Before Stotter knew whether or not his car would start, he found himself curious about the windowless metal building. There were fields fenced off alongside the river, planted with wheat, corn, and an assortment of big leafy plants, maybe different kinds of vegetables. On the other side of the building was a huge parking lot. The concrete square reminded Stotter of a helipad. It extended all the way to the building, where there was a set of double-wide doors tall enough to drive in a very large truck or, perhaps, a small plane.
Yesterday in the early-morning hours, Stotter’s main concern had been if anyone had seen him. The crops looked well tended but probably weren’t checked every day. He had calculated how long it would take to hike all the way down to the building on his arthritic knees and wondered if it would even be worth the trip. But when he twisted the key in the ignition, the old Buick had fired right up, leaving him to wonder if it really had stalled or if the night before had all been a figment of his imagination.
Now back on the ridge but not quite as high up as he had been the previous morning, he knew one thing for certain: no one would expect him or see him approach from up above, out of the trees and brush, instead of through the open pasture or the access road. So whatever clandestine activities—if there were any—would not be alerted by his presence.
Through binoculars he scanned the complex before starting his hike down. He didn’t see any security cameras anywhere though he suspected the thin, almost invisible wire that ran above the barbed-wire fence was hot.
He brought his camera but left the wireless mic. No live cam today. The photos would need to be his documentation. If he found anything.
He kept thinking about the creature he had seen running through the forest. It appeared to be the same creature his father described that had fallen from the sky over Roswell. Maybe that’s what the lights were; the lights that had exploded right before his eyes while he videotaped them for his fans. It had happened only moments before those teenagers thought they were attacked in the forest. Stotter had already heard their stories. They claimed to have seen a creature with beams of lights shooting out of its arms.
If there had been a creature like the one the teenagers saw and the one Stotter had seen, was it possible there were more? And if so, where had they gone? It couldn’t have been far without someone seeing them, just like Stotter had seen the one running through the trees. He was convinced the field house might be some sort of base.
It all sounded crazy, but that’s what the government had said about his father’s story. To this day they still weren’t able to explain the wreckage of that strange aircraft. Instead of explaining, the government hid away the evidence, not realizing that Stotter’s father hadn’t surrendered all of the film that documented the event. Wesley Stotter had kept his father’s secret all these years, taking seriously his responsibility for the photos that no one else knew existed.
Maybe now was finally the time to make those photos public. Stotter hoped the ones he shot today would be equally exciting.
CHAPTER 48
NEBRASKA
Wesley Stotter had done his homework. It was something his fans expected. He knew almost everything there was to know about the Nebraska National Forest. He could list every type of tree and every species of bird. He knew the forest was ninety thousand acres—fifteen miles wide and eleven miles from north to south. Twenty thousand of those acres were covered by trees, the rest, rolling pasture land. He had visited the campgrounds, climbed the observation tower, and been inside the nursery. But he didn’t have a clue what went on inside the field house between the Dismal River and the forest.
Ordinarily he wouldn’t care. But when the sun came up after his sleepless night in his stranded Roadmaster with his Colt .45 cradled in his hands, the first thing he noticed was the sunlight hitting the tin roof below. Where his vehicle had stalled had given him a bird’s-eye view of the field house. Tucked between sand dunes with the Dismal River winding behind it and the forest ridge on the other side, the complex remained shielded from view of the main road. It was easy to forget it existed. No one took an interest in something they couldn’t see.
Before Stotter knew whether or not his car would start, he found himself curious about the windowless metal building. There were fields fenced off alongside the river, planted with wheat, corn, and an assortment of big leafy plants, maybe different kinds of vegetables. On the other side of the building was a huge parking lot. The concrete square reminded Stotter of a helipad. It extended all the way to the building, where there was a set of double-wide doors tall enough to drive in a very large truck or, perhaps, a small plane.