Sole Survivor

politics. He is as pale as any job on a mortician's table, withered, with elfin bones grown thin from lack of use; and when unconsciously he curls his feeble fingers around the hands of ministering attendants, his grip is no stronger than that of a cradled newborn baby struggling to hold fast to its mother's thumb.
        Sometimes, in this profound sedation, he murmurs wordlessly but forlornly, mewls, and even weeps, as if adrift in a soft sad dream.
         At the Shell station, only three vehicles were at the self-service pumps. Tending to their cars, the motorists squinted and ducked their heads to keep wind-blown grit out of their eyes.
        The lighting was as bright as that on a movie set, and though Joe and Rose were not being sought by the type of police agency that would distribute their photographs to local television news programs, Joe preferred to stay out of the glare. He parked along the side of the building, near the restrooms, where huddled shadows survived.
        Joe was in emotional turmoil, felt slashed across the heart, because now he knew the exact cause of the catastrophic crash, knew the murderer's identity and the twisted details. The knowledge was like a scalpel that pared off what thin scabs had formed over his pain. His grief felt fresh, the loss more recent than it really was.
        He switched off the engine and sat speechless.
        “I don't understand how the hell they found out I was on that flight,” Rose said. “I'd taken such precautions… But I knew when he remote-viewed the passenger cabin, looking for us, because there was an odd dimming of lights, a problem with my wristwatch, a vague sense of a presence -signs I'd learned to read.”
        “I've met a National Transportation Safety Board investigator who's heard the tape from the cockpit voice recorder, before it was destroyed in a convenient sound-lab fire. This boy was inside the captain's head, Rose. I don't understand… Why didn't he take out just you ?”
        “He had to get us both, that was his assignment, me and the girl-and while he could've nailed me without any problem, it wouldn't have been easy with her.”
        Utterly baffled, Joe said, “Nina? Why would they have been interested in her even then? She was just another passenger, wasn't she? I thought they were after her later because… well, because she survived with you.”
        Rose would not meet his eyes. “Get me the key to the women's restroom, Joe. Will you, please? Let me have a minute here. I'll tell you the rest of it on the way to Big Bear.”
        He went into the sales room and got the key from the cashier. By the time he returned to the Ford, Rose had gotten out. She was leaning against a front fender, back turned and shoulders hunched to the whistling Santa Ana wind. Her left arm was curled against her breast, and her hand was still shaking. With her right hand, she pulled the lapels of her blazer together, as though the warm August wind felt cold to her.
        “Would you unlock the door for me?” she asked.
        He went to the women's room. By the time that he unlocked the door and switched on the light, Rose had arrived at his side.
        “I'll be quick,” she promised, and slipped past him.
        He had a glimpse of her face in that brightness, just before the door fell shut. She didn't look good.
        Instead of returning to the car, Joe leaned against the wall of the building, beside the lavatory door, to wait for her.
        According to nurses in asylums and psychiatric wards, a greater number of their most disturbed patients responded to the Santa Ana winds than ever reacted to the sight of a full moon beyond a barred window. It wasn't simply the baleful sound, like the cries of an unearthly hunter and the unearthly beasts that it pursued, but also the subliminal alkaline scent of the desert and a queer electrical charge different from those that other-less dry-winds imparted to the air.
        Joe could understand why Rose might have pulled her blazer shut and huddled into it. This night had both the moon and the Santa Ana wind to spark a voodoo current in the spine-and a parentless boy without a name, who lived in a coffin of steel and moved invisible through a world of potential victims oblivious to him.
         Are we recording?
        The boy had known about the cockpit voice recorder-and he'd left a cry for help on it.
         One of their names is Dr. Louis Blom. One of