Before the Fall(97)

“Yeah,” he says. “He remembers.”

“Wasn’t he off the case?” says Scott.

Gus squints into the sun.

“Let’s just say some new facts are moving the FBI to the front of the investigation.”

Scott looks puzzled. O’Brien pats his arm.

“Let’s go inside.”

They sit in the kitchen. Eleanor puts on an episode of Cat in the Hat to distract the boy (too much TV, she thinks. I’m giving him too much TV), then sits on the edge of her seat, jumping up every time he stirs.

“Okay,” says O’Brien. “This is me taking off the gloves.”

Scott looks at Gus, who shrugs. There’s nothing he can do. The divers recovered the cockpit door this morning, lasering the hinges and floating it to the surface. Tests showed the holes were indeed bullet holes. This triggered a shift in procedural authority. Phone calls were made from government offices and Gus was told in no uncertain terms that he should give the FBI as much operational leeway as they required. Oh, and by the way, he was getting O’Brien back. Apparently, the brass was convinced that O’Brien wasn’t their leak. Plus, it turned out, he was being groomed for big things—Gus’s liaison explained—so they were putting him back on the case.

Ten minutes later, O’Brien walked into the hangar with a team of twelve men and asked for a “sit rep.” Gus saw no point in fighting—he was a pragmatist by nature, as much as he disliked the man personally. He told O’Brien that they’d recovered all remaining bodies except for Gil Baruch, the Batemans’ body man. It looked as if he had either been thrown clear of the others or had floated out of the fuselage in the days after the crash. If they were lucky his body would wash up somewhere, as Emma’s and Sarah’s had. Or, quite possibly, it was simply gone.

The questions as Gus saw them were as follows.

Who fired the shots? The obvious suspect was the security man, Gil Baruch, the only passenger known to be armed, but since none of the passengers or crew had gone through a security screening before boarding the plane, they were all potential shooters.

Why had the shots been fired? Was the shooter attempting to force his way into the cockpit in order to hijack the plane? Or simply to crash it? Or was the shooter attempting to get inside the cockpit to avert the crash? Villain, or a hero? That was the question.

Why was the captain in the main cabin and not the cockpit? If it was a possible hijack scenario, was he a hostage? Had he come out to defuse the situation? But if that was the case…

Why was there no mayday from the copilot?



Speaking of the copilot, divers had found Charles Busch strapped into his seat in the cockpit, hands still gripping the yoke. One of the bullets had buried itself in the floor behind him, but there was no evidence that anyone had made it inside the cockpit before the plane hit the water. Gus told the agent that autopsy results on Busch would be back that afternoon. None of them knew what they were hoping for. The best-case scenario, in Gus’s mind, was that the young man had suffered a stroke or heart attack. The worst case, well, the worst case was this was a calculated act of mass murder.

All loose debris had been tagged and bagged and was here now, being cataloged. The good news was that the black box and data recorders had been recovered. The bad news was that it appeared one or both may have been damaged in the crash. Techs would work around the clock to recover every last trace of data. By the end of the day, Gus told him—barring an unexpected turn of weather—the fuselage should be up and on its way to the hangar.

O’Brien listened to everything Gus said, then called in the helicopter.

Now, in the kitchen, Agent O’Brien makes a show of taking a small notebook out of his pocket. He removes a pen, unscrews the cap, lays it next to the pad. Gus can feel Scott’s eyes on him, questioning, but he keeps his focus on O’Brien, as if to signal to Scott—this is where you should be looking now.

They have agreed not to discuss the case on the phone, not to put anything in writing until they find out how O’Brien’s memo was leaked. From now on, all conversations will take place in person. It is the paradox of modern technology. The tools we use can be used against us.

“As you know,” says O’Brien, “we found the plane. And Mrs. Dunleavy, I’m afraid I have to tell you that, yes, we have officially recovered the bodies of your sister, her husband, and your niece.”

Eleanor nods. She feels like a bone that has been left to bleach in the sun. She thinks about the boy, in the living room watching TV. Her boy. And what she will say to him, or should say to him. She thinks about Doug’s last words this morning.

This isn’t over.

“Mr. Burroughs,” says O’Brien, turning to Scott, “you need to tell me everything you remember about the flight.”

“Why?”

“Because I told you to.”

“Scott,” says Gus.

“No,” O’Brien snaps. “We’re done holding this guy’s hand.”

He turns to Scott.

“Why was the pilot outside the cockpit during the flight?”

Scott shakes his head.

“I don’t remember that.”

“You said you heard banging before the plane crashed. We asked if you thought it was mechanical. You said you didn’t think so. What do you think it was?”