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come across as kidding?”
    I took Luke Messerly’s card out of my pocket and slid it across her bigwig executive desk.
    “Recognize the type there, Colonel? Take a good, hard look at it. Because your name is about to be emblazoned on the front page of the paper that made it famous. I’m not an ancient alien theorist asking for a pass to Roswell, ma’am. I’m an NYPD homicide cop working a homicide. You’re the face of an organization that has just goofed up big-time. ‘That’s classified’ isn’t going to cut it. You guys need to get in front of this.”
    “Detective,” she said with a stiff smile. “There are channels for this kind of thing that we have to abide by. Your request has been made. First, it has to be reviewed, and the information declassified after due process. Or feel free to try to get approval from the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Otherwise, I can’t help you. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
    I looked at Emily. She seemed as pissed as I was. I couldn’t believe this bull.
    “One last question, Colonel. Do your superiors wind you up in the morning, or—like with drones—do they use WiFi control nowadays?” I said.
    “Now, is that necessary, Detective? Please leave now or I’ll have you escorted.”
    “Eardley was murdered,” Emily said. “A pilot, a fellow airman, murdered. Thrown off a roof! You don’t care about that, Colonel?”
    “Of course I care,” Payton said, maintaining a blank expression that said the exact opposite. “It’s sad. I know lots of pilots, lots of dead ones, too. They get killed in combat. They commit suicide. Some of them get drunk and fall off buildings up in New York City after they go AWOL. Make sure to hand your security passes back when you get to the downstairs desk.”

Chapter 15
    “Well, we gave it a shot, at least. That’s what really counts, right?” Emily said with mock cheeriness on the ride back to Union Station.
    Even after she stopped the fed car, I sat there saying nothing. I looked out at the columned facade of the station, the people walking back and forth. When I spotted the wedding-cake white of the hovering Capitol dome off to the right, I felt like punching the dashboard.
    “Washington is really something,” I said. “It’s one thing to not be able to find out something, quite another to be told it’s being hidden from you on purpose—and don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”
    “It’s a disgrace,” Emily said. “Did you contact Eardley’s family yet?”
    “No,” I said. “That’s one of the main reasons I came down here. Silly me. I thought I might find out what the hell happened so I’d have something to tell them. Imagine? Now I have to call this guy’s mother and say, ‘Good news, ma’am. Your son didn’t die in a crash in ’07, but, bad news, he died falling off a building last week. And no one in the military cares why.’”
    “What really drives me crazy,” Emily said, “is how stupid this is. The truth will come out eventually. These idiots can’t see that?”
    “They’re bureaucrats, Emily,” I said. “Bureaucrats by nature aren’t the deepest of thinkers, or they wouldn’t be bureaucrats. I’ll tell you, the first thing I’m going to do after I contact Eardley’s family is urge them to get a lawyer to sue the crap out of the Air Force and find out what the hell happened.”
    “You know what, Mike?” Emily said, drumming her fingers on the wheel. “Is it possible to hold off contacting the family one more day?”
    “I guess I could ask the Medical Examiner to delay a little longer,” I said. “But I want to get a move on so that Eardley’s family can have a real burial. Why? What are you thinking?”
    “That Air Force robo-witch was an ass, but Chris Milne truly is good people,” Emily said. “Give him some time.”
    “Okay, Emily. I’ll delay it a couple of days, but I won’t hold my breath,” I said, as she finally gave me a peck on the cheek