Sole Survivor

sweet. He loved his job because he believed what he did would save lives, help to prevent other crashes. I hate these people, whoever they are.”
        Among the white pines at the foot of the meadow, near where Joe and Barbara had first entered the clearing, something moved: a shadow gliding through deeper shadows, dun against purple.
        Joe held his breath. He squinted but could not identify what he had briefly glimpsed.
        Barbara said, “I think it was just a deer.”
        “If it wasn't?”
        “Then we're dead whether we finish this talk or not,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone that revealed the bleak and paranoid new world order in which she lived following Flight 353.
        He said, “The fact that your tape was erased-didn't that raise anyone's suspicions?”
        “The consensus was that I'd been tired. Three hours' sleep the night of the crash-then only a few hours the next night before Minh called and woke me. Poor bleary-eyed Barbara. I'd sat listening to the tape over and over, over and over, and at the end I must have pressed the wrong button-you know?-and erased it without realizing what I'd done.” Her face twisted with sarcasm. “You can see how it must have happened.”
        “Any chance of that?”
        “None whatsoever.”
        Though Joe unfolded the three sheets of paper, he didn't yet begin to read them.
        He said, “Why didn't they believe you when you told them what you'd heard on the tape? They were your colleagues. They knew you to be a responsible person.”
        “Maybe some of them did believe it-and didn't want to. Maybe some of them just chalked it up to my fatigue. I'd been fighting an ear infection for weeks, and it had worn me down even before Pueblo. Maybe they took that into account. I don't know. And there's one or two who just plain don't like me. Who among us is universally loved? Not me. Too pushy. Too opinionated. Anyway, it was all moot-because without a tape, there was no proof of the exchanges between Blanc and Santorelli.”
        “When did you finally tell someone you'd made a transcript word for word?”
        “I was saving that. I was trying to figure the right moment, the right context in which to mention it-preferably once the investigation turned up some detail that would support what I said had been on the tape.”
        “Because by itself your transcript isn't real proof.”
        “Exactly. Sure, it's better than nothing, better than memory alone, but I needed to augment it with something. Then those two creeps woke me in the hotel in San Francisco, and after that… Well, I just wasn't much of a crusader any more.”
        Out of the eastern forest, two deer leaped in tandem into the bottom of the meadow, a buck and a doe. They raced across the corner of the clearing, quickly disappearing into the trees on the northern perimeter.
        Under the skin on the back of Joe's neck, ticks of apprehension still burrowed and twitched.
        The movement he had glimpsed earlier must have been the two deer. From their volatile entrance into the meadow, however, he inferred that they had been flushed from the trees by something-or someone-that had frightened them.
        He wondered if any corner of the world would ever feel safe to him again. But he knew the answer even as the question passed through his mind: no.
        No corner. Not anywhere.
        Not ever.
        He said, “Who do you suspect-inside the Safety Board? Who did Minh call next after you? Because that person is probably the one who told him not to pass the word any further-and then arranged to have him killed and the evidence burned.”
        “It could have been any of them he was intending to call. They were all his superiors, and he would have obeyed their instructions. I'd like to think it can't be Bruce Laceroth, because he's a bedrock guy. He started out a grunt like the rest of us did, worked his way up. The five board members, on the other hand, are presidential appointees, approved by the senate for five-year terms.”
        “Political hacks.”
        “No, actually, the great majority of the board members over the years have been straight-shooters, trying to do their best. Most of them are a credit to the agency, and others we just endure. Once in a while, yeah, one of them is slime in a suit.”
        “What about the current Chairman and Vice Chairman? You said Minh Tran was going to call them-supposing he