The Flight Attendant(102)
Her tongue felt thick and heavy from the taser, and as she watched the contents of her purse spilled out in front of her, she tried to turn her guttural moaning into words. She had one sentence she had to say, and she wished it was the two words, I’m sorry. Or maybe something more specific: I’m sorry I didn’t do more. I’m sorry I was unlovable or incapable of being loved. I’m sorry I never had children. Or even a cat of my own. I’m sorry, Rosemary, I’m sorry, Jessica, I’m sorry, Dennis, I’m sorry, Tim.
I’m sorry, Alex.
I’m sorry, Enrico.
God, Enrico. About to be killed for no other reason than that he was chivalrous. A young romantic who had walked her back to her room. She never should have let him. One more mistake of hers with consequences for others.
Would any of these people miss her? Would Megan? Gillian? Paula? Would anyone really and truly miss her? Supposedly, whatever we do that’s selfish goes with us to the grave; whatever we do that’s selfless lives on. She couldn’t imagine a single thing she had done, a single act, that had even hinted at immortality. Her legacy? She had no legacy.
She could feel her cheeks were wet and she was crying, which she hadn’t expected. She had been told over the years by pilots, usually when they were having a drink, that the last words of most captains before their aircraft augured into the side of the mountain or broke apart before breaking the plane of the sea were these: Mother. Mommy. Mom. That lovely woman who once upon a time had read to her from Beverly Cleary would have been devastated at the way her older daughter had followed so rigorously her husband’s swath of self-destruction. Any mother would.
Finally she found just enough motor control to form a sentence. But it was neither the two-word apology that was bubbling up inside her nor the plea to spare her or Enrico the pain that loomed. It was the deepest truth of who she was because it spoke to how she had lived, and the plain unvarnished reality that we cannot escape who we are and most of the time we die as we lived.
She turned her head as much as she could so she could meet Buckley’s eyes and asked, her voice still fuzzy from the shock and paralysis, “Please. Can I have a drink?”
He paused, seeming to give the request serious, genuine consideration, his eyes almost mystified, and for a long second Cassie believed that she had bought another moment of life. One last taste of the essentia, the ambrosia, the amrita that filled her veins and her soul and kept her pain at bay. But then he shook his head ever so slightly, almost wistfully, and attached a long, circular tube—a silencer, Cassie presumed—to the end of Enrico’s uncle’s Beretta.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
FD-302 (redacted): MAJOR DENNIS McCAULEY, ARMY CHEMICAL CORPS
DATE: August 6, 2018
DENNIS McCAULEY, date of birth—/—/——, SSN #————, telephone number (—)————, was interviewed by properly identified Special Agents RICHARD MARINI and CATHY MANNING in a private conference room at the BLUE GRASS ARMY DEPOT in Richmond, Kentucky.
MANNING led the interview; MARINI took these notes.
After being advised of the nature of the interview, McCAULEY provided the following information.
McCAULEY acknowledged seeing his sister-in-law CASSANDRA BOWDEN on Saturday afternoon and evening, August 4, in New York City, and insisted that her behavior was “mostly” normal. She went with his family to the Bronx Zoo and then to a restaurant in lower Manhattan. He noticed that she was checking her phone more than most adults would throughout the day and during dinner, and “definitely seemed nervous about something.”
He said he cannot recall ever seeing her without his wife ROSEMARY BOWDEN-McCAULEY present. He said the two of them have never e-mailed or spoken on the phone.
He stated firmly that he has never shared any classified information with BOWDEN, and BOWDEN has never asked him for any. He said that while they have discussed life in the military very generally and his background as an engineer, they always talked more about her job than his. He denied ever giving her papers, data, diagrams, flash drives, or e-mails that had anything to do with the disposal of chemical weapons or the remaining U.S. stockpile; he insisted that he never shared any information on sarin, VX, or any chemical weapons not yet destroyed in the U.S. arsenal.
He said he never took work home; he said there was no way that his wife ROSEMARY could have shared any information with her sister or provided CASSANDRA BOWDEN with classified intelligence, because he didn’t tell her anything.
He said he was shocked that his sister-in-law might have killed ALEX SOKOLOV, though he acknowledged that she has a drinking problem. He volunteered that he does not believe she is a Russian spy.
35
But Buckley didn’t shoot.
Instead, almost as if it were happening to someone else, as if it were an out-of-body experience, Cassie saw him dragging her by her arms further into the hotel room and away from the door. Her dress had rolled up near her hips and she felt the rug burning her thighs. Intellectually she welcomed the discomfort: it suggested that feeling and mobility were returning. When they reached the bed, he let her go, dropping her unceremoniously onto the floor beside it as if she were a canoe dragged from the beach, and then sat down on the edge of the mattress and pointed the Beretta down at her chest.