Night Fall (2 page)

Jill whispered, “Oh, my God… what…?”

Bud stood motionless, not quite comprehending what he’d just seen, but in his gut, he knew it was something terrible. His next thought was that whatever this was, it was big enough and loud enough to draw people toward the beach. He took Jill’s arm and said, “Let’s get out of here. Fast.”

They turned and sprinted across the fifty yards of sand and up the dune. Bud grabbed the video camera and tripod as Jill scrambled down the far side of the dune. Bud followed and said, “Get dressed! Get dressed!” They both dressed quickly and ran toward the Explorer, Bud carrying the tripod and Jill carrying the camera, leaving the blanket and ice chest behind.

They tossed the video equipment in the backseat, jumped in the front, and Bud started the Explorer and threw it into gear. They were both breathing hard. He left his headlights off, and with wheels spinning, he drove back to the trail and made a sharp right turn. He drove cautiously in the dark, along the nature trail, then through the parking field, and out onto Dune Road where he put on his headlights and accelerated.

Neither of them spoke.

A police car approached from the opposite direction and sped past them.

Within five minutes, they could see the lights of Westhampton across the bay. Jill said, “Bud, I think a plane exploded.”

“Maybe… maybe it was a giant skyrocket… fired from a barge.” He added, “It exploded… you know… a fireworks show.”

“Skyrockets don’t explode like that. Skyrockets don’t burn on the water.” She glanced at him and said, “Something big exploded in midair and crashed in the ocean. It was a plane.”

Bud didn’t reply.

Jill said, “Maybe we should go back.”

“Why?”

“Maybe… people… got out. They have life vests, life rafts. Maybe we can help.”

Bud shook his head. “That thing just disintegrated. It had to be a couple miles high.” He added, “The cops are already there. They don’t need us.”

Jill didn’t reply.

Bud turned onto the bridge that led back to the village of Westhampton Beach. Their hotel was five minutes away.

Jill seemed lost in thought, then said, “That streak of light-that was a rocket. A missile.”

Bud didn’t reply.

She said, “It looked like a missile was fired from the water and hit a plane.”

“Well… I’m sure we’ll hear about it on the news.”

Jill glanced into the backseat and saw that the video camera was still on, recording their conversation.

She reached back and retrieved the camera. She rewound the tape, flipped the selector switch to Play, then looked into the viewfinder as she fast-forwarded.

Bud glanced at her, but said nothing.

She hit the Pause button and said, “I can see it. We got the whole thing on tape.” She ran the tape forward, then backwards, several times. She said, “Bud… pull over and watch this.”

He kept driving.

She put down the video camera and said, “We have the whole thing on tape. The missile, the explosion, the pieces falling.”

“Yeah? What else do you see in there?”

“Us.”

“Right. Erase it.”

“No.”

“Jill, erase the tape.”

“Okay… but we have to watch it in the hotel room. Then we’ll erase it.”

“I don’t want to see it. Erase it. Now.”

“Bud, this may be… evidence. Someone needs to see this.”

“Are you crazy? No one needs to see us screwing on videotape.”

She didn’t reply.

Bud patted her hand and said, “Okay, we’ll play it on the TV in the room. Then we’ll see what’s on the news. Then we’ll decide what to do. Okay?”

She nodded.

Bud glanced at her clutching the video camera. Jill Winslow, he knew, was the kind of woman who might actually do the right thing and turn that tape over to the authorities, despite what it would do to her personally. Not to mention him. He thought, however, that when she saw the tape in all its explicitness, she’d come to her senses. If not, he might have to get a little forceful with her.

He said, “You know, the… what do you call that? The black box. The flight recorder. When they find that, they’ll know more about what happened to that airplane than we do, or what the tape shows. The flight recorder. Better than a video recorder.”

She didn’t reply.

He pulled into the parking lot of the Bayview Hotel. He said, “We don’t even know if it was a plane. Let’s see what they say on the news.”

She got out of the Explorer and walked toward the hotel, carrying the video camera.

He shut off the engine and followed. He thought to himself, “I’m not going to crash and burn like that plane.”

Five Years Later

Long Island, New York

Conspiracy is not a theory,

it’s a crime.

CHAPTER TWO

Everyone loves a mystery. Except cops. For a cop, mysteries, if they remain mysteries, become career problems.

Who killed JFK? Who kidnapped the Lindbergh baby? Why did my first wife leave me? I don’t know. They weren’t my cases.

I’m John Corey, formerly a New York City homicide detective, now working for the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force, in what can only be described as the second act of a one-act life.

Here’s another mystery: What happened to TWA Flight 800? That wasn’t my case either, but it was my second wife’s case back in July 1996, when TWA 800, a big Boeing 747 bound for Paris with 230 passengers and crew on board, exploded off the Atlantic coast of Long Island, sending all 230 souls to their deaths.

My second wife’s name is Kate Mayfield, and she’s an FBI agent, also working with the ATTF, which is how we met. Not many people can say they have an Arab terrorist to thank for bringing them together.

I was driving my gas-guzzling, politically incorrect eight-cylinder Jeep Grand Cherokee eastbound on the Long Island Expressway. Beside me in the passenger seat was my aforementioned second and hopefully last wife, Kate Mayfield, who had kept her maiden name for professional reasons. Also for professional reasons, she’d offered me the use of her surname since my name was mostly mud around the ATTF.

We live in Manhattan, on East 72
^nd
Street, in the apartment where I had lived with my first wife, Robin. Kate, like Robin, is a lawyer, which might have led another man and his psychiatrist to analyze this love/hate thing, which I might have with lady lawyers and the law in general with all its complex manifestations. I call it coincidence. My friends say I like to fuck lawyers. Whatever.

Kate said, “Thanks for coming with me to this. It’s not going to be very pleasant.”

“No problem.” We were heading toward the beach on this warm, sunny day in July, but we weren’t going to sunbathe or swim. In fact, we were going to a beachside memorial service for the victims of Flight 800. This service is held every year on the July 17
^th
anniversary date of the crash, and this was the fifth anniversary. I’d never been to this service, and there was no reason why I should. But, as I said, Kate had worked the case and that’s why, according to Kate, she attended every year. It occurred to me that over five hundred law enforcement people worked that case, and I was sure they didn’t attend every, or maybe any, memorial service. But good husbands take their wives at their word. Really.

I asked Kate, “What did you do on that case?”

She replied, “I mostly interviewed eyewitnesses.”

“How many?”

“I don’t remember. Lots.”

“How many witnesses saw this?”

“Over six hundred.”

“No kidding? What do you think actually caused the crash?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the case.”

“Why not? It’s officially closed, and officially it was an accident brought about by a mechanical failure that caused the center fuel tank to explode. So?”

She didn’t reply, so I reminded her, “I have a top secret clearance.”

She said, “Information is given on a need-to-know basis. Why do you need to know?”

“I’m nosy.”

She looked out the windshield and said, “You need to get off at Exit 68.”

I got off at Exit 68 and headed south on the William Floyd Parkway. “William Floyd is a rock star. Right?”

“He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.”

“Are you sure?”

“You’re thinking of Pink Floyd,” she said.

“Right. You have a good memory.”

“Then why can’t I remember why I married you?” she asked.

“I’m funny. And sexy. And smart. Smart is sexy. That’s what you said.”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

“You love me.”

“I do love you. Very much.” She added, “But you’re a pain in the ass.”

“You’re not exactly easy to live with either, sweetheart.”

She smiled.

Ms. Mayfield was fourteen years younger than I, and the small generation gap was sometimes interesting, sometimes not.

I’ll mention here that Kate Mayfield is rather nice-looking, though it was her intelligence that first attracted me, of course. What I noticed second was her blond hair, deep blue eyes, and Ivory Soap skin. Very clean-cut. She works out a lot at a local health club and goes to classes called Bikram yoga, spin, step, and kick boxing, which she sometimes practices in the apartment, aiming her kicks at my groin, without actually connecting, though the possibility is always there. She seems to be obsessed with physical fitness while I am obsessed with firing my 9mm Glock at the pistol range. I could compile a long list of things we don’t have in common-music, food, drinks, attitudes toward the job, position of the toilet seat, and so forth-but for some reason that I can’t comprehend, we’re in love.

I went back to the previous subject and said, “The more you tell me about Flight 800, the more inner peace you’ll find.”

“I’ve told you everything I know. Please drop the subject.”

“I can’t testify against you. I’m your husband. That’s the law.”

“No, it isn’t. We’ll talk later. This car could be bugged.”

“This car is not bugged.”

“You could be wearing a wire,” she said. “I’ll need to strip-search you later.”

“Okay.”

We both laughed. Ha ha. End of discussion.

In truth, I had no personal or professional interest in the Flight 800 case beyond what any normal person would have who had followed this very tragic and peculiar accident in the news. The case had problems and inconsistencies from the beginning, which was why, five years later, it was still a hot, newsworthy topic.

In fact, two nights earlier, Kate had tuned in to several news programs to follow the story of a group called FIRO-Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization-who’d just released some of their new findings, which did not match those of the government’s official conclusion.

This group was made up mostly of credible people who worked on the accident investigation for various civilian agencies, plus friends and family of the dead passengers and crew. Plus, of course, the usual conspiracy theory nuts.

FIRO was basically giving the government a hard time, which I appreciated on a visceral level.

They were also media-savvy, so, to coincide with this fifth anniversary of the crash, FIRO taped interviews with eight eyewitnesses to the crash, some of whom I’d seen on TV with my channel-surfing wife two nights earlier. The witnesses made a very compelling case that TWA Flight 800 had been blown out of the sky by a missile. The government had no comment, except to remind everyone that the case was solved and closed. Mechanical failure. End of story.

I continued south toward the Atlantic Ocean. It was a little after 7P.M., and the memorial service, according to Kate, started at 7:30 and ended at 8:31, the time of the crash.

I asked Kate, “Did you know anyone who died?”

“No.” After a moment, she added, “I got to know some of the family members.”

“I see.” Kate Mayfield, as best as I can tell after a year of marriage, keeps her job and her personal feelings separate. Therefore, her taking half a day AL-which is FBI talk for annual leave, and which everyone else calls vacation-to attend a memorial service for people she didn’t know seemed not completely understandable.

Kate caught the drift of my questions and my silence and said, “Sometimes I need to feel human. This job… sometimes it’s comforting to discover that what you thought was an act of evil was just a tragic accident.”

“Right.”

I won’t say at this point that I was getting a lot more curious about this case, but having spent the better part of my life nosing around for a living, I made a mental note to call a guy named Dick Kearns.

Dick was a homicide cop I’d worked with for years before he retired from the NYPD, then went over to the Anti-Terrorist Task Force as a contract agent, which is what I am. Dick, like Kate, worked the TWA case as a witness interviewer.

The FBI started this joint task force back in 1980 as a response to bombings in New York City by the Puerto Rican group called the FALN as well as bombings by the Black Liberation Army. The world has changed, and now probably ninety percent of the Anti-Terrorist Task Force is involved with Mideast terrorism. That’s where the action is, and that’s where I am, and where Kate is. I had a great second career ahead of me if I lived long enough.

The way this joint task force works is that the FBI is able to tap into the manpower of the NYPD, getting retired and active-duty cops to do a lot of the legwork, surveillance, and routine stuff for the FBI so that their overpaid and over-educated agents could be free to do really clever stuff.

The mixing of these two very different cultures did not work well at first, but over the years a sort of working relationship has developed. I mean, look, Kate and I fell in love and got married. We’re the poster couple for the ATTF.

Point is, when the Feds let the cops in the house to do manual labor, the cops got access to lots of information that used to be shared only among the FBI people. Ergo, Dick Kearns, my brother in blue, would be willing to give me more information than my FBI wife.

And why, one might ask, would I want that information? Certainly I didn’t think I was going to solve the mystery of what happened to TWA Flight 800. Half a thousand men and women had worked on the case for years, the case was five years old, it was closed, and the official conclusion actually seemed the most logical: a loose or frayed electrical wire in a fuel indicator, located in the center fuel tank, sparked and ignited jet fuel vapors that blew the tank and destroyed the aircraft. All the forensic evidence pointed to this conclusion.

Almost all.

And then there was that streak of light seen by too many people.

We crossed a short bridge that connected the mainland of Long Island to Fire Island, a long barrier island that had a reputation of attracting an interesting summer crowd.

The road led into Smith Point County Park, an area of scrub pine and oak, grassy sand dunes, and maybe some wildlife, which I don’t like. I’m a city boy.

We came to where the bridge road intersected with a beach road that ran parallel to the ocean. Nearby, in a sandy field, was a big tent whose side flaps were open to the sea breeze. A few hundred people were gathered in and around the tent.

I turned toward a small parking lot, which was completely filled with official-looking cars. I continued on in four-wheel drive down a sand road and made myself a parking space by crushing a pathetic scrub pine.

Kate said, “You ran over that tree.”

“What tree?” I put my “Official Police Business” placard in the windshield, got out, and we walked back toward the parking area. The parked cars were either chauffeur-driven or had some sort of “Official Business” placards in their windshields.

We continued on toward the open tent, which was silhouetted against the ocean.

Kate and I were wearing khakis and a knit shirt, and as per Kate, I wore good walking shoes. As we walked toward the tent, Kate said, “We may run into a few other agents who worked the case.”

Criminals may or may not return to the scene of their crime, but I know for a fact that cops often return to the scenes of their unsolved cases. Sometimes obsessively. But this wasn’t a criminal case, as I had to remind myself; it was a tragic accident.

The sun was low on the southwestern horizon, the sky was clear, and a cool breeze blew in from the ocean. Nature’s okay sometimes.

We walked to the open tent where about three hundred people were gathered. I’ve been to too many memorial services and funerals in my professional life, and I don’t volunteer to go to ones that I don’t have to go to. But here I was.

Kate said, “Most of the family members wear photos of their loved ones who died. But even if they didn’t, you’d know who they were.” She took my hand, and we walked toward the tent. She said, “They’re not here to find closure. There is no closure. They’re here to support and comfort one another. To share their loss.”

Someone handed us a program. There were no chairs left so we stood alongside the tent on the side that opened to the ocean.

Just about opposite this spot, maybe eight miles out, a giant airliner had exploded and fallen into the sea. Aircraft debris and personal effects washed ashore on that beach for weeks afterward. Some people said that body parts also washed up, but that was never reported by the news media.

I recalled thinking at the time that this was the first American aircraft to be destroyed by enemy action within the United States. And also that this was the second foreign-directed terrorist attack on American soil-the first being the bombing of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in February 1993.

And then, as the days, weeks, and months passed, another explanation for the crash began to gain more credibility: mechanical failure.

No one believed it and everyone believed it. I believed it and I didn’t believe it.

I looked out at the horizon and tried to imagine what it was that so many people saw streaking toward the aircraft just before it exploded. I have no idea what they saw, but I know they were told they didn’t see anything.

It was too bad, I thought, that no one had captured that brief moment on film.