EPISODE 1, SCENE
4 Luanne Rice's Wrangler bumped up the "Summer Access Only" road near the top of Lizard Head Pass. The pass had been closed after last night's storm. Now it was open, but slow treacherous going. She found Marshal Tramaine's truck and a San Juan County ambulance parked off the road. Tracks from the vehicles led up a hill. Luanne got out of her Wrangler and followed the tracks on foot through a sparse stand of birch trees into a clearing. There she saw the plane. It used to be a sleek twin engine Beechcraft. Now parts of it were scattered in the snow like, Luanne thought morbidly, grave markers. Tramaine and the paramedics were zipping up two yellow body bags by the fuselage. Luanne came over to them. She'd never seen a dead body. "What happened, Sheriff?" Luanne asked, pulling her notebook out. Tramaine straightened and winced at the unpleasantness of his job. "They must've gone off course in the storm", he said. "Two dead. The pilot and Dolores Thorne." Luanne looked up from her note taking, stunned. "Dolores Thorne? Jordan's mother?" Tramaine nodded, eyeing Luanne's notebook. "You'll hold back on putting this in the paper until I've notified the victims' families..." "Sure", Luanne gulped. |