The Falling Woman: A Novel

by Richard Farrell

  She nodded, already reaching for a pen and the files on her desk, moving on to the next problem.

  “What happened to your father?”

  She glanced up at him and put down the pen.

  “He was dead, Mr. Radford. The air force knew within hours of his plane going down. He’d crossed the wrong line on a map, and so they held back that information. For six months, I held on to false hope.”

  She didn’t shake his hand when he left.

  On the elevator, he wondered about the term “agency support.” The words felt double-edged, suggesting cooperation but also retractability. Agency support meant that as long as they liked what he was doing, they’d have his back.

  Radford stopped back by Gray’s office to gather his notes and hear what the man had to say.

  “It’s pretty thin,” Gray said. “Speculative at best.”

  “What choice do I have?” he said.

  “If you find her, if her story is true, you’ll look like a genius. But if this is all a hoax, well . . .”

  Radford knew the risks, though it didn’t matter. Soon he’d be on the road, on the way to a small town in the Shenandoah Valley, where, if his instincts were right, he was going to find the woman who fell from the sky, and then he would end this, once and for all.

  34

  The town appeared squalid in some places, in others quaint. The tiny Main Street shops had begun to decorate for Memorial Day. Red-white-and-blue bunting hung from shop windows and over doors. It seemed like a good place to spend a holiday weekend, away from D.C. with its crowds and constant buzz.

  Radford remembered the smell of white pines from his childhood. He hadn’t been to the mountains in years, and the instantaneous familiarity—of light, of sound, and space—surprised him as he drove through the town. He had grown up in a place much like this, and he understood the kind of people who lived here, which he hoped would yield an advantage. If Adam’s story proved to be true, and if this woman really was hiding out, she shouldn’t be hard to find. At least that was his hope. If Erin Geraghty was here, he wasn’t leaving without her.

  The post office seemed like a good place to start, but he took a cautious approach. One thing about small towns: they didn’t welcome interrogations from outsiders, especially investigators from the federal government. Sitting behind the counter in the post office was a heavyset woman in a puckered blue-denim postal shirt. She smiled at him as he approached the counter.

  “Getting ready to close up, hon,” she said.

  He asked if she knew a place where he could grab an early dinner.

  She suggested he try the restaurant up the street. “Sandy’s is open,” she said. The woman spoke with a thick drawl, something that always surprised him. He was only a few hours outside the D.C. suburbs, but it seemed like an entirely different world. He thanked the woman and headed toward the restaurant on foot.

  The steady, piercing chirp of frogs sang from the fields. As a boy, Radford had loved days like this the most, when the first spring heat wave hinted of the long summer days to come. He thought of his older brother Patrick and how they would ride their bikes over to Swan Creek. Sometimes the Miller girls would be there, swimming in their cutoffs and bikini tops. Patrick would climb the oak tree that stretched over the water, attracting the attention of the girls. Then he’d hurl himself off the tree and jump toward the center of the creek. In those days, young Charlie stayed on the shore, always too shy to take off his shirt, too concerned about appearances to run around in his boxers like his brother did. Every part of him envied his brother’s freedom and confidence. And he had to admit to himself that little had changed. There were still many things he lacked the courage to do.

  Would finding this woman, and bringing her in, would that make him stronger? Would he prove them all wrong back in Kansas? Would Dickie Gray be there to shake his hand? Because he was doing this whole thing on his own, absorbing all the risk, he hoped he’d also receive all the credit when it was done. That at least would be a bit of redemption.

  He was sweating as he approached the restaurant. A cowbell jingled above the door when he entered. An older man stood behind the bar reading the paper.

  “What you drinking, captain,” the bartender said.

  “How are your Bloody Marys?” Radford asked.

  “Best in the commonwealth.”

  Radford nodded and peeked at the menu. He didn’t notice the woman who entered, didn’t see her place her purse on the bar or reach for a menu from a stack on the corner. But when he glanced over and spotted her, he knew who this woman was: Erin Geraghty. The Falling Woman.

  He resisted the urge to rush over and grab her.

  After two weeks and three days of searching, after days and nights of hopelessness and ridicule he’d endured, she stood no more than ten feet away, carrying no sign of all that had happened. Panic swept over him. The moment felt surreal. Try as he might, he couldn’t reconcile the utter ordinariness of her appearance, of her demeanor. To steady himself, he took a sip of his drink, and nearly choked on the spice.

  Casually dressed in jeans, a loose sweatshirt, and with a baseball cap on her head, she ordered a beer. He did note that there was something distinctly patrician about her carriage, something that set her apart from the locals, the way she held herself at the bar with an erect posture, the way she gripped the glass. She was thin, too thin, he thought, and a bit pale. Her hair was very short. His hand trembled. He’d come all this way to find out if she was real and there she was.

  Now what? He had no idea. All along, Radford had expected the whole Falling Woman story to be a hoax. Even as he found evidence to suggest that something like that really could have happened, even after Adam walked into the Wichita Holiday Inn and gave him a name—a verifiable name, one of the seven on his list—even after all that, he still hadn’t expected it to be real. Hadn’t expected her to be real. But there she was, close enough to reach out and touch. Now, of course, he had to make sure her story was true.

  Be careful, he thought, don’t draw her attention. But he couldn’t stop staring at her. Erin Geraghty. A hundred times he’d studied her picture. Excitement surged through him like electricity.

  When the bartender returned, Radford ordered a beer. He didn’t want another drink, but he needed to blend into the background. Slowly, his investigator instincts returned. He noted the time and marked it down in his notebook.

  Behind the bar, a mirror held half of her reflection, enough for Radford to study her without being obvious. Absolutely, the woman sitting at the bar was Erin Geraghty. She was alive!

  But an encounter in a bar? Her sudden appearance was jarring, unexpected, like lightning out of a blue sky. Radford barely touched his drink, just watched as she casually flipped through a book. She seemed so calm, while his pulse was racing.

  What had he expected? Something much more dramatic, certainly. Nothing about the woman at the bar stood out, nothing to indicate that the world was clamoring for her story, her name, her whereabouts. What was she doing here, out in the open, acting as if nothing had really happened to her?

  Oddly, he thought of his father. Every year, when his dad called to say thanks for the customary Christmas gift—one hundred dollars’ worth of Powerball tickets—Martin would say, “Charlie, if I win this fucking thing, you won’t see me for a month. I’ll go rent a cabin in the woods and not tell a soul.” Protect your interests, that was his father’s point. Maybe that’s why this woman had come here, to let the dust settle, to work out her plan. Was she collecting offers for a book? Waiting for a movie deal? But if that was the case, surely word would have leaked. And why would Adam have offered her up? And why was she sitting ten feet away from him now, drinking a beer and reading a book, seemingly without a care in the world?

  Radford didn’t want to confront her here. Obviously, they knew her in this place. She had allies. He glanced at his watch, asked for the check, settled up his tab, and went outside. But he had no intention of going far. He noti
ced a side door near a large dumpster. He’d have to watch that door too, so she didn’t slip away.

  He sat on a bench outside at the patio bar, trying to formulate a plan. His car was a good ten-minute walk away, and she might bolt if he went to retrieve it. He couldn’t risk it. Though if she’d been this easy to find, what was the risk? He figured that whatever else this woman was up to, she was settled here for a while at least.

  The minutes crawled past. He wanted to call Wendy, to share this incredible news with someone, but he’d neglected to tell her he was in town.

  As he waited, time seemed to stop. The longer he sat there, the more he questioned his judgment. He should’ve just approached the woman in the bar and taken his chances. Ten minutes passed, a half hour; the shadows lengthened around him.

  Sandy’s parking lot began to fill as the dinner crowd arrived. Radford kept an eye on the front door, but the woman still didn’t emerge. Was she a lush? How long would she stay in there drinking? An insect bit his ankle, and he shifted to another spot amidst the trees. That was when he spotted that the side door to the restaurant was now open.

  “God damn it,” he said as another bug bit into his flesh, this time on his neck. She may already have left, and he’d missed her.

  He crossed the street and reentered the restaurant. He expected her to be gone, and sure enough, the woman was no longer at the bar. He walked up to the bartender, and this time pulled out his badge and credentials.

  “The woman who was sitting over there,” Radford said. “I need to talk to her.”

  The bartender either didn’t register the request or was being hostile, because he didn’t respond. Radford braced for a fight, but instead, the man put down his drying towel and motioned with his head toward the main dining room. A tray in her hand, an apron wrapped around her waist, Erin Geraghty was taking dinner orders.

  “She works here?” Radford said.

  He stood near the hostess stand at the front of the restaurant and watched. After a few minutes, he’d attracted the attention of the other waitresses and a few diners, but Erin hadn’t seen him yet. He studied her as she delivered a plate of food to a table of three silver-haired women, pausing a moment to chat with them. She was attractive, despite her frail appearance and close-cropped hair. She had almost flawless skin, strong legs, a pretty smile. But she was incredibly thin too. Her arms, her wrists, what he could see of her ankles beneath her jeans, looked like skin wrapped around bone. And the haircut seemed imposed, not chosen. Try as he might, he couldn’t picture her on the plane. He couldn’t imagine her falling from the sky. As she walked across the restaurant, he kept trying to piece together the unfathomable circumstances that brought her here. She didn’t look like someone who could fall down a set of stairs and be okay, much less come screaming out of the sky, crash through trees, a barn roof, a hayloft, onto the earth, and not only survive but walk away.

  The bartender kept a close eye on him, as did most of the waitstaff. Erin Geraghty took two more orders, talking for a long time with a large group seated in the middle of the restaurant. Then a waitress approached her and whispered in her ear. Radford’s pulse raced again. He saw the woman’s expression change as she glanced around the restaurant before spotting him standing by the kitchen doors.

  He stood still, though internally he was ready to give chase. But she didn’t run. She didn’t look for help, or panic, or turn white. She smiled at her customers, continued to write down their orders, and slowly moved toward him.

  “I’d rather not do this here,” she said. Her voice was pleasant, her demeanor easy and light. Professional, he thought, like she had just apologized for the slow service and promised to be back to get his order.

  “I’m not leaving,” he said. “I don’t want to make a scene, but you need to understand that I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  She smiled. If he thought he was intimidating her with his authority, he realized quickly that was not the case.

  “Well,” she said, “I work until nine. You can sit at the bar or you can come back in two hours. Tuesday night is the meatloaf special. We always pack ’em in.”

  Technically, he lacked the authority to do much. He couldn’t arrest her because she’d broken no laws. He had a legal right to question any witness involved in the accident but no enforcement authority. If a witness didn’t show up, if a passenger refused to cooperate, there was little that Radford could do. She didn’t have to speak to him. He couldn’t drag her out the front door.

  “Where then?” he asked.

  She wrote down her address on an order slip and tore the sheet off her pad. Her calm demeanor, her casual attitude about the whole thing confused him. She handed the paper to him.

  “I’d prefer to do this in the morning,” she said. “But I’m guessing that’s not an option.”

  Radford took the paper, glanced at the address, and shook his head. “I’ll be there at nine.”

  “Well, I won’t be home until nine thirty,” she said. “I don’t have a car.”

  “I’ll pick you up,” he said.

  “I don’t get into cars with strangers,” she said. Her tone was playful, lightly mocking, almost flirtatious. What the hell was her angle? With that, she stepped into the kitchen.

  He waited a few more minutes near the bar. If she was nervous, if she feared the worst, if she planned a mad-dash escape, nothing about her behavior indicated it. He watched her for a while, but nothing changed. He glanced at the address again and typed it into his phone. The location was nearby.

  “You ordering anything?” the bartender asked.

  Radford waved his hand and moved toward the door. Outside, he wanted to call Ulrich. He wanted to call Dickie Gray. The urge to share the news was overwhelming. But he still had work to do, and alerting the agency now might backfire. As he walked back toward his car, he knew the only person he could tell, the only one he trusted, was Wendy. She answered on the third ring.

  “Where have you been?” she asked. “I called the hotel. I called your cell. I was so worried.”

  “I’m in Virginia,” he said, unsure how to proceed.

  “What?” she said, a hint of surprise, maybe anger too, rising in her voice. “You’re home?”

  “No,” he said. “Listen, I’ll explain later. I found her. I found the woman.”

  “You found who?” Wendy asked.

  “The Falling Woman. She’s alive, Wendy. She’s real and I found her.”

  35

  As soon as Radford left, Erin asked Sandy for an advance on her next paycheck. Her only thought was that she had to flee. But where would she go? She had no car, no viable plan, hardly any money. For an instant, she imagined grabbing Adam’s tent and camp stove and heading out into the woods. But how long could she last?

  Without a question, Sandy brought her an envelope with cash.

  “You okay, hon?” Sandy asked.

  “I may not be coming in tomorrow,” she said.

  “Why don’t you let Hazard take you home?” she said. “You shouldn’t be going alone.”

  “I’ll be okay,” she said. “Whatever happens, I’ve made peace with my choices.”

  She was tired and was having trouble trying to think straight. Pedaling back in the dark, she tried to reconcile the contradictions of it all.

  Once at the cabin, she sat on the porch waiting for Radford. Since the crash, time had slowed down, sped up, gone around in circles. Only in the past few days had she started to feel normal. She thought, for the first time really, how much she missed the girls. Running from them was something she could never fully understand. Had she somehow abandoned her faith in love? How had she so callously severed the bonds with her family?

  When Claire was in high school, she hit a rough patch. Depression. Anxiety. Eating issues. Erin watched as this sweet, tender, serious girl, who used to embrace life, turned into a gloomy, hollowed-out shell who wouldn’t leave her room. Erin suggested they start running together. On the weekends, she woul
d set an alarm, don her shorts and shoes, and then go quietly into Claire’s room to wake her daughter. They’d stretch in the front yard before the sun rose. How long did this go on? A few months maybe. No more than a dozen or so runs. But Erin loved the sound of her daughter’s running shoes slapping the pavement. She loved those quiet miles along the river. She loved the closeness. They didn’t even talk that much; mostly, they ran in silence. When they got home, Erin would make butter toast and carry it on a tray to Claire, who began to eat again, eventually began to smile. Erin didn’t remember when they stopped running together, but she knew she’d done something important, something that mattered. Of all the things in her life, those quiet, intense hours with Claire stood out as among the most important.

  Sitting on the porch waiting for Radford to appear, she had almost convinced herself she was ready to go home.

  Yet another contradictory force gnawed away at her. It was the certainty of her death. But she wasn’t afraid anymore. It was as if fear had been vanquished. All fear. She wasn’t afraid of dying. She wasn’t afraid to live out her remaining days on her terms. Liberated from fear, all that remained was acceptance.

  It had started to rain when she heard tires crunch on the gravel driveway. Frogs croaked from the creek behind the cabin. The headlights shone on the porch and the car stopped.

  36

  Whatever the hell this woman’s angle was, she’d done a damn good job at staying gone. It seemed like the whole world had been searching for her, yet somehow, she’d just slipped away. Radford knew such a feat required not only cunning but also patience, support, and a great deal of will. He’d be straight with her, transparent. That’s how he’d start.

  He approached the porch slowly. A steady light rain released forest smells. Lightning flashed in the distance, too far away to hear thunder. Whip-poor-wills sang in the woods. He understood why a place like this would be appealing.