“Charlie, I need this off my plate,” Ulrich said. “Do we have a name at least? A theory as to who she is?”
Radford glanced at his notes and shook his head.
“Jesus, Charlie, help me out on this. I told you, I need to know who she is and why she’s telling this story. I’m tired of standing in front of the press with my dick in my hands.”
“It’s possible, you know,” Lucy Masterson said, first glancing at Ulrich, then back to Radford. He was sure he heard her wrong. “The story could be true.”
“You’re kidding me,” Ellsworth said. “We’re entertaining this foolishness?”
“I did my grad school thesis on survivability factors,” she said. “I stumbled on some strange shit.”
Beneath the table, Radford’s fists clenched. Why was she talking about this? He didn’t want to talk about the woman. He wanted to talk about his work with the bodies. What mattered was the number, 123. What mattered was identifying the dead, getting the relatives the answers they deserved, and then moving on with the more difficult work of reconstruction. Exhausted, hungry, down to his last pair of clean socks, the work ahead relentless. He wanted a drink, time to call Wendy. They were only days into investigating one of the worst aviation accidents imaginable, a million questions he hadn’t begun to even ask. The last thing he needed was this distraction. The Falling Woman. Sasquatch. Who was she? How was it possible? Was she faking it? Everyone was asking the wrong questions, but Radford didn’t know what the right questions even were. He was eager for this complication to go away. He didn’t want the nonsense to continue. You take it, then, Lucy, he thought but didn’t say.
Ulrich frowned and pointed at Radford. “The story should not be about this woman,” he said. “Make it go away.”
“I’m just saying,” Lucy said, “that it’s happened before.”
“I’m out of here,” Ellsworth said. “Some of us have an actual investigation to conduct.”
Ellsworth stood, pushed back his chair noisily, but paused at the door. He glared back at Radford with an almost open hostility. The others in the room glanced from Radford to Lucy and back to Ellsworth.
“From what I can tell,” Lucy said, “there have been a handful of reported cases of sustained free-fall survival.”
“What are you saying?” Ulrich said.
“The data is murky at best,” Lucy said. “But it might have been possible for someone to survive the fall.”
Ellsworth groaned and shook his head. Radford wanted to leave too. He didn’t want to hear any more. But Lucy continued, talking about at least five other people who had fallen from airplanes without parachutes or wings or ropes, all of them surviving falls that were seemingly impossible to survive. How could this be understood?
“Lucy, you’re saying this is possible?” Ulrich said.
“I only know what I’ve read,” she said.
“I’ve heard it all now,” Ellsworth said.
“Enough,” Ulrich said. He turned to Radford. “Top priority. I need something definitive on this woman. No more rumors and myths. This isn’t difficult. Find out who she is. Find out why she was in that barn. Expose her, arrest her—hell I don’t care what you do to her. But get her off my plate.”
Outside the conference room, Radford spotted Lucy in the hall. He wanted to scream at her, to remind her that the next time she wanted to throw him under a bus, the least she could do was warn him. But he liked Lucy more than anyone else on the team, and he still needed her help.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” she said. “Probably not what you wanted to hear.”
“You could’ve warned me,” he said.
“I didn’t plan on saying anything,” she said. “I just think we need to keep an open mind.”
“That’s easy to do when it’s not your head on the block,” he said.
“Why didn’t you go to the hospital Sunday night?” she asked.
“Ellsworth,” he said. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to be a part of this nonsense.”
“You’re a part of it now,” she said.
Lucy promised to send him what research she had. “What the hell difference does it make?” he said. “The idea of it is preposterous. A woman falling out of an exploding plane? Shep is right. I am searching for Sasquatch, with a pencil and a flashlight.”
Lucy patted him on the shoulder and walked away. Radford was left thinking that he needed a drink and a good night’s sleep, but knowing that neither was in his future.
16
Rolling hills and rain east of Columbus. Adam was talking about Ho Chi Minh when they stopped for lunch. He’d been reading a book about the Vietnamese ruler. Adam ordered coffee, a chicken sandwich, french fries. Erin ordered tea, nibbled at a Caesar salad, and pushed the lettuce around the plate with her fork. The food was bland and she had no appetite.
He paid for lunch, helped her back into the car. Walking hurt, and every step sent hellish spasms through her back. He insisted that they stop every few hours, insisted that she get out and move around. It was all so surreal, like a dream. The rain fell more steadily as they moved ahead, the wiper blades beating out a rhythm. They ascended into mountains, and the rain turned colder, and the clouds sank closer to the ground. At a rest stop, he bought her a soda, asked her to take another pill.
“We’re about four hours away from D.C.,” he said. “We can stop here and finish in the morning. Or we can keep going. It’s up to you.”
Darkness enveloped them. She had lost track of the days. Was it still Tuesday? She had a vague memory of spending the previous night in a motel; Adam sleeping on the floor, blue walls, an old rotary phone. The ringing in her ears had returned, less piercing than before, less sharp, intermittent, like church bells calling the hours. “My ears,” she said.
“They’re probably reacting to the altitude,” he said.
He took a wrong turn, spent half an hour trying to get back on the highway. She had no memory of the past few days or even getting in the car, no memory of walking or waking or even of being alive, as if a great eraser had scrubbed her thoughts clear, so that only the afterimages remained. Blue walls, straw falling from the sky, and a great fire.
“All those underground tunnels and caverns in Vietnam,” he said. “They weren’t allowed to make maps. They trained at night, memorizing the intricate turns and twists. The tunnels ran all over the country.”
She wanted to ask questions. Who are you? What are you talking about? Why have you erased my brain? But then, a moment later, she recognized him, recognized the car, the song on the radio.
“Ho studied cooking in Europe,” Adam said. “But then I guess his life took a dramatic turn. There’s no way to predict a person’s path. We all wander around like ghosts, waiting for our futures to unfold.”
She laid her head back, trying to remember. Some of her memories were scrambled, but others were clear.
She thought back to a year earlier. They had driven out to his hunting cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains after work. She lied to Doug that day, told him she was going to stay in the city to finish up a series of contract reviews for the Defense Department, a not infrequent occurrence when the work piled up.
“He’ll expect you to call,” Adam said a year ago.
“I told him I was working. My phone is off. I’m with you. I’m yours. Nothing else in the world matters.”
They’d waited more than a month, since the night in Atlanta, where their passion could’ve been chalked up to the wine, or to being on the road, or to the escape from long hours at the office. But to disappear this way, to run off together, meant they were walking into something much bigger. A full moon had risen. She worried about how she smelled after sitting in the office all day. She worried about her dry skin, but Adam wouldn’t let go of her hand.
“I’m not sure about sex,” she said. It was a silly thing to say, awful considering how much she wanted him.
Adam smiled and squeezed her hand tighter. They approached the Bl
ue Ridge Parkway. Shadows of mountains loomed. The sky above the car darkened and filled with stars.
“Do you need me to stop anywhere?” he asked. “Can I get you anything?”
She moved in, grabbed his leg, kissed his neck while he drove. At its best, she and Doug and shared a tepid sex life. Her husband’s indifference often confused her, seldom aroused her, and never satisfied. She’d been with only two other men before Doug. With Adam, the sex became exalted. He treated her body the way a dervish treats the dance, spinning her into higher and higher planes of joy and ecstasy.
“I would dream about you,” Adam said. “I’ve been half wild thinking about you.”
He turned off the highway and curlicued up a switchback road.
“Let’s not talk about the past,” she said. “Can we concentrate on now?”
What an asinine thing to have said. She was so full of herself, so preprogrammed to respond. Ahead, the cabin was dark, almost spooky. Adam told her that the nearest neighbors were a mile away. Wind whistled through tall pines, which cast moon shadows on the ground. Fishing poles leaned against the porch. An old canoe. Adam lifted a stone that hid the key, opened the front door, and turned on the porch light, revealing the cabin’s rustic charm. The air smelled of fireplaces and wet leaves. She held his hand. It felt holy, almost blessed, despite what they were doing, or maybe because of it, like they had stepped into a realm in which the rules no longer applied.
Inside, the cabin was spare, musty, and perfect. She wondered if he’d brought other women here. The thought disturbed her, chilled the radiating warmth inside. Was she just one of many? She wanted to be the exception, wanted his passion for her to be as singular as hers was for him. He opened the blinds, turned on lights. A creek burbled nearby. Forest smells—juniper, last fall’s leaf litter, sharp mud, distant smoke from a fire. She opened a window, then another. Inside the small kitchen, with its tiny stove, a cupboard full of pots, pans, and utensils, she discovered a world so different from her own.
“What do you think?” he said.
“Perfect.”
“I’ll go into town and pick up some supplies,” he said.
“It’s late,” she said. “Just stay.”
But he insisted, so she gave him a small list. Was he having second thoughts? Was she? After he left, she showered, changed into clean clothes, and began to tidy up the cabin. With scissors, she went outside in the moonlight and cut flowers, gathered wild grass and autumn’s first leaves. The mountain air chilled her skin. By the time he returned, she’d transformed the small cabin. Candles flickered in the windows.
“It looks great,” he said.
He carried the groceries into the kitchen and she followed. She stood behind him, wanting to touch him yet resisting.
“Look,” she said. “This is awkward enough. We don’t have to stay.”
Adam turned, reached for her, pulled her close. He took her, right there in the kitchen, shimmying her body up onto the counter. It was over quickly. They were both out of breath, sweating. She wrapped her arms around his waist and turned.
“Jesus,” she said, laughing. “The door was wide open.”
She remembered that as though it had been yesterday, but of course, it was from a different life. Now they were in West Virginia. Rolling hills. Coal country.
Nothing made sense.
What parts of the past few days had she dreamed? What parts were imagined? Was she still dreaming? She didn’t know how to locate the line anymore, the line between reality and her imagination. Her memory was fuzzy, a distant static that refused to ease.
“I can’t go back,” she said. It was not something she knew for certain. But it was more than a hunch. A feeling seemed to take possession of her. No more hospitals. No more doctors. No more overbearing husbands. She had no idea what the feeling meant or what came next. She didn’t know where they were going; she only knew she couldn’t go back. Not yet. “I can’t go home.”
“Of course you can,” he said. “Your daughters. Your family. You have to go back.”
She had no certain memory of children, no sense of home or family. She fell silent. Her thoughts slipped again, moving back and forth like the tide sliding in and out.
Adam changed the subject, kept talking, now about his father, a navy SEAL in Vietnam. “He jumped from airplanes,” he said. “He wore a parachute.” Was he trying to be funny? she wondered. She didn’t laugh.
“What did you do before you became a lawyer?” she asked, attempting to stay focused on their conversation rather than her own drifting thoughts.
“I was a submarine officer in the navy,” he said. “Twice we sailed under the North Pole.”
“What was that like?” she asked.
“It was dark and quiet,” he said. “I felt like we didn’t belong there. I wanted to leave.”
“It sounds perfect,” she said.
Adam kept telling stories, stories he’d never shared with her before. He seemed nervous, maybe even afraid of her. As the miles passed, he slowly became familiar to her again, not as a lover but as someone she could still trust. She reached out and touched the back of his head while he drove. She didn’t talk about what would come next because, in part, she didn’t know. Everything felt shrouded, confusing, detached. Some memories seeped back into her consciousness as they drove, vivid and lustrous, only to recede a few miles down the road.
“My father,” she said, “kept this little plastic statuette of a naked couple in his top drawer. No bigger than a matchbook. I found it when I was a little girl. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven. There was a tab on the man’s leg. When you pulled down on the tab, the man’s oversized penis jabbed inside the woman.”
Adam laughed. “What an odd memory. But that’s good. You see, things are beginning to come back to you.”
“My father died the summer before I started seventh grade,” she said.
She didn’t know where this memory was coming from, but she told him anyway, how an ordinary August morning broke when she was a child, a morning full of chores, reading, cartoons, and lunch. “My father was a doctor. Each summer, he’d take a week off and spend long lazy days with us. There was no indication that anything was wrong, that he was ill. That morning, he played nine holes of golf with friends and came home and made us lunch. My father asked me if I’d walk to the store and buy a gallon of milk. Those were the last words he ever said to me. While I was gone, he had a massive heart attack and died in our living room.”
Adam reached out and touched her hand.
“It all felt so normal,” she said.
He flicked the headlights on high beam. Fog shrouded the road ahead and scattered the light.
“The world seems stable,” she said. “But it’s not. Nothing would feel stable again after that day.” Adam craned his neck and looked out the window. Was he listening? she wondered. Had his thoughts drifted elsewhere? Back to Ho Chi Minh?
She wasn’t sad telling the story about her father. Darkness replaced light but then light shone again. Life didn’t have to make sense; it just had to be lived.
Outside, fog dimmed what little sky remained visible. The irregular cadence of the wheels on the road lulled her toward sleep. The car’s engine droned. Adam’s slight breaths were barely audible. They crossed over into Virginia. They were close now.
“Take me to the cabin,” she said.
He turned, his face showing concern and confusion. “Absolutely not,” he said. “Your family needs to know you’re okay.”
“I can’t go home,” she said. “I want to go to the cabin.”
“You aren’t making sense. You need to be seen at a hospital.”
“I’m making perfect sense,” she said. “Take me to the cabin. I’ll stay there. Please.”
She knew he would do as she asked. It may have been the only thing she knew for certain at that moment. That was why she had called him. He always listened to her. And so, when they reached the Blue Ridge Parkway, Adam turned north
without another word. North toward the cabin. On some level, she knew he would never understand her decision. But she no longer cared. She felt so small, like a piece of dust landing on the surface of a table. If she were any smaller, she could disappear. She wanted to be that small.
17
Tuesday morning, the road adjacent to Wichita’s Via Christi Hospital was jammed with news vans, satellite poles, and vendors hawking T-shirts. On opposite sidewalks, zealots and skeptics shouted insults, many with cartoon images of the Falling Woman on posters and signboards. One side celebrated the miracle; the other decried the heresy. The whole scene resembled a sideshow. Behind blue sawhorse barricades, Wichita police stood watch.
As Radford drove past the ambulance bay, he shook his head in wonderment at how the story had turned so quickly into a spectacle. He didn’t want to be there. He had 123 bodies that needed his attention, and this unnecessary diversion was just going to make things take longer.
At the barriers in front of the hospital parking garage, he stopped and rolled down his window. The long hours and the relentless pressures of the investigation had eroded his enthusiasm for distractions, and a deep weariness had replaced the initial thrill of working his first major investigation. A city cop approached his car.
“I need to park,” Radford said.
“Sorry, sir,” the cop said. “Not without a permit.”
“I’m visiting a patient,” he said.
“Permits office is back on Topeka Street. You’ll have to go back there before I can let you through.”
Radford could’ve simply pulled out his credentials, but something held him back. The fact was, he didn’t want to admit why he was there. The cop signaled him to turn around, so he ended up parking three blocks away. He left his NTSB jacket in the car, tucked his badge into his pocket, and headed back to Via Christi.
He walked toward the hospital under a sunny blue sky. Warm breezes shook the poplars that lined the street. Under different circumstances, he might’ve found a sidewalk café, ordered a coffee, and read the paper or just watched people strolling by, the charm of being a stranger in an unfamiliar city. As he approached the hospital’s entrance, another cop stopped him. Radford was impressed, almost taken aback by the layered security. This time, he flashed his badge, but he still had to endure additional scrutiny of two walkie-talkie calls before they allowed him to enter the hospital lobby.
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