“What about the computer that was processing the digitized version?”
“Scorched garbage. Nothing in it salvageable.”
“But you still have your copy.”
She shook her head. “I left the cassette in my hotel room while I went to a breakfast meeting. The contents of the cockpit tape were so explosive, I didn’t intend to share it right away with everyone on the team. Until we’d had time to think it through, we needed to be careful about when and how we released it.”
“Why?”
“The pilot was dead, but his reputation was at stake. His family would be devastated if he was blamed. We had to be absolutely sure. If the cause was laid in Captain Blane’s lap, then tens of millions — even hundreds of millions — of dollars’ worth of wrongful-death litigation would ensue. We had to act with due diligence. My plan was to bring Mario back to my room after breakfast to hear the tape, just the two of us.”
“Mario Oliveri,” Joe said, referring to the man in Denver who had told him last night that Barbara had retired and moved back to Colorado Springs.
“Yeah. As head of the human-performance group, Mario’s thoughts were more important to me at that moment than anyone’s. But just as we were finishing breakfast, we got word about the fire at the labs — about poor Minh. By the time I got back to my room with Mario, the copy of the tape I’d made over the phone was blank.”
“Stolen and replaced.”
“Or just erased on my own machine. I guess Minh told someone that I’d duped it long-distance.”
“Right then you must have known.”
She nodded. “Something was very wrong. Something stank.”
Her mop of hair was as white as the feathers on the head of the eagle that had overflown them, but until this moment she had seemed younger than fifty. Now she suddenly seemed older.
“Something wrong,” he said, “but you couldn’t quite believe it.”
“My life was the Safety Board. I was proud to be part of it. Still am, Joe. They’re damn good people.”
“Did you tell Mario what was on the tape?”
“Yeah.”
“What was his reaction?”
“Amazement. Disbelief, I think.”
“Did you show him the transcript you’d made?”
She was silent a moment. Then: “No.”
“Why not?”
“My hackles were up.”
“You didn’t trust anyone.”
“A fire that intense…there must have been an accelerant.”
“Arson,” Joe said.
“But no one ever raised the possibility. Except me. I don’t have faith in the integrity of their investigation of that lab fire at all. Not at all.”
“What did the autopsy on Minh reveal? If he was murdered and the fire set to cover it—”
“If he was, they couldn’t prove it by what was left of the body. He was virtually cremated. The thing is…he was a really nice guy, Joe. He was sweet. He loved his job because he believed what he did would save lives, help to prevent other crashes. I hate these people, whoever they are.”
Among the white pines at the foot of the meadow, near where Joe and Barbara had first entered the clearing, something moved: a shadow gliding through deeper shadows, dun against purple.
Joe held his breath. He squinted but could not identify what he had briefly glimpsed.
Barbara said, “I think it was just a deer.”
“If it wasn’t?”
“Then we’re dead whether we finish this talk or not,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone that revealed the bleak and paranoid new world order in which she lived following Flight 353.
He said, “The fact that your tape was erased — didn’t that raise anyone’s suspicions?”
“The consensus was that I’d been tired. Three hours’ sleep the night of the crash — then only a few hours the next night before Minh called and woke me. Poor bleary-eyed Barbara. I’d sat listening to the tape over and over, over and over, and at the end I must have pressed the wrong button — you know? — and erased it without realizing what I’d done.” Her face twisted with sarcasm. “You can see how it must have happened.”
“Any chance of that?”
“None whatsoever.”
Though Joe unfolded the three sheets of paper, he didn’t yet begin to read them.
He said, “Why didn’t they believe you when you told them what you’d heard on the tape? They were your colleagues. They knew you to be a responsible person.”
“Maybe some of them did believe it — and didn’t want to. Maybe some of them just chalked it up to my fatigue. I’d been fighting an ear infection for weeks, and it had worn me down even before Pueblo. Maybe they took that into account. I don’t know. And there’s one or two who just plain don’t like me. Who among us is universally loved? Not me. Too pushy. Too opinionated. Anyway, it was all moot — because without a tape, there was no proof of the exchanges between Blane and Santorelli.”
“When did you finally tell someone you’d made a transcript word for word?”
“I was saving that. I was trying to figure the right moment, the right context in which to mention it — preferably once the investigation turned up some detail that would support what I said had been on the tape.”
“Because by itself your transcript isn’t real proof.”
“Exactly. Sure, it’s better than nothing, better than memory alone, but I needed to augment it with something. Then those two creeps woke me in the hotel in San Francisco, and after that…Well, I just wasn’t much of a crusader any more.”
Out of the eastern forest, two deer leaped in tandem into the bottom of the meadow, a buck and a doe. They raced across the corner of the clearing, quickly disappearing into the trees on the northern perimeter.
Under the skin on the back of Joe’s neck, ticks of apprehension still burrowed and twitched.
The movement he had glimpsed earlier must have been the two deer. From their volatile entrance into the meadow, however, he inferred that they had been flushed from the trees by something — or someone — that had frightened them.
He wondered if any corner of the world would ever feel safe to him again. But he knew the answer even as the question passed through his mind: no.
No corner. Not anywhere.
Not ever.
He said, “Who do you suspect — inside the Safety Board? Who did Minh call next after you? Because that person is probably the one who told him not to pass the word any further — and then arranged to have him killed and the evidence burned.”
“It could have been any of them he was intending to call. They were all his superiors, and he would have obeyed their instructions. I’d like to think it can’t be Bruce Laceroth, because he’s a bedrock guy. He started out a grunt like the rest of us did, worked his way up. The five Board members, on the other hand, are presidential appointees, approved by the Senate for five-year terms.”
“Political hacks.”
“No, actually, the great majority of the board members over the years have been straight shooters, trying to do their best. Most of them are a credit to the agency, and others we just endure. Once in a while, yeah, one of them is slime in a suit.”
“What about the current chairman and vice chairman? You said Minh Tran was going to call them — supposing he wasn’t able to reach Laceroth first.”
“They’re not your ideal public servants. Maxine Wulce is the chairman. An attorney, young and politically ambitious, looking out for number one, a real piece of work. Wouldn’t give you two cents for her.”
“Vice chairman?”
“Hunter Parkman. Pure political patronage. He’s old money, so he doesn’t need the job, but he likes being a presidential appointee and talking crash lore at parties. Give you fifteen cents for him.”