Fatal Voyage tb-4

by Reichs, Kathy

  Though blurred by layers of plastic, I could make out details in the clear upper half. Matted hair, a red plaid shirt, ghostly white hands bound at the wrists. I pulled gloves from my pack, snapped them on, and gently rolled the bundle.

  Crowe's hand flew to her mouth.

  A face, purple and bloated, eyes milky and half closed. Cracked lips, a bulging tongue pressed to the plastic like a giant leech.

  Noticing an oval object at the base of the throat, I brought my light close. A pendant. I pulled out my knife and slit the plastic. The hiss of escaping gas was followed by an overpowering stench of putrefaction. My stomach recoiled, but I didn't pull back.

  Holding my breath, I teased back the plastic with the tip of the knife.

  A male silhouette was clearly visible on a small silver medal, arms crossed piously at the throat. Engraved letters formed a halo around the head. I held the light obliquely to bring out the name.

  Saint Blaise.

  We had found the missing fisherman with the ailing throat. George Adair.

  This time I suggested a different route. Crowe agreed. Leaving Bobby and George to secure the site, the sheriff and I drove to Bryson City and pulled Byron McMahon from a football game he was watching on the parlor TV at High Ridge House. Together we prepared an affidavit, which the special agent took directly to a federal magistrate judge in Asheville.

  In less than two hours McMahon called Crowe. Based on the probability of a hate crime, and on the possible involvement of federal lands, due to the proximity of a reservation and national parks, a search warrant had been issued.

  It fell to me to phone Larke Tyrell.

  I found the ME at home, and, from background noise, guessed he was involved with the same football game.

  Though Larke's words were cordial, I could tell my call unnerved him. I did not take time to assuage his anxiety, or to apologize for the lateness of the hour.

  The ME listened while I explained the situation. Finally, I stopped. Silence stretched so long I thought we'd been disconnected.

  “Larke?”

  When he spoke again, his tone had changed.

  “I want you to handle this. What do you need?”

  I told him.

  “Can you pick it up at the incident morgue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want personnel?”

  “Who's still there?”

  “Maggie and Stan.”

  Maggie Burroughs and Stan Fryeburg were death investigators with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill, deployed to Bryson City for the processing of Air TransSouth 228. Both were graduates of my body recovery workshop at the university, and both were excellent.

  “Tell them to be ready at seven.”

  “Roger.”

  “This has nothing to do with the plane crash, Larke.”

  “I know that. But these are dead bodies in my state.”

  There was another long pause. I heard an overwrought announcer, a cheering crowd.

  “Tempe, I—”

  I did not help him out.

  “This has gone too goddamned far.”

  I listened to a dial tone.

  What the hell did that mean?

  I had other things to worry about.

  The next day I was up at dawn, at the Arthur house by seven-thirty. The scene had been transformed overnight. A sheriff 's deputy now stood guard at the kudzu gate, others at the front and back doors. A generator had been activated, and every light in the house was on.

  When I arrived, George was helping McMahon load books and papers into cardboard boxes. Bobby was covering the mantel with white powder. As I passed on my way to the kitchen, McMahon winked and wished me good luck.

  I spent the next four days like a miner, descending to the basement at dawn, surfacing at noon for a sandwich and coffee, then descending again until after dark. Another generator and lights were brought in to illuminate my underground world, so day and night became indistinguishable.

  Tommy Albright arrived on the morning of day one. After examining and photographing the bundle I was certain contained George Adair, he released the body for transport to the Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva.

  While Maggie worked the decomp stain inside the courtyard wall, Stan helped me photograph the cellar floor. Then we exhumed the alcove burial, slowly exposing the corpse, recording body position and grave outline, and screening every particle of dirt.

  The victim lay facedown on a gray wool blanket, one arm twisted beneath the chest, the other curled around the head. Decomposition was advanced, the organs soup, the head and hands largely skeletonized.

  When the remains were fully uncovered and documented, we began removal. Transferring the cadaver to a body bag, I noted that the left pants leg was badly torn, the leg missing below the knee.

  I also noticed concentric fractures in the right temporo-parietal region of the skull. Linear cracks radiated up the sides of the central depression, turning the whole into a spiderweb of fragmented bone.

  “Somebody really blasted this guy.” Stan had stopped screening to look at the skull.

  “Yes.”

  My outrage was building as it always did. The victim had been dealt a skull-shattering blow, then dumped in a hole like last year's mulch. What kind of monster did such things?

  Another thought pierced through my anger.

  This corpse was buried only inches below the ground surface. Though putrefied, considerable soft tissue remained, indicating a relatively recent death. Did earlier victims lie beneath? In other alcoves? I kept my eyes and mind open.

  Maggie joined us in the basement on day two, having excavated a ten-foot square to a depth of twelve inches around and below the courtyard stain. Though the job was tedious, her efforts paid off. Two isolated teeth turned up in the screen.

  While Stan finished sifting dirt from the alcove burial, Maggie and I probed every inch of the cellar floor, testing for the presence of buried objects and for differences in soil density. We found eight suspicious locations, two in the original alcove, two in the main chamber, and four in a dead-end tunnel off the chamber's west side.

  By late afternoon we'd dug a test trench at each location. The suspect spots in the main room yielded only sterile soil. The other six sites produced human bone.

  I explained to Stan and Maggie how we would proceed. I would request help from the sheriff 's department with photography and screening. Stan would continue in the alcove. Maggie and I would begin with the tunnel sites.

  I directed my crew with professional detachment, the calm of my voice and the composure of my face wildly out of sync with my pounding heart. It was my worst nightmare. But what was that nightmare? How many more bodies would we unearth, and why were they there?

  Maggie and I were excavating the first two tunnel disturbances when a figure appeared at the entrance, caught between our spots and a light in the main chamber. I couldn't make out the silhouette, and wondered if a member of the transport team was coming to ask a question.

  One step and I knew.

  Larke Tyrell walked toward me, gait precise, back ramrod straight. I rose but did not greet him.

  “I've been trying your portable.”

  “The press have me on autodial.”

  He did not pursue it.

  “What's the count?”

  “At this point, two decomposed bodies and two skeletons. There's bone in at least four other locations.”

  His eyes moved from my face to the pits where Maggie and I were uncovering skeletons, each with tightly flexed limbs.

  “They look like prehistoric bundle burials.”

  “Yes, but they're not.”

  His gaze swung back to me.

  “You would know that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tommy sent the two decomps to Harris Regional, but they're not going to want their autopsy room tied up. I'll order everything transferred to the incident morgue and keep the place operational for as long as you need.”
/>   I did not reply.

  “You will do this?”

  “Of course.”

  “Everything is under control?”

  “Here it is.”

  “I'm looking forward to your report.”

  “I have excellent penmanship.”

  “I thought you'd like to know that the last of the Air TransSouth passengers has been identified.”

  “Petricelli and the students in 22A and B?”

  “Petricelli, yes. And one of the students.”

  “Only one?”

  “Two days ago the young man assigned to seat 22B phoned his father from Costa Rica.”

  “He wasn't on the plane?”

  “While in the waiting area, a man offered him a thousand bucks for his boarding pass.”

  “Why didn't he come forward earlier?”

  “He was in the rain forest and completely cut off, never heard about the crash until he returned to San José. Then he hesitated a few days before calling home, knowing the jig was up for torpedoing the semester.”

  “Who is the substitute passenger?”

  “The unluckiest bastard in the universe.”

  I waited.

  “A tax accountant from Buckhead. We found him through a thumbprint.”

  He looked at me a very long moment. I stared back. The tension between us was palpable.

  “This is not the place, Tempe, but we do need to talk. I am a fair man, but I have acted unfairly. There have been pressures.”

  “Complaints.”

  Though Maggie kept her eyes down, the rhythm of her trowel changed. I knew she was listening.

  “Even wise people make unwise choices.”

  With that, he was gone.

  Again, I wondered what he meant. Whose unwise choices? Mine? His? Someone else's?

  The next forty-eight hours were spent with trowels and brushes and human bones. My team dug and documented while Crowe's deputies hauled and sifted dirt. Ryan brought me coffee and doughnuts and news of the crash. McMahon brought me reports on the operation upstairs. I gave him Mr. Veckhoff 's diary, and explained my notes and theories during lunch breaks.

  I forgot the names engraved in stone. I forgot the strange caricatures watching silently from walls and ceilings. I forgot the bizarre underground chambers and caves in which I worked.

  We recovered eight people in all, the last on Halloween.

  The following day we learned who blew up Air TransSouth 228.

  “A PIPE. THE KIND THAT YOU PUT IN YOUR MOUTH AND SMOKE.”

  McMahon nodded.

  “In a checked bag.” My voice registered my incredulity.

  “An airline employee remembers telling this guy arriving at the last moment that his duffel was too large for the overhead bin and he would have to check it. The guy was sweaty and distracted, and pulled off his sport jacket and stuffed it into the duffel before giving it to a baggage handler. They're saying he left a hot pipe in the pocket of the jacket.”

  “What about smoke detectors? Fire detectors?”

  “Baggage compartments don't have them.”

  Ryan, McMahon, and I were seated in folding chairs in a briefing room at NTSB central. I could see Larke Tyrell at the end of our row. The front of the room was filled with personnel of the response and investigative teams, the back crammed with journalists.

  Magnus Jackson was making a statement, projecting visuals onto a screen behind him.

  “Air TransSouth 228 was brought down by an unpredictable confluence of events resulting in fire, explosion, depressurization, and in-flight breakup. In that order. I'll take it step by step, take questions when I'm done.”

  Jackson worked the keys of a laptop, bringing up a diagram of the passenger cabin.

  “On October fourth, at approximately eleven forty-five A.M.passenger Walter Lindenbaum presented himself to Air TransSouth agent James Sartore for boarding of Flight 228. Agent Sartore had just announced last call for boarding and stated that Mr. Lindenbaum was extremely agitated, concerned that his late arrival had caused the forfeiture of his seat.

  “Mr. Lindenbaum had two bags, a small one and a larger canvas duffel. Agent Sartore informed Mr. Lindenbaum that there was no overhead space left for the duffel and that it was too large to fit under the seat. He tagged the bag and told Lindenbaum to leave it on the jetway and the baggage handler would take care of it. Mr. Lindenbaum then removed a knitted fabric sport jacket, put it in the duffel, and boarded the aircraft.”

  Jackson brought up a credit card receipt.

  “Mr. Lindenbaum's credit card records reflect the purchase of a one-liter bottle of 151-proof Demerara rum on the evening prior to flight.”

  More keystrokes, and the receipt was replaced by several views of a charred canvas bag.

  “The Lindenbaum bag and its contents, and these objects alone, of all the artifacts recovered from the crash”— the phrase emphasized by a hard look to the audience—“manifest geometric burn patterns showing symmetry and more combustion inside than outside.”

  He traced the patterns with his laser pointer.

  “Interviews with family members have disclosed that Walter Lindenbaum was a pipe smoker. He was of the habit when entering a no-smoking area of slipping his pipe into his pocket and relighting it later. All evidence points to the presence of a smoldering pipe in the pocket of the Lindenbaum jacket when that jacket went into the cargo bay.”

  A murmur spread through the back of the room. Hands shot up and questions were shouted. Jackson ignored them as he projected additional pictures of burned clothing, unfolded then folded.

  “Inside the baggage compartment, fragments of smoldering tobacco and ash spilled from the pipe bowl and communicated incandescent combustion to surrounding fabrics in the bag, generating what we call a hot spot.”

  More shots of burned canvas and clothing.

  “Let me repeat. Geometric burn patterns have been found on no other items recovered from the wreckage. I'm not going to go into it here, but the press release explains how evidence of slow burning of folded clothes inside the bag cannot be explained by anything that occurred after a midair explosion.”

  The next visual showed smoke-blackened fragments of glass.

  “Mr. Lindenbaum's rum bottle. Inside the loosely packed duffel, smoke spread at a temperature consistent with that of the localized combustion, a temperature warmer than the bottle and its contents, which were not involved in the combustion process. The bottle remained intact, and smoke was deposited on it. These deposits, seen in this view, have been analyzed by our lab. The products of decomposition present in the smoke are consistent with the point of origin as I am describing it. Traces of tobacco smoke were positively identified on the bottle, among other traces, especially since forensic analysis also disposed of unburned tobacco strands in the pipe bowl as reference.”

  Jackson switched to a diagram of the plane.

  “In the Fokker-100, fuel lines run under the cabin floor, above the baggage compartments, from wing tanks to aft-mounted engines.”

  He traced the route with his pointer, clicked to a close-up of a fuel line, then zoomed in on a fitting.

  “Our structures team has found evidence of a fatigue crack in a fuel line fitting where it passes through the bulkhead at the rear of the baggage compartment. In all likelihood, this crack was generated by a flawed through-fitting acting as a stress riser.”

  A magnified image of a hairline fracture filled the screen.

  “Heat from the incandescent combustion in Mr. Lindenbaum's duffel aggravated the crack, allowing minute quantities of vaporized fuel to dissipate from the line into the hold.”

  He brought up a dirty and discolored chunk of metal casting.

  “Localized heat degradation, manifested in localized discoloration, is clearly recognizable on the fuel line at the point of failure due to heat exposure. I'll go to simulation now.”

  Keys clicked, the screen went blank, then filled with an animation of an F-100 in flight. Time ticked in
one-second increments at the top of the screen.

  The Lindenbaum duffel could be seen high in the left rear of the baggage compartment, immediately below seats 23A and B. I watched it ooze from pink, to salmon, to red, a cold lump in the pit of my stomach.

  “Incandescent combustion in the duffel,” Jackson narrated. “A first ignition sequence.”

  Pale blue specks began to seep from the bag.

  “Smoke.”

  The particles formed a fine, transparent mist.

  “The baggage compartment is pressurized the same as the passenger cabin, meaning it is supplied with air containing an adequate proportion of oxygen. The significance is that there is a lot of warm air moving around down there.”

  The mist slowly dispersed. Red colored the ends of the Lindenbaum suitcase.

  “Though it was contained at first, the smoke eventually spread from the duffel. The heat eventually pierced, and then there was a development to laminar flaming combustion outside the duffel, igniting the suitcases on each side and giving off dense smoke.”

  Tiny black dots appeared at a fuel line running along the inner wall of the baggage compartment. I stared, mesmerized, as the dots multiplied and slowly descended, or were entrained in the ambient air movement.

  “Then began the second ignition sequence. When fuel began to dissipate out of the pressurized line, the quantity was so minute it vaporized and mixed with the air. As the fuel expanded in a vapor state it sank, since fuel fumes are heavier than ambient air. At that point an odor would have been present and easily detected.”

  Traces of blue appeared in the passenger cabin.

  “Smoke seeped into the cabin through the ventilation, heating, and air-conditioning system, and eventually to the exterior via the pressurization outflow valve.”

  I thought of Jean Bertrand. Had he noticed the odor? Seen the smoke?

  There was a flash, red spread outward from the Lindenbaum suitcase, and a jagged hole appeared in the rear of the baggage compartment.

  “Twenty minutes and twenty-one seconds into the flight, vaporized fuel crossed a wire bundle, which apparently contained some arcing wires, and ignited in a deafening detonation. This explosion can be heard on the cockpit voice recorder.”