“I woke one morning, went to check on her, and discovered the dog wasn’t in her arms. Her father had taken it away from her in the night. There’d been no argument, no tedious pleas, no gnashing of teeth. My sweet Claire simply awoke and found her beloved dog gone.”
“I don’t get the point,” Adam said. “How is this connected?”
“Parents have instincts about their children,” she said. “Doug knew I’d never take that dog from her. He was right too. I’d have protected her innocence for as long I could. What he did, it seemed an oddly cruel act, and yet, somehow merciful too.” She paused, looked up at Adam. “Doug was protecting Claire from me. Well, this time I’m going to protect them. I’m going to protect them from me.”
Adam touched her back, but she felt nothing, only confusion.
“Let me take you home,” he said. “You have a lot to sort out, but you can’t do it out here, all alone. You would’ve called the firm first. That’s an easy explanation. Blame the rest on your memory loss. No one will care about the details.”
“No,” she said. “I have to let go this time.”
He began to gather her clothes and to stuff them in a small suitcase. Then, as if a switch were flipped to off inside her, she collapsed onto the bed and lay staring up at the ceiling.
“I used to shit myself,” she said. Her voice was hollow, devoid of emotion. Adam finally stopped packing. He turned toward her, as if remembering she was in the room. “After they ablated my pancreas with radiation, I’d carry around extra underwear, adult diapers, wet wipes in my purse.”
He reached for her hand, but she pulled away.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said. “You just need to go home.”
“I’m going to die,” she said. “You know it’s true. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Did you hear what I just told you? Do you realize what’s happening? You fell from a fucking airplane. Do you even realize what that means?”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Please go. Leave me alone.”
“You have to go back,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking straight when I brought you here. That’s over now. I’m taking you home.”
He gripped her hands and pulled her up and off the bed. They were face-to-face, like two boxers before a match, ready to attack. Then, out of nowhere, he let go of her and she collapsed back to the bed, as if her knees gave way, as if she swooned. I’ve never fainted in my entire life, she thought. And then she did.
A moment later, she came to. Adam sat on the edge of the bed, frantically tapping her cheek.
“I’m so tired,” she said.
“You aren’t well,” he said. “You need to be checked.”
“I’ve been explaining myself to people for too long. Justifying. Rationalizing. Please tell me I’m going to wake up and this will all be a dream.”
“Just trust me,” he said.
“No, I have to trust myself on this. I can’t leave.”
Then he curled around her and she closed her eyes. She needed his caresses, needed to feel safe and warm and protected. She never wanted him to stop.
“The crash.” His voice was soft now, soothing, like when he used to read to her. “There are legal issues here. They will recover the bodies and ID them. They won’t find yours and they’re going to come looking for you. Let me take you home.”
“I just want to sleep,” she said
“I’m taking you home,” he said. “You aren’t thinking clearly.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.
In spite of the deepest exhaustion she’d ever known, deeper than that caused by the chemo, deeper than anything but death itself, she was utterly resolved.
“Your family thinks you’re dead. Erin, just imagine your daughters.”
“That’s how it should be, Adam. That’s how it has to be. Just lay here and hold me and let me sleep.”
21
Ulrich had wanted answers on Friday, but Radford didn’t have them. In fact, by the end of the weekend, he had run out of questions to ask. All the evidence pointed in contradictory directions. Pure logic said that surviving such a fall was impossible. Common sense and physics rejected the notion. The rational brain flailed at the very possibility. Such a story, were it proven, would be a profound miracle of escape, an incomprehensible near miss with death that science couldn’t explain. For days, Radford had waded through debris fields littered with broken bodies. He’d witnessed the most horrific injuries—severe burns, crushed heads, injuries that confirmed the violence of the crash. But he’d also seen relatively intact bodies too, dead passengers with no visible trauma, still strapped in their seats. He’d found a young child’s body in a muddy bog with hardly a scratch. And then there were the crowds in front of the hospital, and the news reports of a possible survivor. And he could not forget the priest’s comment: She’s not lying. Didn’t these things point to the possibility of an anomalous event? A freak occurrence? A miracle? And what of the other cases Lucy had researched?
With each day that passed, with each positive ID of a body, it became clear that something most unusual had happened the night Pointer 795 exploded. And if he could find this woman, if he could untangle the facts of her story, he’d make a name for himself at the agency. They’d still be talking about this investigation twenty years from now. But the risks were weighted the other way too. The laughter at the DPM would be nothing compared with the humiliation he’d face if he went after this story and it turned out to be a hoax. The world was watching. If he screwed up, there’d be no coming back. If he decided to try to find her, he’d have to take on the search with full effort.
The fallout from his report and Friday’s meeting had been less painful than he’d expected. Ulrich was reading the report and would have a response soon. The weekend passed with an unexpected but welcome silence—a truce was how he thought of it. Radford did his part to avoid conflict too. He mostly stayed locked in his room, wrestling with his thoughts, and by the time he returned to work Monday morning, he felt resolved but unsure of what he was walking into. Instead of chasing down any further leads on the Falling Woman, he intended to concentrate on identifying the remaining bodies. He just didn’t know if Ulrich would agree with his plan.
He left the Holiday Inn early and headed out to McConnell Air Force Base, which had become the permanent morgue. The bodies, the whiteboard, and all the equipment had been shifted from the high school gym over the weekend. Pieces of the plane were being hauled there too. Radford passed through security, flashing his ID to an airman and entering the hangar. It was the middle of May in Kansas, but the heat made him think of an August morning.
An outline of the 737-600 was taped to the floor of the cavernous hangar. The ghost plane—102.5 feet long, 117 feet wide at the wings, almost 12 feet wide at the fuselage—was partially filled in with pieces of the destroyed aircraft. A long section of the plane’s keel beam bisected the middle of the white outline. The metal, bent and charred, ran at least twelve feet along the center of the outline. The aft air-conditioning pack lay crushed on its side. Running aft to fore were sections of stabilizer ribs, wing panels, fuselage windows, upright seat rows, motor windings, engine cowls, two sections of landing gear, arrester tubes, low pressure compressors, a rubber tire, a piece of radome. The whole place smelled of jet fuel, smoke, mud, and terror.
Radford’s thoughts flashed back to a fox carcass he had come across in the woods last winter. He and Wendy had taken their dog for a walk. A dusting of snow covered the trail, and when Yeager began sniffing and scratching at the white earth, Radford spotted the fox’s rotting remains, identifiable only by the thinnest tuft of red fur along the decomposing spine. It was the contrast that was so stark; the pieces of plane, like the bones on that fox, just hinted at what was once real.
“It’s jarring, isn’t it?” Lucy Masterson said.
“It looks so different in the field,” he said. “You can’t see the pieces connected.”
“I’m glad you�
��re back,” she said. “We have the tower tapes from the FAA. I haven’t listened yet.”
“Investigating a crash,” Radford said, “is one part archaeology, one part guesswork, and one part origami.”
“What was that?” Lucy asked.
“Something that Dickie Gray told me a while ago,” Radford said. “I wish the hell he were running this instead of Ulrich.”
“I don’t know the man well,” Lucy said. “But Ulrich isn’t all bad. He wants the same outcome we all do. Did he bless your report?”
He shook his head, surprised to hear Lucy defend their boss, and more surprised that he almost agreed with her.
Along the hangar’s south side, two large bulletin boards leaned against a metal wall. At Ulrich’s insistence, someone had tacked up photographs of the still unidentified victims. As each new positive ID was made, the victim’s photograph was removed. They were entering the second week of the investigation, and more than forty photos still hung from the boards. Good, steady progress had been made, but there was much more work ahead. Lucy had helped by taking over some of Radford’s duties while he investigated the Falling Woman, but she hadn’t moved the number. He needed to get all those photos down. That was all that mattered now.
They crossed through the hangar and into the small office where the NTSB investigators had set up shop. Three cluttered desks crowded the room, along with stacks of aviation manuals. Lucy cued up the first tape and hit the play button. The recording came to life.
Indy Center, Pointer 795 with you at flight level 3-3-0.
Radford recognized the copilot’s voice. Jack Delacroix. His résumé was on the desk: Six years with Pointer Air. Almost eight thousand hours of flight time. Radford remembered his lifeless body in the destroyed cockpit, the bloodied spike of femur tearing through his uniform trousers. He thought of the man’s wife and three young kids.
The tapes were scratchy but the voices clear. Lucy took notes as she traced the plane’s flight path across a chart she had laid out on the small desk. As the plane crossed the Mississippi River, the first potential signs of trouble appeared on the tape.
Pointer 795, Indy Center, turn left to a heading of 230. Will try to get you higher to avoid weather at your eleven o’clock.
“How bad were the thunderstorms?” Radford asked.
“Bad,” Lucy said. “Two different weather fronts converged. Cloud tops climbed to fifty thousand feet.”
Outcomes turned on such things. What seemed stable could suddenly come apart, and the routine nature of flying often hid the risks. Life was the same. Radford had spent his life building defenses against such chaos, yet the chaos found its way to him anyway. The heart condition in college that ended his flying career. His shattered dreams. Wendy’s depression. And now this.
The ill-fated flight was now fifteen minutes from destruction, but, of course, no one on board knew. Radford imagined the routine of it all, inside the cockpit, in the cabin. The end of a four-day trip for the crew, they would’ve been excited about coming home for Crock-Pot meals and Little League games and piano lessons. He imagined the passengers, some on the plane for business trips, others going on vacation. As much as he could, Radford tried to filter out emotion. But hearing the pilots’ voices in real time was always disturbing, like looking down on a tragedy from above, knowing its inevitability. He had the urge to warn them, wanted to tell Delacroix to call his wife, wanted to shout at the captain.
Kansas City Center, Pointer 795 requests either higher or a way around this cell.
Pointer 795, KC Center, hold for vectors. Traffic ahead at same flight level.
“Crowded skies,” Lucy said.
“Less than a minute now,” he said.
Then came the last call from the doomed craft: Kansas City Center, Pointer 795 requests two-niner-zero to avoid weather. He thought of Delacroix’s wife, probably getting the kids to bed in San Francisco. And that storm, surging up into the troposphere, a spring cold front colliding with tropical air streaming up from the Gulf of Mexico. It must have been a monster, part of a system that spawned tornadoes in Iowa, flash flooding in Nebraska. The lightning would have flashed in the tops of the cloud. Radford imagined the pilots’ final seconds. When did they know? After a long pause on the scratchy tapes, the tragedy became apparent.
Pointer 795, KC Center. Could you check your transponder, sir? We have lost your Mode C.
Mode C was the airplane’s altitude reporting transponder, a radar signature on the controller’s screen. It meant that the plane had already come apart. Radford startled when Lucy clutched his hand, the same way a child might grab a hand in a scary movie, looking for reassurance that they were not alone.
“The controllers know something’s up,” he said. Lucy had closed her eyes.
The air traffic controller sent three more requests, none of which got a response. Ten seconds of blank tape followed before another aircraft called. Kansas City Center, Cactus 1185. Sir, we have a large explosion at our three o’clock. Very bright. Lucy squeezed his hand. Charlie wanted to pull away, but he didn’t.
A few seconds later, another flight, this one eastbound, reported seeing a similar flash of light. By now, the controller saw Pointer 795 coming apart on his radar screen, the single blip dissolving into grains. All aircraft with Kansas City Center, be advised we have a possible explosion. Standby for vectors. Remaining remarkably calm, the controller’s voice betrayed no panic. Given the magnitude of what was occurring in his sector, a series of commands followed that turned all approaching airplanes away from the disintegrating jet.
“All those bodies,” Lucy said. “It’s painful to think about it.”
Radford learned in training not to look at the bodies as a whole, not to see them as people but to concentrate on sections. Study the leg. Inspect the shattered abdomen. You had to think about the implication of the injuries, not the life of the person. But as they sat there, listening to the tapes, he could envision the passengers whole again, experiencing the final few moments of their lives. That plane hailing down, and the bodies, 123 of them, falling through the night. How long did the passengers live? How many were still conscious when they started to fall?
In spite of himself, he imagined a woman falling through the sky and heading toward the barn. He pictured her dropping, imagined what she felt—the cold air, the speed, the rush of wind. In all likelihood, she would’ve lost consciousness, which, given the circumstances, was a gift. Did she wake up at some point? Did she see the ground rushing toward her? What did she think in that moment?
“Could someone really have made it through?” he asked.
Lucy looked up. Their hands were still touching.
“Charlie, I don’t know, but you need to find out. We need to be certain. You can’t let all these questions just float out there unanswered. There are families waiting to hear. There are people who need to know.”
“Listening to these tapes,” he said, “hearing the voices of the other pilots and the air traffic controllers, everything seems so grounded. With all the work ahead of us, a miracle seems hardly plausible.”
“You think you’ll be able to ignore it then?” she asked. “You think you can just wait for someone else to solve it?”
“I’ve done my part,” Radford said.
Lucy tapped the power button and took out her headphone jack. A door closed in a nearby room just before the lights flicked on, seeping through the door’s glass window. They both turned. Shep Ellsworth stood at the door.
“Isn’t this fucking poignant,” he said. “Do you two want me to turn out the light?”
“Grow up, Shep,” Lucy said. She seemed unfazed by the intrusion, but Radford felt his cheeks flush. Their hands came apart.
“Asshole wants us,” Ellsworth said. “Downstairs in five, if you can tear yourselves away.”
“I need to call my wife,” Radford said.
“I bet you do,” Ellsworth said, laughing.
Lucy touched his shoulder lightly and s
miled. Then she stood, grabbed her notes, and walked out of the room with Ellsworth. Radford admired her confidence, her cool response. He pulled out his phone.
“I only have a minute,” he said to Wendy. “I wanted to say good morning.”
“My doctor just called,” she said. “Everything looks good. Charlie—she said there’s no reason for us to wait. We can start trying. I just need to know where you stand.”
He missed Wendy more acutely than he ever had. When they were first married, and sexual passion filled their days, he thought it would never change. But all this talk of children made a difference, caused a shift. He wanted her back, the woman he loved, the woman he fell in love with.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ll call you later. I love you.”
“Wait,” she said. “A reporter called the house. She asked about you, about the Falling Woman.”
“What?” he said. Anger swelled. How had his name leaked to the press? How did someone get his home phone number? The investigators weren’t supposed to be part of the story.
“Don’t say anything,” he said. “Please, Wendy. Just don’t talk to them. I’ll handle it here. Call me if they bother you again. I’m serious. Anything at all. Call me right away.”
“Is it true?” Wendy asked. “Did she really fall from that plane and survive?”
“Listen, I have to go.”
“Did she, Charlie?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’ll be back on the pile today. No more of this foolishness.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “It’s not natural. A person isn’t supposed to just fall out of a plane and live.”
22
Adam left Sunday night for the second time, and Erin awoke early Monday morning, excited about the prospect of the day ahead: long hours of solitude, birdsong, the sunrise, a hike into the woods, a fire if the spring evening turned chilly. Or she could roll over and go back to sleep. Stay in her pajamas until noon, drink coffee on the patio, and listen to the sounds of nature for hours. How long since she’d been truly alone? How long since she’d had a day without work, appointments, emails to answer, calls to return? This is where she wanted to be. She felt no need for company, no real desire for contact with the world.
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