“That’s not why I’ve called, Mr. Oliveri. I’m having trouble reaching one of your senior investigators, whom I need to talk with urgently, and I’m hoping you can put me in touch. Something’s wrong with her voice mail at your Washington offices.”
“Her voice mail? We have no current senior investigators who are women. All six are men.”
“Barbara Christman.”
Oliveri said, “That had to be who it was. But she took early retirement months ago.”
“Do you have a phone number for her?”
Oliveri hesitated. Then: “I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Maybe you know if she resides in D.C. itself or which suburb. If I knew where she lived, I might be able to get a phone—”
“I heard she came home to Colorado,” Oliveri said. “She started out in the Denver field office a lot of years ago, was transferred out to Washington, and worked her way up to senior investigator.”
“So she’s in Denver now?”
Again Oliveri was silent, as if the very subject of Barbara Christman troubled him. At last he said, “I believe her actual home was Colorado Springs. That’s about seventy miles south of Denver.”
And it was less than forty miles from the meadow where the doomed 747 had come to a thunderous end.
“She’s in Colorado Springs now?” Joe asked.
“I don’t know.”
“If she’s married, the phone might be in a husband’s name.”
“She’s been divorced for many years. Mr. Carpenter…I am wondering if…”
After long seconds during which Oliveri failed to complete his thought, Joe gently prodded: “Sir?”
“Is this related to Nationwide Flight 353?”
“Yes, sir. A year ago tonight.”
Oliveri fell into silence once more.
Finally Joe said, “Is there something about what happened to Flight 353…something unusual?”
“The investigation is public record, as I said.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
The open line was filled with a silence so deep that Joe could half believe that he was connected not to Denver but to the far side of the moon.
“Mr. Oliveri?”
“I don’t really have anything to tell you, Mr. Carpenter. But if I thought of something later…is there a number where I could reach you?”
Rather than explain his current circumstances, Joe said, “Sir, if you’re an honest man, then you might be endangering yourself by calling me. There are some damned nasty people who would suddenly be interested in you if they knew we were in touch.”
“What people?”
Ignoring the question, Joe said, “If something’s on your mind — or on your conscience — take time to think about it. I’ll get back to you in a day or two.”
Joe hung up.
Moths swooped. Swooped. Batted against the flood-lamps above. Clichés on the wing: moths to the flame.
The memory continued to elude Joe.
He called directory assistance in Colorado Springs. The operator provided him with a number for Barbara Christman.
She answered on the second ring. She did not sound as though she had been awakened.
Perhaps some of these investigators, who had walked through the unspeakable carnage of major air disasters, did not always find their way easily into sleep.
Joe told her his name and where his family had been one year ago this night, and he implied that he was still an active reporter with the Post.
Her initial silence had the cold, moon-far quality of Oliveri’s. Then she said, “Are you here?”
“Excuse me?”
“Where are you calling from? Here in Colorado Springs?”
“No. Los Angeles.”
“Oh,” she said, and Joe thought he heard the faintest breath of regret when she exhaled that word.
He said, “Ms. Christman, I have some questions about Flight 353 that I would—”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupted. “I know you’ve suffered terribly, Mr. Carpenter. I can’t even conceive the depth of your anguish, and I know it’s often difficult for family members to accept their losses in these horrible incidents, but there’s nothing I could say to you that would help you find that acceptance or—”
“I’m not trying to learn acceptance, Ms. Christman. I’m trying to find out what really happened to that airliner.”
“It’s not unusual for people in your position to take refuge in conspiracy theories, Mr. Carpenter, because otherwise the loss seems so pointless, so random and inexplicable. Some people think we’re covering up for airline incompetence or that we’ve been bought off by the Airline Pilots Association and that we’ve buried proof the flight crew was drunk or on drugs. This was just an accident, Mr. Carpenter. But if I were to spend a lot of time with you on the phone, trying to persuade you of that, I’d never convince you, and I’d be encouraging you in this denial fantasy. You have my deepest sympathy, you really do, but you need to be talking to a therapist, not to me.”
Before Joe could reply, Barbara Christman hung up.
He called her again. Although he waited while the phone rang forty times, she did not answer it.
For the moment, he had accomplished all that was possible by telephone.
Halfway back to his Honda, he stopped. He turned and studied the side of the service station again, where the exaggerated and weirdly distorted shadows of moths washed across the white stucco, like nightmare phantoms gliding through the pale mists of a dream.
Moths to the flame. Three points of fire in three oil lamps. Tall glass chimneys.
In memory, he saw the three flames leap higher in the chimneys. Yellow lamplight glimmered across Lisa’s somber face, and shadows swooped up the walls of the Delmanns’ kitchen.
At the time, Joe had thought only that a vagrant draft had abruptly drawn the flames higher in the lamps, though the air in the kitchen had been still. Now, in retrospect, the serpentine fire, shimmering several inches upward from the three wicks, impressed him as possessing greater importance than he previously realized.
The incident had significance.
He watched the moths but pondered the oil wicks, standing beside the service station but seeing around him the kitchen with its maple cabinetry and sugar-brown granite counters.
Enlightenment did not rise in him as the flames had briefly risen in those lamps. Strive as he might, he could not identify the significance that he intuited.
He was weary, exhausted, battered from the trauma of the day. Until he was rested, he could not trust either his senses or his hunches.
On his back in the motel bed, head on a foam pillow, heart on a rock of hard memory, Joe ate a chocolate bar that he’d bought at the service station.
Until the final mouthful, he could discern no flavor whatsoever. With the last bite, the taste of blood flooded his mouth, as though he had bitten his tongue.
His tongue was not cut, however, and what plagued him was the familiar taste of guilt. Another day had ended, and he was still alive and unable to justify his survival.
Except for the light of the moon at the open balcony door and the green numerals of the digital alarm clock, the room was dark. He stared at the ceiling light fixture, which was vaguely visible — and only visible at all because the convex disk of glass was lightly frosted with moonglow. It floated like a ghostly visitant above him.
He thought of the luminous Chardonnay in the three glasses on the counter in the Delmanns’ kitchen. No explanation there. Though Charlie might have tasted the wine before pouring it, Georgine and Lisa had never touched their glasses.