The next morning Winston had gone no farther than the Trinity House Cafe and ordering his breakfast special when two well-dressed men at the next table waved him over.
“Yes, sirs?” he said.
“You’re Winston Cooper, aren’t you?” the older of them asked. “Your badge is a giveaway.”
“Yes, sir,” Winston answered. “Though I don’t believe we’ve met – something I could say about almost everyone in Prescott, for all that I’ve been here a few months.”
“I’m Robert Blake. My friend here is Ronald Carter. We’re Prescott’s leading bankers.”
Winston took careful note of their appearances. The three men shook hands and gestured at Winston to join them.
“We were curious,” Robert said, “if it’s not a secret, on how your department is doing at investigating the heath murders.”
“All those people, the railroad trains,they just vanished,” Ronald added.
“I wish I had something to say,” Winston said. “Everything we’ve found has been in the newspapers. Yes, we’ve been in touch with the Army Air Corps and the Navy about the mystery airship. They say there’s no way – no known way — to fly that high. No antiaircraft gun could reach the airship, ignoring that there’s no direct evidence that whoever is flying it created the devastation. Shooting at an innocent man will largely create business for our fair city’s attorneys. We for sure have some questions we’d like answered, but that’s not the same thing.”
“I read,” Robert said, “people tried shining searchlights on it, a few nights ago, and blinking them in Morse code. No answer.”
“I heard,” Winston said. “I gather they’ll try again, this time putting the searchlights well out in the desert where city lights won’t hide what they are doing.”
“I hope that law and order is faring well,” Ronald said. “We’ve been comparing notes, and recently our loan business has been a bit sparse. Deposits are doing well, especially the boarding houses and our two hotels, but people are selling their homes when they can, but not buying new ones.”
“Hotels are sightseers,” Winston said. “We try to tell them not to enter the Heath, because you die there, but it’s a free country. I haven’t heard of anyone disappearing, but some people get awful close to those sandy spots. Not a secret…we’ve had inquiries from back east, universities and mining companies, people looking to send expeditions to find out what happened.”
“I was in Phoenix last week,” Robert said. “Parked under canvas at the Sky Harbor the Air Corps has a half-dozen pursuit planes, a platoon of soldiers setting up barracks and a permanent hangar, all pre-fabs left over from the Great War.”
“Those buildings show President Taft’s thrift,” Ronald said. “The pre-fabs had been finished, not shipped over there, so the crates were moved out into the California desert and stored until needed. Whenever we have another war.”
