“If I want your thoughts, Shep, I’ll ask for them,” Ulrich said. “Charlie, I can’t let you go. Not without more information. I can’t chip into the budget so you can satisfy an itch.”
No one trusted him anymore. All the investigators had backed away from him because of this story. No one wanted the stink of the Falling Woman on them; no one wanted to be smeared by it, to have their professional reputations tainted. Oh, were you one of the ones who chased down that crazy story? A woman falling out of the sky! Radford understood such reluctance. Until this morning, he’d even shared it.
“I have a location,” Radford said. “I know where the woman is.”
“There is no fucking woman.” Ellsworth shot up, coming quickly across the room toward Radford until the two men were face-to-face. “And every goddamn day you keep going on like this means we’re one day further from solving the whole thing. A plane exploded. People died. And you’re out chasing fairy tales.” He put his hand on Radford’s shoulder.
Radford smacked Ellsworth’s hand away and pushed him backward, but the man came right back at him, his body braced for violence. Ulrich quickly moved between them and then shoved Ellsworth out of the office.
“I’m sorry,” Ulrich said. “That shouldn’t have happened. You can file an incident report.”
“I don’t give a shit about him.”
Radford realized he was shaking, and made a conscious effort to calm himself.
“What do you need?” Ulrich said.
“I need to resolve this,” Radford said. “I need to run this one out. That’s why you put me on this case, isn’t it?”
“But I can’t let you just disappear. That will send the wrong signal.”
“I’m going,” he said. “I’ll take leave if I have to. I’m doing no good here. I’m holed up in my room like a goddamn psychopath. The maids don’t even knock anymore. You want this too. You want me up on that stage with answers. I think I can get them, but you have to let me go.”
Ulrich shook his head, but the image of the hostile hearing room must have been enough to sway him. He held out three fingers.
“Three days, Charlie,” he said. “I’m serious. You have three days. The hearing is Friday. I want you back in town by Thursday night. With answers. With a name. Don’t tell me you couldn’t find her. Don’t come back and ask for more time. This is going down on Friday, and you will be up there, with me, in that hearing room.”
Once outside, Radford spotted Lucy Masterson. With her were two women, both wearing dark coats and sunglasses. He remembered that Lucy would be conducting the rescheduled interviews with the pilots’ widows today. He wanted to introduce himself, to offer condolences, to look each of them in the eye and promise that they’d solve this mystery, that in time, somehow, all of it would make sense. He also wanted to share his news with Lucy. But there simply wasn’t time. He sped away as the three women entered the hangar.
Radford didn’t notice that the same blue car followed him back to the hotel. He went to his room to pack. Time was moving fast. He had a purpose now, and he was eager to get going. But there were delays getting his travel approved, and Radford missed the last flight out of Wichita. He would not leave until Tuesday morning now, precious hours wasted on red tape.
In the early morning, on his way out of the hotel, he removed the hanging Do Not Disturb tag from his door. In the lobby, he asked for a shuttle to the airport.
“You heading home?” It was the woman from the bar. She was sitting near the hotel’s sliding doors, casually reading a newspaper.
“Back to D.C.,” Radford said. She seemed familiar, friendly. Radford smiled. He tried to place her, to see if she was one of the many investigators now working the case, but nothing came to him.
“Have a nice trip,” she said.
32
The Blue Ridge Lanes sign glowed in red neon, even in bright sunshine. The bowling alley had become Erin’s office of sorts, with its posted boasts of League Discounts, Kidz Parties!, Friday-Night Karaoke & $2 Pitchers, and Cosmic Bowling. She never bowled, but Blue Ridge Lanes had the only reliable public wireless signal in town. Adam left an old laptop, and it worked well enough for what she needed today. Erin ordered a coffee from the bar and sat near the pool tables, away from the overweight and elderly men in rayon shirts who risked herniated discs from their efforts to knock down pins.
That morning, she went online to her hometown newspaper, the Capital Gazette. Adam’s email had directed her to the link. In the body of his email, he wrote only three words: “I’m so sorry.”
On the web page, her family posed on the front porch of their home. She was struck by Doug’s stern expression, his gray cardigan sweater and slacks. He looked handsome. She was always attracted to him, but for the first time, she genuinely missed him. Tory leaned on his shoulder, head down, her mascara running just a bit from her eyes. Claire stood to the side, somber, stoic, aloof, and yet so very pretty.
From the depths of her heart, she wanted to comfort them, to tell them all that their lives were better this way. With her gone. With that finality.
The caption beneath the photo reported that a local family was holding a memorial service for their deceased wife and mother. A short quote from Doug followed: “We appreciate the outpouring of support and love from our Annapolis friends and neighbors.” She imagined him rehearsing those lines before he spoke them. Even his grief felt modulated.
She clicked to a photograph of herself, precancer, smiling, her head tilted to the side. It had been taken when she and Doug went to a wedding on the Eastern Shore. She remembered making love to him that night in their hotel, one of the last times they did. Was she sleeping with Adam then? The past already blurred. The woman in the photo looked like a stranger.
The short article went on to say that the family requested privacy in this difficult time. An adjacent article speculated on “The Falling Woman,” a title she found ridiculous. Falling was only one small part of what she did that night. The oddness of juxtaposing those two stories in the same paper struck her, the way the one teased at the other. What did the girls think? What about Doug? She knew he was far too pragmatic to place any faith in such a fantastical story. But the girls? Had he convinced them?
When she became sick, Doug fought fiercely on her behalf, but she understood he was fighting her disease, the insult that introduced such chaos in their lives. He fought for a return to stability. He fought for clarity. For Doug, news of her death must’ve been a clean razor cut through the skin of his confusion. Such clarity could never be threatened by something as preposterous as a woman falling from the sky.
In the obituary, Doug’s careful prose excised emotion. His sterile words were precise but cold:
Erin (Walsh) Geraghty was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1969. She attended Holy Name High School and Georgetown University. She graduated from law school at Duke University and passed the bar exam in the state of Maryland. For twenty years, she worked as an attorney at Hawkins, Lemenanger, & Walton, specializing in contracts law. In 1993, she married Doug Geraghty. Their twin daughters, Victoria and Claire, were born in 1998. Erin was an avid runner, a talented gardener, and a loving wife and mother.
Her life reduced to a few lines of text. The facts were all there, but surely she was more than the mere facts. Her life must have had more to it than statistics. She resisted the urge to call the paper and print an amendment. Jesus, Doug. Really? This is what you think of me? She wanted to write him. For a split second, she contemplated returning, not to embrace him but to scream at him one last time for his cold, rational passivity. But then, the girls. What would they think? What would her return do to them?
After Erin’s father died, she believed, for a long time, he would come back. She used to awake in the morning and expect to see him downstairs. This went on for months after his death. At times, it felt like he was simply in another room, or the basement, or out of town. Her father’s absence felt contingent, reversible, and unreal. His
presence radiated long after he was buried. In high school, in college even, she held on to that faint flicker of expectation, not as strong as hope but far sturdier than a fantasy. Maybe she still did. And now, after reading the obituary, after seeing the girls in the Gazette family photo, she wondered if her daughters would feel that way too.
She replied to Adam’s email: “What the hell are you sorry for?”
33
When Radford landed at Dulles Tuesday morning, a steady rain was falling. He deplaned in Concourse B but took the AeroTrain over to Concourse D. He wanted to pass by the gate from which Pointer 795 departed. The airport was crowded, and he didn’t have much time, but this stop felt important. An odd flicker of hope had slipped into him, an unfamiliar optimism.
He spotted the sign for the gate ahead. There was still so much work to do, still so much he didn’t know. He tried to imagine the people who’d walked this same hallway on the night Pointer 795 departed. Tried to picture their lives running out ahead of them. They deserved answers. Standing by the otherwise ordinary gate, D28, he tried to find some context, some meaning for all this.
But nothing at the gate indicated what had occurred there. Travelers hurried past. On a glossy poster behind glass, the smiling faces of a tanned couple in swimsuits advertised sixty-nine-dollar fares to the Bahamas.
He resisted the urge to stop and eat. He had to stay focused now because he thought he could see the end of his investigation. He didn’t know what he’d do if he found the woman, much less how he’d convince her to come forward. For that matter, he didn’t know what he’d say in three days at the public hearing, but for the first time since the whole thing began, he had formed a plan that should enable him to reach the end. Above his head, tiny porcelain cranes directed him toward the baggage claim.
Outside, the bustle of the big airport felt so different from what he’d left behind in Wichita. Here crowds of people waited for rides. Taxis and buses passed. He wanted to call Wendy, wanted to stop by their condo to surprise her. But he knew that he needed to finish this first, to find this woman. No part of him wanted to hide from his wife, but right now, he had no other choice. First, he needed to get over to the NTSB headquarters, check in, and grab a vehicle.
“It’s criminal that you aren’t running this investigation,” he said an hour later, peeking his head into Dickie Gray’s office door.
“Mr. Radford,” Gray said warmly. “Come to pay tribute to the village elder?”
Radford could only imagine the insult, being left off the team during a major investigation, left behind to sift through paperwork and mishaps of little import.
“We sure could use you out there,” Radford said.
“Fieldwork is a young man’s game,” he said. “Besides, I’ve never been fond of the prairies.”
“Ulrich and Ellsworth are tearing each other apart.”
“The great lightning debate,” Gray said.
“The theory makes sense, but the evidence isn’t breaking their way.”
“Do you have time for a drink?” Gray asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Radford said. “I need to get on the road before traffic starts.”
“Such urgency. Shouldn’t you be preparing for Friday’s hearing?”
Radford hesitated. How much should he tell this man? He wanted to share his news, share his excitement, but he didn’t want to face more ridicule.
“I have a lead,” Radford said. “On the woman.”
“Oh, dear god,” Gray said. “Please tell me you aren’t mixed up in that foolishness. What are they calling her? Waltzing Matilda?”
A bolt of shame and doubt shot through Radford’s chest.
“You told me to follow the evidence. You taught me to ask the right questions. Well, in spite of everything, I’ve been asking those questions. I’ve taken enough shit already. I think this all may be true. There may really be a ‘Falling Woman.’ Will you just look at my initial report?”
“Charlie,” Gray said lightly, but with a hesitant edge to his voice, “I thought I’d taught you better than this.”
“Will you please look? I only have a few minutes. I need to turn in some paperwork before I get going.”
Gray motioned with his hands, but Radford was reluctant to leave his files—they might get lost among the other stacks on Gray’s desk.
“She may have hit the trees coming down, and the barn roof was rotting, and the hay was three feet thick. There was soft mud below the hay.”
Gray shook his head but opened the first file. “Where is she?”
Radford felt safe around this man, in contrast to how he felt in Kansas. For a moment, he was tempted to invite Gray along for the ride, but the next few hours were filled with so much uncertainty. He told Gray where he was going, and what he hoped to do when he arrived.
“This kind of thing has happened before,” Radford said.
“I know,” Gray said. “I’ve done some research. But listen to me. Be careful with this. You’ve stepped into a shit storm here. This isn’t about investigative work. Just be careful. Too many eyes are watching.”
As Radford left Gray’s office, a department head waved him down and told him to get up to the ninth floor.
“The Director knows you’re here,” the man said. “She wants to talk.”
Carol Wilson became the NTSB director six months earlier, and so far, Radford had not been within fifty feet of her. She had come to Wichita a few times, but he’d only seen her from a distance, usually with a group of reporters in tow. Wilson was a political appointee, with no investigative experience, but so far, she’d done well. She had a reputation for being scrupulous, keen, and direct, and she listened and learned. But Pointer 795 was her first real test, and such scrutiny often brought out the dark side of politicians.
Radford tucked in his shirt and swiped at his hair. When he arrived upstairs, a secretary asked him to wait outside the executive suite. He didn’t welcome the delay, but such proximity to power was rare, and he intended to make the most of it.
Twenty minutes later, the secretary directed Radford from the waiting area to a smaller inner office. The thick oak doors opened into a large anteroom, with a pristine blue couch, hardwood floors, and two polished chairs. On the eggshell walls hung framed photographs with thick matting, pictures of aircraft in flight, trains, buses, plus one of Wilson shaking hands with President Obama. Bright sun streamed through windows that faced north, toward the National Mall and the city’s classic bone-white architecture. He was touching the inner core of power. A different secretary offered him water and produced a bottle of mineral water. He knew he should feel more nervous, should be thinking about how he’d address the director. But instead, he felt light, almost at ease. His mind was elsewhere, thinking about the work ahead and how he’d approach the Falling Woman once he found her.
“The director’s available now,” the secretary said. She knocked lightly on the oak door and then opened it slowly.
Carol Wilson stood when he entered and walked around her elegant mahogany desk to shake his hand. Her skin felt cool, almost delicate, but her handshake was firm. She was tall, lean, attractive in a rather standoffish way. Dark hair, strong eyes, a pretty smile. She possessed charisma, an almost palpable charm. Within a few seconds, Radford felt outmatched. She invited him to sit.
“Catch me up,” she said.
He wasn’t sure how much she knew, so he talked at first about how they’d stalled with body identification. “So many of the passengers in the blast zone were severely burned,” he said. It seemed strange to talk so openly about such violent, intimate details.
“The families are applying pressure,” she said. “And the insurance companies are having a field day with this story. They have a right to some closure. How many possible matches are there among the unidentified bodies?”
“Seven,” he said.
“So, we still haven’t moved that number?”
He shook his head.
“I’m preparin
g a portfolio for each family,” he said, “with painstaking details about what has been done, what’s being done, and what will continue to be done to sort out the possible matches among the still-missing victims.”
It was a lie. He’d had no plan to make a portfolio until the words came out of his mouth. For the first time, he felt an uneasy kinship with Ulrich, as if he understood the man’s behavior a bit better. Understood the need to please, the desire for approval.
“No amount of data,” she said, “no assurances or speeches or direct access to my cell phone will make up for the fact that more than two weeks have passed and we still don’t have the name of the woman who was taken to the hospital.”
She was sharp, direct, just like he’d heard.
“Mr. Radford, what did you think when you were reassigned?”
“I thought this was a goat fuck,” Radford said. The words came out of him before he had time to pull them back.
Wilson laughed.
“I know that you’re under a lot of pressure,” she said. “But it’s going to get worse until we resolve this open issue. We need something concrete before Friday.”
“I have a lead,” he said. “I’m on my way now to check it out. If it’s true, if this information pans out, we will have answers very soon.”
“I believe in transparency,” Wilson said. “My father was an air force pilot. He was shot down in North Vietnam. For six months, the air force wouldn’t tell us anything. I won’t run my shop that way. You have complete agency support on this, Mr. Radford. Whatever you need. But this woman, whoever she is, can’t have just disappeared. Find her, but keep me in the loop.”
Radford took this last remark as his cue to leave, so he stood up. But the director wasn’t done yet.
“Don’t fuck me on this,” she said. “Whatever her story turns out to be, bring her in. Get us her name, and you can stand up there on Friday and be justifiably proud.”
“May I ask you a question?” he said.
The Falling Woman: A Novel Page 18