REPORT: CRASH
FILE #: 217

JAROD IS AT A SMALL AIRPORT, waiting for his flight, Arista Airlines Flight #105, to San Diego to get ready for boarding. While he waits, he sits and reads a book about Nebraska. A little girl, also a passenger waiting for Flight 105, sits across from him, and she and Jarod play a short game of peek-a-boo just before the boarding call is announced. A young man, Daniel Falk, walks up and plops down in a chair beside Jarod. He tells Jarod that the flight has been over-booked, and he's been "bumped" from it. The next flight won't be for another five hours, and if he must wait that long, he won't be in time to sign up for his freshman classes at college that day. All his required courses will be filled and closed before he can get to registration.

Jarod and Daniel had been talking on and off throughout their waiting period at the airport. Daniel had told Jarod about his basketball scholarship, about his hopes for the future, about his wonderful relationship with his folks... Feeling empathy for Daniel and his predicament, Jarod gives Daniel the ticket he's holding which will get Daniel onto Flight 105 in Jarod's place. Daniel is reluctant to accept the offer, but Jarod insists he's not in any hurry. "It's not like anybody's chasing me... today," Jarod jokes. Daniel gratefully accepts the ticket and rushes off to board the plane. As he exits the terminal, he calls over his shoulder to Jarod, "Thanks, Jarod! You saved my life!" Jarod grins, and waves good-bye.

AT THE CENTRE, Sydney meets Miss Parker in a corridor and asks her what happened to her finger (which is in a metal bracing cast). She growls that she broke it "mud wrestling”. Realizing that she doesn't want to talk about it, Sydney changes the subject and asks her what's she's doing at the office that day. She shows him Mr. Lyle's personnel file, and tells him that she's been looking for information on who his associates and allies in The Centre might be. Over the last 18 months, since Jarod's escape, Mr. Parker had lost ground with The Centre bigwigs. Now, he wants Miss Parker to find out what she can about Lyle, so he (Mr. Parker) can "lobby the Triumvirate" for Lyle's old position among their elite group. So far, Miss Parker says, she hasn't been able to find out anything. And since Mr. Parker directly opposed Mr. Lyle... and Miss Parker shot him (at Hillman Marine in Connecticut) ... Lyle's allies were doing everything they could to bar Mr. Parker's promotion.

As they're talking, Broots walks up and tells Miss Parker and Sydney that a delivery has come from Jarod. Miss Parker and Sydney follow Broots to the Tech Room where they find three full-sized gym lockers set up: one for Broots, one for Sydney, and one for Miss Parker. They open the lockers and find inside of them copies of a high school yearbook: 1983 Douglas High School, Townsend, Nebraska. They also find invitations to the high school's reunion, and name badges that identify them as Mr. Ricky Sanders (Broots), Professor Tom Greer (Sydney)... and MRS. Ricky Sanders (Miss Parker). Sydney is amused when Broots informs him that the Sanders were missionaries stationed with a Catholic charity in Africa; he can't quite see Miss Parker as the "missionary sort". Professor Greer, he learns from Broots, was a professor of obscure languages who had only taught at the high school for one semester, so his students probably won't remember him at all.

Jarod has highlighted a page in the yearbook that refers to the "Camera Shy" people: those of the class of 1983 who had been unavailable for senior photographs. Broots says he checked on them and didn't find anything of special interest about them except for the fact that two of them were deceased.

Also, in the yearbooks are sticky notes from Jarod which read: ALWAYS STAY THE WAY YOU ARE. UNLESS YOU WANT TO SURVIVE. Sydney explains that this is Jarod's way of telling them they're in danger. Miss Parker is unimpressed and refuses to go to "Armpit, Oklahoma" until Broots finds out more about the high school and its importance. "It's Nebraska," Broots corrects her, and Miss Parker replies: "Hell is Hell, Broots."

AT THE AIRPORT Jarod is awakened from a light nap by the sounds of people wailing and sobbing around him. He goes to the airline attendant and asks what's happened; why so many people are so upset. The attendant tells him that Flight 105 crashed just outside of San Diego, and that there were fatalities. Even though he's not Daniel Falk's relative, Jarod demands to know if Daniel is all right. The attendant tells him, sadly, that Daniel's body was positively identified at the scene. He died on impact. Jarod is so overcome with grief, that he seems to have trouble breathing for a moment. Gasping, he finally backs up and collapses into a chair.

AT THE NTSB FIELD CENTER, San Diego, California, Jarod arrives at a hanger where the wreckage of Flight 105 is being reassembled by NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigators. He introduces himself to the chief investigator, Clark Thomas, as Jarod Lindsay, an investigator from Washington. Thomas is not thrilled to have Jarod there, but his assistant, investigator Diane Post, welcomes Jarod aboard. They show Jarod aerial photographs of the crash site and inform him that there is no evidence of mechanical problems on the plane so far. Both pilots survived the crash and are recuperating at Centennial Hospital; and both are under suspicion of having caused the crash themselves. Jarod asks where the cockpit voice recorder and the flight recorder (the plane's "black boxes") are, and Thomas tells him they're en route. Jarod demands to be advised when the boxes arrive and excuses himself from the hanger.

IN NEBRASKA, Broots, Miss Parker and Sydney meet at the Grand Palladium hotel where Jarod has NON-SMOKING rooms reserved for them. Other alumni are also staying at the hotel, and one of them "recognizes" Ricky Sanders (Broots). He comes up and says, "hi", compliments Ricky on his incredible weight loss -- (Ricky was terrifically over-weight in high school.) -- and then introduces himself to Ricky's "wife" (Miss Parker). Miss Parker responds to the man's touch on her arm by grabbing him in a judo hold that make it impossible for him to continue any contact. Cradling his injured hand, the man hurries off, and Broots tells Miss Parker: "Way to blend in."

AT CENTENNIAL HOSPITAL, Jarod and the other NTSB investigators go to talk to the pilot of Flight 105, a woman named Angela Wylie. Angela suffered "blunt force trauma to the frontal lobe" when the plane crashed and has no memory of the events of the crash itself. She says she remembers getting ready for approach in San Diego, and she remembers her passengers screaming... but can't give Jarod or the other investigators any details at all. She explains to Jarod, "It's like somebody painted my mind black." Then breaking into angry self-depreciating tears, she tells him, "Eleven people died, but I lived... What makes me so special?"

AT THE NTSB HANGER Jarod enters to find investigators Thomas and Post looking over the already opened black boxes from Flight 105. Angry, Jarod tells them that he'd given them specific instructions to call him before the boxes were opened so he could be there when they were. Thomas blows him off by saying he was strapped for time and couldn't wait for Jarod to get there. Post shows Jarod the information gleaned from the flight data recorder, which indicates that the airplane's elevator flaps were stuck at 0 instead of the 20 required for lift over the mountains just outside the airport where Flight 105 was supposed to land. Because there wasn't enough lift, the plane stalled and crashed into the mountains. Thomas then shows Jarod the cockpit voice recorder, and Jarod is surprised to find the record still in the "off" position. Apparently, Thomas tells him, the recorder jammed and never came on, so there is no verbal record from the pilots as to what took place in the cockpit before the crash. Jarod says he's never heard of anything like that happening before, and Thomas dismisses it as a "rare, but possible" occurrence.

All the evidence seems to indicate that, aside from the cockpit recorder, everything mechanical on the plane was working fine. Thomas says the crash was caused because one of the two pilots on the plane didn't set the elevators to the proper position. Now, all they have to do is find out which of the two pilots was responsible for the error.

AT CENTENNIAL HOSPITAL, Jarod and Post visit the room of Flight 105's co-pilot, Brandon Larson. They find his father, Mr. Larson, the president of Arista Airlines, in the room with his son. Mr. Larson tells them he's glad his son survived the crash, and that he was looking forward to putting Brandon into a managerial position at the airlines. When Mr. Larson tries to stay in the room while Jarod and Post question Brandon, Jarod tells Mr. Larson he'll have to leave. Larson does so, reluctantly.

Jarod sets a small tape recorder up on the bed-tray in the room and asks Brandon about the crash. Brandon says he's not sure what happened; that it must have been a mechanical malfunction. Post tells him they've already ruled out mechanical errors and are focusing on pilot error. She tells him the elevators on the wings were set at the wrong pitch, and Brandon sighs deeply. He says he's sorry to have to say it because he and pilot Angela Wylie were good friends, but he'd told Angela to set the pitch of the elevators at 20 and then assumed that she had done it. Apparently, she hadn't. Watching Brandon, Jarod notices that the man is sweating excessively. He asks Brandon if the room seems warm to him, and Brandon tells him, no. His sweating is cause by fever which is a side effect of the pain killing medication he's taking, he says. Jarod and Post thank Brandon for his time and leave the room.

Post is ready to set blame on Angela Wylie for the crash, but Jarod isn't convinced. He tells Post that the pain-relieving medications dispensed by the hospital were usually simple analgesics; and simple analgesics don't cause fever. Something else was causing Brandon Larson to sweat like that, guilt, maybe. Post tells him that Brandon might have simply been fretting over having to expose Angela as a bad pilot; they were friends, she reminds him. Maybe Brandon was just stressed out. "Is that what you really think, Diane?" Jarod asks, and walks away.

AT THE HANGER, Jarod goes in to look at the recovered fuselage of the plane. Most of it is still intact, which kept the fatalities down, but still: eleven people died in the crash... including the little girl with whom Jarod had played peek-a-boo. He finds her doll among the victims' possessions collected from the crash site. He also finds Daniel Falk's carry-on luggage, which includes a pair of basketball shoes and a graduation photograph of Daniel flanked by his parents. The sight of the things makes Jarod's heart ache.

IN NEBRASKA, getting ready for the reunion, Miss Parker is smoking in their non-smoking room and complaining that the people at the gathering are "dead from the neck up and they don't even know it." Broots takes offense at this, and points out that one of the couples he'd talked to had been married for fourteen years, and another person coached Little League... They had real lives. Was her life so great, Broots asks her: she's forced to stay in The Centre until she can find a man who had been stolen from his family; she was haunted by the murder of her mother; she competed for her father's attention against a "ball headed lunatic" with an oxygen tank... Miss Parker snaps at him, "Careful!" Broots recoils a bit, but still says to her, "I'm just saying... I'd take a Sunday sermon or a Little League game over that any day..."

AT CENTENNIAL HOSPITAL, Jarod stands by while Thomas and Post inform pilot Angela Wylie that she's probably going to be charged with negligence in the crash of Flight 105. Wylie starts to cry, and Jarod tells her that because they don't have the cockpit voice recorder to work off of, they're just taking her co-pilot, Brandon Larson's, word for what happened before the crash. If she could remember anything, it would be helpful. Wylie stutters and wails, "I can't remember anything!"

IN NEBRASKA, at the reunion, Miss Parker is dressed in leather, smoking, and keeping herself separate from the rest of the guests by intimidating anyone who comes near her. Broots, on the other hand, is enjoying himself: laughing, carrying on conversations, and accepting compliments for his weight loss and his "trophy wife".

Miss Parker is ready to leave, when the emcee at the reunion announces he's going to pay a short tribute to those class members of 1983 who couldn't make it to the reunion because they had died. A photograph of a young woman is flashed up on a large movie screen, and her name is recited for the audience. Miss Parker pulls on Broots sleeve, nagging at him to go, when a second photograph is displayed: that of Bobby Bowman, who had been a member of the Farmers of Tomorrow Club, but died before graduation. Broots points at the picture, and Miss Parker looks at it. Her face floods with recognition. Bobby Bowman was Mr. Lyle.

IN SAN DIEGO, still unconvinced that Angela Wylie was responsible for the crash of Flight 105, Jarod runs some tests and checks some data by himself. He goes to the lab where blood tests were done on the pilots to check them for illegal substance abuse, and he discovers that the blood test for Brandon Larson had been tampered with. On an earlier FAA blood test, Brandon's macro static blood count was 15, but on the test done after the Flight 105 crash, the macro static blood count had dropped to 10. Macro static blood counts were never supposed to change at all; they were always a constant. So, Jarod surmises, the blood sample delivered under Brandon's name wasn't Brandon blood. He asks the lab technician who brought her the sample, and she tells him it was brought in by chief investigator Clark Thomas.

Jarod also checks out the cockpit voice recorder on his own and discovers that it hadn't been "inactive" during the flight. It had recorded something, but its imprint cylinder had been demagnetized, so most of the recording was erased. There were still fragments of data left, but it would have to be pieced together. Jarod sets his laptop computer to the task.

Later, he follows Clark Thomas to the hanger where the wreckage of Flight 105 is being housed, and eaves-drops on a telephone conversation Thomas is having with Diane Post. Thomas tells Post to ignore Jarod's concerns and to hurry up, decide about the case, and close it as soon as possible. Then Jarod sees Thomas meet with Mr. Larson, Brandon's father, in the same hanger. Larson hands Thomas an envelope filled with cash and walks off silently.

The next day, sleeping lightly in his lair, Jarod is disturbed by nightmares of Daniel Falk repeating to him, "Thanks, Jarod! You saved my life!" Jarod rouses himself, and depressed and exhausted, calls Sydney on his cell phone. He tells Sydney about the crash, about Daniel Falk, and says, "Now he's gone. And I'm still here." Sydney is sympathetic to Jarod's distress but tells him they could spend a lifetime debating "fate" and blame. Sorrowful, Jarod sighs and says, "A lifetime... Is that how long this will hurt?" He disconnects the call, and lies back on his bed, staring mournfully at the ceiling.

IN NEBRASKA, Broots, Sydney and Miss Parker gather to discuss the Omaha Police report Broots had been able to find on the death of Bobby Bowman. Bobby had supposedly been murdered 16 years ago by his father. Bobby's decapitated body was found in the bed of his father's pick-up truck, and his father had been convicted and sent to prison. But if Bobby Bowman WAS Mr. Lyle, then he couldn't have died in 1982, Sydney reminds them. So, Bobby (Mr. Lyle) must have somehow faked his death and framed his father for it.

Miss Parker sends Broots back to The Centre to see if he can find out anything about Bobby Bowman or Mr. Lyle that isn't in Mr. Lyle's personnel file. And Miss Parker and Sydney go to find Martha Bowman, Bobby's mother.

Martha Bowman is still living on the farm where Bobby grew up. On the surface, the farm looks well kept; the house clean; and Martha is fixing bowls of food for her two dogs. She tells Miss Parker and Sydney that Bobby had been adopted, and had been a beautiful and wonderful child until he was about 15 years old, when he suddenly "snapped" and became so aggressive and so violent that she and her husband didn't know what to do with him. Martha suddenly stops talking about Bobby, and shouts at her dogs to stop barking and come inside to eat their dinner... But... there is NO SOUND of barking dogs, and no sign of any dogs in or around the house at all.

Martha then continues about Bobby, telling Miss Parker and Sydney that he was sweet one minute and then "mean as a snake, and violent" the next. His behaviors became so bad, that her husband, Lyle, had often resorted to locking Bobby outside in an 8-by-12 foot shed in the back yard. Noting that her husband's name was "Lyle", Sydney remarks on it, and Martha tells him that, yes, her husband's name WAS Lyle Bowman, but that he always made Bobby refer to him as "Mister." Martha then starts shouting at her non-existent dogs again...

Trying to keep Martha calm, Miss Parker and Sydney make no remarks about her odd behavior and deflect her attention to a photograph of Bobby and another young man. The other boy was Bobby's friend, Jimmy Radloff, who had died shortly before Lyle Bowman killed Bobby, Martha tells them... while she brushes her finger with a toothbrush. Jimmy and Bobby had gone hiking in the woods, and Jimmy never came home. Miss Parker whispers to Sydney that Bobby had killed Jimmy and used Jimmy's decapitated body to fake his own death.

Martha then takes Miss Parker and Sydney out back to the shed where Bobby was often kept during his fits of rage. The shed is small, cramped, and dirty inside. A heavy padlock hangs from the outside of the door. Miss Parker tells Sydney that if her father had ever put her into a place like that, she would've killed him. Martha goes on to tell them that after Jimmy Radloff's death, Bobby went berserk. He attacked Lyle Bowman with a shovel, and it was that incident, Martha says, that probably caused Lyle to kill Bobby. She thought the cutting off Bobby's head was a bit much, but otherwise had no comment about the murder.

Sydney asks where Lyle Bowman is now, and Martha tells him that her husband is in solitary confinement at Topeka Penitentiary in Topeka, Kansas. "Lyle rubs people the wrong way," she says, and them wanders off by herself. Sydney tells Miss Parker they should find Lyle Bowman and talk to him. When they look back at Martha, she's standing by the side of her house with her head resting against it: not moving, not speaking, not doing anything....

IN SAN DIEGO, Jarod goes to Angela Wylie's house after he learns that she's been released from the hospital. When he arrives, he finds her front door unlocked, and the lights off inside. He enters the living room, turns on a light, and finds Angela sitting on the living room couch... with a handgun beside her. She's going to kill herself. With the charge of "negligence" regarding the crash of Flight 105, her career is ruined; she blames herself for the deaths of the passengers even though she can't remember what actually happened; and she can't face the victims' families. She wants to die. Jarod insists that he's doing everything he can to prove she's innocent and begs her to re-think her decision. After some more talking and cajoling, he gets Angela to hand him the gun, and he promises her that he'll expose the truth about the crash.

Later, Jarod tracks down Mr. Larson at Arista Airlines, and tells him he's been hearing rumors that Larson's son, Brandon, was using illegal drugs before and possibly during the flight of Flight 105. He'll have to conduct a full investigation, he says. Larson panics, and when Jarod is gone, Larson calls Clark Thomas on his cell phone and demands that Thomas close the investigation of Flight 105 immediately. Thomas tells him he's working as fast as he can. What neither man knows is: Jarod had tapped their telephonic equipment and heard everything they said.

In his lair, Jarod's computer has finished reconstructing the corrupted data from the cockpit voice recorder. When the data is enhanced and cleaned up, it translates into a vocal record of what happened during the seconds before the plane crashed. Angela Wylie's voice can be heard clearly reprimanding Brandon Larson for not obeying her order to set the elevators at the proper pitch. Brandon whines an apology. Angela shouts that she can't get any lift out of the plane; they're going to hit the mountains. Brandon screams, and there's the sound of an explosion. Then... nothing. Angela didn't cause the crash. Brandon did.

That evening, Jarod sneaks into Brandon Larson's hospital room, and, sitting in the dark, plays and replays the recording from the cockpit voice recorder repeatedly, until Brandon wakes up from a fitful sleep. Jarod then turns on a light, lets Brandon know he's there, and shows him the tape recorder with the voice recorder tape on it. He's going to expose Brandon as the one responsible for the crash of Flight 105, he says, but first he wants an explanation from Brandon about why he lied about Angela Wylie. Brandon complains that it was all his father's idea. His father was a very controlling man who demanded perfection. "There's no room for error with my father," he says. And it was his father's constant demand for perfection, and his controlling nature that caused Brandon to seek comfort and solace in prescription medications -- which he had come to abuse. Brandon's father picked his schools, his career, even his girlfriends, Brandon says. When the plane crashed, and his father found out about Brandon's drug use, Mr. Larson had concocted a plot to exonerate Brandon and frame Angela Wylie for the accident... and Brandon went along because he couldn't say 'no' to his father. "No one says 'no' to my father..." Brandon repeats, and an unsympathetic Jarod tells him that it's about time someone did.

IN TOPEKA, KANSAS, Miss Parker and Sydney see Lyle Bowman in his cell at the Topeka Penitentiary. Bowman is standoffish and worn. One wall of his 8-by-10-foot cell is covered with large cutouts of padlocks (just like the padlock on the door of the shed at the Bowman farm). He tells Miss Parker and Sydney that, regarding Bobby, "I hated the little bastard, but I didn't kill him."

Bobby had been fine after the Bowman's adopted him, until he was about 15 years old, when a "counselor" from the adoption agency came to check up on him. The counselor spent a lot of time with Bobby, and it was during this period that Bobby's aggressive tendencies surfaced. When the dead body was found in Lyle Bowman's pick-up truck, Bowman hired a lawyer, who tried to find the counselor and talk to him about Bobby's sudden change of character. But the lawyer found that no one in the adoption agency knew who the counselor was, and the lawyer had never been able to find him. Lyle was convicted of Bobby's murder, even though a positive ID of the body in the truck was never made. The body was decapitated and was so decomposed that by the time it found its way into the pick-up truck, investigators hadn't been able to get a good set of fingerprints off it.

With this information it is abundantly clear to Sydney that Bobby (Mr. Lyle) had, indeed, killed his friend, faked his own death, and framed Lyle Bowman for the killing. Sydney then asks about the paper padlocks on the wall of the cell, and Bowman tells him that they come from an anonymous sender: one every month since the day of his conviction. He thinks they're annoying, but uses them as a sort of calendar to keep track of how long he'd been in the cell...

BACK IN SAN DIEGO Jarod sets a plan in motion to trap Mr. Larson and Clark Thomas. He sabotages the elevators on the wings of a small jump plane, installs a toggle switch device under the co-pilot's seat, and packs a parachute for himself. Then he calls Larson and Thomas to meet him at the plane first thing the next morning.

When Larson and Bowman arrive, Jarod tells them he's discovered some new and fascinating evidence at the Flight 105 crash site that they just must see to believe. Believing they had defaced, corrupted, or destroyed all the evidence there was that pointed to Brandon Larson, Mr. Larson and Clark Thomas are very nervous about Jarod's claims of "new" evidence. Jarod nevertheless convinces them to fly to the crash site with him in the jump plane.

During the flight to the crash site, Jarod keeps the jump plane low to the ground to better "simulate the decent of Flight 105". When they're near the site... near the mountains... Jarod excuses himself from the pilot's seat and goes to the back of the plane. He tells Mr. Larson he can have the pilot's seat: the view of the site is better from there. Larson reluctantly moves into the pilot's chair beside Clark Thomas, who's in the co-pilot's chair. The two men whisper to one another about what evidence Jarod could possibly have found, and then look to the back of the plane to confront Jarod directly. But he's gone. He's used the parachute and jumped out of the plane.

When he's safely on the ground, Jarod contacts the plane via radio, and tells Thomas and Larson he knows the truth about the crash of Flight 105. Brandon Larson was high on drugs and didn't hear Angela Wylie's command to adjust the pitch of the elevators. By the time she discovered Brandon's error, it was too late to correct it... and eleven people died. Jarod also informs Thomas and Larson that the plane they're in now is also set to crash. The elevators won't work, and they'll see firsthand just how the victims of Flight 105 felt just before they crashed into the mountain and died. Thomas tries to activate the elevators and find that they are, indeed, jammed. He begs Jarod to save him.

Jarod tells him that he knows how to fix the elevators, but won't do it until Thomas and Larson confess, aloud, for the cockpit voice recorder to hear and record, everything about their cover-up, their lies, the bribes, and the evidence they tampered with to save Brandon Larson's career. Thomas admits immediately to his misdeeds and demands that Larson do the same. But Larson is reluctant to admit that he was wrong and doesn't like the fact that someone else (Jarod) is controlling the situation. When he sees the mountains loom closer, though, Larson admits to his part in the cover-up, bribery and obstruction of justice, and begs Jarod to help them fix the plane.

Jarod tells them about the toggle switch under Thomas's co-pilot seat and tells them to activate it. Thomas flips the switch and regains control of the plane's elevators. He has just enough time to get them into the proper pitch before the plane stalls. Jarod then lets them know that they only have enough fuel to make it back to the airport... where the police will be waiting for them.

BACK AT THE CENTRE, Broots shows Miss Parker and Sydney the scant information he'd been able to find on Mr. Lyle: a date of employment, and a date of termination. That was all. But he tells them, searching for information on Bobby Bowman in The Centre archives, he was able to find a copy of Bobby's adoption papers. The only reason why The Centre would have those, Sydney informs them, was because The Centre had arranged Bobby's adoption itself.

Even with all the information they've found, however, Miss Parker is reluctant to accept the fact that she didn't kill Lyle when she shot him in Connecticut. Sydney tells her again that they now KNOW for a fact that Bobby Bowman/ Mr. Lyle had already faked his death once, by using a headless corpse as a decoy; and that the body pulled out of the river after the shooting in Connecticut had been headless, too. Miss Parker tells Sydney and Broots that she'll have the body exhumed to prove to them that it is Mr. Lyle's body. Broots informs her that she can't exhume the body because there isn't one. The Centre had the body cremated...

IN TOPEKA, KANSAS, Lyle Bowman receives another paper padlock in the mail and sticks it to the wall of his prison cell.

IN SAN DIEGO, Jarod meets with Angela Wylie who is entirely grateful to him for his efforts to find out the truth about the crash. "Thank you, Jarod. You really saved my life," she says.

Later, Jarod goes to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Falk, Daniel Falk's parents, and returns to them Daniel's personal effects. When they see Daniel's carry-on luggage, the parents collapse against each other and start to cry. His voice breaking with emotion, Jarod explains to them the circumstances of Daniel's death, and hands over the carry-on luggage to them. Jarod apologizes for having been partly responsible, he says, for Daniel being on the plane, and tells the Falks that he'll leave if they want him to. Mrs. Falk composes herself and gives Jarod a comforting look. She invites him to come inside and sit with them and asks him to tell them about his short time with their son. Jarod smiles wanly, accepts her invitation, and enters the house. The door closes softly behind him.