dying. Taking damn long enough" He smiled at her. "It sounds funny I know, specially to someone as young as you, but that's what I wish I had, that feeling of not even noticing that time is passing, not even thinking about it." O'Hearn stared up at the ceiling. Chase couldn't help glancing up, wondering if he was counting the dots. Shoe was quite, folded his hands in lap and stared at them.

"The closer I get to the end the more I think that all those little lies we've all told over the years, even the very innocent lies, they all add up to something bad, something very bad that we have to drag around with us everyday..."

"Lies?"

He waved his hand. "Nothing specific to do with your man, I mean all our lies, the lies you tell yourself at night when you look in the mirror before you go to bed, the lies you whisper in the children's ears to help them sleep at night. All of it builds up, it grows, it becomes a thing inside you that you have to carry around. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to unburden myself just because I know I'm dying. I don't care about me at all, it's them I want to help..." he trailed off and fell silent.

Chase pulled out the photo. She pointed to the man she thought was Lt. Lawrence. "That's Lawrence isn't it?"

Shummaker looked down at the image. He nodded. "That's him, but I never met him, just saw the photo in the Major's billfold is all."

"He dove at you for opening his wallet?" Shoe looked incredulously at O'Hearn.

O'Hearn nodded. "I'd heard some stories when I was sent out the Essex in '45, but then I pulled back to train in the jets and wasn't around for a few years. I remember the name though, Reese Lawrence. Weird name you know, Reese, that was all I really though about at the time.  Then I found that picture in the Major's wallet years later and I asked who it was. He said it was Lawrence The major got a bit angry and I was just teasing him a bit. Next thing I know I'm on the ground in the other room and major is trying to kill me. I don't know anything more than that really. I assume that's what you're going to find out. Major never would talk about it. " 

She nodded. "So, when you say he left, what... he went AWOL?"

O'Hearn look uncomfortable. "Something like that."

Then it clicked and her eyebrows shot up. "He deserted?" 

Shummaker's eyes went wide. O'Hearn shrugged. "I really don't know." 

"I'm looking for a deserter?"

"You're looking for someone who doesn't want to be found."

Chase's heart was beating so hard she was sure Shummaker could here. She said nothing and he eased out of the booth without looking at her again. She watched him walk out of the diner and amble across the parking lot to a '70s Impala. She couldn't get the idea out of her head, I could be looking for someone who's still alive.