The Moonlit Earth

by Christopher Rice

  The worst part was how her own interview was now being used to cast suspicion on her brother. If he was alive, why wasn’t he in touch with his family? What did he have to hide? They were probably still replaying that fateful sequence even now as she sat in this windowless room with these emotionless suits.

  Close-up on Megan tearfully proclaiming her brother to be one of the bravest people she knew. Cut to a grainy still image of Cameron’s frightened, tense expression as he is led out of the lobby of the Nordham Hotel. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

  Who was she kidding? That wasn’t the worst part. No, the worst part was that she had been allowed only several minutes to rejoice over the evidence that her brother might be alive before the charges against him had started flooding into her mother’s living room by way of the flat-screen television.

  Now some voice in her head, a voice that sounded as detached and maddeningly chatty as Lucas had sounded for most of the day, tried to convince her that as soon as she dispatched with this inconvenient interrogation, she would have the opportunity to jump up and down for joy, clap her hands, and scream, “My brother’s alive! My brother’s alive!”

  But these weren’t the words coming out of her mouth now. She had already taken the agents through the tale of how she had taught her brother how to swim across the Cathedral Beach cove without fear. Now she was working her way up to the present. It was almost as if she thought she accrued ten more points for every few minutes she could get through without them stopping to ask her a question.

  She was telling them about the party two nights earlier. The fight about their father seemed relevant because Cameron had told her they would talk about things once he got back. He had plans, see? For when he got back. Terrorists don’t make plans if they’re going to blow themselves up. Like every other story she had shared with them, there was an agenda to it. Of course there was. What else should they expect?

  It was Fredericks who stopped her in midsentence. “How much had he had to drink?”

  Had she mentioned his drinking? When she realized she had referenced the tall drink in his hand when she had first spotted him staring down through the wrought-iron grate, she did her best to appear only slightly ruffled. The act wasn’t good enough. Fredericks came back at her again. “Does he usually drink before he works a flight?”

  “He said he couldn’t deal with our family sober.”

  “Families can be tough, I agree. But does he usually drink before a flight?”

  “No. He doesn’t.”

  She felt devastated. How could she have the wind knocked out of her by a single question? The answer was clear. She had been running on fumes, talking just to take more air out of the room, piling on detail after detail about how Cameron Reynolds was a Vanity Fair–reading, romantic-comedy-loving homo who ran screaming from cockroaches. Maybe this had been her real mistake. She had ended up sounding like a mother instead of a sister. And everyone knew a good mother would never entertain the notion that her son could have killed anyone, even if her son’s bloody prints had been found on the knife.

  When Lucas suggested that she and her mother go in without an attorney, Megan had approved of the idea because it seemed noble, and a little defiant in the best sense of the word. And wouldn’t the opposite have suggested guilt? But now she could feel in her bones why people demanded a lawyer, even when they were guilty as sin. She needed company on her side of the table. And it would have been nice if someone else could have asked them for a glass of water. Now that they had turned on her, such basic questions seemed like a show of weakness.

  “And you didn’t expect him to be there?” Fredericks asked.

  “It was a surprise party. I didn’t expect anyone to be there.”

  Fredericks gave her a conciliatory smile. “Sure. But it sounds like he made a lot of effort to be there? What time did the Hong Kong–bound flight leave LAX?”

  “Eleven thirty.”

  “So the party started at—what? Around eight?” She nodded, and he continued. “So he stays for about forty-five minutes or so. Then he’s got to catch a ride to Lindbergh Field in time to catch his shuttle flight.”

  “San Diego to LAX is literally up and down. The drive takes two hours. The flight had to be—what? Twenty minutes?”

  “Sure,” Fredericks said again. “But still, he wanted to be there.”

  “Yes. He did.”

  Loehmann scratched something on her notepad.

  “Does he usually drink around your family?” Fredericks asked.

  “He’s not a big drinker in general. But at Thanksgiving, he’d have wine.”

  “And at Christmas?”

  “I don’t honestly know. I don’t monitor what my brother drinks.”

  “You did two nights ago,” Loehmann said, breaking her silence.

  “Because you were startled that he was drinking at all,” Fredericks added. “Especially when you take into account that he had to work that night.”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “Yes? You were startled?” Fredericks asked.

  “Yes. I was. But my impression was that he was upset that I was moving back to Cathedral Beach. He didn’t want to say anything because he knew my ex had given me a lot of grief over it, but he was afraid.”

  “What was he afraid of?” Loehmann asked.

  “We’re best friends and I was moving back to a place where almost everyone voted in favor of Prop Eight. He said he didn’t want to lose me to those people.”

  “Is your brother very political?”

  “Only when his civil rights are at stake.” There was enough bite in her response to silence both agents. But it was a deep silence that gave off an air of superiority and satisfaction. So she rushed to fill it. “No, he wasn’t political. But Prop Eight? Come on. Who didn’t have an opinion about that? I mean, he’s gay, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Any boyfriends you know about?”

  “He dated a lot, but the only one he tried to commit to was the guy I told you about, the guy in L.A. He turned out to be a loser so it only lasted a few months. After him, there wasn’t anyone serious.”

  “That you knew of,” Fredericks finished for her.

  “Yes. That I knew of.”

  “Anyone in Hong Kong or from when he used to work the Bangkok flight? Friends or anyone overseas he might like to hang out with?”

  It must have been the word overseas that tripped her memory. They had stopped her before she could recount Cameron’s story about the flight that almost lost both engines between Hawaii and Los Angeles. Given all that had happened in the last forty-eight hours, she had almost forgotten that her brother might have told her a tall tale about why he had reconnected with their father. So not only had he been boozing it up before work but he might have lied to her as well. And the lie had been an elaborate, detailed one.

  Spill it, she thought. Part of her believed that if she just told the truth and nothing but the truth, then she could pass through this interview as if it were a mere formality. Because that’s what it was supposed to be. That’s what Lucas had assured her it would be when he had convinced her to come down here. But if she kept something to herself, if she left something out, if she lied— then it became something else altogether.

  She forced herself to speak. “No, I don’t know of anyone besides his other flight attendants. But I was going through so much recently, he didn’t have much time to talk about himself. He could have had a whole romance with someone in Hong Kong and I was too busy yammering my head off about getting fired for him to say a word about it.”

  “So two nights ago, it was your father you talked about?”

  “Yes. If I hadn’t picked up his phone when it started ringing … He would have found a better way to tell me, is what I’m saying. He planned on telling me. That’s what he said. And he said we would talk about it more when he got back.”

  “Did he say when he was coming back?”

  “His layovers were about four days.”

 
“Right. But when did he say he was coming back?”

  She tried to remember. And she made a show of trying to remember, as well. But she couldn’t. The last thing she could recall them saying to each other, besides the rushed and final I love you, which had eased her anxiety a bit, had been some back-and-forth about email and cell phones. He was getting screwed on cell phone charges.

  “He didn’t say when he was coming back,” Megan answered. “But he didn’t need to. I knew his turnarounds were only a few days.”

  “So he didn’t tell you he had time off and that he hadn’t decided which return flight he was going to work yet?”

  “No,” she answered.

  Neither agent said anything. They were giving her time to absorb this. They didn’t have to clarify it for her. After they fought about something important to both of them, Cameron had assured her they would resolve things once he returned. But he had no idea when he was coming back. And the next-to-last thing he had said to her was not to call him on his cell phone because it would cost him too much money.

  If he had been a guy she was dating, she might have broken things off over this kind of dismissal. But he wasn’t some guy she was dating. He was her brother. The problem was he hadn’t been acting like the brother she had known for twenty-seven years.

  Fredericks said, “I take it you’ve seen the security camera footage.” He had dipped into his briefcase and extracted a pixelated blowup of her brother and his Middle Eastern companion hurrying through the crowded lobby of the Nordham Hotel. “If not, we wanted to ask you if you could identify the man next to him in this image.”

  “I’ve never seen that man before in my life,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve been watching him on TV for three hours. I know what he looks like. I’ve never seen him before.”

  But Fredericks left the photo exactly where he had set it: right in front of her. If he had put the picture back in his briefcase, she might have been able to keep her mouth shut. But he hadn’t, so she didn’t.

  “Can I ask you both a question?”

  Fredericks nodded. Loehmann stared at her.

  “Why was the security camera footage released to the media?” There was a stony silence. “I figure I have the right to ask. Considering it has most of the world believing my brother is a terrorist.”

  “The Hong Kong Security Bureau is handling this investigation. We’re assisting in the gathering of information from American citizens on American soil because that’s what we do.”

  “And you’ve sent people to Hong Kong,” she said. “I heard that on the news on the way over.”

  “We have offered to send a team to Hong Kong to assist in the investigation should the Security Bureau require our services.”

  “Have they accepted?”

  “If they do, I’m sure you will hear it on the news.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “You guys seem to be relying on the news a lot.”

  He just stared at her, as if the idea that she might try to spar with him was more amusing than anything else. Loehmann seemed more quietly intrigued by this turn in the conversation. But it didn’t matter because Megan had the information she was looking for. She didn’t believe for a second any official had given the camera footage to the media; someone had leaked it. And at the very least, maybe it was grounds for a lawsuit, some kind of lawsuit that would vindicate Cameron when this was all said and done. But given that he was still missing, possibly injured, and maybe even being held captive by the strange man he had left the hotel with, the prospect of a lawsuit seemed frail and petty, like an old blanket bundled around a burning log.

  “So when it came to your father,” Loehmann said, “where did you two leave off?” Why was she taking over? Had she sensed that her partner might have been thrown by Megan’s comment? “I mean, clearly you were upset by the fact that they’re living together.”

  Loehmann lifted her eyebrows when she saw the reaction on Megan’s face. Megan’s urge was to correct the woman. No, they’re not living together, see? They’re just speaking again. … And then she realized what an idiot she would sound like if she corrected an FBI agent on a minor detail such as an address. The woman probably already had information on Cameron that Cameron did not even have.

  “He didn’t tell you?” Fredericks asked.

  “He said they were speaking again. He didn’t say they were living together.”

  “Oh,” Fredericks said. “Well, maybe he planned on telling you when he got back.”

  Which would have been when? Or maybe he planned on telling me when I didn’t call him on his cell phone because it would cost him too much money? Or maybe he didn’t plan on telling me at all.

  “What do you want from me?” she said. She was as surprised by the sound of her own voice as they were. “You want me to believe that lying about his relationship with our dad makes my brother capable of murdering all of those people? Well, I don’t. Do you want me to admit my brother was acting out of character the other night? I will. Fine. He was. He never drinks before a flight. But maybe he was drinking that night because he wanted to see me but he was afraid of admitting that he was living with our father. Now that you’ve gone out of your way to fill me in, that’s what I’d put my money on.

  “So keep me here as long as you want and ask me all the questions you want, but that’s not going to change. My brother is not a terrorist. The very idea is outrageous and absurd. Leak that to whatever newspaper you want.”

  They waited to make sure she had finished her speech. Then Loehmann rose from her chair, gave her partner a nod, and left the interrogation room.

  For a second Megan thought she would be arrested for mouthing off to an FBI agent, but instead, Fredericks straightened in his chair and said, “All we wanted was some of your time. And you gave it to us. So thank you.”

  The car was a black Mercedes sedan with tinted windows. The driver had a tree-trunk neck and wore aviator sunglasses; Megan figured he was a security guard on loan from Lucas’s firm. The man in the passenger seat had introduced himself as Eric Reynard, an attorney. Their attorney, thanks to Lucas.

  Megan was grateful Lucas wasn’t waiting for them outside the interrogation room. She might have exploded at him for sending her in alone, and that wouldn’t have been fair. It didn’t take much to convince her, because she hadn’t believed for a second that the FBI knew things about Cameron she might not know. Nothing of real consequence, at any rate. Nothing like the bombshell they dropped on her right at the end.

  But Lucas was outside the building when Megan and Lilah were released. Reynard explained he was giving a statement to the press that was long overdue and might also serve as a good diversion while they tried to leave the building. The diversion part worked. Megan hadn’t been able to hear the statement yet because she was recounting her interrogation for their attentive new attorney.

  Lilah didn’t seem to hear a word her daughter said. As they merged onto Interstate 5, she held her giant purse against her stomach with a two-armed grip that suggested she thought they might be about to go off-roading. Her eyes were half closed and she rested her head against the handle next to the window.

  “Where are we going?” Lilah finally asked.

  “Rancho Santa Fe. The media’s already camped outside both your houses, so Lucas found a place where you all can settle for the time being. Nice house, apparently. You should be very comfortable. Once we get past the evening news broadcasts, I’ll have some people from my office go to both of your places and pick up some things.”

  “Thank you,” Megan said.

  “I think we can expect the media to stay on you for a while, but from the sound of things, I doubt you’ll have any FBI surveillance, given that you didn’t know anything about your brother’s recent activities. That’s why they threw in the thing about your father at the end. To test you. It sounds like you failed, which, when it comes to your freedom of movement over the next week or so, is a good thing, I assur
e you.”

  Megan tried not to fault the man for how emotionally tone-deaf these final statements were. He was a lawyer, not a psychologist. Yes, in this context, complete ignorance as to what her best friend had been doing with his life could be construed as a good thing.

  Lilah looked ill. “Did you know?” she asked.

  “I knew they were speaking. I had no idea they were living together.”

  “I can’t imagine the things he must have said about me.”

  “Cameron?”

  “No. Your father.”

  “What could he possibly have said?” Megan asked.

  “It must have been something terrible. He must have smeared me in some way if he got Cameron to move in with him, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I don’t think that’s it. Cameron said something happened on one of his flights. Some kind of technical problem with the plane. The passengers didn’t know how serious it was, but he did, and he said it forced him to take stock of his relationships. And it made him want to mend fences with Dad.”

  “When did he say this?”

  “At the party the other night.”

  “I didn’t even see him at the party.”

  “He left right after I got there.”

  Her mother digested this, then she said, “A technical problem? Did you believe him?”

  Megan had to admit, her delivery hadn’t been the most convincing. The story was a weight she no longer wanted to carry, and she had told it with irritation and impatience in her voice. Megan checked to see if their attorney was listening. He wasn’t. He was talking into his BlackBerry in a low voice. In another context, the sense that this well-dressed man was secretly attending to the details of her life would have been comforting, even a little seductive. But now, all the talk of evening news broadcasts driving them from their respective homes and the sense that they were being whisked away to an undisclosed location amounted to a violation that was almost as painful as her interrogation. Almost.