O’Conner cursed again. I was just opening my mouth to say something reassuring and probably wrong when a crack split the air. “My God, somebody’s shooting,” O’Conner said, and his head spun toward the ridge angling alongside the house. I saw sparks fly from the chopper’s tail boom as another shot rang out. “Top of the ridge,” he said. “That’s a high-powered rifle. Those aren’t warning shots — somebody’s trying to bring him down.”
As if the pilot had heard him, the chopper halted in midair, then veered sharply to the left and began weaving toward us in violent zigs and zags. Orbin had been an army pilot, I remembered. I hoped he recalled enough of his combat training to outmaneuver the sniper.
Wheels began turning frantically in my head, and I flashed back to my pot patch excursion with Waylon, and to the rage he’d shown when Orbin shot Vernon’s dog. “We need to find Waylon,” I said urgently. “Where’s Waylon?” Suddenly, magically — mercifully, even — Waylon’s truck stopped in front of the porch. O’Conner waved frantically and pointed toward the ridge just as another muzzle flash erupted. Without a word, Waylon roared to the treeline, then leapt from his truck and sprinted up the mountainside.
As bullets continued to slam into the chopper, the aircraft wove and dodged toward the spot the shots were coming from, as if Orbin wanted to confront his assailant face to face. Sparks flew as a bullet glanced off the main rotor. Suddenly a spiderweb of fracture lines painted the front windshield, and the plastic bubble burst. The helicopter seemed to leap up in surprise, then pitched forward and rolled to the left, plummeting toward the valley floor.
When it hit, it collapsed with surprisingly little resistance, the remainder of the Plexiglas windows shattering, the metal tail boom crumpling like cardboard tubing. The impact was followed by near silence — a few groaning aftershocks, little else. For some reason I was expecting alarms and sirens, so the quiet seemed eerie and wrong. Then, as O’Conner and I ran toward the wreckage, came the searing rush of intense flame. Within seconds fire engulfed the cockpit, making our approach — and his survival — utterly impossible.
O’Conner shielded his face, peering into the flames. “Jesus. What a godawful mess. What the hell is going on here, Doc?”
“I wish I knew. Just when I think things can’t get any worse up here, they do. I’ve heard a lot of bad things about Cooke County over the years. I didn’t realize they were all understatements.”
O’Conner took out a satellite phone — the nearest cell phone tower was several ridges away — and dialed the sheriff’s dispatcher. He told her the sheriff’s helicopter had just crashed and burned and that the pilot was dead. He gave directions, including a description of the kudzu tunnel, which the dispatcher asked him to repeat. Prompted, he gave his name. But he did not say that the helicopter had been shot down, and he did not stay on the line, as I could hear the dispatcher instructing him to. “When they get here, tell them about the shots. I don’t think it’s wise for me to be here when Tom Kitchings finds his brother dead in my front yard.” He turned and trotted toward the house.
I was about to go after him when Waylon emerged from the woods and stumbled across the clearing toward me. “Got away,” he gasped. “Some boot tracks heading down the back side of the ridge — they’s a old logging road down there. Heard a ATV leaving about the time I got to the top. Sorry.” He bent over, hands on knees, to catch his breath. “Did find this, though.” He fished a knotted bandanna from a pocket and untied it, revealing five brass shell cases, about two inches long, shaped like miniature artillery rounds. “Winchester thirty-thirty,” he said. “Hunnerd-fifty-grain load; muzzle velocity ’bout twenty-four-hunnerd feet a second. Same ammunition used by half the deer hunters in this county.”
“Waylon, did you touch these?”
“Nossir. Picked ’em up with my hanky here.”
“There might still be fingerprints on them. Hang onto them till the sheriff and his folks get here. Then make sure somebody gives you an evidence receipt for them.”
For the first time since I’d met him, Waylon suddenly looked nervous. “Doc, the sheriff might take these better coming from you than from me,” he said. I frowned, puzzled. “He’s gonna be out for blood, and it might not be good for my health if I was to be the one to give him these. Can I turn ’em over to you, and let you give ’em to him?”
“Sure.” I took the bundle from him and retied it. Then I pulled a small notepad from my back pocket and scrawled two makeshift evidence receipts. I signed and gave one to Waylon; I tucked the other away for later, to be signed by whoever I gave the brass to. “Keep that in a safe place,” I said. He nodded.
I looked around for O’Conner, but he was nowhere in sight. “Sounded like Jim was going to make himself scarce for awhile,” I said.
“Sounds like a good idea. Them Kitchingses don’t like me all that much, but they’s a whole lot less kindly disposed toward Jim.”
“You think they’ll find him?”
“Not if he don’t wanna be found. Hell, he was a Army Ranger, and he grew up in these hills. He could stay hid and live off the land for the rest of his life, if he wanted to.”
He was probably right. “Hey, Waylon?”
“Yeah, Doc?”
“I’m glad it wasn’t you up there shooting.”
A half-dozen expressions crossed his face in quick succession. “So am I, Doc. But then again, I ain’t, too. You know what I mean?”
I knew what he meant.
CHAPTER 35
Williams arrived just minutes after the emergency call, the strobes firing atop his black and white Cherokee. He skidded up to the front porch, then caught sight of the smoldering helicopter in the field below and careened down to where Waylon and I stood. He leapt out and stared at the wreckage, then whirled to face us. “What happened here?” he demanded. Without waiting for an answer, he drew his revolver and pointed it at Waylon. “Put your hands up and get over here to the vehicle.” Waylon blinked in surprise, but slowly raised his arms.
“He had nothing to do with it,” I said. “He was pulling up in his truck when the shooting started. He was running up the ridge toward the shooter when the helicopter came down.”
Williams wheeled on me. “And what the hell were you doing here? And what kind of secret operation is O’Conner running? And where the fuck is he?”
“I’ll be glad to tell you everything I know,” I said. “You willing to put down the gun? Makes it hard for me to concentrate, being afraid you might accidentally shoot an innocent bystander who also happens to be a witness.”
Williams glowered. “I’m not so sure he’s just a witness, I doubt very much that he’s a bystander, and I’m damn certain he ain’t all that innocent.” But he holstered the weapon anyway and allowed Waylon to lower his hands while he told what he’d seen when he reached the ridgetop. When Waylon told him he’d found the shell cases, Williams held out his hand. “Here; let me have them.”
“I ain’t got ’em no more. I give ’em to the Doc.”
Williams turned to me, his hand still extended. “Sure,” I said. “Why don’t you finish with Waylon first, and then you and I can discuss all this in private.”
After a few more questions, the deputy allowed Waylon to go. “Don’t even think about leaving town,” he warned as Waylon climbed into his truck. Waylon nodded. As he drove away, I breathed a sigh of relief.
I gave Williams my account of the events, starting with my tour of O’Conner’s camouflaged ginseng farm and ending with the crash. “Waylon did his best to catch the shooter,” I said. “Those shell cases could be important. And it might help to get some pictures or a cast of those footprints.” Williams looked thoughtful. “Here are the shell cases.” I removed the knotted bandanna from my shirt pocket. He reached for it, but I pulled it back. “Deputy, would you mind signing this receipt?” I fished out my handwritten note: “Received from Dr. Bill Brockton: Five brass cartridge cases in red bandanna, recovered from ridge above Orbin Kitchings murder s
cene.”
Williams reacted as if I’d spit in his face. “You think I’m gonna forget I’ve got shells from the gun that killed Orbin Kitchings? Think I’m gonna throw this ratty bandanna in the washing machine or the trash can?”
“No, not at all,” I said. “Things get intense anytime an officer is killed, and this is the sheriff’s own brother. An aggressive defense lawyer could completely destroy the value of those shell cases if we don’t document every link in the chain of evidence. I’d hate to see Orbin’s killer go free because we didn’t keep good records.”
Williams nodded curtly, snatched a pen from his pocket, and signed the receipt. I handed him the small bundle. “The TBI crime lab might be able to get some prints off those,” I said. “Maybe the guy forgot to wipe ’em clean as he loaded.”
He looked surprised. “Thanks, Doc — I’m not sure I’da thought of that. Much obliged.” He tucked the packet into the shirt pocket of his uniform and rebuttoned the flap. As he raised his eyes from his chest, I saw his gaze lock onto the end of the valley. A black Ford Expedition was rocketing up the gravel road. It swerved across the field, lurching to a stop beside us, and Tom Kitchings leapt out.
Before I could stop him, the sheriff rushed to the blackened cockpit. There he came face to face with the charred remains of his younger brother. Tom Kitchings let out a loud groan, and then another. Then he clutched his chest, sank to his knees, and toppled to the ground, unconscious.
I was no medical expert — I was the doctor who lost every single patient, after all — but I was pretty sure the sheriff had just suffered a coronary. That meant time was of the essence. We had only sixty minutes — the so-called “golden hour”—to prevent serious cardiac damage. After that, I knew, his blood-starved heart muscle would start to die. “We’ve got to get him to the hospital right away,” I said.
“I’ll call for an ambulance,” said Williams, reaching for his radio.
“Too slow,” I said. “We’re half an hour outside of town here. By the time they get here and get him back to town, he’ll suffer permanent damage. We’ve got to get him to a cardiologist within an hour.”
“Goddamnit, Doc,” he shouted, “we ain’t got a cardiologist out here.”
“No, but we can get him to one faster than we can get him back to town. Call your dispatcher; get ’em to patch us through to LifeStar.”
LifeStar — UT Medical Center’s air ambulance service — had two helicopters based behind the hospital, within sniffing distance of the Body Farm. It took less than a minute for the dispatcher to patch Williams through to LifeStar’s flight coordinator. The deputy described the sheriff’s symptoms and asked if they could send a chopper. “What’s your location?”
“We’re in a small valley six or eight miles southeast of Jonesport,” said Williams. “Brush Creek Mountain is directly to our west, and—”
“Wait wait wait,” said the coordinator. “Anybody there got a GPS unit?”
“Oh. Yeah. Affirmative,” said Williams. He pulled a handheld Global Positioning System receiver from a pouch on his belt and powered it up. The display showed signals from four orbiting satellites. “Stand by for coordinates,” said Williams. As he began rattling off numbers, I looked over his shoulder at the display. “Latitude three-five-point-niner-five-three-five degrees north. Longitude eight-two-point-seven-niner-six-eight degrees west.”
As the dispatcher read the coordinates back for confirmation, I realized something was wrong. I tapped his shoulder to get his attention, but he shrugged me off in annoyance. I tapped again, harder. “LifeStar, stand by,” he snapped, then whirled to confront me. “What the fuck?”
“You transposed two numbers in the longitude,” I said urgently, pointing at the display. “You said ‘point seven nine’; the display says ‘point nine seven.’” I did some quick math in my head. “That’s almost two-tenths of a degree. They’re going to land ten or twelve miles from here, somewhere over in North Carolina.”
Williams looked ready to explode. He radioed the flight coordinator to correct the number, and the coordinator read the revised longitude back. “Readback is correct,” said Williams. I reached to take the radio from him. He relinquished it with a look of supreme annoyance.
“How soon can they be in the air?” I asked.
“Thirty seconds ago,” said the coordinator. “Should be landing in about twelve minutes.”
“Wow, that’s great. Anything we can do for the patient here in the meantime?”
“Stand by.” The radio was silent for nearly a minute before the LifeStar dispatcher came back on. “The flight nurse says keep him quiet, feet elevated. If he’s conscious and you can round up an aspirin tablet, give him one to chew. That’ll thin his blood a little, maybe help restore some flow to the coronary artery.”
“Will do,” I said. “Signing off now. Thanks for the help.”
“It’s what we’re here for.”
I handed the radio back to Williams and sprinted to the back of my truck, where I always kept a first aid kit. Somewhere among all the bandages and wet wipes, ointments and surgical gloves, I knew there was a packet of aspirin. The profusion of tiny containers was maddening. Finally I found it: a single foil pack containing two aspirin. With trembling fingers, I tore open the foil. Both pills popped out, skittered across the truck bed, and began rolling toward the gap in the tailgate. As the first pill rattled down into the recesses of the bumper, I lunged desperately, snagging the other just as it reached the opening. My own heart was pounding now.
Kitchings had regained consciousness by now, so Williams and I propped him against one wheel of the Jeep. As he chewed, grimacing from the acidity of the pill or the pain in his chest, I told him about the shooting, the crash, and Waylon’s pursuit of the shooter. He quizzed me closely about the shell cases — how many? “Five,” I said. What caliber? “Waylon said thirty-thirty. Long, like a hunting cartridge. Your deputy has ’em in his pocket.” Kitchings looked at Williams and held out his hand.
Williams fished out the bandanna, untied the knot, and placed the nest of cartridges in the sheriff’s upturned palm. “Careful; there might be prints on them,” I said. Using a corner of the fabric, the sheriff carefully lifted one shell and studied its flat base. His face — already a mask of pain and anxiety — did not change expression. “Yep, Winchester thirty-thirty,” he grunted. “Leon, that mean anything to you?”
“Hell, Sheriff, there’s gotta be a hunnerd thirty-thirty deer rifles in Cooke County alone coulda fired those, and a few hunnerd more in spittin’ distance.” Kitchings nodded grimly, retied the bandanna, and fumbled with the button on his shirt pocket. “Sheriff, I was gonna take them back to the office and get ’em off to the TBI crime lab. Like the doc here says, might be some prints on there. Maybe some ejector marks or firing pin impressions in the TBI ballistics database, too.” The sheriff tucked the bandanna into the pocket. “Sheriff, with you goin’ to the hospital and all, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be carryin’ evidence off with you. Gonna break the chain of custody; hell, they might even get lost.” Williams reached toward the sheriff’s pocket, but Kitchings knocked his hand away.
“Goddamnit, Leon, I ain’t dead yet,” he growled with surprising force. “I am still the damn sheriff of Cooke County, and I am taking custody of these damn cartridges.” Just as Williams opened his mouth to argue, an orange and white helicopter skimmed over the ridge and dropped to the valley floor. The instant the wheels touched ground, the flight nurse and paramedic were out the door with a litter. Ignoring the deputy and me completely, they set it on the ground and laid the sheriff down, snapping a safety belt across his hips and another, loosely, across his chest. Then they called us in to help. The four of us hoisted the stocky sheriff, bore him to the chopper, and slid the litter through the double doors. Even before the doors slammed shut, the two turbine engines were spooling up.
Through the window, I glimpsed the nurse starting to rig an IV bag. But it was only a glimpse.
The helicopter leapt off the ground and banked westward with the speed of a combat aircraft. As it vanished behind the ridge, I checked my watch. Twenty-three minutes, give or take one, had elapsed since the sheriff sank to the ground. If the first hour was golden, I hoped that made the first half-hour platinum. In any case, if speedy diagnosis and treatment were as crucial as the cardiologists claimed, Kitchings should be back on the job within a few days.
But I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. I also wasn’t sure I’d ever see those cartridge cases again. I turned to Williams. “Deputy, once the dust settles and the sheriff’s back on his feet, you might ought to get him to write you an evidence receipt for those shells.”
“You bet, Doc,” was all he said. But the expression on his face — a swirl of anger, frustration, and fear — spoke volumes more. Trouble was, I couldn’t quite catch hold of the meaning.
CHAPTER 36
Headlights danced across the mangled JetRanger as a vehicle bumped across the field toward the wreckage. I wondered which group was arriving first: the TBI agents or my forensic assistants.
I had reached Miranda on the satellite phone Jim O’Conner left with me. Today was a tough time to be rounding up a forensic team. Not only was it Saturday, it was the Saturday that fell smack in the middle of UT’s four-day fall break. Normally, even on weekends, the hallways and offices beneath the stadium were crawling with Anthropology students; today, apparently, they were as scarce as virgins at a fraternity party. Miranda had called back after a half-hour to say she’d completely struck out in her efforts to round up two more grad students. “Call Art Bohanan,” I told her. “He doesn’t know bones, but he’s good at bagging evidence and taking crime scene photos. And try Sarah Carmichael.”
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