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.”
BOOK TWO
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 72ndStreet, 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.”
