Sole Survivor

had come, Joe was tense. Surveying the woods. Waiting for the bullet.
        When they reached the gravel road, he said, “The two men that Blane named on the cockpit tape.”
        “Dr. Blom and Dr. Ramlock.”
        “Have you tried to find out who they are, launched a search for them?”
        “When I was in San Francisco, I was prying into Delroy Blane's background. Looking for any personal problems that might have put him in a precarious psychological condition. I asked his family and friends if they'd heard those names. No one had.”
        “You checked Blane's personal records, appointment calendars, his chequebook?”
        “Yeah. Nothing. And Blane's family physician says he never referred his patient to any specialists with those names. There's no physician, psychiatrist, or psychologist in the San Francisco area by those names. That's as far as I carried it. Because then I was awakened by those bastards in my hotel room, a pistol in my face, and told to butt out.”
        To the end of the gravel road and onto the paved state route, where sizzling silver rain danced in a froth on the blacktop, Barbara fell into a troubled silence. Her brow was creased, but not-Joe sensed-because the inclement weather required that she concentrate on her driving.
        The lightning and thunder had passed. Now the storm threw all its energy into wind and rain.
        Joe listened to the monotonous thump of the windshield wipers. He listened as well to the hard-driven drops snapping against the glass, which seemed at first to be a meaningless random rattle; but gradually he began to think that he perceived hidden patterns even in the rhythms of the rain.
        Barbara found perhaps not a pattern but an intriguing puzzle piece that she had overlooked. “I'm remembering something peculiar, but…”
        Joe waited.
        “… but I don't want to encourage you in this weird delusion of yours.”
        “Delusion?”
        She glanced at him. “This idea that there might have been a survivor.”
        He said, “Encourage me. Encouragement isn't something I've had much of in the past year.”
        She hesitated but then sighed. “There was a rancher not far from here who was already asleep when Flight 353 went down. People who work the land go to bed early in these parts. The explosion woke him. And then someone came to his door.”
        “Who?”
        “The next day, he called the county sheriff, and the sheriff's office put him in touch with the investigation command centre. But it didn't seem to amount to much.”
        “Who came to his door in the middle of the night?”
        “A witness,” Barbara said.
        “To the crash?”
        “Supposedly.”
        She looked at him but then quickly returned her attention to the rain-swept highway.
        In the context of what Joe had told her, this recollection seemed by the moment to grow more disturbing to Barbara. Her eyes pinched at the corners, as if she were straining to see not through the downpour but more clearly into the past, and her lips pressed together as she debated whether to say more.
        “A witness to the crash,” Joe prompted.
        “I can't remember why, of all places, she went to this ranch house or what she wanted there.”
        “She?”
        “The woman who claimed to have seen the plane go down.”
        “There's something more,” Joe said.
        “Yeah. As I recall… she was a black woman.”
        His breath went stale in his lungs, but at last he exhaled and said, “Did she give this rancher her name?”
        “I don't know.”
        “If she did, I wonder if he'd remember it.”
        At the turnoff from the state route, the entrance road to the ranch was flanked by tall white posts that supported an overhead sign bearing graceful green letters on a white background: LOOSE CHANGE RANCH. Under those three words, in smaller letters and in script: Jeff and Mercy Ealing . The gate stood open.
        The oiled-gravel lane was flanked by white ranch fencing that divided the fields into smaller pastures. They passed a big riding ring, exercise yards, and numerous white stables trimmed in green.
        Barbara said, “I wasn't here last year, but one of my people gave me a report on it. Coming back to me now… It's a horse ranch. They breed and race quarter horses. Also breed and sell some show horses like Arabians, I think.”
        The pasture grass,