John Nance: 16 Souls

Judith was feeling like a fidgety six-year old, sitting, then jumping to her feet to pace some more, stopping to examine the contents of the fridge before continuing her holding pattern and sitting again. The idea of driving to the ungrateful pilot’s house was rising past the level of silly to the status of potential intent.

How dare he not answer! If she could disrupt her weekend to work on his case, he could at least have the courtesy to keep the appointment, Judith thought, toying with the idea of attacking a pint of unopened ice cream in the freezer.

The sliding door to her north-facing deck was open and she stepped into the pleasant temperatures for a moment, feeling the light silk blouse she was wearing flutter in the breeze, her eyes drawn to the stark clarity of the front range some thirty miles distant. There were still times she longed for someone to share such moments with, although the solitude these days was good — especially after the last relationship had collapsed with such a deafening roar. Deciding now to be alone was more a capitulation to reality than a choice, but she knew it would still be painfully reviewable from time to time, and usually without warning.

The vista was timeless and awesome. On the west side of Boulder the Flatirons — giant slabs of near-vertical granite — defiantly stabbed the sky, as if guarding the entrance to the high mountains beyond. Further west she could see the sheer, vertical east face of Long’s Peak — the so-called “diamond” that rock climbers loved — a vertical granite wall thousands of feet high.

Judith’s mind snapped back to the dilemma of locating her truant client, and just for a second, the destabilizing thought that Marty Mitchell might not be answering because he couldn’t flitted across her logic circuits.

His house was ten miles distant, in Boulder itself and not far from her office. Given her growing unease, it was probably worth the drive to motor over and pound on his door. But what worried her the most was the realization that he hadn’t been a second late in any of their past encounters, a fact she attributed to his military training.

No, this was too uncharacteristic. Something had to be wrong.

(Denver — 5:40 pm August 14 th)

Scott Bogosian had been thinking about fate lately, but not the fate that had almost become fact.

Now, as he stood alongside his aging Volvo, his legs shaking, the concept of fate was taking on a far more personal and sinister meaning. That stop sign he had raced through was right there, right behind him, clearly marking the intersection, its command to “STOP” big and red and undeniable.

But he’d never seen it until now. Why? Sun in his eyes, not concentrating, sleepy, what?

Scott realized he was panting, not exactly like an overheated hound, but not far from the analogy, feeling desperately short of breath.

What was it, two minutes ago? he wondered.

The minivan approaching the same intersection at a ninety-degree angle had barely registered in his peripheral vision, but the automatic assumption that any car approaching from the side was going to stop was automatically unquestioned. After all, no transportation authority would design an intersection in which traffic was allowed to approach from four directions at once without a stop sign or a stop light or something. Yet his path had been clear of signs or signals, or so he thought, as the part of his consciousness assigned to driving presumed an unchallenged right of way, right up to the moment of impact that hadn’t occurred.

Fate had written a different script, and the screeching, gut-wrenching four wheel emergency skid into the intersection to avoid the minivan had been a success measured by millimeters.

Mom’s taxi had sped on, miraculously untouched, the startled, unforgettable faces of two tiny passengers staring at him from the back seat through the very windows he would have crushed. Those faces were now etched in his memory as permanently as those impacted by the midair collision of Regal Airlines Flight 12 and Mountaineer 2612, an incredible accident he’d spent the better part of the past six months researching.

Scott looked down at his shaking hands. Limping through the empty intersection afterwards and pulling over to the curb, he wondered why everyone else’s world — and heart — hadn’t stopped as completely as his.

No one had come running to scold, condemn, or support. The McDonald’s customers across the street continued waiting for their Big Macs, the do-it-yourself gas station across the way was filled with oblivious customers, and even a police cruiser motored by without a second glance, flush in the uninterrupted flow of this alternate reality.

What almost happened in his universe hadn’t, and therefore life moved on, only Scott was now awash in a flood of unbidden adrenaline.

He forced his aging body back behind the wheel and studied the ashen image in the little mirror on the visor. No question he’d been getting rougher around the edges and, to admit it, somewhat seedier since the Rocky Mountain News folded in 2009, almost taking his career with it. A year of struggle had landed him a part time position with the Denver Post — a permanent probationary toehold which kept him breathing, and eating. But essentially the door to being a mainstream, byline newspaper reporter had slammed shut without jarring another open, and Scott, the fading newspaperman at age 58, was experiencing an eerie mix of fatigue and anxiety.

Of course, working now meant making rent with magazine articles, local professional journal writing, and a growing involvement with a digital news service started by other furious Rocky Mountain News alumni, in addition to his new part-time position with the Post. But he’d been spending an inordinate amount of time digging hard with a determination to tell the story of Mountaineer Flight 2612 and Regal Airlines Flight 12. Yes, it was possible he was becoming myopic — fixated on the story, a crowd of one who thought it could support a book. But the story was so incredibly multi-dimensional, and those faces in the windows of the other airplane were indelible, too. Like all airline accidents, there were so many contributing causes it was hard to put in perspective, especially when an out-of-control headline grabber like Grant Richardson seized the opportunity to prosecute an airline captain for murder — the same DA who’d pursued several nurses recently for an entirely innocent but fatal system mistake.

There was a key still missing in the Regal Air crash, something just out of reach that no one had yet discovered or put together. Call it a hunch. Several nights he had awakened with a startling idea of what might have contributed to the crash, but each time it had slipped away as the fog of sleep lifted — if, in fact, there had been anything there to begin with. Maybe it was a reporter’s instinct for an incomplete explanation, or perhaps it was nothing more than wishful thinking. What was propelling him forward was the certainty that an accident that convoluted couldn’t possibly arise from a single mistake.

He thought of the lengthy, tear-stained interview he’d just completed, and that thought in turn sparked a moment of panic: what if his recorder had failed? His handwriting was so lousy these days even he couldn’t read the notes he scribbled during interviews, notes taken as he locked eyes with the subject. His traditional steno pads were dwindling in importance. The recordings made him a better writer, but violated one of the orthodoxies of newspaper reportage — that real reporters took notes by hand with the ease of breathing. The tradition would brand him a less professional reporter, and losing an interview tape would mean losing half the information and the very essence of the interview.