"There's so much more to this that I have to tell you." But at the moment my head happened to be in the clouds and I couldn't remember what it was.

"Tell me tonight. I'll call you. Right now I have people waiting for me inside. But I'm not going to hang up until you give me your word. Will you go home tonight and wait for help?"

I would jump off a cliff for him right now. "Yes, I'll go home."

"Good."

"But how about this? When Tom shows up tomorrow, I'll give him everything we've found out, but I'm going with him to talk to Angelo. And we have to go back up to Marblehead to look for that package."

"What about tonight?"

"I'll take Dan and we'll go home. Just don't let Lenny bring Angelo back."

The line began to pop and crackle, then grew into a steady stream of static, and I lost him for a moment. "Bill?"

"I heard you," he said, cutting in and out, "and I'm losing my battery. I'll call you later tonight, on the hotel phone."

"I'll be there. Bill…" He didn't answer. "Are you there?" Nothing. "I love you, too," I said softly, but the connection was gone.

Dan was in his office with his feet up on the desk. He had the computer keyboard in his lap, and he was scanning the monitor.

"What are you doing?"

"Checking the work schedule for tonight."

"You're looking for Little Pete."

"I just think it's a good idea to know where he is."

"And is he working?"

"Not according to the schedule posted yesterday."

I breathed a silent sigh of relief. "I'm sorry about kicking you out."

"I understand. You women all have your secrets."

"You should talk."

He allowed a little touché smile. "Can we get the hell out of here," he moaned, "before I melt? It's a long way up to Marblehead."

"I'm ready, but we're not going to Marblehead. I've got some things to tell you."

"Hey," he yelled as I headed back to my office, "what's all over your butt?"

"Excuse me?"

"You've been sitting in something. Your ass is all white."

I twisted one way and then the other, trying to see behind me. Sure enough, there was something that looked like chalk dust all over my jeans. "I don't know." I tried to dust it off and got it all over my sweaty hands. "I think it's from that corner over by the window where I was sitting. There's been a pile of this stuff on the floor since the day I got here. It doesn't say much for our cleaning crews."

"I can't take you anywhere, Shanahan. You're a mess."

I went back to my office and loaded up my backpack. While I waited for Dan, I went to the corner to investigate the strange white residue on the floor, the stuff that had reminded me of rat poison on my first day in the station. I crouched down and rubbed a bit of it between my fingers. It felt grainier and heavier than chalk dust. There was no obvious source at the base of the wall or around the window. I stood up, wiped my hands on my jeans, and was starting to go when I saw more of it on top of my two-drawer file cabinet. My backpack hit the ground with a thud as I stood and stared straight up at the ceiling. It wasn't chalk dust.

"Dan." He didn't answer. "Dan," I yelled, climbing up on the cabinet, "Come in here."

"What?" he yelled back. "I'm coming."

He walked in just as I was pulling a brown envelope out through the space where the corner tile had been. More of the white stuff had fallen when I moved the tile. Acoustic tile shavings were in my eyes and stuck to the damp skin on my face. I had to blink several times before I could look down and see him standing next to the cabinet. I presented him with Dickie Flynn's package.

"You guys always said the ceiling was the best place to hide things."

The TV powered up with its distinctive electronic snap, and a blast of full-volume static boomed from the set. The scratchy noise felt like sandpaper scraping across raw nerves.

"God Almighty." Dan scrambled for the volume control, punched the wrong button, and turned the static to blaring canned-sitcom laughter. Laughter, especially fake, felt obscene in the fragile silence and made our situation that much more surreal. He found the volume and turned it down as I fumbled with shaking hands to get the cassette out of the envelope.

"Where's the fucking remote?"

"Are you sure Delta's not going to mind us being in here?"

"I told you, we have a deal. I loan them a B767 towbar when they need it, and I get to use their VCR whenever I want."

I put the tape into the slot-tried to, anyway-cramming it in a few times before I realized one was already in there. Every step seemed to take forever as I found the button to eject, pulled the cassette out, and put ours in. Dan found the remote, killed the light, and moved in next to me in front of the screen. His shoulder was warm against mine as we leaned back against the conference table, and I was glad that whatever we were about to see, I wasn't going to see it alone.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to stop shaking. It didn't work.

He aimed the remote at the screen. "Ready?" Without waiting for an answer, he hit Play.

Within seconds, the picture changed from the high, bright colors of situation comedy to the grainy black-and-white cast of a surveillance video. The date and time were marked in the lower right-hand corner, and the rest of the screen was filled with the image of a small aircraft parked in the rain on a concrete slab. It was a commuter, so there was no jetbridge, just a prop plane parked at a gate. I looked at the markings on the tail. A wave of recognition began as a tightening of my scalp when I realized that I also recognized the gate. The date-check the date again. The tight, tingling feeling spread from the top of my skull straight down my back and grabbed hold, like a fist around my backbone. It was March 15, 1995, at 19:12:20. The Ides of March.

Without taking his eyes from the screen, Dan found the Pause button. We stared, as frozen as the image before us, and I could hear in his breathing, I could feel in his stiffening posture, that he was thinking what I was, that it couldn't be, please don't let it be-

"The Beechcraft," he whispered.

The Beechcraft, he'd said, not a Beechcraft. I looked at him, grasping for reassurance, hoping not to see my worst fears in his face. But the odd TV glow turned his skin into gray parchment and made deep hollows of his eyes. Under a day's growth of dark stubble, he looked stunned.

"Are you sure? Is that…" I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. "Check the tail number."

He didn't check. He didn't have to check. We both knew what we were looking at. It was one of Dickie Flynn's surveillance tapes of the ramp, the one from March 15, 1995. That was the night that Flight 1704 crashed outside Baltimore. This was the Beechcraft that had gone down, and this was our ramp it was parked on. It was less than three hours before the fatal landing, and I had no doubt that when he raised the remote and hit Play, we were going to see things we weren't supposed to see. We were going to find out the things that Ellen knew, and maybe understand why she was dead.

I turned back to the screen, eyes wide, neck rigid, and stared straight ahead. A feeling of dread filled the room-Dan's or mine or both, I couldn't tell. It was growing, filling the small space and, like that heat in my office, pressing back on me and making it hard to draw a breath. I wondered if Dan could feel it, too, but I couldn't look at him. I was glued to the screen, afraid to keep looking, but afraid to look away.

He held up the remote, but before he restarted the tape, I felt him pull himself up, square his shoulders, and center his weight, like a soldier girding for battle. He hit Play and the rain began to fall again.