Lost Cargo (2 page)

Traffic streamed up the avenue. Finally the signal changed. He made it across, squeezed through a hedge, and found a path that ran around the building, which turned out to be a condominium with well-tended grounds that bordered the park.

No sign of the dog. No sign of anybody else, either. Empty terraces with designer tables and chairs stretched into the woods. The stone balconies that jutted out along the back wall all seemed to be empty, too, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that somebody was watching him.

And then he just wanted to get out of there.

The path twisted down a shady gorge filled with lichen-spotted boulders and ran out on the bank of a creek. The dog had to be down there somewhere. He began to climb down, bracing against the trees, half-sliding down the slope. The sounds of traffic faded to a distant rumble. When he reached the bottom, he stood up in profound quiet under towering oaks and pines. The gorge might have been a million miles from the city.

Yellow leaves drifted over the creek. On the other side of the water the path picked up again and meandered into the woods. The dog couldn’t have gone that far.

“Foley,” he called.

The creek gurgled.

“Foley! Foley, you freak! Here, Foley!”

He gave a piercing whistle. Still nothing. Seconds later, something moved under the ferns down the gorge. The idiot dog. He began to crawl through the formidable rocks and almost lost his sneakers in the mud. The weeds around the boulders concealed a bog where the creek had spread beyond its banks. Black fur emerged from the ferns. Foley, nose in the dirt beside a slab of rock, working away at something.

“What are you doing, you crazy dog, making me chase you like that?” Travis slipped the collar on the dog’s neck and was about to hightail it out of there when a glint in the weeds caught his eye.

Great, a drunk had passed out in the underbrush or a body was in the bog. He steeled himself, moved the weeds back with his shoe, and uncovered a black bag someone had crammed under the rock.

“So you were after something,” he told Foley. “You’re not as dumb as I thought.”

Whoever left it there had done a job and a half to hide it. The waterproof fabric was in good condition, though, and bore the letters JF above the buckle. Drugs, he figured, but when he pulled the rain flap back the bag turned out to hold a camera, four lenses, and a flash. A camera bag.

Surprised, he took the camera out. A beautiful Nikon. The spectacular lenses with it looked like they cost thousands of dollars.

Mystified, he packed everything back, slung the whole thing over his shoulder, and hauled the dog through the trees. The gorge began to get to him. He imagined eyes on his back and jumped when a twig snapped. When he came to the creek, he couldn’t stand it any longer and whirled around, about to shout, “Hey,” only to face an empty path. By the time he reached Connecticut Avenue, he’d never been so glad to get out of the woods.

The camera wouldn’t turn on. He stood on the sidewalk for several minutes, trying to figure out what was wrong with it while the traffic thundered by and the dog stared at him.

“Let’s go home, Foley,” he said. “Let’s see if has any pictures.”

Monroe Broussard, one of his roommates, leaned his tall, thin frame against the kitchen counter. He had a tuna sandwich in one hand and a stack of law books beside him and looked like he was on his way out of the house.

Foley rushed to his water bowl.

“The electric bill’s here,” Monroe said. “And Ryan called. His dad had his surgery and he’s doing okay.”

“When’s he coming back?”

“Next week, maybe. What’s with Foley?”

Travis shook his head. “The weasel got off the leash and ended up in the park.”

“Oh, yeah?” Monroe laughed. “Got you again.”

“Yeah, he got me all right. Look at this. You’re not going to believe what I found.” Travis lifted the Nikon out of the camera bag. The fabric still carried the earthy scent of the woods and something else, a sulphurous whiff that he hadn’t noticed outside. Under the bright kitchen lights the camera seemed even more mysterious, an important, abandoned piece of somebody’s life.

Monroe handled the Nikon. “Professional camera.”

“It won’t turn on, though,” Travis said.

“It’s cracked on the side.”

Travis leaned in. “Oh, yeah, look at that. They must’ve dropped it.”

“There’s no ID or anything?” Monroe asked.

“No, nothing. I want to check the photos. You have software, right?”

Monroe gave the camera back. “Not for that, I don’t. I have a card reader, but I don’t have time right now. I’m meeting Annie.”

Not that he didn’t meet his girlfriend Annie every day.

“I’m not a camerahead, but I can handle a card reader,” Travis said.

Monroe hesitated. Travis knew he didn’t want him on his precious Mac.

“Well, I’ve probably got a few minutes,” Monroe said.

They clomped down the wooden steps from the kitchen into the basement apartment. Monroe wasn’t into knickknacks other than a framed photo of Annie Wong and a rock from his Mississippi hometown on his desk. The apartment just seemed to be a place to store his clothes. They turned on a few lights that cast shadows from the pipes across the concrete walls. House Beautiful would have run screaming.

“Okay, here goes,” Monroe said.

He ran a slideshow. Autumn woods. A park service sign for the Melvin Hazen Trail and Rock Creek Park. The creek with a common gray bird on a stone. Another shot of the same bird lifting its head. Somebody was really into birds. The pictures were full of rich detail. More birds followed, some in flight and some so camouflaged in the underbrush they were almost invisible. A spectacular hawk with a very dead mouse in its talons. A black triangle on the ground.

“Christ, what’s that?” Travis said.

Monroe stopped the slideshow. “You got me,” he said, and went to the next photo. The black triangle again.

The strange craft lay at a bad angle in thick weeds and had no cockpit, no wings, and no visible insignia. The streaks of mud on the hull, the broken tree limbs, and crushed weeds were so real that Travis could almost touch them. Behind the triangle the woods faded into the horizon.

“Looks like a
UFO
,” Travis said.

“You’re not pulling something, Maguire, because I’m late already and I don’t have time for this crap.”

“Come on, man, I just found the camera ten minutes ago.”

Monroe gave him a skeptical look and continued the slideshow. Over a hundred and fifty shots of the triangle from all angles. Wide windows. Ripped metal. Gouges in the forest floor where the thing had plowed across the ground. The pictures returned to the woods with a series along the creek. Then a figure appeared in the trees.

Travis leaned forward.

The picture was slightly out of focus, as though the photographer had taken it in a hurry. A towering woman with gigantic girth was striding toward the camera. Her pale chopped-off hair brushed the collar of a long gray garment that flared over her feet.

Monroe enlarged the section. In the close-up they could see her small eyes and massive neck and how her features twisted as she squinted at the photographer. There was something frightening about her expression, but Travis wrote it off. A lot of people weren’t photogenic.

Did she know about the crash?

“That’s it, the last one,” Monroe said. “Maybe a military plane came down in the woods.”

“It’s not a military plane. Look how narrow it is. What’s the date on them?”

Monroe clicked on a picture. “Yesterday.”

“And what about the sumo-wrestler woman? What’s her date?”

“Yesterday, like everything else.”

“So what’s this thing doing in the woods?”

Monroe leaned back and gestured with one hand. “Well,
something
happened. That’s obvious. You know, I’ve got an open mind and I’m not going to say that
UFO
s don’t exist because I just don’t know. The main thing here is even if you think that
UFO
s are real, a
UFO
just can’t crash in the middle of the nation’s capital without people knowing about it. First of all, it would never get past the military. It wouldn’t happen.”

“Unless, of course, it had technology that’s beyond us,” Travis said.

Monroe didn’t seem to hear him. “And even if it did get past the military, just for the sake of argument, somebody somewhere would’ve seen it. People are up twenty-four hours a day. Cops. Cab drivers. People in cars. Somebody would’ve reported it. There has to be an explanation.”

“Like what?”

“I have no idea.” Monroe shook his head, copied the pictures to a flash drive, printed one shot of the black triangle and the giant, and gave everything to Travis. “Annie’s waiting for me. I’ve got to go.”

Travis made coffee, went upstairs, turned on his laptop, and rang his mother.

“It’s me,” he said. “Didn’t Burke Collins used to work for the Associated Press?”

“No ‘hello Mom’?” she said. “How about a ‘how are you’ for your poor old ancient mother?”

“Hello, Mom,” he said in a slow, theatrical tone. “And how are you this evening?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said. He pictured her just in from her advertising agency, wearing jewelry and a suit. “I’ve never been better. I feel like a queen. Burke worked for the AP years and years ago.”

“What’s he do now? He’s in politics, right?”

“He’s a consultant, and he’s doing very well. He has his own firm on Capitol Hill. What’s this about, Travis? You’re not looking for a job, are you? You know you have to finish college and get your Master’s.”

“I just need his cell phone. I want to ask him something. It’s not that big a deal.”

“I’ll have to look it up.” She sounded annoyed. “I talked to Lisa a few minutes ago. They’re going to look at a condo tomorrow after they land. She’s so excited. She says they’ve been looking online for a month. Remember that we’re eating at six, so be sure you’re here at five, Travis. I’m going to need your help with this dinner and I don’t want to hear any half-assed excuses. And speaking of asses, your father called. He wants to fly you up to Halifax for Christmas.”

“Happy holidays in Halifax. I’ll talk about you the whole time.”

“Not funny,” she said.

“I’ll wait while you get the number.”

“I’ll send it to you, sweetie.” Click.

Sweetie. She really knew how to get on his nerves. Travis shook his head and went out on the upstairs screened porch. He’d lived on the porch all summer, reading novels into the night, but it was too chilly now to stay out there for long.

So Lisa and Ian were coming back to D.C. after two years in London. Ian planned to work on a textbook and teach philosophy at a Washington university next fall. Lisa had left her British magazine and lined up something in Washington, too, although he wasn’t sure what. He missed his sister. She’d flown to D.C. for a week every summer, but it would be good to have her around all the time.

Faint sounds came up the hill from Connecticut Avenue, horns and rumbles amplified by the clear night air. His thoughts turned to Rock Creek Park. Beyond the avenue the skyline gave way to the city’s great swath of wilderness.

The black triangle might be lying in there now.

He stared down the hill at the dark trees and then up at the sky, looking for stars, but the glare from the city drowned them all out.

When he went in, his mother had emailed Burke’s cell phone number with a rambling reminder about the dinner tomorrow. He propped the print of the black triangle on his desk, took out his phone, and tried to find the right words. Foley came up and jumped on the bed.

He knew that Burke used to work for the AP, he texted, careful not to say too much. He wanted his professional opinion about some digital photos, the most incredible pictures he’d ever seen.

While he waited for an answer, he went through the photos again. The photographer shot everything over a four hour period, but other than a park sign and a few scenes of the creek, there were no landmarks, just hundreds of trees that all looked the same.

Did the photographer wander around or take a straight path?

He Googled Rock Creek Park and found the Melvin Hazen trail, the path he’d scrambled down off Connecticut Avenue. The park itself was twelve miles long in one place, had twenty-five miles of trails, almost eighteen-hundred acres of wilderness, deer, raccoon and fox, overgrown bridges, and the ruins of old mills.

The letters on the camera bag had to be the photographer’s initials. Who was JF?

Burke’s text came in. He had a meeting with a client in the morning and was picking up a train ticket at Union Station. He’d be there at noon near the theater.

Monroe loped across the parking lot toward Maxwell’s. The restaurant had closed for the night, but he could see Annie in the adjoining store, straightening bottles of organic wine and sleek cooking equipment on the shelves. She waved, pulled her long hair over her shoulder, and came to the door, fastening her coat over her jeans. His heart skipped a beat when she smiled.

“Hey, you,” he said.

She leaned up to kiss him. “I’m starving. I’ve been craving a bagel with cream cheese and tomato all day.”

Monroe laughed. “The deli’s closed. Maybe the pub has bagels.”

They went into Sullivan’s, an Irish watering hole with a floor full of half-empty tables. A gaunt, fortyish waiter took their order when they sat down near the bar. Sully’s didn’t have bagels. They didn’t have cream cheese, either, but the waiter said the kitchen would come up with something just as good. Monroe ordered a bottle of water.

“I still want a bagel with cream cheese,” Annie said.

“Let’s get married,” Monroe said.

She smiled and looked down. “I’ve heard that before.”

“We’ll have a bagel and cream cheese wedding cake.”

“I want sixteen children. You should know that.”

“Fine with me,” he said. “Let’s have twenty-five.”

She toyed with her silverware. “How many children do you really want?”

“I want to get through law school before I even think about that.”

“I still want sixteen.”She looked down again.