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“Well, yeah, there’s that,” she conceded. “But maybe you could rationalize it.”
“Rationalize it how?”
“Same way Robin Hood did, I guess. Take from the rich, give to the poor.”
“But,” I started to protest, then stopped. But what?
“There’s something else,” she added.
Crack! Crack crack crack! The metal door of my room rattled, and I jumped almost as if the knocks had been gunshots. “I gotta go,” I said furtively. “Somebody’s at my door.”
More rapping. “Hey, Doc—you in there?” It was McCready’s voice. “You about ready?” I checked the bedside clock. Crap, I thought. I was five minutes late. “Be right there,” I hollered. “One second.”
BANG! “Yo, Doc! We’re burning daylight!”
“Coming. Coming!” I muttered a quick “talk to you later” into the phone and ended the call, then hurried to the door and tugged it open. “Sorry,” I said, my face flushing. “I got caught on a call to UT.”
“Everything all right?”
I nodded. His question was routine—superficial small talk, without a doubt.
Almost without a doubt, I realized uneasily. Was it just my imagination, or were his eyes boring into mine with the keen skepticism of a federal investigator?
On the rocky ride up the mountain, I mentally replayed the phone call, pondering the information and testing her Robin Hood theory: Did it fit the facts? And was it the simplest explanation that did? I had to admit, it did seem to fit with Janus’s swashbuckling style, his daredevil streak. I’d seen videos of him landing a DC-3 in jungle clearings scarcely bigger than my backyard. Clearly the man didn’t mind some peril—in fact, he seemed to thrive on it. Was he simply braver than most of us, more tolerant of high doses of danger? Or was it possible that Janus was an adrenaline junkie: not just accustomed to risk, but addicted to it—that danger was his drug of choice?
If so, he may have suffered a fatal overdose, I realized—an overdose supplied by Chapo Guzmán, a rich but deadly devil to dance with.
“BIG DAY TODAY, GUYS,” SAID MCCREADY AS WE loaded onto the platform and prepared to descend the bluff for our second assault on the wreckage. “Summer solstice; longest day of the year. Fourteen hours of daylight.”
Boatman groaned; Kimball said, “Great! We get overtime, right?”
“Sure you do,” said McCready. “And good always triumphs over evil. And the Democrats and Republicans are about to set aside their differences and work together for the greater good.”
“Hmm,” Kimball muttered.
The morning wore on; the sun rose and the heat soared, the brown stone of the mountain soaking up the solstice sun. I was surprised by the heat—I’d heard that San Diego doesn’t get hot until July or even August—but somehow we had managed to catch a heat wave, which combined with the residual heat from the fire to make the crash site feel like a sauna. For much of the morning we were in shadow, sheltered by the rock wall at our backs. By eleven, though, the shadow had shrunk to a narrow band at the base of the bluff, and a hot, dry wind was funneling up the valley, swirling dust and cinders around us.
Mercifully, a few minutes later, McCready called a lunch break. Caked with dust and the salt of dried sweat, we boarded the platform and ascended the bluff. After our hours of baking on the slope, the comforts of the command center—ice water, air-conditioning, and a feast of sandwiches, fruit, chips, cookies, even ice cream bars—seemed wondrous beyond comprehension: as if we’d been released from a low, hot circle of Dante’s Inferno and whisked straight to Paradise.
AFTER LUNCH I STAKED A CLAIM ON A CORNER OF the command center’s small sofa. I must have nodded off, because I suddenly found myself waking up. The chatter in the room had ceased, and—hearing the abrupt silence—I jerked awake and said, “What?” Then, as the fog of sleep dissipated, I heard what had caused the agents to fall silent: the thrum of an approaching helicopter. My first thought was of the sheriff’s chopper, but then I realized that the pitch was too high. This was no army-bred workhorse; this was a racehorse—the same Fox 5 News racehorse that had trailed Carmelita Janus up the mountain, I saw when I followed the agents outside.
McCready and Prescott—apparently the case agent had arrived sometime during my nap—frowned as the helicopter settled down, and their frowns turned to scowls as a young reporter, accompanied by a cameraman, ducked beneath the swirling blades and scurried toward us. Prescott held up a warning hand and shook his head—a clear, strong no signal—but they kept coming. The cameraman handed the reporter a microphone, and as they neared us, he held it up and began speaking. “Mike Malloy, Fox Five News. Who’s in charge here?”
“I am,” said Prescott.
“And who are you?” he demanded.
“I’m the federal officer who’s going to arrest you both if you don’t leave immediately. This is a restricted area and you know it. So get back in your helicopter and get out of here, and I mean now.”
“Of course, of course. Just a couple quick questions before we go.”
“No,” said Prescott. “Now.”
“Have you identified the body of Richard Janus yet?” Prescott didn’t respond. “Have you found his body—or any body?”
“I won’t comment on an ongoing investigation,” said Prescott, his voice ringing like steel on stone. “But I will comment on this.” He held up a thumb and forefinger, practically touching. “You are this close to being arrested for tampering with a crime scene, interfering with a federal officer in performance of his duties, and two or three other things I haven’t thought of yet. When we have news, we will hold a press conference. Which you’ll be welcome to attend. If you’re not behind bars.”
The reporter held up his hands and began backing away, but he wasn’t giving up yet. “What’s the crime? You say this is a crime scene, so what crime are you investigating?” Prescott scowled, but I wasn’t sure whether his anger was triggered by the reporter’s doggedness or his own revelation—I felt sure it was unintentional—that the mountaintop wasn’t just a crash scene, but a crime scene.
Then I noticed Prescott’s gaze lifting and shifting, refocusing on something beyond the journalists, and I saw four ERT techs edging up behind them. Prescott gave a slight nod—a gesture so subtle that I wasn’t sure whether I’d actually seen it or just imagined it—and the four agents swiftly closed the gap, grabbing the TV guys by the arms and force-marching them back to the helicopter. Just before the reporter was pushed into the cabin, he shouted a final question, and the flicker in Prescott’s eyes as he heard the last three words sent a shock wave coursing clear through me.
“Do you consider Richard Janus to be the victim,” the reporter had yelled, “or the criminal?”
BACK AMID THE SWELTERING WRECKAGE, THE AIR-CONDITIONED comfort of lunchtime soon seemed a distant memory, and by midafternoon, even Kimball and Boatman had stopped bantering. We worked in steady silence, punctuated only by the thud of metal bumping metal, the rasp of metal scraping rock, the clink of rock rolling against rock. We’d still found no signs of hair or teeth or sinew, and as I stooped and straightened, stooped and straightened, I settled into a trancelike rhythm, moving like some assembly-line automaton: a metal-sorting machine, my clawlike hands gripping scraps and shards and depositing them on the rack, which—every twenty minutes or so—ascended into heaven, or into what passed for heaven out on the hellishly hot hillside. Only moments after disappearing, it seemed, the rack would return, its maw empty and mocking, sneering, So, ready to pack it in?
“So, ready to pack it in?” I heard the question again, this time coming from outside my head, not inside. Startled, I looked around, then looked up. McCready was peering down at me from the rim, his expression quizzical and amused.
“Sorry,” I said. “What?”
“Ready to call it a day? It’s after five.” The insatiable rack had just come down once more, and McCready pointed toward me, then pointed toward the rack, and then mimed the act of
reeling in a fish. I was exhausted, true; I’d spent most of the night fretting rather than sleeping, and I’d been keyed up all day as well.
But I was loath to end a second day without finding something: that, too, was true—truer, or at least more compelling at the moment, than my fatigue. I suspected that Prescott was still pressuring McCready, but if he was, McCready was shielding us from it. “Don’t forget, it’s the solstice,” I called up to him. “You promised us extra fun in the sun today.”
