Night Fall (43 page)

“And you saw this streak of light again?”

“Yes. And we saw ourselves on the beach, watching the streak of light as it rose in the air… then the explosion… and we jumped to our feet and watched this huge fireball as it rose higher, then the fireball and pieces started to fall… then we heard the explosion, and we turned toward the camera and began running back to the sand dune. On the TV, in the background, we could see what we hadn’t seen when we were running… the flames spreading on the water…” She again closed her eyes and sat motionless. With her eyes still closed, she said, “You can see Bud running right up to the camera, then the image shifted all over the place…” She opened her eyes and forced a smile and said, “He was so panicky, he never shut off the camera as he ran to the car and threw the camera and tripod in the rear seat. You can hear us on the tape, and we sound pretty scared.”

“So, the camera was running in the backseat of the Explorer.”

“Yes.”

“And recorded your conversation?”

“Yes. This is when I was trying to convince him that we should go back to see if we could help.” She added, “Sometimes I wish we hadn’t erased that tape.”

“Me, too.”

I played with the Band-Aid wrapper, and we looked at each other for a few seconds. I said, “So, you watched the tape on the TV screen, then erased it.”

She nodded and said, “Bud convinced me… and he was right… that dozens of other people had seen this… had seen the rocket, and the explosion… and that our tape wasn’t needed as evidence… so why should we give the videotape to the authorities…?” She paused. “It’s very explicit. I mean, even if we weren’t married and having an affair… even if we were single, or married to each other… why should anyone see this tape?” She asked me, “What would you have done?”

I knew that question was coming, and I said, “I’d have held off on erasing it that night. I’d have waited, I’d have discussed it with my partner, I’d have examined my own marriage and asked myself why I was involved in an affair, and I’d have followed the investigation, to see if my tape was a critical piece of evidence in a horrendous crime. Then I’d have made my decision.”

Jill Winslow sat staring out the window, then brought a tissue out of the pocket of her robe and dabbed her eyes. She took a deep breath and said, “That’s what I wanted to do.” She looked at me and said, “I really did… all those people… my God… and I did follow the investigation, and hundreds of people came forward saying they’d seen that streak of light, and everyone thought it was a missile attack… then… it started to change.”

I said, “At that point, when it was declared an accident, a mechanical failure, would you have turned over the tape if you had it?”

She looked down at her hands, which were shredding the tissue, and said, “I don’t know. I hope so.”

“I
think you would have.”

She didn’t reply.

I let a few seconds pass, then asked her, “Whose video camera was it?”

She replied, “It was mine. Why?”

“Were you familiar with videotape technology at that time?”

“I understood the basics.”

“How about Bud?”

“I taught him how to use my camera. Why do you ask?”

“Well, the report I have says that Bud physically destroyed the mini-cassette. Is that true?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you left the Bayview Hotel, you pulled over to the side of the road, and Bud destroyed the tape by running over it, then burning the tape.”

She shook her head. “No. He erased it back in the hotel room.” She added, “That’s what I told the FBI, and that’s what Bud told them. No one said anything about destroying the tape.”

Well, someone did. Mr. Nash, to be more specific. I asked her, “Did the FBI ask you or Bud for this erased tape?”

“Yes. They asked me, and I gave it to them.” She looked at me and said, “I learned afterward that a magnetic videotape that has been erased can be… the images can be retrieved in some way… I don’t know if they were able to do that… I mean, they probably didn’t, because if they did, they’d be able to see what Bud and I saw… and they would have come to another conclusion…” She looked at me. “Do you know if they were able to restore the tape?”

“No, I don’t.” In fact, I did know. There was no doubt that the FBI lab could pull up the images on a magnetic tape that someone thought was erased for all time, assuming nothing else had been recorded over it. I asked her, “Was the tape blank when you gave it to them?”

She nodded. “It was still in the video camera. When they came here, it was one of the first things they asked me about. I went into the family room, got the video camera, and brought it out to them. They were sitting at this table.”

“I see. And they questioned you, and you told them what?”

“I told them the truth. About what Bud and I had seen. They’d already spoken to Bud, but I didn’t know what he’d said to them because they told him not to contact me and not to take my calls.” She added with a rueful smile, “And he didn’t, the wimp. The FBI showed up here on the Monday after the crash and said they wanted to question me, and my story had better not be different from his. Well, it turns out he lied about a few things, including the fact that we’d had sex on the beach-he said we were just walking and talking-but I told the truth, from beginning to end.”

“And they promised you that if you told the truth, your husband would never know?”

“They did.”

I asked, “And did they return for another visit?”

“Yes. They asked more questions, as though they knew more about what was on the tape. In fact, I asked them if the tape had been totally erased, and they said yes, it had been, and that I had committed a crime by destroying evidence.” She added, “I was terrified… I was crying… I didn’t know who to turn to. Bud wasn’t taking my calls, I couldn’t talk to my husband… I thought about calling my lawyer, but they had warned me not to call my lawyer if I wanted to keep this quiet. I was totally at their mercy.”

I said to her, “The truth shall set you free.”

She sobbed and laughed at the same time and said, “The truth will get me divorced with the worst prenuptial agreement ever signed in New York State.” She looked at me and said, “And I have two sons who were eight and ten at that time.” She asked me, “Are you married?”

I held up my hand with my wedding ring.

“Do you have children?”

“Not that I know of.”

She smiled and dried her eyes again with the shredded tissue. She said, “It’s very complicated with children.”

“I understand.” I asked her, “Did they ask you to submit to a polygraph?”

She replied, “On their first visit, they asked if I would, and I said yes, I’m telling the whole truth. They said they’d bring a polygraph tester here the next time. But when they returned, there was no polygraph. I asked them about it, but they said it wasn’t necessary.”

I nodded. It wasn’t necessary because by this time, they’d restored the tape, and everything they wanted to know was on that tape. What they didn’t want were signed statements by Jill Winslow or Bud, or taped interviews, or a polygraph test-all of which might come to light later if Mrs. Winslow or Bud came forward, or were found by someone else-like me.

In effect, Nash, Griffith, and whoever were not trying to discover credible evidence of a missile strike on TWA 800; they were trying to suppress and destroy the evidence, which is what they accused Jill Winslow of doing.

I asked Mrs. Winslow, “Did these gentlemen from the FBI swear you to silence?”

She nodded.

“But after the official conclusion was announced-that it was an accident-didn’t you wonder why your eyewitness statement and Bud’s wasn’t taken into account?”

“I did… but then this man, Nash, called, and we met here again, and he explained that without the videotape, my statements and Bud’s had no more importance than the hundreds of other eyewitness statements.” She took a deep breath and said, “Nash told me I should consider myself lucky, and get on with my life, and never think about this again.”

“But that didn’t happen.”

“No, it didn’t… I still see the rocket…”

“And you saw that CIA animation of the accident?”

“I did. It was completely wrong.”

“It would have been nice to have your tape.”

She didn’t reply.

We sat there awhile in silence. She stood, got a tissue from the counter, and blew her nose. She opened the refrigerator and asked me, “Would you like some bottled water?”

“No, thanks, I don’t drink pure water.”

She took a bottle of water and poured it into a glass. Real lady.

I digested what she’d said so far, and it distilled down to a few key facts: Bud had not physically destroyed the tape; the FBI and CIA had undoubtedly restored the erased tape and seen what two hundred eyewitnesses had said they’d seen-a rising streak of light.

Therefore, what? I had only two words to describe it: conspiracy and cover-up.

But why? There were a lot of reasons why. But I wasn’t going to try to fathom how people in Washington thought, what their secret agendas were, what their motives were, and what they gained by a cover-up. I was certain they had good security reasons for covering up what could be friendly fire, an experimental weapon, or a terrorist attack-but I was also certain that those reasons were wrong.

Jill Winslow looked exhausted, sad, and troubled, as though something was on her mind. I thought I knew what was on her mind, and I wanted to help her get it off her mind.

Still standing, she asked me, “Are you going to see Bud today?”

“Today or tomorrow.”

She smiled and said, “He’s part of a foursome with my husband today.”

“Are they friends?”

“Social acquaintances.” She sat down with her glass of water, crossed her legs, and said, “Cheating on your husband is bad enough, but if Mark ever found out it was with Bud, he’d feel like a complete fool.”

“Why?”

“Mark thinks
Bud
is a fool. For once, Mark is right. Mark once said to me, ‘Jill, if you ever cheat on me, at least pick someone who you won’t be embarrassed by if it became public.’ I should have listened.”

I thought about that advice, and I agreed. I mean, you don’t want to be caught having an affair with someone who everyone else thinks is a loser or a geek, or who’s ugly and a few pounds overweight. I asked Jill Winslow, “Is he good-looking?”

“Yes. But that’s about it. It was all physical.” She smiled. “I’m so shallow.”

It actually wasn’t all physical-it had a lot to do with Mark Winslow, and Jill Winslow’s need to be less than a perfect wife, even if Mark didn’t know it. But I didn’t reply. As the expression goes, “You can’t feel sorry for a rich girl drinking champagne on a yacht.” But in a way, I felt sorry for Jill Winslow.

As for Bud, I could assume he was a member of the same country club as the Winslows, and it would take me about ten minutes to go to the club and ask about Bud. But I didn’t think I needed Bud. What I wanted was here.

She asked me, “Is there anything else?”

I replied, “That’s about it… except for a few details about your time in the hotel room when you came back from the beach. You watched the videotape. Take me through that.”

“Well… we watched it… we fast-forwarded through the part where we were in the dunes on the beach blanket… and began as we ran down to the beach… then we played this part from the time we were making love on the beach until the time when we saw the streak of light… we rewound that and played it in slow motion… you could see this glow on the horizon… then this light rising into the air… in slow motion, you can see the smoke trail, and we realized we could also see the blinking lights of the aircraft that was about to…”

“How long did the tape run?”

“The part on the beach ran for about fifteen minutes, from us walking down to the beach to when Bud ran back and grabbed the camera. Then about five minutes of darkness when the camera sat in the rear seat, and you could hear us talking.”

“Okay. And the part on the beach blanket when you first started recording?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe fifteen minutes. I didn’t even want to see that. There was no reason to see it.”

“Right. So you ran the tape, paused, rewound, ran it in slow motion, and so forth?”

“Yes. It was… unbelievable.”

“Hypnotic. Mesmerizing.”

“Yes.”

“What did you do after you finished with the tape?”

“Bud erased it.”

“Just like that? You said you didn’t want to erase it.”

“I didn’t… we argued, but… he wanted to erase it. He also wanted to get out of the room in case someone had seen us coming from the beach. I didn’t think this was possible, but he wanted to leave and go home. Our cell phones were starting to ring now because people were seeing this on TV, and people who knew we were out there were trying to contact us, but we weren’t taking any calls. Then Bud went into the bathroom to call his wife-he was supposed to be fishing with friends.”

I commented, “Maybe he sloshed water in the bathtub and yelled, ‘Make for shore, me hearties.’”

She smiled and said, “He’s not that clever. But he
was
paranoid.”

I said, “It’s not paranoid to cover your butt.”

She shrugged and said, “At that point, I thought we’d be found out one way or the other. It was a bad piece of luck that we both were out east with cover stories when this happened. Mark called my cell phone once, but I didn’t answer. When I got in my car and started driving home, I played his message, which said, ‘Jill, did you hear about the airplane crash out there? Give me a call.’ I called my girlfriend first, who I was supposed to be with in East Hampton, and she hadn’t heard from him. So, I called Mark back and told him I was upset and I was coming home.” She smiled and said, “It wasn’t even a close call.”

I said, “If I may indulge myself in some amateur psychology-you’d like to get caught. Or, at the least, you don’t care about the consequences.”

“Of course I do.”

“I speak from some experience when I say that getting caught is easier than breaking up. The results are the same, but getting caught only takes a subconscious desire, while breaking up takes a lot of courage.”