looked up at her briefly, embarrassment again displayed on his features.
“You said Jason Archer was your husband?”
She slowly nodded. Was) The word was numbing to her. She felt her
hands begin to shake uncontrollably, the vein in her left temple to
pulse spasmodically.
“I just had to make sure. There was another Archer on the plane too. A
Benjamin Archer.”
For a moment her hopes soared, but reality threw her immediately back
down. There had been no mistake. If there had been, Jason would have
called. He had been on that plane. As much as she had willed him not
to be, he had been. She looked over at the distant lights. He was
there now. Still there.
She cleared her throat. “I have some photo identification, Officer.”
She opened her wallet and handed it across.
He noted the driver’s license and then his eyes caught on the photo of
Jason, Sidney and Amy, taken barely a month ago. He stared at it for
several moments. Then he handed the wallet back quickly. “I don’t need
to check anything else, Ms. Archer.” He looked out the window. “There’s
a couple of other deputies stationed along up the road, and a slew of
National Guard all around. Some of the guys from Washington are still
up there, that’s what all the lights are for.” He looked at her. “I
really can’t leave my post, Ms. Archer.” He looked down at his hands.
Her eyes trailed his. She saw the wedding ring on his left hand, the
ring finger swollen by time so that the simple gold band would never
come off without taking the digit with it. The officer’s eyes crinkled
and a faint bit of moisture appeared on his cheek. He looked away
suddenly, his hand quickly rising to his face and then back down.
He started the car and put it in gear. He looked over at her. “I can
understand why you came up here, but I don’t recommend that you stay
long, Ms. Archer. It’s not… well, it’s not that kind of a place.”
The patrol car swayed and bumped over the dirt road. The officer stared
intently ahead, toward the blinding lights. “There’s a devil in hell
and a Lord God above, and, while the devil had his way with that plane,
all those people are with the Lord right now, Ms. Archer, every last
one of ‘era. You believe that, and don’t let anybody ever tell you
different.”
Sidney found herself nodding at his words, wanting so badly to believe
that they were true.
As they approached the lights, Sidney felt her mind recede farther and
farther into the distance. “There was… a bag, canvas with blue
crisscross stripes. It was my husband’s. It has his initials on it.
JWA.
I actually bought it for him for a trip we took several years ago.” She
briefly smiled as the memory washed over her. “It was really for a
joke. We had sort of had an argument and it was the ugliest bag I could
find at the time. Of course, as it turned out, he loved it.”
She abruptly looked up and caught the officer’s surprised look.
“I… I saw it on the TV. It didn’t even look damaged. Is there any
way I could see it?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Archer. Whatever’s been collected has already been
taken away. The truck came just about an hour ago to take away the last
shipment for the day.”
“Do you know where it goes?”
The officer shook his head. “It wouldn’t matter if I did. They
wouldn’t let you near it. After the investigation is complete, they’ll
return it, I expect. But from the looks of this one, that could be
years. Again, I’m sorry.”
The patrol car finally stopped a few feet away from another uniformed
policeman. The officer got out of the car and conferred briefly with
his colleague, pointing twice in the direction of the police cruiser
while Sidney sat there, unable to take her eyes off the lights.
She was startled when the officer leaned his head in the car. “Ms.
Archer, you can get out here.”
Sidney opened the car door and got out. She briefly looked at the other