I took a shower, toweled off, trimmed my beard, put on clean clothes, rearranged the hangers in the closet, lay down to nap and couldn’t, paced, did push-ups, gazed out at the snow, forced myself to watch television. Anything to stop staring mindlessly at my phone on the bathroom counter where I’d plugged it in to recharge, waiting for it to ring.
A little dog with a high-pitched yap was barking and whining in the room above mine. I turned up the TV. Five minutes of channel surfing produced nothing that held my interest beyond a few seconds of the Ellen DeGeneres Show — and only because it occurred to me how much Ellen resembled Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
The barking upstairs grew louder, more incessant. I cranked up the volume. Then somebody next door started pounding in protest on the wall. I fantasized about putting my fist through the Sheetrock and teaching whoever was on the other side a lesson in potential life-saving etiquette: never pound on the wall of any motel to complain about the noise because you never know whether it’s harmless, hard-of-hearing gramps on the other side of that wall with Wheel of Fortune turned up too loud, or members of the Manson family. I turned off the TV, grabbed my phone, threw on my jacket, and left.
Walking through the motel’s parking lot toward my car, I looked up and saw the faintest hint of blue sky before the windblown clouds reclaimed their domain. Crocodile Dundee had been right about the forecast; the snow seemed to be letting up somewhat. If all went according to his plan, I’d be airborne in the morning. One step closer to getting Savannah back.
I needed to know as much about him as I could — his motives, his capabilities, everything and anything that might afford me an advantage if and when we crossed swords. Nowhere, it dawned on me as I pondered what limited resources were available to me in snowy South Lake Tahoe, offered more knowledge than a public library. There was a small one just off Lake Tahoe Boulevard, about a mile and a half west of the motel. I’d noticed it while searching for Savannah earlier in the day. I fired up the Yukon and drove over.
Librarians are among the smartest and often least sociable individuals on the planet. Books are their friends; it’s most people they can do without, especially dumb ones. I’d come to that realization the summer between my third and fourth grades in school when I’d been granted a rare day off from farm chores and walked two miles to the local public library, a two-story, turn-of-the-century, red brick fortress that smelled of damp paper.
The librarian, Miss Vanderford, had a long nose and heavy-lidded eyes bunkered behind winged, bejeweled reading glasses. She was ancient. Probably in her forties.
“What’re you looking for?” she asked me, from behind the checkout counter.
“A way out.”
“A way out, huh? Of what? This? Your life?”
I shrugged and stared at the holes in my canvas basketball shoes.
Miss Vanderford walked over with a cigarette dangling from between her lips, and grabbed a novel off the nearest shelf. “You want excitement? A life of grand adventure? Here. Read this.”
She thrust the book in my hand. It was “The Hunters,” a fictional account by author James Salter of his experiences flying F-86 Sabre jets during the Korean War. I walked back to the farm, found some shade behind the hay baler, and read until the sun went down and there was no more light. All I ever wanted to be after that was a fighter pilot.
The South Lake Tahoe Library, a modern, wood-frame structure of spare, architectural utility, offered no inspirations comparable to those of my youth, but the librarian on duty, a willowy blonde about my age with pleasant green eyes, did offer me a cup of coffee and research assistance.
“I’m interested in finding out as much as I can about a plane crash that occurred outside of town, a long time ago.”
“The one I heard about on the radio this morning?” she asked me.
I nodded.
“You a reporter?”
“I’m a pilot.”
“Just curious about what happened?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“Well, you’re in luck. We got a call this morning from one of the TV stations in Reno. They’re also curious about that airplane. I’ve already started doing some research for them.”
I followed her to the back of the library. She turned toward me as we walked and extended her hand.
“I’m Constance, by the way.”
“Cordell Logan.”
We shook hands.
“Haven’t seen you in here before.” She gave me a shy smile. “I think I would’ve remembered.”
“My first visit.”
“Really? Well, I hope it won’t be your last.”
She asked me if I’d come to Lake Tahoe to ski. I told her no. She told me she used to ski, before her divorce, but banged up her knee.
“My kids snowboard,” Constance said. “They’re always trying to get me to try it. They say it’s healthier on the joints.”
“Not snowboarding would probably be even healthier.”
She smiled, guiding me to a long wooden table with an old, box-shaped microfilm reader resting atop it.
“Well, anyway, I went through every copy of the paper from October 1956. Don’t know if it’s related to that airplane they found or not, but I found this story very curious.”
On the machine’s illuminated screen was a front page, photocopied, from the October 25, 1956, edition of the Reno Gazette-Journal. At the bottom of the page, below an Associated Press story headlined, “Hungarian Students Rise Up Against Russkies,” was another, much shorter wire-service dispatch that ran under the headline:
LOUD BOOM HEARD
Lake Tahoe (AP) — El Dorado County sheriff’s officials were investigating reports of a loud explosion heard early Wednesday morning in the remote, mountainous area known as Voodoo Ridge, about 10 miles west of Lake Tahoe’s south end.
A handful of area residents reported hearing a thunderous “boom” shortly after midnight. Authorities were exploring the possibility that an airplane may have crashed. However, no missing aircraft were reported. A sheriff’s official said a team would be sent to search the area as soon as weather conditions improve. A storm has blanketed the Sierra this week with nearly two feet of snow.
“I went through every copy of the newspaper for a month after that,” Constance the librarian said, “but I couldn’t find anything more about it. I will say, though, the area described in this article is the same area where they supposedly found that airplane yesterday.”
Waiting at the checkout counter with a stack of books, a stooped old man with a cane and a black beret coughed to get her attention.
“Duty calls,” Constance said apologetically. “Excuse me.”
I sat down at the table and reread the story on the microfilm machine. It offered nothing by way of actionable intelligence: residents had heard what may or may not have been a plane crash; there was no apparent attempt on the newspaper’s part to follow up.
So much for that.
Frankly speaking, the story about the Hungarian uprising that appeared on the same page made for far better reading. We studied the revolt in great detail at the academy, how even though the revolt failed, it came to play a major role decades later in the eventual downfall of the Soviet Union.
The article continued inside the newspaper. I hand-cranked the microfilm, advancing the pages, intending to finish the article. I never got that far.
On the jump page was a list of five, one-paragraph news briefs, each with its own headline, all under a larger headline, “News of the West.” The first brief described the winning entry in an Idaho potato-growing contest, the second detailed how officials were assessing small cracks in the Hoover Dam. It was the third story that caused me to sit up straighter in my chair: