“What do you mean?”
“When you left the Bayview Hotel, you pulled over to the side of the road, and Bud destroyed the tape by running over it, then burning the tape.”
She shook her head. “No. He erased it back in the hotel room.” She added, “That’s what I told the FBI, and that’s what Bud told them. No one said anything about destroying the tape.”
Well, someone did. Mr. Nash, to be more specific. I asked her, “Did the FBI ask you or Bud for this erased tape?”
“Yes. They asked me, and I gave it to them.” She looked at me and said, “I learned afterward that a magnetic videotape that has been erased can be . . . the images can be retrieved in some way . . . I don’t know if they were able to do that . . . I mean, they probably didn’t, because if they did, they’d be able to see what Bud and I saw . . . and they would have come to another conclusion . . .” She looked at me. “Do you know if they were able to restore the tape?”
“No, I don’t.” In fact, I did know. There was no doubt that the FBI lab could pull up the images on a magnetic tape that someone thought was erased for all time, assuming nothing else had been recorded over it. I asked her, “Was the tape blank when you gave it to them?”
She nodded. “It was still in the video camera. When they came here, it was one of the first things they asked me about. I went into the family room, got the video camera, and brought it out to them. They were sitting at this table.”
“I see. And they questioned you, and you told them what?”
“I told them the truth. About what Bud and I had seen. They’d already spoken to Bud, but I didn’t know what he’d said to them because they told him not to contact me and not to take my calls.” She added with a rueful smile, “And he didn’t, the wimp. The FBI showed up here on the Monday after the crash and said they wanted to question me, and my story had better not be different from his. Well, it turns out he lied about a few things, including the fact that we’d had sex on the beach—he said we were just walking and talking—but I told the truth, from beginning to end.”
“And they promised you that if you told the truth, your husband would never know?”
“They did.”
I asked, “And did they return for another visit?”
“Yes. They asked more questions, as though they knew more about what was on the tape. In fact, I asked them if the tape had been totally erased, and they said yes, it had been, and that I had committed a crime by destroying evidence.” She added, “I was terrified . . . I was crying . . . I didn’t know who to turn to. Bud wasn’t taking my calls, I couldn’t talk to my husband . . . I thought about calling my lawyer, but they had warned me not to call my lawyer if I wanted to keep this quiet. I was totally at their mercy.”
I said to her, “The truth shall set you free.”
She sobbed and laughed at the same time and said, “The truth will get me divorced with the worst prenuptial agreement ever signed in New York State.” She looked at me and said, “And I have two sons who were eight and ten at that time.” She asked me, “Are you married?”
I held up my hand with my wedding ring.
“Do you have children?”
“Not that I know of.”
She smiled and dried her eyes again with the shredded tissue. She said, “It’s very complicated with children.”
“I understand.” I asked her, “Did they ask you to submit to a polygraph?”
She replied, “On their first visit, they asked if I would, and I said yes, I’m telling the whole truth. They said they’d bring a polygraph tester here the next time. But when they returned, there was no polygraph. I asked them about it, but they said it wasn’t necessary.”
I nodded. It wasn’t necessary because by this time, they’d restored the tape, and everything they wanted to know was on that tape. What they didn’t want were signed statements by Jill Winslow or Bud, or taped interviews, or a polygraph test—all of which might come to light later if Mrs. Winslow or Bud came forward, or were found by someone else—like me.
In effect, Nash, Griffith, and whoever were not trying to discover credible evidence of a missile strike on TWA 800; they were trying to suppress and destroy the evidence, which is what they accused Jill Winslow of doing.
I asked Mrs. Winslow, “Did these gentlemen from the FBI swear you to silence?”
She nodded.
“But after the official conclusion was announced—that it was an accident—didn’t you wonder why your eyewitness statement and Bud’s wasn’t taken into account?”
“I did . . . but then this man, Nash, called, and we met here again, and he explained that without the videotape, my statements and Bud’s had no more importance than the hundreds of other eyewitness statements.” She took a deep breath and said, “Nash told me I should consider myself lucky, and get on with my life, and never think about this again.”
“But that didn’t happen.”
“No, it didn’t . . . I still see the rocket . . .”
“And you saw that CIA animation of the accident?”
“I did. It was completely wrong.”
“It would have been nice to have your tape.”
She didn’t reply.
We sat there awhile in silence. She stood, got a tissue from the counter, and blew her nose. She opened the refrigerator and asked me, “Would you like some bottled water?”
“No, thanks, I don’t drink pure water.”
She took a bottle of water and poured it into a glass. Real lady.
I digested what she’d said so far, and it distilled down to a few key facts: Bud had not physically destroyed the tape; the FBI and CIA had undoubtedly restored the erased tape and seen what two hundred eyewitnesses had said they’d seen—a rising streak of light.
Therefore, what? I had only two words to describe it: conspiracy and cover-up.
But why? There were a lot of reasons why. But I wasn’t going to try to fathom how people in Washington thought, what their secret agendas were, what their motives were, and what they gained by a cover-up. I was certain they had good security reasons for covering up what could be friendly fire, an experimental weapon, or a terrorist attack—but I was also certain that those reasons were wrong.
Jill Winslow looked exhausted, sad, and troubled, as though something was on her mind. I thought I knew what was on her mind, and I wanted to help her get it off her mind.
Still standing, she asked me, “Are you going to see Bud today?”
“Today or tomorrow.”
She smiled and said, “He’s part of a foursome with my husband today.”
“Are they friends?”
“Social acquaintances.” She sat down with her glass of water, crossed her legs, and said, “Cheating on your husband is bad enough, but if Mark ever found out it was with Bud, he’d feel like a complete fool.”
“Why?”
“Mark thinks Bud is a fool. For once, Mark is right. Mark once said to me, ‘Jill, if you ever cheat on me, at least pick someone who you won’t be embarrassed by if it became public.’ I should have listened.”
I thought about that advice, and I agreed. I mean, you don’t want to be caught having an affair with someone who everyone else thinks is a loser or a geek, or who’s ugly and a few pounds overweight. I asked Jill Winslow, “Is he good-looking?”
“Yes. But that’s about it. It was all physical.” She smiled. “I’m so shallow.”
It actually wasn’t all physical—it had a lot to do with Mark Winslow, and Jill Winslow’s need to be less than a perfect wife, even if Mark didn’t know it. But I didn’t reply. As the expression goes, “You can’t feel sorry for a rich girl drinking champagne on a yacht.” But in a way, I felt sorry for Jill Winslow.
As for Bud, I could assume he was a member of the same country club as the Winslows, and it would take me about ten minutes to go to the club and ask about Bud. But I didn’t think I needed Bud. What I wanted was here.
She asked me, “Is there anything else?”
I replied, “That’s about it . . . except for a few details about your time in the hotel room when you came back from the beach. You watched the videotape. Take me through that.”
“Well . . . we watched it . . . we fast-forwarded through the part where we were in the dunes on the beach blanket . . . and began as we ran down to the beach . . . then we played this part from the time we were making love on the beach until the time when we saw the streak of light . . . we rewound that and played it in slow motion . . . you could see this glow on the horizon . . . then this light rising into the air . . . in slow motion, you can see the smoke trail, and we realized we could also see the blinking lights of the aircraft that was about to . . .”
“How long did the tape run?”
“The part on the beach ran for about fifteen minutes, from us walking down to the beach to when Bud ran back and grabbed the camera. Then about five minutes of darkness when the camera sat in the rear seat, and you could hear us talking.”
“Okay. And the part on the beach blanket when you first started recording?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe fifteen minutes. I didn’t even want to see that. There was no reason to see it.”
“Right. So you ran the tape, paused, rewound, ran it in slow motion, and so forth?”
“Yes. It was . . . unbelievable.”
“Hypnotic. Mesmerizing.”
“Yes.”
“What did you do after you finished with the tape?”
“Bud erased it.”
“Just like that? You said you didn’t want to erase it.”
“I didn’t . . . we argued, but . . . he wanted to erase it. He also wanted to get out of the room in case someone had seen us coming from the beach. I didn’t think this was possible, but he wanted to leave and go home. Our cell phones were starting to ring now because people were seeing this on TV, and people who knew we were out there were trying to contact us, but we weren’t taking any calls. Then Bud went into the bathroom to call his wife—he was supposed to be fishing with friends.”
I commented, “Maybe he sloshed water in the bathtub and yelled, ‘Make for shore, me hearties.’”
She smiled and said, “He’s not that clever. But he was paranoid.”
I said, “It’s not paranoid to cover your butt.”
She shrugged and said, “At that point, I thought we’d be found out one way or the other. It was a bad piece of luck that we both were out east with cover stories when this happened. Mark called my cell phone once, but I didn’t answer. When I got in my car and started driving home, I played his message, which said, ‘Jill, did you hear about the airplane crash out there? Give me a call.’ I called my girlfriend first, who I was supposed to be with in East Hampton, and she hadn’t heard from him. So, I called Mark back and told him I was upset and I was coming home.” She smiled and said, “It wasn’t even a close call.”
I said, “If I may indulge myself in some amateur psychology—you’d like to get caught. Or, at the least, you don’t care about the consequences.”
“Of course I do.”
“I speak from some experience when I say that getting caught is easier than breaking up. The results are the same, but getting caught only takes a subconscious desire, while breaking up takes a lot of courage.”
She reverted to her lady-of-the-manor tone and asked curtly, “What does this have to do with why you’re here?”
“Maybe everything.”
She glanced at the wall clock and said, “I should get ready for church.”
“You have time. Let me ask you this—after you and Bud watched the videotape, I assume you showered before you went home?” I added, “You had sand and salt on you.” Not to mention bodily fluids.
“We did shower.”
“And he showered first?”
“I . . . I think so.”
“And you watched the tape again while he was showering?”
“I think so . . . it’s been five years. Why?”
I think she knew why I was asking, so I asked her a setup question, “That afternoon, what did you do from the time you checked in at four-thirty P.M. until you drove to the beach at seven P.M.?”
She replied, “We watched TV.”
“What did you watch?”
“I don’t remember.”
I looked at her and said, “Mrs. Winslow, you haven’t lied to me yet.”
She looked away from me, pretended to think, then said, “I remember. We watched a movie on TV.”
“A videotape?”
“Yes . . .”
“A Man and a Woman.”
She looked at me and didn’t reply.
I said, “You took it out of the hotel lending library.”
“Oh . . . yes . . .” She kept looking at me looking at her, then to break the silence, she said in a light tone of voice, “Very romantic. But I think Bud was bored.” She asked, “Have you ever seen it?”
“No. But I’d like to borrow yours, if I may.”
There was a long silence during which she stared down at the table, and I looked at her. She was obviously fighting an inner battle, and I let her fight it. This was one of those moments in life when everything turned on a single decision, and a few words. I’ve been here many times, with a witness or a homicide suspect, and they need to reach their own decision—which I’ve tried to make easier by all I’ve said up until that moment.
I knew what was going through her mind—divorce, disgrace, public humiliation, children, friends, family, maybe even Bud. And if she thought further into the future, she’d think about public testimony, lawyers, national media, and maybe even some danger.
She spoke, barely above a whisper, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I replied, “Mrs. Winslow, there are only two people in this world who know what I’m talking about. I’m one, you’re the other.”
She didn’t reply.
I picked up the Band-Aid wrapper and scooted it across the table at her. I said, “We found one of these in Room 203. Did you cut yourself?”
She didn’t reply.
“Or did you use the Band-Aid to cover the missing plastic tab on the library videotape? That’s how you recorded your videotape over A Man and a Woman. While Bud was in the shower.” I let a few seconds pass, then said, “Now, you can tell me that’s not true, but then I have to wonder why you kept that movie that you took out of the hotel library. Or, you can tell me that it’s true, that you did record your videotape over the movie, but later destroyed it. But that’s not what you did.”
Jill Winslow took a deep breath, and I could see tears running down her face. She looked at me and said, “I guess . . . I guess I should tell you the truth . . .”
“I already know the truth. But, yes, I’d like to hear it from you.”
“There’s really nothing to say.”
She stood, and I thought she was going to show me out, but instead she took a deep breath and asked, “Would you like to see the tape?”
I stood, and I could actually feel my heart speed up. I replied, “Yes, I’d like to see the tape.”
“All right . . . but . . . when you see it . . . I hope you understand why I couldn’t show it . . . or give it to anyone . . . I’ve thought about it . . . many times . . . I thought about it in July when I saw the memorial service on television . . . all those people . . . but does it matter how they died?”
“Yes, it does.”
She nodded, then said, “Maybe if I gave you this tape, you could continue to keep this quiet . . . is that possible?”
“I could tell you it’s possible, but it’s not. You know that, and I know that.”
Again, she nodded, stood motionless for a while, then looked at me and said, “Follow me.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Jill Winslow led me into a big family room in the rear of the house and said, “Have a seat there.”
I sat in a leather armchair facing a plasma TV screen. She said, “I’ll be righ
t back.”
She left the room, apparently to go to some secret hiding place. I should tell her that there are no secret hiding places in a house—I’ve never missed one in twenty years as a cop. But Mark Winslow was not a cop; he was a clueless husband. Or, as the old joke goes, “If you want to hide something from your husband, put it on the ironing board.”
I stood and walked around the sunlit room. There was a wall of framed photographs, and I saw their two sons, who were handsome, clean-cut young men. There were photos of family vacations from around the world, and a section of black-and-white photos of another generation standing in front of limousines, horses, and yachts, showing that the money went back a long way.
I studied a recent color photograph of Mark and Jill Winslow, taken at some black-tie affair, and you wouldn’t know they were a couple.
Mark Winslow was not a bad-looking guy, but he had so little presence, I was surprised that the camera even recorded his image.
On another wall were some stupid golf plaques, civic awards, business citations, and other evidence of Mr. Winslow’s many accomplishments.
The bookshelves held some popular fiction and mandatory classics, but mostly golf and business books. Interspersed with the books were golf trophies. I deduced that the man played golf. I noted there was no indication of any rugged pursuits such as deep-sea fishing, hunting, or military service. There was, however, a mahogany bar in the corner, and I could picture Mr. Winslow shaking up a few martinis so he could get blotto every night.
I mean, I didn’t dislike this guy—I didn’t even know him—and I don’t automatically dislike the rich. But I felt that if I met Mark Winslow, I would not ask him to have a beer with me and Dom Fanelli.
In any case, I think Jill Winslow had made her decision regarding Mark Winslow, and I hoped she hadn’t changed her mind while she was hunting for the videotape.
On a paneled wall was another trophy—an oil portrait of Jill, done maybe ten years ago. The artist had captured the big, watery brown eyes and the mouth, which looked both demure and sensuous, depending on how you wanted to interpret it, or what was on your mind.