AM: I was saving a second viewing until after I spoke with you, Captain. Tonight.
CR: You haven’t even watched it again? Special effects? Are you unhinged?
AM: I don’t know how, and I don’t know who. But the editing, the editing was phenomenal. Yes. But none of that was real. It was a horror-hoax.
CR: What have they done to you?
AM: A horror-hoax, we’re nearly certain. Footage made with a scared little girl, I know she was abandoned on the highway.
CR: Then you know her name. You know a lot more than you let on in our first conversation.
AM: I didn’t know any of that then. The mother is in prison now. A capital sentence was barely averted. She basically murdered her daughter by abandoning her in [redacted] at the edge of winter.
CR: I know.
AM: This sick person filmed, edited. Did the effects later, using footage of her murder in process.
CR: What? Then what about the anomaly? You yourself were insisting I knew about the—
AM: Alan, he murdered that girl and made a sick effects tape from what he did.
CR: Then how do you explain the hole in sky?
AM: I told you.
CR: Special effects.
AM: Yes.
(There are several seconds of relative silence as the Subject rises and paces around his Lucite cage, rubbing the back of his disheveled hair and muttering. When he stares again at Anna, it is with a profound measure of tangible sympathy and regret. The power in the room seems to shift as Anna fidgets, draining away from her. Her suited back fills the screen for a few moments as she leans to recover her pen. When we see the Subject again, he is sitting on the bench with tears in his eyes.)
CR: I’m going to learn what they’ve done to you.
AM: I don’t want to talk about my training, or the film. I want to talk about the murderer, the film-maker, and what we can to do capture him and make him pay for his crimes.
CR: (Considering. He begins to say something, thinks better of it. Then:) Did you know that the girl’s body rapidly decayed, to the point where she was barely recognizable as a female?
AM: Alan, please.
CR: I want to talk about this. Before we talk about what you want. This informs that.
AM: Fine. She was in a state of advanced decomposition when discovered, yes. Several days elapsed. There were beetles. There were crows.
CR: And did you know that the remaining nervous tissue, recovered from the eye sockets, resulted in tests that stated her recoverable DNA was between seven hundred and eight hundred years old?
AM: That’s impossible. But yes, I know. The tests were partial, rushed and deeply flawed.
CR: They had little left to work with. Do you remember how the little girl looked like an ancient woman?
AM: Alan—
CAMERAMAN, STILL OFF-SCREEN: Ma’am. You want security?
AM: No. I am still in charge here.
(The cameraman begins to say something which turns into an indecipherable murmur.)
CR: You are, quite right. Complete and total, just look at me. I’m just trying to talk to you, so we can catch up and get back on the same level of understanding.
AM: So you’re the reasonable one now?
CR: It’s been a very long time. Can we talk about this? Please?
AM:… Okay. So you’re saying the girl was seven hundred years old when she died.
CR: Her samples tested to that, yes.
AM: And this is logical to you.
CR: No. But I think it’s an inexplicable phenomenon crucial to understanding.
AM: To understanding what?
CR: The origin of the anomaly.
AM: I told you, there is no… (She sighs, pulls out the hair tie at her neck and briefly clouds the camera with her own movement in front of it. She runs her hands through her now-draping hair and then sits back again.) Okay. To get you to talk about the murderer, we will talk briefly about the possibility of a time-space anomaly, hovering in midair.
CR: Yes. But first, the girl.
AM: How could she be alive if she was centuries old?
CR: She was only barely alive, when she crawled out. All of that aging happened all at once. She was already almost dead when the… the cutting began.
AM: (Terse, angry.) She was traumatized, Alan, by being in the process of being butchered by the sick fuck operating the camera. That footage was used to give her the… the impression of highly advanced age. She was disheveled, frostbitten. She was grimacing in agony.
CR: You know, I try to tell myself all that, in the nights. Sometimes even still. But there’s the nagging matter of the dog and the severed arm.
AM: Yes, it was hers. It led investigators to the murder site.
CR: Perfect DNA match. Same tests, same results. Seven hundred to seven hundred and fifty years old, based on fingernail disintegration and the marrow analysis, which was radioactive by the way.
AM: She suffered gamma exposure?
CR: How could you not know that?
AM: Where are you going with all of this?
CR: I think I can narrow down the man’s profile. He was not a murderer. But I’m almost certain he was military, ground-air, with a significant AFSOC [Air Force Special Operations Command] background.
AM: How did you arrive at this conclusion, Alan?
CR: I only have the facts strung together from my orders when I was in the observation bunker, webbed together with a lot of conjecture. I don’t want to mislead you.
AM: I’ll keep that very much in mind.
CR: And?
AM: Your murderer identity hypothesis shares… some similarities with my own. Entertain me.
CR: You sure?
(She spreads her hands grandly, almost flippantly, perhaps indicating that she will not interrupt him regardless of her frustrations or disbelief.)
CR: All right. Let me get this out. After the tape was received at the Air Force Academy, and then the link made to the discovery of the girl’s remains, it went up to top brass at the Pentagon, likely the Secretary of the Air Force and some other top-end DoD [Department of Defense] types. You know, to decide what to do with it all before it went to the U.S. Marshals or the FBI. To make sure that it wasn’t some “sick fuck” as you say who was current military, someone who would cause embarrassment during an investigation. The mils, you see… we protect our own. Or they do, rather. To a point.
AM: Go on.
CR: Well, the note, the cryptic composite attached to the videotape, led back to the call index. Someone did some fingerprint analysis on the note and came up dry, either before or certainly after the arm was discovered. The guy who took the call was Lieutenant Pete McAllister, my buddy. He was put on surveillance duty with me, monitoring the site.
AM: Wait. I suspected the identity of the call receiver, although you confirming that you knew him prior to your shared duty tells me something. But why he was later assigned to you at the monitoring station in [redacted]? That makes no sense.
CR: That’s what I thought, neither of us were instrument or even observation specialists, and the few times I dared to question him about it I could see he was scared shitless. I’m only sharing this with you now because I know he… my Pete died recently.
AM: Yes.
CR: Do you know how?
AM: I’m afraid I cannot say.
CR: (Eyes averted, voice breaking.) Well, there’s time. Anyways when I asked him, I could see he was terrified. So I had to guess why he was there with me. The station, it was very good for one thing. It was good for time to think.
AM: And your guess was?
CR: That Pete was assigned there to keep him quiet, because he had heard the caller’s voice and handled the tape. And that if he ever tried to escape or told me too much, they would kill him.
AM: That’s… that’s quite a leap in speculation. Escape? You think he was forcibly detained in his later duties?