《The Manifest》Chapter 12

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Jessica got off from work around seven that night, and was so happy to see how dedicated Edgar and his new friend were to find her mother that she skipped dinner and went straight to Edgar's office. To show her appreciation, she stopped at a shop a block away from the building and picked two extra-large slabs of pizza for not only them but for her as well because she had barely eaten a thing since talking to Edgar earlier that day. She had a hard time getting through her lunch as she was half excited and half nervous about what they were going to do. As she strolled into the building the weather was only half raining and muggy. She also noticed there was a large RV in front of the building with a few people dressed like bikers hanging out front, having a smoke and talking about something. She walked by them quickly and into the building. Once on the third floor, she strolled in and looked around for Edgar. She didn't see him immediately, so she walked up to a desk and asked someone if he was in. Before the young man could answer, Tuck walked into the lobby to greet her.

"Ms. Johnson, it's nice to see you again." He said to her. "We didn't meet last time. I'm Allen Tucker, Edgar and I run this firm."

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Tucker." Jessica said as she held up the pizza, "I brought something in for the guys since I thought we might be here for a few hours. Mr. Willis gave me the impression we had a lot to talk about."

"Why thank you." Tuck said, taking them from her. "We have Chinese ordered already, but I'm sure there are a few here who might prefer this over what Edgar ordered." He took it and walked her to the conference room where everyone was already talking. Tuck placed the pizza on the table as Edgar and Jerome stood up to greet Jessica and exchange pleasantries.

Jerome, who really isn't a fan of Asian foods, spotted the pizza and grabbed a slice for himself. While munching on the food, he looked back to Jessica, "Thanks, and I guess now would be a better time than ever to start this thing?"

"Well, we have pizza and a few people here who might need some blanks filled in. I guess it would be best to start off from the beginning." Edgar said, as he pretty much ignored the pizza, "Jessica, you might want to start off by telling Jerome what happened at the Vigil."

"Which vigil did you attend?" Jerome asked, somewhat curious.

"I was at the vigil at the national military cemetery on Sunday Night." Jessica said, as she did her best to think back, "I remember going somewhat alright with this one because it was going to be mostly silent and like a brief period of morning. Sometime during the ceremony, I saw my mother on the other side of the field. I guess she saw me because she ran away and sped off in a car as fast as she could."

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Jerome was still curious, "Your mother is the one we're looking for, correct?" Jessica nodded, and he continued, "What connection does her mother have to..."

"Your answers are here," Edgar said, as he handed a piece of paper over to him. Jerome was looking at the paper in utter amazement and then looked back at Edgar, as it was the manifest that Norsberg had given them.

"Where the hell did you get this?" Jerome asked, "This is amazing!"

"Our person is named Johnson," Edgar told Jerome as he was already scanning the names on the list.

"And this is your mother?" Jerome asked Jessica, as he was pointing to her mother's name on the list.

"Yes, it is." Jessica answered, "My brother and I were in the terminal and we watched her get onboard. We know she was on the plane when it left the gate." She could see that Jerome hadn't been given all the details of the case so far, so this must have been the time that Edgar was going to use to get everyone on the same page.

"This is amazing. If you saw your mother... this opens a whole can of worms that has always been suspected but never proven." Jerome took a seat and kept staring at the manifest, "Can I keep this?" he asked Edgar, like a young boy at Toys R' Us who just found that must have toy of the Christmas season. While still reading it, he picked up his slice of pizza and resumed eating while reading it over. "There isn't even a single marker smudge on this at all! Where the hell..."

"Let's get back to the topic at hand." Edgar interrupted, somewhat eager to not focus on the founder of the feast. "We might as well start from the beginning, that being the crash of flight 77."

Jerome quickly finished his current bite, "You mean the alleged crash of Flight 77."

Jessica quickly picked up on this, "What do you mean alleged?"

"I mean there is even more evidence that suggests that a plane didn't crash into the Pentagon." Jerome replied, "All this evidence has been staring us in the face for five years, and no one was brave enough to ask the important questions."

"But aren't you just talking about wild conspiracy theories?" Tuck said out loud from a corner of the conference room. He never seemed impressed with the suggestion, and used the opportunity to air it out for the discussion.

"Conspiracy theories are nothing to be afraid of." Jerome countered as he put down his greasy food, "Throughout history, almost every tragic event had theories that were presented to the public in order to offer an alternate premise to what could have happened. The word 'conspiracy' has been added to it mostly because theories presented usually include more than one person planning the event or tragedy in question, thus making it a premeditated offense. Conspiracy theories date back centuries, with stories such as the Illuminati and One World Government to today's big whoppers like the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Junior. Every major event in history has their own theory, to the point where people in my field jokingly say that an event isn't truly one of a kind unless they have their own conspiracy theories. Take both World Wars as a prime example. There's a long standing theory that Archduke Francis Ferdinand's assassination in Sarajevo was orchestrated but the Germans to push their own ally into a war. The theory was that the Germans were eager to start a war while they were still winning the arms race. Then there's the theory about the Second World War and the attack on Pearl Harbor."

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"Did we bomb ourselves then too?" another person asked sarcastically. There was a little laughter, and when things settled down Jerome responded.

"No, of course we didn't." Jerome answered, "The conspiracy theory surrounding that event is that the government had prior knowledge to the attack and did nothing to stop it. The motive was that the military thought a huge body count in the harbor would create an outcry large enough to allow the US Government to finally get off the bench and into both sides of the war, which worked since the US immediately declared war on both Japan and Germany. I'm not saying any these suppositions are true, but that's the reason why we call them theories. They sound nice but have little or no evidence to back them up in any way."

Jerome took a final bite of his pizza, tossed the crust into the trash can beside him and paused for a moment to chew his food.

"That brings us to the theories surrounding the alleged crash of flight 77." Jerome continued, "The stories surrounding that particular event began to surface in February of 2002, by a French website called "Hunt the Boeing". It was this website that for the first time presented ideas and theories that contradicted the government's story about what happened in Washington on September 11th. I know we all saw the same footage on that tragic day and were all fed the same story about a plane had slammed into the side of the Pentagon at 9:43am. What this website showed the public was photos that presented and evidence details that contradicted the official story. These photos showed a smaller hole in the building and damage that was too small to have been caused by a Boeing 757. Many people who looked into the theories were originally trying to debunk the story, only to be consumed by the theory and convinced that things were too fishy to ignore. "Hunt the Boeing" presented too many good questions without enough answers to back up the official story. The best way to describe this is with a visual aide."

Edgar took care of this for him and waked into the other room and came back with a decent sized white board, and a few markers, "I think this might do the trick for you." he said as he went back to where he was sitting beside Tuck.

"Thanks," Jerome said as he took a piece marker and began to draw on the board, "Based on the photographs of the Pentagon that were taken days after the attack, we were able to calculate that the size of the hole in the Pentagon is 65 feet across, and the height of the building is 73 feet tall..." Jerome drew a picture of what he estimated would be the size of the damage caused to the building. "This is the size of the damage caused at the pentagon that day. However, this is where things get sticky because the wing span from tip to tip on a 757 is a little over a hundred and twenty four feet. From nose to tail, the plane is over a hundred a fifty-five feet long and the height is forty-four and a half feet high. So let's think about this again, a plane that is over a hundred and twenty feet wide and have a look at that in comparison to the hole we found at the Pentagon." Jerome too a red piece of marker this time and drew in the dimensions of the 757 wingspan and the tail height into the picture. "How does a plane this massive fit into a hole that is just a little over half its size?" Jerome turned back to the several people listening to him and no one could provide an answer, "When we look at the damage that was also sustained by the Pentagon, we learned that it isn't consistent with the damage that was sustained at the World Trade Center. If it was in fact a Boeing 757 that hit the pentagon, the wings would have cause damage a lot wider than sixty-five feet, which suggests that something smaller than a 757 hit the building instead. This is where many of the theories surrounding the Pentagon take up roots. They all suspect that something else other than an airliner hit this building and if this is the case, it would explain why your mother is still alive."

"Wow," Jessica said, amazed by what she heard so far. "This is the first I'm hearing about this."

"I'm not surprised," Jerome replied, "The media and the government has worked very hard to silence the dissenting voices regarding the events of September 11th. You have to look very hard just to find some of it on the internet."

"So this is where you come in," Jerome said to Jessica, "This means your mother's living, breathing body is all the proof someone would need to blow this case wide open. It would put a lot of top ranking officials on the hot seat. This could be the biggest cover up in the history of our nation and if we can find Jessica's mother, we might be able to prove it."

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