EXT. RURAL RESIDENTIAL ROAD - DAY
Oak-shaded two-lane lined by widely spaced handsome homes on big lots surrounded by rolling hills. John and Jan in uphill power-walk mode past the driveway to a California Ranch style home, Running shoes, khaki shorts, polo shirts with sweat-stained collars and armpits. Both with five-pound dumbbells in each hand. Jan's ensemble complements her Cal-Berkeley ballcap, John's does the same for his Stanford cap. Their labored breathing reflects their purposeful pace. Finally:
JOHN: I found them. Travis did the trick.
JAN: What trick?
JOHN: Street view to the gated entrance of their mobile home park.
JAN: Really?
Cottonwood Creek Mobile Estates, a few blocks away from the Laramie River. A feed store down the road in one direction, another park in the other. Grey sky and patches of snow on the ground.
JAN: When did you find this?
JOHN: When you were on the phone with Karen.
JAN: Oh.
JOHN: Do we know if Steve found his dog?
JAN: He did. Well, a golfer on the sixteenth fairway at River Oaks did.
JOHN: Maybe that'll move him to reconsider his leash policy.
JAN: Considering Karen says he's having him chipped, perhaps so.
A lull.
JAN (cont.) Have you ever been to Laramie?
JOHN: Cheyenne U-S-D-C for Big Coal versus E-P-A my second year at Buford Sawyer. Six days in late January, below zero every one of them. You?
JAN: Closest was Fort Collins for a cousin's wedding when I was seventeen.
A lull.
JAN (cont.): Any other Travis tricks.
JOHN: Yes. A link I'll click soon as we get back.
JAN: Do we know what the link links to?
JOHN: An ancestry site.
Jan stops, stopping John.
JOHN (cont.) Thomas Travis Walker in bold. Maybe there's more than one.
Jan's PHONE CHIRPS, she stops, John stops, she gets it from pocket, stares at screen.
JOHN (cont.) Cue drumroll.
JAN: Barb forwarding a picture Chloe took.
She hands him the phone, John stares at the selfie Chloe has taken that includes Hunter, Jackie, Tom and Chloe at bunched together, smiling back at Chloe's camera-on-stick, the Chihuahuan Desert and rolling hills of The Tularosa Basin behind them.
JOHN: I've been there.
JAN: Where's there?
JOHN: San Augustin Pass pullover on seventy just before White Sands. That's the Tularosa Basin behind them.
JAN: Why and when were you there?
JOHN: Dad was looking at land in the Cloudcroft area. I turned eleven the week before. We flew to El Paso and rented a jeep.
JAN: We including mom and sis?
JOHN: Mom and sis were in Palm Springs with aunt Betty.
JAN: So the Cloudcroft land.
JOHN: Beautiful. Six acres of pines on the side of a hill. He had the plans and architect for the four-bedroom A-frame. It was that or Park City. He flipped a silver dollar at dinner one night, heads. Park City. Though mom would have gone along happily with Cloudcroft, as did dad with Park City, her happierness about Park City winning, so to speak, was palpable. As was barely dad's less happier. Which I never again sensed. Park City obviously worked out and, since this has come up, we need to get back later to talking about selling.
JAN: Okay.
JOHN: But now how about we get to that ancestry link.
JAN: Double time.
JOHN: Go.
They continue their march around the bend, out of view.
