Fatal Voyage tb-4

by Reichs, Kathy

  “The FBI's coming on board?” Larke asked.

  “They're here, pawing at the fence, so it may not be long.”

  I broke in, unable to wait another moment.

  “Do we have a passenger list?”

  The ME slid a printout from his pad and handed it to me.

  I experienced a kind of fear I'd rarely felt in my life.

  Please, God.

  The world receded as I raced through the names. Anderson. Beacham. Bertrand. Caccioli. Daignault. Larke spoke, but his words didn't penetrate.

  A lifetime later, I unclamped the teeth from my lower lip and resumed breathing.

  Neither Katy Brennan Petersons nor Lija Feldman was on the list.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.

  I opened them to questioning looks. Offering no explanation, I returned the printout, the profound relief already blunted by a sense of guilt. My daughter was alive, but the children of others lay dead on a mountain. I wanted to work.

  “What would you like me to do?” I asked Larke.

  “Earl has the morgue under control. Go work recovery. But once transport starts I'll need you here.”

  Back at the site, I went directly to a decontamination trailer and donned mask, gloves, and jumpsuit. Looking more like a spaceman than an anthropologist, I nodded to the guard, circled the barricade, and crossed to the temporary morgue for an update.

  The exact location of every flagged item was being entered into a CAD-type program using technology called Total Station. The position of airplane parts, personal effects, and human remains would later be plotted onto virtual grids and printed out as hard copy. Since the technique was far quicker and less labor-intensive than the traditional system of mapping with strings and grids, the removal of remains had already begun. I headed out across the debris field.

  The sun was arcing toward the tree line, and delicate shadows spiderwebbed the carnage. Klieg lights had been set up, and the smell of putrefaction had strengthened. Otherwise, little had changed in the time I'd been gone.

  For the next three hours I assisted my colleagues in tagging, photographing, and packaging what was left of the passengers of Air TransSouth 228. Complete corpses, limbs, and torsos went into large body bags, fragments into small ones. The bags were then hauled uphill and placed on racks in refrigerated trailers.

  The temperature was warm, and I perspired inside my suit and gloves. Flies swarmed, attracted by the rotting flesh. Several times I had to fight nausea as I scraped up entrails or brain tissue. Eventually, my nose and mind numbed. I didn't notice when the sky went red and the lights clicked on.

  Then I came to the girl. She lay face up, legs bent backward in the middle of her shins. Her features had been gnawed, and the exposed bone glowed crimson in the sunset.

  I straightened, wrapped my arms around my middle, and drew several steadying breaths. In, out. In, out.

  Dear God. Wasn't a thirty-thousand-foot plunge enough? Must creatures degrade what remained?

  These children had danced, played tennis, ridden the roller coaster, checked their e-mail. They represented the dreams of their parents. But no longer. Now they would be framed photos resting on closed caskets.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Time for a break, Tempe.”

  Earl Bliss's eyes peered at me from the slit between his mask and cap.

  “I'm fine.”

  “Take a break. That's an order.”

  “O.K.”

  “At least an hour.” Halfway to the NTSB command center I stopped, dreading the chaos I knew I'd find. I needed serenity. Life. Birds singing, squirrels chasing, and air that was free of the smell of death. I reversed direction and walked toward the woods.

  Skirting the edge of the debris field, I spotted a break in the trees and remembered that Larke and the lieutenant governor had appeared at that point, coming from their helicopter. Up close, I could see the route they had probably taken. Perhaps a trail or streambed at one time, it was now a meandering, treeless passage littered with rocks and bordered by scrub. Stripping off mask and gloves, I headed into the forest.

  As I moved deeper into the trees the organized hubbub around the wreckage receded, and forest sounds took over. Thirty yards in, I climbed onto a fallen sourwood, drew my feet to my bum, and gazed up at the sky. Yellow and rose now streaked the red as nightfall crawled toward the horizon. It would soon be dark. I couldn't stay long.

  I let my brain cells pick their topic.

  The girl with the ravaged face.

  No. New category.

  The cells chose living people.

  Katy. My daughter was over twenty now, moving off on a life of her own. It was what I wanted, of course, but the severing of ties was hard. The child Katy had passed through my life and disappeared. I was now meeting the young woman Katy, and liking her very much.

  But where is she? the cells asked.

  Next.

  Pete. We were better friends separated than we'd ever been married. On occasion, he actually talked to me and listened to me. Should I ask for a divorce and move on, or roll with the status quo?

  The cells had no answer.

  Andrew Ryan. I'd been thinking of him a lot lately. Ryan was a homicide detective with the provincial police in Montreal. Though we'd known each other for nearly a decade, it was only last year that I'd agreed to date him.

  Date. I had my usual cringe reaction. There had to be a better term for singles over forty.

  The cells had no suggestion.

  Nomenclature aside, Ryan and I had never pulled it off. Before our first official social outing, he had gone undercover, and I hadn't seen him in months. At times like this, I missed him intensely.

  I heard rustling in the underbrush and held my breath to listen. The woods were quiet. Seconds later I heard it again, this time on my other side. The movement sounded too large for a rabbit or squirrel.

  The brain cells sounded a low-level alarm.

  Thinking perhaps Earl had followed me, I stood up and looked around. I was alone.

  For a full minute nothing moved, then the rhododendron to my right jiggled, and I heard a low growl. I whirled but saw only leaves and bushes. Eyes probing into the shrubbery, I slipped off the log and planted my feet.

  Moments later there was another growl, followed by a highpitched keening.

  The cells called in the limbic guys, and adrenaline shot to every part of my body.

  Slowly, I squatted and reached for a rock. Hearing movement behind me, I pivoted in that direction.

  My eyes met other eyes, black and gleaming. Lips curled back over teeth pale and slick in the deepening twilight. Between the teeth, something horrifyingly familiar.

  A foot.

  The cells struggled for meaning.

  The teeth were embedded in a human foot.

  The cells linked to recently stored memories. A mangled face. A deputy's comment.

  Oh, God! A wolf? I was unarmed. What to do? Threaten?

  The animal stared at me, its body feral and emaciated.

  Run?

  No. I had to get the foot. It belonged to a person. A person with family and friends. I wouldn't abandon it to scavengers.

  Then a second wolf emerged and positioned itself behind the first, teeth bared, saliva darkening the fur around its mouth. It snarled and the lips quivered. Slowly, I stood and raised the rock.

  “Back!”

  Both animals halted, and the first wolf dropped the foot. Sniffing the air, the ground, the air again, it lowered its head, raised its tail, took a step in my direction, then sidled away a few feet and stopped, motionless and watching. The other wolf followed. Were they uncertain or did they have a plan? I started to retreat, heard a snap, and turned to see three more animals at my back. They appeared to be slowly circling.

  “Stop!”

  I screamed and threw the rock, catching the closest animal near its eye. He yelped and twisted, scampering backward. The others froze for a moment, then resumed ci
rcling.

  Placing my back to the fallen tree, I twisted a branch from side to side, trying to detach it.

  The circle was getting smaller. I could hear their panting, smell their bodies. One of the group took a step inside the circle, then another, flicking its tail up, down. It stood staring, soundless.

  The branch broke, and at the sound the wolf jumped back, then stood again and stared.

  Grasping my branch like a baseball bat, I screamed, “Beat it, you scavengers. Get out of here,” and lunged at the lead wolf, swinging my club.

  The wolf easily jumped out of the way, retreated a few feet, then resumed circling and snarling. As I was readying my lungs for the loudest yell that had ever escaped them, someone beat me to it.

  “Scram, you goddamn fur balls. Yo! Haul ass!”

  Then one missile followed by another landed near the lead wolf.

  The wolf scented, snarled, then spun and loped off into the underbrush. The others hesitated, then moved off behind him.

  Hands trembling, I dropped the branch and braced myself against the fallen sourwood.

  A figure in Tyvek and mask ran toward me and heaved another rock in the direction of the disappearing wolves. Then a hand went up and removed the mask. Though barely visible in the twilight gloom, I recognized the face.

  But it couldn't be. This was too improbable to be real.

  “NICE SWING. YOU LOOKED LIKE SAMMY SOSA.”

  “The goddamn thing was getting ready to go for my throat!” It was almost a shriek.

  “They don't attack live people. They were only trying to drive you away from their dinner.”

  “Did one of them explain that to you personally?”

  Andrew Ryan plucked a leaf from my hair.

  But Ryan was underground somewhere in Quebec.

  “What in hell are you doing here?” Slightly calmer.

  “Is that a thank-you, Goldilocks? Maybe Riding Hood would be more appropriate, given the circumstances.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, brushing bangs off my forehead. Though Iwas grateful for the intervention, I preferred not to cast it as a rescue.

  “Nice do.”

  He reached for my hair again, and I parried the move. As usual when our paths crossed, I was not looking my best.

  “I'm scraping up quarts of brain matter, and a wolf pack was just sizing me up as a candidate for joining the dismembered, and you find fault with my styling gel?”

  “Is there a reason you're out here by yourself?”

  His paternalism irritated me. “Is there a reason you're here at all?”

  The lines in his face tensed. Such nice lines, each placed exactly where it ought to be.

  “Bertrand was on the plane.”

  “Jean?”

  The passenger list. Bertrand. It was a common name, so I'd never thought of Ryan's partner.

  “He was escorting a prisoner.” Ryan drew air through his nostrils, exhaled. “They were connecting to an Air Canada flight at Dulles.”

  “Oh, God. Oh, my God. I am so sorry.”

  We stood mute, unsure what to say, until the silence was pierced by an eerie, quavering sound, followed by a series of high-pitched yips. Were our friends challenging us to a rematch?

  “We'd better get back,” Ryan said.

  “No argument here.”

  Ryan unzipped his jumpsuit, took a flashlight from his belt, flicked the switch, and raised it to shoulder level.

  “After you.”

  “Wait. Let me have the light.”

  He handed it to me, and I crossed to the spot where I'd first seen the wolf.

  Ryan followed.

  “If you're hunting mushrooms, this is not a good time.”

  He stopped when he saw what lay on the ground.

  The foot looked macabre in the yellow beam, its flesh ending in a crushed mass just above the ankle. Shadows danced in and out of the grooves and pits left by carnivore teeth.

  Pulling fresh gloves from my pocket, I snapped one on and picked up the foot. Then I marked the spot with another glove and secured it with a rock.

  “Shouldn't it be mapped?”

  “We can't tell where the pack found this. Besides, if we leave the thing here it's puppy chow.”

  “You're the boss.”

  I followed Ryan out of the woods, holding the foot as far from my body as possible.

  When we got back to the command center, Ryan went into the NTSB trailer and I took my find to the temporary morgue. After hearing my explanation of its provenance and why I'd collected it, the intake team assigned it a number, bagged it, and sent it to one of the refrigerated trucks. I rejoined the recovery operation.

  * * *

  Two hours later Earl found me and delivered a note: Report to the morgue. 7 A.M. LT.

  He produced an address and told me I was done for the day. No amount of argument would change his mind.

  I went to decontamination, showered under scalding water for as long as I could take it, and put on fresh clothes. I left the trailer with Christmas-bow skin, but at least the smell was gone.

  Clomping down the steps, as exhausted as I'd ever been, I noticed Ryan leaning against a bubble-top cruiser ten feet up the access road, talking with Lucy Crowe.

  “You look beat,” said Crowe when I drew near.

  “I'm good,” I said. “Earl pulled me in.”

  “How's it going out there?”

  “It's going.”

  I felt like a midget talking to them. Both Ryan and Crowe topped six feet, though she had him beat in shoulder breadth. He looked like a point guard; she was a power forward.

  Not in a mood to chat, I asked Crowe for directions and excused myself.

  “Hold it, Brennan.” I allowed Ryan to catch up, then gave him a “don't bring it up” look. I did not want to discuss wolves.

  As we walked, I thought of Jean Bertrand, with his designer jackets, matching ties, and earnest face. Bertrand always gave the impression he was trying too hard, listening too closely, afraid to miss an important clue or nuance. I could hear him, flipping from French to English in his own personal brand of Franglais, laughing at his own jokes, unaware that others weren't.

  I remembered the first time I'd met Bertrand. Shortly after arriving in Montreal, I'd gone to a Christmas party hosted by the SQ homicide unit. Bertrand was there, mildly drunk, and newly partnered with Andrew Ryan. The hotshot detective was already something of a legend, and Bertrand's veneration flowed undisguised. By evening's end the hero worship had grown embarrassing for everyone. Especially Ryan.

  “How old was he?” I voiced the question without thinking.

  “Thirty-seven.” Ryan was right there in the middle of my thoughts. “Jesus.”

  We reached the county road and headed uphill.

  “Whom was he escorting?”

  “A guy named Rémi Petricelli, known to his friends as Pepper.”

  I knew the name. Petricelli was a bigwig in the Quebec Hells Angels, reputed to have ties to organized crime. The Canadian and American governments had been investigating him for years.

  “What was Pepper doing in Georgia?”

  “About two months ago a small-time trafficker named Jacques Fontana ended up charcoal in a Subaru Outback. When every road led to his door, Pepper decided to sample the hospitality of his brothers in Dixie. Long story short, Pepper was spotted in a bar in Atlanta, the locals nailed him, and last week Georgia agreed to extradite. Bertrand was hauling his ass back to Quebec.”

  We'd arrived at my car. Across at the overlook, a spotlighted man held a mike while an assistant powdered his face.

  “Which brings more players to the table,” Ryan went on, his voice leaden.

  “Meaning?”

  “Pepper had juice. If he'd decided to deal, a lot of his friends would be in deep-dish shit.”

  “I'm not following.”

  “Some powerful people probably wanted Pepper dead.”

  “Enough to kill eighty-seven other people?”

 
; “Without a hitch in their breathing.”

  “But that plane was full of kids.”

  “These guys aren't the Jesuits.”

  I was too shocked to respond.

  Seeing my face, Ryan switched tacks. “Hungry?”

  “I need to sleep.”

  “You need to eat.”

  “I'll stop for a burger,” I lied.

  Ryan stepped back. I unlocked my door and drove off, too tired and heartsick to say good night.

  * * *

  Since every room in the area had been grabbed by the press and NTSB, I was booked into a small B & B on the outskirts of Bryson City. It took several wrong turns and two inquiries to find it.

  True to its name, High Ridge House sat atop a summit at the end of a long, narrow lane. It was a two-story white farmhouse with intricate woodwork on the doors and windows, and on the beams, banisters, and railings of a wide veranda wrapping around the front and sides. In the porch light I could see wooden rockers, wicker planters, ferns. Very Victorian.

  I added my car to a half dozen others in a postage-stamp lot to the left of the house, and followed a flagstone path flanked by metal lawn chairs. Bells jangled as I opened the front door. Inside, the house smelled of wood polish, Pine-Sol, and simmering lamb.

  Irish stew is perhaps my favorite dish. As usual, it brought Gran to mind. Twice in two days? Maybe the old girl was looking down.

  In moments a woman appeared. She was middle-aged, about five feet tall, with no makeup and thick gray hair pulled into an odd sausage roll on the top of her head. She wore a long denim skirt and a red sweatshirt with Praise the Lord scrolled across her chest.

  Before I could speak, the woman embraced me. Surprised, I stood angled down with hands out, trying not to strike her with my overnighter or laptop.

  After a decade the woman stepped back and gazed at me with the intensity of a player receiving serve at Wimbledon.

  “Dr. Brennan.”

  “Tempe.”

  “It's the Lord's work you're doing for these poor dead children.”

  I nodded.

  “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. He tells us that in the Book of Psalms.”