Chris came through as we were getting into the car. He had been able to arrange a meeting for us at another office, on the other side of the Potomac.
A little after eleven thirty, Emily and I walked through the south parking lot entrance of the Pentagon. Two checkpoints, three massive endless corridors, and an elevator ride later, Air Force Colonel Kristin Payton greeted us by her secretary’s desk.
Payton was an outdoorsy-looking woman of about forty-five, pale and raw-boned, with short blond hair. Unlike Chris Milne’s office, hers was anything but austere. It had a thick Air Force-blue carpet, a beast of a cherrywood desk, and a comfortable-looking worn leather couch beneath a big double window. A framed article on one of her office’s wood-paneled walls revealed that she was one of the first female pilots to fly an A-10 Warthog in combat.
“Mr. Milne has briefed me on what you found up in New York, Detective,” Colonel Payton said as she sat us down before her desk. “He also referenced the sensitivity due to the intelligence concerns. Just for the sake of argument, what would you be looking for?”
“Well, I guess finding out how Eardley was designated KIA would be a start. Were there any remains found in the crash?”
“Just off the top of my head, I would say no,” Colonel Payton said, folding her hands on her desktop. “Usually the crash of an aircraft as huge as a C-130 will completely obliterate any human remains. If there was an additional fuel fire, which I would assume there was, it would have been even more impossible to recover anything at all. But in all honesty, I don’t know. We can’t know until we receive and read the AFSC report.”
“AFSC?”
“That’s Air Force Safety Center, at Kirtland in New Mexico,” the colonel said. “It’s like the military version of National Transportation Safety. They have to do a report on any and all military aviation incidents.”
There was a buzzing sound.
Payton drew a phone from one of her uniform pockets and stood. “Excuse me, please, would you?” she said, and left the room. Emily and I shared a look.
Payton was gone for about three minutes before she hurried back in with a strange, worried look on her taut face. She wiped it off with a deep breath.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I’m going to have to cancel this meeting. I do not have the authorization to discuss this classified matter with you any further.”
“Wait, just like that? Are you kidding, Colonel?” I said.
“No, Detective,” she said, giving me a blank, obtuse look. “Do I come across as kidding?”
I took Luke Messerly’s card out of my pocket and slid it across her bigwig executive desk.
“Recognize the type there, Colonel? Take a good, hard look at it. Because your name is about to be emblazoned on the front page of the paper that made it famous. I’m not an ancient alien theorist asking for a pass to Roswell, ma’am. I’m an NYPD homicide cop working a homicide. You’re the face of an organization that has just goofed up big-time. ‘That’s classified’ isn’t going to cut it. You guys need to get in front of this.”
“Detective,” she said with a stiff smile. “There are channels for this kind of thing that we have to abide by. Your request has been made. First, it has to be reviewed, and the information declassified after due process. Or feel free to try to get approval from the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Otherwise, I can’t help you. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
I looked at Emily. She seemed as pissed as I was. I couldn’t believe this bull.
“One last question, Colonel. Do your superiors wind you up in the morning, or—like with drones—do they use WiFi control nowadays?” I said.
“Now, is that necessary, Detective? Please leave now or I’ll have you escorted.”
“Eardley was murdered,?
?? Emily said. “A pilot, a fellow airman, murdered. Thrown off a roof! You don’t care about that, Colonel?”
“Of course I care,” Payton said, maintaining a blank expression that said the exact opposite. “It’s sad. I know lots of pilots, lots of dead ones, too. They get killed in combat. They commit suicide. Some of them get drunk and fall off buildings up in New York City after they go AWOL. Make sure to hand your security passes back when you get to the downstairs desk.”
Chapter 15
“Well, we gave it a shot, at least. That’s what really counts, right?” Emily said with mock cheeriness on the ride back to Union Station.
Even after she stopped the fed car, I sat there saying nothing. I looked out at the columned facade of the station, the people walking back and forth. When I spotted the wedding-cake white of the hovering Capitol dome off to the right, I felt like punching the dashboard.
“Washington is really something,” I said. “It’s one thing to not be able to find out something, quite another to be told it’s being hidden from you on purpose—and don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”
“It’s a disgrace,” Emily said. “Did you contact Eardley’s family yet?”
“No,” I said. “That’s one of the main reasons I came down here. Silly me. I thought I might find out what the hell happened so I’d have something to tell them. Imagine? Now I have to call this guy’s mother and say, ‘Good news, ma’am. Your son didn’t die in a crash in ’07, but, bad news, he died falling off a building last week. And no one in the military cares why.’”
“What really drives me crazy,” Emily said, “is how stupid this is. The truth will come out eventually. These idiots can’t see that?”