Snow Fall by Andrew P Foster

Author:Andrew P Foster [Foster, Andrew P]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-20T22:00:00+00:00

Two Steps Back

The name Al Forester rang a bell but it was a distant ring. The drawl of his voice on the answering machine was what finally placed him — a public relations officer with the Dallas police. Back in July I had asked him for his help in interviewing airline personnel. When Chris and I go back from school, we found his message to call him as soon as possible.

I got through to him late in the afternoon.

I was on a plane to Dallas that evening, right after Eileen picked up Chris.

There was no denying the urgency of the call. One of the boarding supervisors had changed his story about the Dallas stopover of my wife’s flight. He said she had not been on board when the plane left Dallas.

I had been to Texas before, a month after the crash, to interview staff. This man had been one of those I’d interviewed. We had met in a honky tonk bar that looked vaguely like a movie set and he sounded vaguely like an offbeat character in a buddy movie. In my disoriented condition at the time, the whole of Dallas had given me the same curiously unreal sensation.

Al Forester had explained what he called Dallas’s “insecurity”. He told me it had started out as a small creek-crossing and with oil had developed into a boomtown. The original settlers had never had the feeling they were going to stay there and that feeling remained through the artificially prosperous days of the oil monopolies. Now the most sold aspect of Dallas might well be the soap opera of the same name. People seemed to think that when the series ended the city would blow away.

That was more likely than the story I was about to hear.

Forester came to the airport to pick me up and explained the situation, as best he could, while we drove to our rendezvous ‘The guy might be crazy but its your call not mine.”

“He’s actually saying my wife was not on the plane?”

“Thats the gist, I mean its a helluva complex thing but yeah.”

Al had been helpful and sympathetic when I’d made my initial requests. Now he looked very uncomfortable, his hands clasped in front of him like a naughty schoolkid. “One more thing.” He paused. I had to encourage him to go on.

“This guy, he avoided coming forward because he was afraid. Afraid, I think, of someone. It seems someone approached him, claimed to be a friend or companion of your wife. This guy asked him not to divulge the fact she wasn’t on the plane, that she never boarded after the layover. He gave some story about your wife’s need to start a new life. Look, I get this sounds like bullshit. It’s incredible. Just shut me up when you’ve had enough.”

It was weirdly less than incredible to me. My thoughts travelled to the man in Chicago, to the possibility of other men. Then they ended in a jumble. Could this be happening? My

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