An hour later, supplied with a huge coffee and a turkey sandwich from a DC deli, I was behind the wheel of a silver Chrysler 200 rental car. When I looked up Marble Spring on my phone and saw that it was only about four and a half hours from DC, I decided to find this guy, Haber, immediately—before the Air Force shut him up, too.
So I was riding up Interstate 270 through northern Maryland with no idea what I would find. A Google search of the name had yielded a frustrating lack of information, but a potential hit: one Paul Haber had been an Army platoon sergeant.
Okay, I was intrigued. But how had he found me? Did someone in DC tip him off? I thought back over the day—the security checkpoints at the Air Force base, the stonewalling at the Pentagon.
Had Payton had a change of heart? No way, I thought, remembering her expression after the phone call. She had too much to lose. Whoever was on the other end of that line wanted Eardley buried for good.
Chris Milne? No, he wouldn’t bother with the cloak-and-dagger, the cryptic note.
My phone buzzed in the cup holder—Emily Parker. I picked up.
“It’s been too long.”
“Ha,” she answered. “I’m guessing you’re not on that train back to New York right now.”
“And miss my date with Paul Haber?” I said. I’d texted her about the note, asking her if she could find anything on the mystery man.
“So I thought. Well, I have something interesting for you. I ran his name and he comes up clean in Army records, nothing unusual, spotless performance records—”
“And that’s interesting?”
“So you don’t want to know?”
“Know what?”
“That he served in Iraq, and his service overlapped with Eardley’s. Both worked in special operations. And what’s more, I also turned up a photo. Dated 2007.”
Marble Spring was a blip on the map in rural Pennsylvania, up in the Allegheny Mountains. I now knew, thanks to Wikipedia, that it’s four miles north of the west branch of the Susquehanna River, and has a population of 112. I practically have more people in my family.
I hooked a right on US 15 into Pennsylvania about an hour and twenty minutes later. Off the interstate, I got on State Route PA 144, then crossed over onto PA 150 and started heading up into the Alleghenies. Stunning ridgeline views opened up as I crossed remote rusting bridges. Down in the distance was a patchwork of farms laid out along zigzagging rivers deep-cut into the heavily forested land.
It had stopped raining when I got out of DC, but around three o’clock it started to rain again. As I came down into a mountain valley alongside a railroad bed, thunder cracked what sounded like a foot from the car. The pelting rain began speed-drumming off the top of the Chrysler.
Five minutes later, I stopped before Marble Spring’s single blinking yellow stoplight. Since there wasn’t another driver to be seen, I paused to look around. Main Street, without even a bank or a post office, redefined the phrase “not much to look at.” By my observation, the town consisted of a dollar store across from a Gothic-looking red brick church, and some sketchy-looking row houses rising up into the woods.
Behind these few structures, in fact all around them, stood the hills, dark and looming, the tops hidden in mist.
Still stopped at the light, I tried my email again. Service was spotty in the hills, but finally the photo from Emily had come through.
It showed our John Doe—Eardley—young and handsome in uniform. And looking very buddy-buddy with the guy next to him, who had an arm slung over Eardley’s shoulder. Tall, also handsome, and apparently Paul Haber.