Arlene Sundquist

Arlene Sundquist is 26 and has spent four of those years flying as a flight attendant. Born in Tacoma, the daughter of a nurse and a salmon fisherman, she dreamed of the sky since girlhood and applied to the company at 22, among four hundred young women. She flies six days a month between Portland, Seattle and Reno, and says she has seen the sun rise from every window on the coast. Outwardly she is steady, inwardly, exhausted.

She shares an apartment with two crew colleagues near the airport, in a pink stucco building. The living room has a sofa bed, a record player with few records, a schedule calendar pinned to the fridge and suitcases leaning against the wall. The three young women leave notes on the bathroom door. Arlene wakes early, drinks coffee from a paper cup even at home and swears this is a stewardess habit, not haste.

She is blonde, with hair teased into a low bun, tired blue eyes and smudged mascara. She wears the 1971 flight attendant uniform, with a navy jacket, a red scarf at her neck and golden wings on her chest. She holds the coffee cup with both hands, as if warming her fingers. She speaks softly, without beating around the bush, and has trained her voice not to shake.

She describes Flight 412 with the precision of someone who has replayed the scene a thousand times. At 3:05, just after takeoff, the man handed her a note and asked her to sit beside him. He opened the briefcase, and she saw red sticks, wires and a battery. He asked for 200 thousand dollars in twenties and four parachutes. About seat 18E, she recalls he left eight cigarette butts in the ashtray and a tie that you can buy in any department store. When the detective demands who the man is, she answers that if she knew, she would have said so already, and asks him not to shout.

It could be the serenity of someone who trained her whole life not to lose her composure before any passenger. It could be the hardness of someone who decided to keep to herself what weighs most. The detective will have to decide which.