“What time was the call?” Addison asked.
“I don’t know. Late morning. Around eleven maybe.”
He paused as he wrote, assembling the facts on a yellow sheet of paper. Finally, he studied her again. “Tell me about your accident,” he said.
Erin shrugged, but a look of pain—or guilt—returned to her eyes. She dropped to her knees, then sat back on her heels. She tore out a blade of grass and folded it into tiny sections. “It was nothing, really. A fender bender on the way to the airport. It was raining that night, and I slammed on the brakes, and my car slid. I hit my head, so they wouldn’t let me fly.”
“Concussion?”
“Just a slight one.” Erin rubbed her head, the spot where the bruise had stopped being tender over a week ago. “I tried to talk them out of grounding me, but Frank insisted. He replaced me.” She pulled a deep breath and looked him directly in the eye. “You know, I was supposed to fly that night. We alternated, Mick and I. I would fly one leg of the trip, he’d fly the next. If I’d been there, I would have been flying instead of him.”
The concerned frown between his brows bespoke genuine concern. “You were lucky to have had that accident,” he said.
Erin regarded him blankly, as though the word lucky was beyond comprehension. Had it been luck? Not for a moment since Mick’s death had she felt a sense of relief that it hadn’t been her. Instead, she felt as if she’d left something unfinished. There was a hole someplace where she should have been, and it didn’t feel right not filling it.
“You flew with Hammon for five years,” Addison said, as she looked out over the water with vacant eyes. “In that time, did you ever see his performance under stress? Any emergency situations or problems in the cockpit?”
A hard, protective glaze drained all emotion from her expression. “You have his records. Read them.”
“Everything in his career won’t appear on those records. I’m looking for other things. Things that may not have been reported. Things that maybe only you would know about.”
Erin shook her head balefully, and her barely audible laugh held more anger than mirth. “If you’re expecting me to provide you with smutty details about Mick’s past mistakes, then you’ve got a big surprise ahead of you.”
“I don’t want smutty details. I want facts. If you don’t answer me, you’ll have to answer—”
“I know, I know. A board of your superiors. But you know as well as I do that I’m not going to help anyone—no matter how powerful—nail my friend. If you or your superiors want to know about Mick’s past performance, then read his records.”
“Why are you so defensive about him?”
She looked up at him, her eyes alive again. “Because I know his family. I knew him. And I know how easy it would be for you to take some past foul-up in-flight and his reaction to it, and turn the information into so-called indisputable evidence to support whatever you want it to.”
Addison stared at her for a moment, as if amazed at her suspicious reasoning. Erin felt his eyes probing deeply into her, seeing things she wanted buried. “Then there were incidents?” he asked.
“You’re a smart man, Mr. Lowe. You must know that occasionally things go wrong. Weather, instrument failures, communication problems, illnesses on board. Mick handled those things with as much finesse as you could ever imagine. And you won’t get more than that from me.”
“Erin, I’m not trying to ‘nail’ him. I’m simply trying to determine if there’s anything to indicate that he could have functioned in a real emergency. Your information could have a positive effect on the investigation. Why do you assume I’m looking for something negative?”
“It will have whatever effect you want it to,” she said, clipping each word. “The man was an ex-fighter pilot in the Air Force. He flew in Vietnam. He was a colonel when he retired from the service. That fact alone should prove that he could function under stress.”
Addison set his clipboard down and rubbed his forehead. “All right. Here’s an easy one. Tell me about Mick’s temperament. His personality. Will you answer that?”
A soft smile crept across her lips. “Yes, I’ll answer that. He was funny. Always laughing, cracking corny jokes. He said he liked flying with me because I always appreciated the punch line.”
Addison smiled weakly.
Erin stared into the distance. “Mick was the kind of person that you could turn to, you know? With a secret or a dream or just an observation. He never made fun of me. And he loved to fly. More than just about anything.” She looked at Addison, a thought occurring to her for the first time. “Are you a pilot, Mr. Lowe?”
“Yes,” he said. “I flew for an airline for six years before I came to work for the NTSB ten years ago.”
“Then you know what I mean.”
There was awe in the tone of her voice, and he heard the desire just behind the fear. “I know that feeling,” he said. “But I wonder if you still do.”
“Of course I do.” She tore out another blade of grass, vaguely aware that he watched her tear it into pieces.
He lowered his voice cautiously. “Then what was that all about last night in Redlo’s office? You tried to resign. Said you never wanted to fly again.”
Erin felt her lungs constricting again, but common sense told her not to address the subject with total frankness. Addison might not be as understanding as Frank was. And what if Frank was right and she could work through her fear…overcome it somehow? As much as she wanted to escape flying again, she didn’t want to throw away the option. “I was upset,” she said. “I’m having a little trouble getting my confidence back. I keep thinking of the crash.” She dropped the blades of grass and dusted off her hands. “It’s the uncertainty that’s driving me crazy. The not knowing what went wrong. If I just knew. If I could figure it out, I feel like I could get a grip on it.”
Addison looked down at her hands. She was shaking. “Are you going to get help?” His question was asked so quietly that she almost didn’t hear over the sound of the water.
“You mean by seeing a psychologist?” she asked, sounding vulnerable for only a moment before her voice took on a hard edge. “I plan to, even though I’m not sure it’ll do any good. I know where my fears come from, and they’re well-founded. I can really work through this on my own.”
“Can you? It seems pretty serious to me.”
“But then, you don’t know me that well.”
“True.”
They stared at each other in truce for a moment, each measuring the other’s ability: hers to confront her ghosts, his to know the truth when he heard it.
He rubbed at the lines webbing out from his eyes, apparently struggling with the words he wanted to say. “What if I told you that I’d had someone close to me who was killed in a plane crash and that I’d suffered similar anxieties? That I feel so strongly about my job because of my own loss? If I told you that, would you stop looking at me like the enemy and see that I really am on your side?”
Erin appraised him from behind her self-erected barriers, testing his expression for a sign of authenticity. It was there, in the softness of his eyes. “How long ago?” she asked quietly.
“Four years, to be exact,” he said, and the pain that flitted through his eyes testified on a deeper level that he, indeed, knew what she suffered. “And I’ll tell you something. You don’t ever forget. Ever.”
Erin dropped her gaze back to the grass. “Does the fear go away?” she asked quietly.
“Yes,” he whispered. “It did for me, but it took a lot of faith and relying on God. The Bible says, ‘Perfect love drives out fear.’”
“First John 4:18,” Erin said softly. “I’ve been using that verse like a mantra.”
“You’re a Christian?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Not that I’ve done much relying on God lately. I guess I’ve been wallowing in all the emotions. It’s hard to pray when you’re grieving.”
“I know. That’s when you need oth
ers to pray for you.”
“I have that. My roommates are in close touch with the Lord.”
“Good. Then give it some time, Erin. God will drive out the fear.”
Erin looked at the sky, breathed a great, deep sigh, then brought her gaze back to his. “I hope so,” she whispered. “I really hope so.”
Chapter Four
The ride home was quiet, tense, and Addison rebuked himself for not being able to make her smile. She was traveling through her own personal vortex, and it was his job to make sure she dwelt there until he’d gotten the answers he needed. She was right. NTSB policy stank. The whole thing stank, he admitted, and not for the first time. Why hadn’t he met her under different circumstances where he could turn on the charm and ask her to dinner? Why did this pall of death and despair have to hang over them now?
He glanced over at her, leaning against the car door, and saw that her cheeks were colored pale pink from the sun. What do you think about when life is normal? he wanted to ask. Who do you see? Where do you go?
But the defensiveness in her hunched posture told him he would get nowhere with her. She saw him as the enemy, and for all practical purposes, he probably was. He leaned forward and flicked on the radio, set the dial to a station with a relaxing tune, and sat back, hoping to see the tension drain out of her. But it didn’t seem to affect her at all.
She raised her elbow to the window and gazed off into the distance. The song on the radio finished, and the local news came on. He reached for the dial to turn to another station, find another song that might do a better job of soothing both their tensions, but stopped when he heard the name “Mick Hammon” spoken by a deep-voiced announcer.
Immediately, Erin perked up and turned her full attention to the radio.
“…Officials are expected to complete the flight report soon, citing evidence of pilot error in the crash that killed 151 people…”
Erin’s eyes flashed accusingly to Addison’s, and he shook his head. “They’re grasping, Erin. I didn’t tell them that. I wouldn’t tell them anything, so they’re making things up.”
Her lips tightened into a thin line, and he knew the sting of her angry eyes again. “You can stop it. You can tell them it wasn’t pilot error and that the cause is still undetermined. It is, isn’t it? Because in this country, a man is innocent until proven guilty.”
Addison pulled into her driveway, cut off the engine, and laid his head back on his seat. “Erin, this isn’t a question of guilt or innocence. Even if it was Hammon’s fault, no one’s condemning him. It’s a question of human error. Human beings make mistakes. That’s no crime.”
“Yeah? Well, tell that to the kids at Jason Hammon’s school…the ones who are calling his father a killer and spreading malicious rumors about how he was addicted to drugs and how he was hallucinating when he drove the plane into the ground. Tell them about human error and see if it stops the rumors or gives Jason any peace.”
“Drugs? No one ever said he was on drugs!”
“No one has to say anything for a rumor to start. All they have to know is that it was pilot error, and imaginations go into full gear manufacturing reasons.”
“I can’t do anything about the cruelty of kids, Erin. You can’t blame me for that.”
“Kids?” Erin laughed caustically and leaned closer to make her point. “It isn’t just kids. It’s adults, too. If you’d spoken to Maureen, you might know that she’s been getting calls from anonymous people who say they’re family members of those who died in the crash. They’re calling her husband a murderer and saying that he killed people they love. And why? Because of your belief that it was pilot error. Think about it. What does that mean? That he was drunk? That he fell asleep? That he forgot how to fly? If you say it was pilot error, then for every hundred people out there you’ll find a hundred different, ready-made reasons. None of them will be accurate, and none of them will be kind. Does that matter to you at all, Mr. Lowe?”
He looked out the window, feeling his own defenses rising up. “Of course it matters. I’m sorry for Mrs. Hammon, and I’m especially sorry for her son. But where does that leave me? I still have to find the truth, and I still have to report it. If I altered my report, a lot more people than those two could be hurt. Another pilot in similar circumstances could make the same mistake, and another crash could occur. I’d have to live with that. I’d sure rather live with telling the truth and hurting two people, than shirk my job and hurt hundreds more.”
Disbelief colored Erin’s eyes. “It’s black or white to you, isn’t it?”
“No,” he said, turning his head back to her again. “There are grays, too. But you aren’t too anxious to help me find those gray areas, the ones that could change my mind. Until you’re willing to give me honest answers about his past performance, you have to accept a little of the blame for the speculation.”
Erin’s face stung, and she swung open the car door. “I think we’ve said enough for one day, Mr. Lowe. You’ll understand if I don’t invite you in.”
Addison only watched, embracing his own anger, as she slammed the car door and bolted up the steps to her front door.
Tears charged to Erin’s eyes when she was safely inside the house. Rage choked her, and a whirlwind of guilt and regret blew through her heart. When would this be over?
She stumbled to the couch, collapsed onto it, and covered her hot face with her hands. Addison was right. Some of the responsibility was hers. But how could she tell him everything, only to allow him to come to the wrong stupid conclusions?
She wiped her face and tried to think rationally. Would anything she said really make him draw negative conclusions about Mick?
She thought of the time their radar had indicated another flight was coming toward them, although the tower couldn’t locate it. The controller had ordered him to stay on his flight path, but Mick had defied him. He had avoided a midair collision with a private jet by bucking orders. The episode hadn’t gone on the record simply because the controller didn’t want to call attention to his own mistake.
There were countless other incidents, some on record, some not. Missed approaches in bad weather, when minimum visibility requirements just weren’t good enough. Safety precautions that bordered on the rebellious. And she was certain Addison had read about Mick’s stubbornness the time he’d practically thrown two Federal Aviation Administration inspectors off the plane when they’d tried to ground his flight because one attendant hadn’t posted the latest pay incentive update in her manual. Mick had a fiery temper, that was no secret, and he operated more on his instincts than from any flight manual. That alone could indict him. But he was the best pilot she’d ever flown with, and she would have trusted him with her life.
She wouldn’t take the chance of delving into each one of those situations with Addison, only to allow him to misinterpret them, or to overlook the truth because Mick’s character traits made him seem unreliable.
She went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, hoping it could snap her out of this state she was in. But even as the cold drops of water ran down her face, she felt her life falling apart.
The telephone rang, the harsh sound cutting through the quiet and lacerating Erin’s nerves. She ignored it for the moment and brought a towel to her face, wiping away the water. Pale gold eyes sought out their twin reflections, searching for the peace that would settle the turmoil in her heart. The phone kept ringing until the answering machine picked it up.
“Erin?” The familiar voice broke into Erin’s gloomy thoughts. “This is Lois. Just calling to see how you’re doing…”
Erin ran to her bedroom and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Erin?” Lois asked again, hesitation and worry packed into the single word.
Erin sighed in relief. She needed Lois now, and her presence by phone was better than the chilling silence that surrounded her in the big house. “Hi.”
“Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Erin lied
. “Where are you?”
“Pittsburgh. I had a couple of hours between flights. I’ve been worried about you, Erin.”
Erin pulled her feet onto the bed and leaned back on the headboard, closing her eyes. The warmth of having someone care filled her. “So you decided to check on your lunatic friend to see if she’s still holding herself together?”
“Okay,” Lois said, undaunted. “If that’s how you want to look at it. But I could tell you were pretty upset last night, and when you’re upset, I’m upset.”
Erin smiled sadly. Either Madeline or Lois would easily take her burden if they could, even share a few tears. But Erin couldn’t transfer the weight. “I know, Lois. But I’ll get through this, really. You’d be proud of me. I even went out for breakfast this morning and drove over to the lake.” There, she thought. That should make Lois feel better.
“You did?” Lois asked, a hint of surprise in her voice. “Really?”
“Yes, I just got back, and—”
“Wait a minute,” Lois cut in. “Are you being straight with me? I know you, Erin. You were upset. I’m having trouble picturing you doing either of those things alone, unless you were planning to throw yourself over a bridge or choke on your eggs, and frankly, you aren’t the suicidal type.”
Erin sighed and dropped her face in her hand. What was the point of skirting the truth when she wanted more than anything to talk about it? “All right,” she whispered. “I didn’t go because I wanted to, and I didn’t go alone. I was with the NTSB investigator who’s trying to pin the crash on Mick. He’s trying to get me to help him do it, and he threatened to subpoena me if I didn’t talk to him.”
“So you did?”
“I talked to him, but I drew the line on certain things. He might still have me subpoenaed.”
“Oh, Erin…” Lois’s voice trailed off in sympathetic despair. “It just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn’t it?”