Nella Mercer's office at the Federal Air Crimes Office regional desk was smaller than I expected, a single window looking out at a parking lot in Northhaven, and she had the trailer paused on her monitor when I walked in, Silas's rough cut queued from the link I'd sent her the night before. "I watched it twice," she said, before I'd even sat down. "Once for what it says and once for what it implies. Those aren't the same crime."
"Can your office do anything about the second one?" I asked.
She turned the monitor so we could both see it and tapped the paused frame, the actress playing young me frozen mid-stride on a riverbank. "We don't adjudicate documentaries," she said. "That's not evasion, that's jurisdiction. If Mr. Trent slandered you, that's a civil matter for a lawyer, not a reopened federal case." She pulled a printed sheet from a folder and slid it across the desk. "But I can tell you what we actually announced, because I think you came here assuming it meant more than it does."
The announcement was dated that day, July 12, though she said the decision behind it had been made on July 8. It was four paragraphs, dry as any government notice, explaining that the Federal Air Crimes Office was redirecting active investigative resources away from the 1971 hijacking file toward cases with recent forensic leads, while leaving the file formally open. The last line was the one Silas's publicity had begun quoting out of context that afternoon: specific physical evidence, if it meets current chain-of-custody standards, remains welcome and will be assessed.
"That's not a reward for theories," Nella said, watching me read it twice. "That's a standing door we never closed. It does not mean we think your money proves a landing site, or a survival, or an identity. It means if someone brings us a parachute harness with provenance, we'll look at it. A film implying a family coached its daughter is not evidence. It's a plot."
"So there's nothing you can do about the premiere," I said.
"Not as an agency, no. And I want to be honest with you rather than kind to you, because I think you'd rather have that." She leaned back. "If I call Mr. Trent and ask him to retract a line, I'm not acting as an investigator anymore, I'm acting as a character witness, and the next thing that happens is his lawyer calls our press office asking why a federal agent is interfering with a film's release. That hurts you more than it helps you."
I sat with that for a moment, the particular disappointment of being told that the authority I'd driven two hours to borrow simply didn't extend to cover the thing that was actually hurting me. "Then what do I do."
"You go back to him and you ask for the whole cut, not the trailer," Nella said. "Trailers are built to imply. Full cuts have to actually say things, in sequence, with sources. If there's a distortion, it'll be easier to point to in context than in thirty seconds of music and river footage." She slid the printed announcement toward me to keep. "And if you ever do find something physical, something with real provenance, bring it to me directly. Not to him first."
I drove back to Alder Reach with the sheet on the passenger seat, past the turnoff for the riverbank where I'd once dragged a canvas bag home thinking I'd found someone's lost gear. The thing I had come to Northhaven hoping for, some ruling that would simply end the problem for me, hadn't existed in the first place. What was left was smaller and more exact: a specific door that stayed open for evidence, and no door at all for correcting a story. I called Silas from the parking lot before I lost the nerve to, and told him I wanted the full rough cut, not the highlight reel he'd shown the volunteers, and that I wanted to see it before I signed anything else. He agreed almost too quickly, the way a man agrees when he still believes the full version will convince you rather than convict him.