I'm back, and I hope you enjoy this chapter. I'd love reviews!
He crossed his arms and rolled the chair away from the desk, putting a little distance between them.
"I haven't heard the tape itself." he said "None of us has"
"No, I know that"
"I can only tell you what I've been told by Robert."
Olivia nods
"You really want to know?"
"Yes." she said, although she didn't know, she couldn't be sure. How could she be sure she wanted to hear it until she's heard it?
He stood abruptly and walked to the window, his back to Olivia. He spoke briskly, in a businesslike manner, as though to strip the words of emotional content.
"The flight is normal until the last forty five minutes. James doesn't say what's wrong, only that he will be right back. They-the people who have heard the tape, assume he went into the bathroom" He turned to look in her direction, though not quite at her.
She nodded.
"Two minutes later, First Officer Roger Martin announces that he's having troubled with his headset. He asks to borrow those of Trevor Sullivan, the engineer. Sullivan hands Martin his own headset, and says, try these. Martin tries the engineer's headset, find's Sullivan's works just fine, and says to him, well it's not the plug, my headset must be bad."
"Roger Martin's headphone's are bad" Olivia said
"Yes. So Martin's gives Sullivan his headset back, and then Sullivan says, here, wait a minute, maybe O'Connell has a spare. Apparently, Sullivan unfastens his seatbelt and reaches over into Jame's flight bag. You know where the flight bags are stowed?"
"Besides the pilot's?"
"On the outside bulkhead beside each pilot, yes, and Sullivan must then pull out something from Jame's flight bag that he doesn't recognize. Because he says, what the hell?"
"It's something he didn't expect."
"It seems that way."
"Not headphones."
"We don't know."
"And then?"
"And then James enters the cockpit. Sullivan says, O'Connell is the a joke?"
Elliot paused. He leaned against the windowsill, half sitting.
"There may have been a scuffle here" Elliot says "I've heard conflicting reports from Robert. But there it was, it was quick. Because Sullivan almost says immediately, what the fuck?"
"And?"
"And then he says, Jesus Christ."
"Who says Jesus Christ?"
"Sullivan."
"And?"
"And that's all."
"No one says anything else?"
"The tape ends."
She tilted her head toward the ceiling, contemplating what the end of the tape meant.
"He had a bomb in his flight bag." she said quietly "An armed bomb. That's why they think suicide."
Elliot stood. He put his hands in his pockets.
"Even one phrase different" Elliot said "and the whole tape could mean something else. Even with the words exactly as I've just said, the tape doesn't necessarily mean anything. You know that. Robert talked about that."
"Do they know for sure that James was in the cockpit at the time?"
"They can hear the latch of the cockpit door opening and closing. After which Sullivan addresses him specifically."
"What I don't understand," she said "is how James could possibly have something that dangerous in his flight bag."
"Actually" Elliot said, "that's the easy part." He turned to look at the snow. "It's harmless, absolutely harmless, everyone does it."
"Does what?"
"A lot of international pilot's do it, almost every flight attendant Robert had know, usually it's jewelry, gold, silver, sometimes gems."
She wasn't sure she understood. She thought of the jewelry James had received over the years, a thin gold bracelet on an anniversary, a gold S chain for a birthday, and then a watch for Christmas one year.
" A hundred times in and out of an airport, the crew get to know the security people, so they chat about families and wave you through, it's a courtesy. A couple times, the security would let me through, just with my badge, one in fifty asked for an i.d. They almost never looked in my brief case."
Olivia shook her head. "I had no idea" she said "James never said."
"Some of the pilots, I guess, they keep it to themselves. I guess if what you're bringing in is a present, it spoils the gift if you're wife knows that you smuggled in past customs. I don't know."
She put her hands in the pockets of her jeans, her shoulders hunched.
"Why doesn't James say anything on the tape?" Olivia asked "If he didn't know it was a bomb, maybe he'd have been just as surprised as Sullivan. He'd have said something. He'd have said, what are you talking about? He'd have exclaimed or shouted."
"Not necessarily."
"James lied about his mother."
"So?" Elliot says
"He didn't sleep in the crew compartment." she said
"It's not enough"
"Someone put a bomb on the plane." she said
"If it was a bomb, someone put it there. I'll grant you that."
"And James must of have known about it." she said "It was his flight bag."
"I won't grant you that."
"You don't really believe that James did this, do you?" Olivia said, with frustration, her back to Elliot
"You wanted to know about the tape." he said "And so I told you."
She unfolded the fax that she'd tucked under her arm. There were nine or ten pages, a lot of names, beginning with James' most recent crew. She looked at the list, Paul Kennedy, Sal Paige, Christopher Halter. Occasionally, a face would come up, a man or woman that James had introduced her to, either at a party, or some convention. Most of them she didn't know, or a majority of them lived in England, having half the crew be internationals. In that way, she thought, the lift of a pilot was an odd one, an almost anti social profession. Members of the crew James had flown with might live fifty miles away or across the ocean.
And then, on a list dated nearly twelve years ago, James having flown with United then, recognized an unusual name that rose right up from the paper and traveled through her bones with a charge.
Muire O'Brien
Flight attendant.
Olivia spoke the name aloud
Muire O'Brien
She was pretty sure it was a woman's name, she wondered if it was an Irish name, if she was pronouncing it correctly. Olivia reached down in front of her and opened the large drawer of James' desk. The junk-mail envelope with the name penciled in the corner wasn't there, but she could see it just as penciled in a corner wasn't there, but she could see the typed name on the list she held in her hands. Muire 3:30.
Knowing instinctively that if she hesitated she'd be paralyzed with indecision, Olivia took the lottery ticket out of her pocket and laid it on James' desk. She lifted up the telephone and once again punched in the number written on it. A voice answered, the same as before.
"Hello" Olivia said quickly "Is Muire there?"
"Who?"
Olivia repeated the name.
"Oh, you mean Muire," the voice at the other end said, and Olivia heard the corrected pronunciation Meur-ah, with a bit of drumroll on the r. "No" the woman said
"Oh sorry" Olivia said, feeling a tremendous rush of relief. She wanted only to get off the phone now.
"Muire was here," the English voice said "but she's gone back to her own place. Are you a friend?"
Olivia couldn't answer her. She sat heavily in the chair.
"Who is this?" the woman in London asked
Olivia opened her mouth but couldn't say her name. She pressed the receiver to her chest.
M at A's, the lottery ticket in front of her read. Muire, 3:30, the junk envelope had read.
Elliot suddenly took the receiver from her and placed it back on it's cradle.
"What made you ask for Muire?" he asked quietly "You've gone white."
"Just a guess" she said
Who was the woman called Muire? And what was James' connection to her? Might he have spent his last phone call with her, or even meant to spend his last night with her? Had James been having an affair? The questions pushed against her chest, threatening to suffocate her. She thought about all the jokes people routinely made about airline pilots and flight attendants. She had always dismissed the jokes, as if no real pilot would be so obvious.
"Elliot? Can you find one more thing about a particular name?" she asks "Where one lives?"
"If you're sure it's what you want." he said
She, herself being a cop could do it herself, but she couldn't bring herself to it.
"This is hell." she said
"Then leave it alone."
She thought about the possibility of leaving it alone.
"Would you be able to?" she asked
She had only remembered the name, as if had been mentioned at some point or another from a story, a dinner, something.
After a time, she found herself in the bathroom. She took off her clothes and turned on the shower, letting the water heat up until it was almost scalding. When she stepped in, she bent the back of her neck to the spray and stood in attitude for a long time. It was such a pleasurable sensation that she stood there until the hot-water tank had emptied itself and turned cold.
When she shut the water off, she could hear music. She adjusted the collar of a long gray bathrobe, a brushed cotton that fell to her ankles. A washed out face and hallowed eyes stared at her in the mirror. Brushing her hair as she walked, she followed the music downstairs and found Elliot sitting on the couch, listening to the piece. It was a piano playing, one of James' vinyl records. She knew the piece, Chopin. She lay down on one of the leather chairs, to the side of Elliot, her feet swung over one side and her back on the other side of the arm rest. James' had used to play the piano, as a memory of him playing at a party invaded her mind. The piano was never something she and James had shared.
" I had no idea you liked piano music" she said when the record finished.
He smirked and looked at her.
"You're a romantic, a closet romantic." she said smiling at him
Olivia had dozed off on the seat for a while and then somewhat groggily climbed up to the bedroom with the idea of slipping into her bed an taking a long nap. She look the book of poetry with her that had the poem that James had written down.
She lay on the bed on her stomach and began to turn the pages, halfheartedly looking at the lines. She read bits of pieces by different poets, and halfway through the book, the word battle suddenly caught her eye, and she realized that she had found the correct poem. But then almost immediately, before she could even read the lines through, she saw a faint notation along the inner margin.
M!
Written in pencil, lightly, with an exclamation point. And there. Unmistakably there.
She sat up sharply and looked closely at the poem, reading it through. It was written by W.B. Yeats, and named the Rose of Battle. It seemed to be about war, that it does not carry peace, and that if they have felt the love of a woman, they should go home.
But what did it mean?
She let the book fall over the side of bed and onto the floor. She lay down again and rolled her face into the pillow. She felt as though she had traveled a thousand miles.
When she woke, she glanced at the clock on her bedside table. It was three-thirty in the morning. She twisted herself out of bed and staggered into the hallway. The door to the spare guest bedroom was shut. Elliot must have went in there and decided to sleep, she thought.
In the kitchen there were no signs of a meal ever having been made. Olivia made a pot of coffee and poured herself a cup. She thought about the note again.
M at A's.
Muire 3:30
M!
Drawing her robe tighter around herself, Olivia quickly climbed the stairs to James' office, it's dusty emptiness a surprise. She saw the paper that she had told Elliot to look for, the information regarding Muire O'Brien.
Muire O'Brien, she read, had left United in her fourth year as a flight attendant, and James' first year as a pilot. Trained by United in London, she had been a flight attendant with the airline four six years. There was an address, a phone number, and a date of birth. Muire O'Brien was now thirty seven.
Elliot had written a note beside the phone number. Tried this, it said. When I called, no one had ever heard of her. Beneath this information was a list of phone numbers. There were four M. O'Brien's listed in the London directory.
Olivia tried to formulate a question, a reasonable request, did the person answering the phone know of James O'Connell? If so, could Olivia ask a question or two? Was that such an unusual thing to ask?
She picked up the telephone and dialed the first number. A man answered, and he sounded as though she had woken him. She quickly calculated the time in London, nine forty five in the morning. She asked if Muire was there.
The man coughed as though he were a heavy smoker.
"Who is it you're wanting?"he asked, as if he hadn't heard the question correctly.
"Muire O'Brien."
"Nope, no Muire here."
"Sorry." Olivia said, hanging up the phone.
She crossed out the first number and tried the second. No response. She tried the third and a woman answered.
"Hello" Olivia said "I'm looking for Muire O'Brien."
The silence at the other end of the line was so complete that Olivia could hear the faint echo of someone else's transatlantic conversation.
"Hello?" Olivia tried again
The woman hung up. Olivia sat with the dead end of the receiver to her ear. She picked up the pencil to cross out the third number, but she hesitated. She called the fourth number instead, and a man answered, where he said there was no Muire there. She tried the third number again.
"Hello?" the same woman said
"I'm sorry to bother you" Olivia said quickly, before the woman could hang up "But I'm trying to locate a Muire O'Brien."
Eerily, there was a similar silence to the first. Something was on in the background. A dishwasher? Music? And then Olivia heard a small sound from the back of the woman's throat, like the beginning of a word that might be spoken. Followed by another silence, shorter this time.
"There's no Muire here." the voice said finally
Olivia thought there might have been a delay between her thoughts and her voice, because by the time she opened her mouth to speak, the line had gone dead.
When Elliot found her in the morning, she was sitting at the table in the front room. The sun had come up, and the glare in the windows caused Elliot to squint at her. In the glare, Olivia could see every pore and line on his face.
"It's bright in here." he said, turning his head away from the window
"Sometimes you need sunglasses in this room." she said "James used to wear them."
She watched as Elliot tucked in his shirt
"How'd you sleep?"
"Fine" she said "And you?"
"Great."
She could see that he had slept in his clothes. He had probably been too exhausted to get undressed, she thought. Adjusting to the light, Elliot seemed to see her face more clearly.
"What's wrong?" he asked
Olivia sat forward in the chair.
"I'm going to London" she said
He didn't hesitate. He didn't hesitate at all.
"I'm going with you" he said
Tell me what you think in a review!