The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel

by Jefferson Bass

  Maddox shook my hand, nodding in the direction of the crash. “Plenty of trauma here, but probably not much human left to identify.” He furrowed his brow at me. “Remind me? How many bones in the human body?”

  “Two hundred and six, in adults.”

  “Uh-huh. Ever work one of those thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles?”

  I shook my head. “Never had the patience.”

  “Well, better start cultivating some,” he said. “Just a guess—but it’s a fairly educated guess—you’ve got one hell of a puzzle waiting down there, and the pieces are gonna be damned tiny.”

  “You mean ‘we,’ don’t you? We’ve got a puzzle. You’ll be down there with us, right?”

  He shook his head. “I wish. Can’t.” He hoisted up the left leg of his pants to reveal a contraption of straps, buckles, and hinges that resembled a medieval implement of torture. “Knee surgery three weeks ago. I’m not supposed to be walking on anything rougher than wall-to-wall carpet. My orthopedist went ballistic when I asked what to do if I had to climb around on a mountainside. ‘Schedule a knee replacement,’ he said.”

  “Knee surgery’s tricky stuff,” I said. “Your doctor’s right to be cautious.”

  Maddox sighed. “I hate being on the sidelines, though.”

  “Not to worry, Pat,” said McCready, clapping me on the shoulder. “If anybody can put the pieces together, it’s this man right here. The best there is.” Then he frowned. “I have a question, though. That little kaboom a minute ago—what the hell was that? It rang our chimes pretty good.”

  “I’ve seen planes brought down by less,” said Maddox. “A lot less.”

  “Hovering beside a burning aircraft.” McCready looked rueful. “Kinda dumb, I guess.”

  “You said it.”

  “So what was it?” persisted McCready.

  Maddox shrugged. “Won’t know till we start combing through the debris. Just guessing, though, I’d say an overheated oxygen cylinder.”

  “That’s what the helicopter pilot said, too.” McCready looked puzzled. “But the fire’s about out. Why would it blow now, not earlier?”

  “Well . . .” The crash expert glanced away, then met McCready’s gaze. “Frankly?” McCready gave a yes-please nod. “Probably the buffet from your rotor wash,” Maddox said, “stirring things around. Maybe knocked the cylinder against something sharp—a metal rod, or a shard of rock—and it popped. Like a balloon.”

  McCready grimaced. “So it was my own damn fault?” I looked at him, surprised; it had been the pilot, not the FBI agent, who had dropped down beside the wreckage. McCready was choosing to let the buck stop with him, though, and I admired that. Maddox gave a half nod, half shrug, which I also admired: He was confirming what McCready said, but without rubbing his nose in it, as he could’ve. McCready shook his head. “Hate that,” he said. “I put my people at risk, and I altered the scene, too. If anybody should know better, it’s me, Mr. Save-the-Evidence. Sorry about that.”

  “Well, look on the bright side,” Maddox said. “If it hadn’t blown now, it might’ve blown later, with your guys right there beside it. Somebody’s boot bumps it, the thing tips over, hits a sharp edge, and kaboom. Could’ve taken off a foot, maybe blinded somebody. So you probably did us all a big favor.” He paused. “Hell, now that I think about it, maybe you oughta call that chopper back to stir things around some more; set off anything else that’s about to blow.” He smiled, making sure we knew it was a joke, not a jab. McCready smiled back. Olive branches had been accepted all around, it seemed.

  McCready shifted gears and got down to business. “Seriously, how soon you think it’s safe to get down there and start working it? We got more oxygen cylinders down there? What about other hazards?”

  Maddox shrugged. “Well, the fuel’s just about burned off. Hydraulic fluid—for the brake lines and the flight-control systems—that’s combustible but not explosive, and it’s probably burned off by now, too. I doubt that there’s another oxygen cylinder—one’s the standard on a Citation, but some have two. I’ve got somebody tracking down the maintenance guys, back at the hangar, so we’ll know for sure.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to read up on the Citation,” McCready said—another surprise to me, since I’d noticed him unfolding a big cutaway diagram of the jet during our cross-country flight. “It’s a twin-engine bizjet? Like a Gulfstream or a Learjet?” Was he doing more fence mending—giving Maddox a chance to demonstrate his knowledge?—or was he testing to see how much the man knew?

  Maddox gave a half smile. “Sort of like a Learjet. The first version of the Citation was a little sluggish; some pilots called it a ‘Nearjet.’ Newer ones are faster, though still not as fast as that Gulfstream horse you guys rode in on—that was you that circled on your way in, right?” McCready nodded, and Maddox rattled on. “But the Citation’s a good design. Solid. Simple, relatively speaking—it’s the only jet approved for single-pilot operation. Sensible, for a multimillion-dollar minivan. It—”

  McCready broke in. “Excuse me? Did you just say ‘minivan’?”

  Maddox nodded. “It’s the Dodge Caravan of bizjets. Not too fast, not too fancy, but functional and roomy, and plenty good enough, you know?”

  “So much for the magic of flight,” said McCready.

  “Hey, I’m all about the magic of flight,” Maddox answered. “It is magic. But tell me: What’s Europe’s biggest aircraft maker called? Airbus, that’s what. Air. Bus. I rest my case.”

  A cell phone at McCready’s belt shrilled; he flipped it open, turning his back to Maddox and me. “McCready,” I heard him say. “Go ahead.” He listened a moment, then said, “Got it; we won’t start the party without you. Thanks.” Snapping the phone shut, he turned to us again. “That was Miles Prescott, from the San Diego field office. He’s the lead agent on this case. He’s on his way up—almost here, he says—and he’s bringing the cavalry with him.”

  McCready pointed down at a jeep road, and sure enough, a quarter mile below, I saw a minicaravan snaking up the ridge. “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” muttered Maddox.

  The lead vehicle, a black Chevrolet Suburban—its windows tinted nearly as dark as its paint—sped past the line of emergency vehicles and pulled onto the concrete pad. It was followed by the familiar, boxy shape of an evidence-recovery truck. Lumbering up behind them was a massive vehicle labeled MOBILE COMMAND CENTER. It looked like the offspring of a Winnebago that had somehow managed to mate with a fire truck.

  The doors on all three vehicles opened simultaneously, almost as if the move were choreographed, and a dozen FBI agents emerged, one wearing a suit and spit-shined shoes, the others decked out in cargo pants, boots, and T-shirts. One of these things is not like the others, I thought. It was an absurd echo from my son’s Sesame Street days, twenty years or more ago, and yet it fit. And maybe, I realized, what was silly was not the song, but the wearing of a three-piece suit on a rocky mountaintop in the wilderness.

  A round of introductions ensued—a litany of names I promptly forgot, except for that of Prescott, the Suit—and when it was done, Prescott turned to McCready. “So we good to go?”

  McCready frowned and shook his head slightly. “I don’t think we can start working it quite yet,” he said.

  “I agree,” said Maddox, taking the opportunity to step forward and reclaim a seat at the figurative table. “The fire’s mostly out, but that wreckage is gonna be hot as hell for a while yet. An oxygen cylinder exploded half an hour ago. Why put your men at risk?” He didn’t mention the helicopter’s role in triggering the explosion, and McCready didn’t either, so I kept quiet about it, too.

  Prescott looked impatient, and at me. “Dr. Brockton? What’s your take on this, forensically speaking?”

  “Forensically speaking,” I said, “this reminds me of something a Tennessee sheriff said to me at a death scene years ago, on a mountainside in the middle of the night.” The other FBI agents and the crash investigator edged closer so they co
uld hear better. “We were discussing whether to start working the scene right then, or to wait until daylight. The sheriff mulled it over and then said, ‘Well, Doc, I reckon he ain’t gonna get any deader by morning.’” Maddox grinned; Prescott gave a tight smile; McCready kept his expression as neutral as Switzerland. “I reckon Richard Janus won’t get any deader if we let things cool down for an hour or so while we figure out the best way to work this thing.”

  What I didn’t say, but couldn’t help thinking, was that in an I.D. case with a celebrity victim, every minute we delayed would cost us, too. The throng of reporters—and therefore the authorities whom the reporters would be badgering for updates—would want us to hurry, to push, to make up for lost time. Looming even larger in my mind was another person who would surely be waiting impatiently, perhaps even desperately: Mrs. Richard Janus.

  THE FBI AGENTS AND I SHIFTED IN OUR CHAIRS IN the command center—adjusting and readjusting our personal-space boundaries, like people crammed into an oversized elevator—as crash investigator Patrick Maddox began briefing us on what to expect in the wreckage. Using the command center’s satellite link and computers, Maddox had, in ten minutes or so, downloaded a batch of files and created a PowerPoint presentation. I was impressed. Maddox appeared at least ten years older than I was—a leathery, rode-hard sixty, probably more—but he seemed far more Internet savvy and Power-Point positive. My relationship with PowerPoint could best be characterized not as love-hate, but as loathe-hate. I despised the software, with a deep and abiding passion. Drop my 35-millimeter slides into the slots of a Kodak Carousel projector, and I’m a happy guy; import them into PowerPoint—whose default settings seem to include a permanent “blur” feature—and I’m one pissed-off professor.

  “Okay, guys,” Maddox commenced. “I’ll give you the supercondensed version of ‘Aircraft 101.’ So I guess that makes it ‘Aircraft 0.1.’ Maybe some of you know some of this stuff already. Hell, maybe all of you know all this stuff already. Tough shit—I like talking about it. And it’ll be easier to recognize the ‘after’—the debris you’ll be recovering—if you’ve taken a look at the ‘before,’ inside and out.” He reached for the power button on the projector, but stopped before switching it on. “By the way, anybody remember anything particularly relevant about this mountain?” None of the younger guys seemed to, but Prescott, as a San Diego old-timer, nodded, and so did I, a middle-aged Tennessean. “A twin-engine Hawker jet crashed up here thirteen years ago, about a quarter mile from here. It was carrying a band. Doc, what’s the name of that Nashville singer they played for?”

  “Reba McEntire,” I said. “She lost her whole band.”

  He nodded. “She and her husband were supposed to be on the plane, too, but they decided to spend the night in San Diego and catch a flight the next day. Lucky for them. Too bad for everybody else.”

  “What caused that one to crash?” asked Kimball.

  “Bad luck and stupidity,” said Maddox, shaking his head. “The night was dark and hazy. The pilots didn’t know the area or the terrain. The FAA briefer they talked to on the radio gave ’em bad advice—practically steered ’em into the mountainside. Shouldn’t’ve happened. But it did. And I can tell you, it was a mess to clean up. Anyhow.” He switched on the projector, and a photo of a sleek little twin-engine jet filled the screen. “Here’s a Cessna Citation.” He clicked forward to another, bigger jet. “Here’s another Citation.” He fast-forwarded through a series of jets, each different from the others. “These are all Citations. Some have straight wings, some have swept wings. Some carry four passengers; some carry sixteen. But they’re all Citations—Cessna calls it the ‘Citation family.’ Confusing as all get-out, unless you’re an airplane geek like me.” He flashed a photo that I recognized from an Airlift Relief newsletter: a smiling Richard Janus standing beside a jet, freshly painted with the agency’s name and symbol. “This is the one we’re recovering here. Donated to Janus’s organization four years ago, in 2000. It’s a 501—an early Citation—built in 1979. Funny thing, most of us wouldn’t dream of driving a car that’s twenty-five years old, but we routinely zip around the sky—six miles up; five, six hundred miles an hour—in vehicles built before some of you guys were even born. This Citation wasn’t new by any stretch, but two years ago, it was upgraded—retrofitted with bigger engines and bigger fuel tanks—so it could fly faster and farther. In the end, of course, that meant it crashed harder and burned longer.”

  “Excuse me,” McCready interrupted. “I’ve been wondering about that.”

  “About which—the crash, or the burn?”

  “The burn. How come the fuel didn’t all explode on impact—one giant fireball?”

  “Because this wasn’t a scene in a Bruce Willis movie,” Maddox deadpanned, earning another round of laughs. “Actually, that’s a good question. Evidently the fuel tanks didn’t rupture completely. So instead of vaporizing and exploding, the fuel—some of it, at least—stayed contained within the wing structure, and it dribbled out or poured out, sustaining the fire. More on that in just a minute,” he said. “First, let’s back up to some basics. Structurally, an aircraft has a lot in common with a bug.” He looked around, noticed puzzled looks on many of the faces, and smiled, clearly pleased by the response. He turned to me. “Dr. Brockton, how would you describe the structural framework of humans?”

  “Well,” I began, “we’re primates—upright, bipedal vertebrates—with an axial skeleton and an appendicular skeleton. The axial skeleton—”

  He held up a finger to interrupt me. “Full marks,” he said. “To translate that into terms that even I can understand, you’re saying our skeleton is an endoskeleton—an interior structural framework—right?”

  “Right.”

  “Whereas bugs have . . . ?”

  “An exoskeleton,” I supplied, feeling a bit like a student being nose-led by a professor—and not particularly liking the feeling. “An external shell, made of chitin—a bioprotein or biopolymer, if I’m remembering my zoology.”

  “I’ll take your word for the chemical details,” he cracked. “A bug’s shell is light, strong, and rigid. So is an aircraft’s. Trouble is, when either one—a bug or a plane—gets squashed, the shell crumples, and the guts go everywhere.”

  “The plane’s guts,” asked Kimball, “or the pilot’s?”

  “At four hundred miles an hour? Both,” Maddox answered. “As we dig down through it, we’ll certainly recognize parts. I’m pretty good at identifying airplane pieces, and I’m told Dr. Brockton here is terrific at identifying people pieces. But basically? That plane and anybody in it? Squashed like a bug.”

  “Oh, goody,” Kimball joked. “Can’t wait.”

  It was gallows humor—a sanity-saving necessity in work this grim. But the truth was, I couldn’t wait. And unless I missed my guess, neither could eager-beaver Kimball.

  I WAS HALFWAY THROUGH MY PART OF THE BRIEFING—I had passed out diagrams of the human skeleton and had worked my way from the skull down through the spine and into the pelvis—when I noticed that my voice wasn’t the only thing droning. Maddox was ignoring me by now, his head turned in the direction of the sound; a moment later, I saw McCready and Prescott turn toward it, too. In the distance but closing fast was the distinctive thudding of a helicopter rotor.

  When it became clear that the helicopter was landing, McCready and Prescott headed for the door, trailed by the rest of us. Maddox and I stayed in the background, watching from the command center’s steps.

  The agents fanned out on the concrete, facing the helicopter—the sheriff’s helicopter again, as I’d guessed from the low, military muscularity of the pitch. As the rotor slowed, the left cockpit door opened and a woman got out of the copilot’s seat—a woman I recognized, even through the dark hair whipping across her face, as Carmelita Janus. She was dressed in black from head to toe, but the outfit was a far cry from widow’s weeds; it looked more like a commando’s uniform for night ops—but night ops with style. She
wore billowy cargo pants of what appeared to be parachute nylon, topped by a long-sleeved, form-fitting pullover; the pants were tucked into tight, knee-high boots that sported tapered toes and a hint of a heel.

  Maddox nudged me, muttering, “Is that who I think it is?”

  “If you think it’s the grieving widow,” I muttered back.

  “Christ, what’s she doing here?”

  “Trying to find out if her husband’s dead, I guess. Or maybe trying to make sure we’re not sitting around playing video games.” I glanced at McCready and Prescott; to say they didn’t look thrilled to see her would have been the understatement of the century.

  Mrs. Janus strode toward the FBI agents, who stood shoulder to shoulder, like some posse of Wild West lawmen, minus the six-shooters and the ten-gallon hats. Her gaze swept across the group, then returned to the central figure, the one wearing the power suit. “You must be Agent Prescott,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Special Agent in Charge Miles Prescott. So, Mrs. Janus? Why are you here?”

  “To identify my husband’s body, if it’s been found. To help search for it, if it hasn’t been.”

  Prescott shook his head slowly, seeming pained. “Ma’am, I’m very sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”

  “Why not? I’m trained in search and rescue. I’m also a paramedic. Not that I think Richard could have survived this crash.”

  “How did you get the sheriff’s office to fly you up here?”

  “Our organization has a good partnership with the sheriff’s office,” she said. “We often work together. Quite closely.” Prescott frowned. “Mr. Prescott, I’m here to help any way I can. Even if it’s just to identify the body.”

  He held out his hands, palms up. “Mrs. Janus, we haven’t even started the search. It’s not safe yet. I can’t put you at risk. And once we do start, we’ll be collecting forensic evidence—evidence we’re counting on to tell us what happened last night. You wouldn’t want any of that evidence to be overlooked, or damaged, or destroyed, would you?”