Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

Richard watched the satellite feed, the pretty young reporter stopping to set up her stand-up, then moving her lips in such an exaggerated fashion that Richard recognized it as a warm-up exercise. Behind her, scattered in the grazing field, purses and wallets, soft-sided duffel bags, magazines. The cameraman had already shot footage of severed limbs and viscera that appeared to have been decoupaged and baked onto what remained of the airframe, a priest’s collar and the shoes that dotted the landscape at random intervals and the intact water bottles and the briefcase with its engraved brass nameplate—the initials G. C. W. clearly visible even through a layer of soot. The rear section of the plane shrouded in the foam of white fire suppressant, and a kid, couldn’t have been more than seventeen, who was missing his clothing from the waist down but still had on a T-shirt bearing the words CLASS OF 2001 and a list of names silk-screened across its back, and a hand, a well-manicured hand with painted fingernails and a wedding set on the ring finger in platinum and diamonds in the art-deco style; the hand clutched an open cell phone, but the casing and the screen and the numbers had begun to melt, and the hand rested on the blackened ground in a puddle of what appeared to be motor oil next to a woman’s facedown body covered in what must have been melted plastic. Richard had seen enough; he knew that the raw feed he was watching would never make broadcast. This was that human compulsion, to see what could not be forgotten, but television news focused on telling us what happened, while we pretended not to want to look.

Cut to the New York–based anchorman giving the briefest possible introduction: “We go now to the crash site, on the outer edges of the Dallas–Fort Worth International airfield, where Graciela Martín is standing by.”

In front of the truck, the reporter began her stand-up, with the tail-rudder section of the plane visible over her left shoulder and the bright American sunlight of the plains now fading into a more seasonally appropriate grayness. Her Michelangelo-veneered teeth glowed with such radiance that they looked almost blue under the camera light. “You are looking—” she started a second time and stopped herself; she had the nervous habit of smiling when reading copy over stories about flesh-eating bacteria, colleges struck with outbreaks of viral meningitis, tourists robbed and dismembered in Colombia, explosions in a corn elevator, forty-car pileups on the interstate, four promising teens killed in a crash involving alcohol and excessive speed. She was still smiling broadly, and someone in the control room said into their headset, “You better frame her up. Or give me some field shots. Don’t shoot that fucking smile talking about dead people.”

She had it cold, first on the scene. The airport police had established their perimeter, which meant FBN would be the only team on site for at least the next hour. Her report went through the basics, Flight 503, departed earlier this afternoon from Salt Lake City. Obligingly, the broadcast monitor filled with reference shots: firemen milling around with no specific duties. This was a recovery operation, not a rescue now, an entirely different protocol. The reporter read what little copy she’d written down, then couldn’t figure out any exit line beyond “Back to you.”

Max Peterson reset the situation, and the cameraman turned to record the departure of the first-responding engines and the firefighters stacking plastic-bagged bodies in an open field; the largest part of the fuselage had come to rest in the grazing lands of a ranch just off the flight path five miles to the west, and now the aircraft-rescue and firefighting teams stood around their equipment, wiping foreheads and cadging cigarettes, little left to their mission except the recovery of body parts and personal effects. Forty-seven wallets, twelve purses, carry-on bags, four laptop computers, an array of small electronic devices melted from the heat of impact’s fireball, one miniature replica license plate from the state of Utah, stamped with the name Gabe.

Richard wasn’t really paying attention anymore; he stared at a shot from the still store, a briefcase with a doe-colored stuffed bear beside it. The monitor audio broadcast the anchor saying, “Here is what we know so far,” and Richard answered him half-aloud, “Nothing. We know nothing.”

And nothing for him to do except head home.

He turned his collar up and ventured to Pennsylvania Avenue. Finding the wide promenade empty save for the odd Metrobus and the white-and-red cars of the District police, he decided to walk until he reached a Metro station or spotted a roaming taxi.

A plane crash was enough to shake anyone.

Special report . Six blocks up Pennsylvania, Richard found himself ducking into a CVS drugstore for some Camel Lights, hard pack. When he was a kid, CVS had a more honest name, Peoples Drug, which seemed a perfect place—the only place—to buy cigarettes. Back outside, he struggled with the cellophane and foil of the pack, then tried to remember which pocket held his matches; halfway through the survey, he produced a single copy of his own business card from the right-hand pocket of his suit coat. A gift from Cadence. Richard MacMurray, Defender of the Republic.

The card, his matches, the muck of subway fare cards and membership IDs that filled his wallet— his personal effects—were the sundries that defined who he was. He thought of the crash, how tonight workers would hit the grazing field under the glow of diesel-powered mercury lights to gather the surviving briefcases, shoes, earrings, and cuff links. Some unlucky relative would get them in the mail once the investigation was complete, another unwanted reminder of just how fleeting the optimism of a New Year truly was.

One thought of Cadence and one unsatisfying cigarette, his first in a year and a day, and Richard found he had wandered west maybe a dozen blocks. At the gothic tower of the Old Post Office, he turned north, toward the welcoming cacophony of the subway. The morning’s weather had begun to turn. An insulating blanket of clouds rolled in from the west, dense, thick, a light gray that seemed more in tune with January, more in tune with his mood. She wouldn’t approve of the midday cigarette any more than she would approve of his morose mood, and he found himself wadding the pack into a ball and tossing it in one of the brown garbage barrels that stood sentry at the exit to the Metro Center station.

As he turned, the eldest from a group of Japanese tourists huddled around a laminated map shyly approached Richard, seeking directions to the Smithsonian in fractured yet competent English.

Richard took the map and turned it over and, through a combination of elementary sentences and Marcel Marceau gestures, showed the man and his group how to take the Blue and Orange Lines the few stops to touristland. As they departed—the men in the group all offering the same slight bow—Richard turned and took his first step smack into the black-suited chest of Don Keene.

“A bravura performance,” Don said. “Overcoming the language barrier to communicate in precise and effective terms.”

Richard laughed and shook Don’s offered hand. “It’s not like I’m the great communicator. In this neighborhood, people only want to find two things, Metro or the museums.” Richard started to walk, expecting Don Keene to follow him, but Don did not move. He stopped, asked, “Headed back to the hotel?”

“I’m at the Pilgrim. I was thinking about catching a cab,” Don said, using his head to point over his shoulder at the street behind him, a gesture that said he was worried about the weather, or maybe just in a hurry.

Richard stepped to the curb, and a purple cab sidled over from the rear of the line at one of the other grand hotels a block away. Once they had settled into the backseat, Don opened his soft leather briefcase and extracted a file folder, placed the case on his lap and rested the folder on top. “You didn’t forget, did you? I’m here to hire an anchorman.”