“Who’s that? Don’t know her.”
I squirmed at the question. “She’s in one of my classes. The campus operator should have a listing for her.”
“Sarah Carmichael. Is she a master’s or Ph.D. student?”
“She…she’s an undergraduate, actually.”
There was a long pause. “Has she taken Osteology?”
“Not exactly. No. But she’s practically memorized the field handbook on her own.”
Another pause, even longer. “Is she who I think she is?”
“Probably. Yes. Look, it’s the student you saw me kissing, okay? I’m sorry; I know it’s awkward, and I hate to drag her into this, but if you can’t find anybody else, she might be the best we can do. She’s smart, she knows the basics, and she’ll do fine recording data and filling in the inventory of skeletal elements.” The inventory of skeletal elements was a fancy name for an outline drawing of the human skeleton. In fieldwork like this, I always assigned one student to color in, with a pencil or pen, the outline of each bone as it was found. Basically, it was like a page from a Halloween coloring book, and the only places where staying within the lines was difficult were the hands, feet, and skull. Besides being faster and easier than writing down the names of bones, the diagram showed me, at a glance, what we’d found — and what was missing. I was confident that Sarah would have absolutely no problem filling it in accurately.
“We don’t need her help,” said Miranda. “We can do this without her.”
“No we can’t, Miranda. Your right arm’s in a cast, remember? You can’t ID bones and write things down and bag evidence with a broken arm. Call Sarah.”
Despite the thousands of miles up to the communications satellite and back down, I could hear Miranda’s angry breathing; in my mind’s eye, I even saw her nostrils flaring. “Damnit,” she finally said, “you ask one hell of a lot, you know that?”
“I do know, and I am sorry. But I’m not asking for me. I’m asking for the dead guy in the helicopter here, and his brother the sheriff, who just left in an air ambulance, and their mother and father, who don’t even know yet that one of their sons has just been killed. It’s a complicated death scene, Miranda, and I need help. Especially yours. Please.”
Two hours after that angry exchange, the department’s pickup came jouncing across the valley floor, with Miranda at the wheel, Art riding shotgun as navigator, and Sarah folded into the jump seat behind them. I motioned them around to the front of the helicopter,d so the headlights illuminated the smashed interior. “Wow,” Miranda said as she hopped out, her orange cast practically glowing in the dark. “That kudzu tunnel is incredible. So Tuscany—the whole grape arbor effect — with a big ol’ East Tennessee twist.” She seemed relaxed and happy. Was it the adrenaline rush of a field case, or had she somehow bonded with Sarah on the drive up? Either way, I was relieved. “Three years and fifty death scenes, and this is the coolest.” She unlatched the window on the cap that covered the bed of the truck and began unloading gear one-handed.
Art waved hello and gave a big wink, which must have been code for something, but I had neither the time nor the privacy to ask him what it meant. Then Sarah extricated herself from the cramped jump seat. The smile she gave me still looked awkward, but the embarrassment in her smile couldn’t hold a candle to the excitement in her eyes. Perhaps I hadn’t bungled things forever after all.
The two hours it took them to reach the scene had seemed like an eternity. The fact was, though, even if they’d arrived sooner, we couldn’t have started excavating the chopper until the wreckage had cooled, and it still felt almost too warm to touch.
I had just finished introducing my helpers to Williams — I was surprised Art hadn’t met the deputy already, on one of the Cooke County visits he’d made with me — when Art pointed toward the mouth of the valley. “Bill, did you order pizza?”
A Crown Victoria eased into the valley and idled across the field toward where we stood. I knew it wasn’t pizza, unless Domino’s had begun recruiting drivers from the ranks of active TBI agents.
Williams and I had almost come to blows over calling in the TBI. As soon as the rotor wash from LifeStar had settled, I had pulled out the satellite phone to call them. “Hell, no,” the deputy said, when I told him what I was doing. “I’m in charge here, and I say no.” It was true that with the sheriff incapacitated and the chief deputy dead, Williams was the ranking law enforcement officer on the scene — and in the whole county, for that matter. But he was a commander without subordinates, and he seemed unsure how to proceed. When he balked at the TBI, I suggested the Tennessee Highway Patrol instead, but he said no to them as well. “Well, somebody’s got to take jurisdiction,” I snapped. “We’re not on federal land, so we can’t call in the feds. Seems like our best bet is your new pals at the TBI.”
I hadn’t meant to say that; it just slipped out in the heat of the moment. Williams went ghostly pale, then angry red; my attempt at an explanation — that I’d been returning a library book to the downtown library, and happened to see him talking with Steve Morgan on the steps of the federal building — sounded lame even to me. “Look,” I’d finally said, “somebody just shot the sheriff’s brother. You don’t have the resources for a big investigation. Call in some reinforcements. It’s your best hope for catching whoever did this.” He still looked unhappy, but he didn’t stop me from making the call.
The front doors of the Crown Vic opened in unison. A grim-faced Steve Morgan emerged from the driver’s side; Brian “Rooster” Rankin exited the passenger side. His cover now thoroughly blown, Rankin had traded his feed cap and overalls for a sportcoat and silk tie.
Williams and Morgan nodded awkwardly to one another, in the way of people who know each other but hate to acknowledge it — like two ministers bumping into each other at a strip club. Rankin, on the other hand, made a point of introducing himself to Williams, which told me that the deputy had not met Rankin at the federal building. That made sense — he was still working undercover, after all. As Rankin shook his hand, Williams’s face betrayed a potent mix of confusion, shock, and fear. When I saw that, I knew that Rankin — the undercover version — must have rubbed elbows with the deputy in some unsavory or illegal context.
The two agents huddled briefly with all of us, first getting a brief recap from me, then asking Williams a few questions — where and when he’d learned of the shooting, when he’d arrived, and so on. Excusing themselves for a moment, they got back into their car, where they conferred in low, earnest tones. When they rejoined us, Morgan seemed to have taken charge of things. “Here’s how we’d suggest proceeding,” he said, in a tone that didn’t actually invite feedback or questions. “I’ll stay here with Dr. Brockton and his team as they excavate the chopper. Agent Rankin will ride back to the courthouse with Deputy Williams to get more background, go over the dispatch logs, and review any pertinent files.”
“I ain’t leavin’,” said Williams. “This is a Cooke County crime scene, I was the first officer on the scene, and that makes me the incident commander here.”
The TBI agents glanced at each other, then Rankin beckoned to Williams. “Leon—buddy—how’s about you come chew the fat with your ol’ pal Rooster fer a minute?” He pointed toward Leon’s Jeep, and they got inside. This time the voices — the deputy’s, at least — got pretty loud. Then, to my surprise, the Cherokee’s engine fired up and the vehicle fishtailed angrily across the field, taking the deputy and the undercover agent out of the valley.
Morgan flashed me a sunny smile. “Interagency cooperation,” he said. “It’s a wonderful thing.” I waited, hoping he might enlighten me about the leverage Rankin seemed to have with Williams, but he didn’t. “Don’t let me keep y’all from your work,” he said, looking toward the helicopter.
We started by mapping the crash site. I asked Sarah to sketch the main features of the scene as Art and Miranda plotted the coordinates of key landmarks. The advent of handheld GPS receivers had greatly
simplified the job of scene mapping — with the push of a button, it was now possible to pinpoint the latitude and longitude of a body and even superimpose it on an onscreen map — but I wasn’t quite ready to dispense with old-fashioned maps and measurements quite yet. Batteries run down, displays burn out, circuit boards fail, even satellites go on the fritz. Besides, most GPS units have a one- to three-meter margin of error, meaning — in the worst-case scenario — that I could go back to a death scene six months later, stand or dig exactly where the gizmo indicated the body had lain, and be off by up to ten feet any direction. If you’re troweling for a missing hyoid bone, a twenty-foot circle — three hundred square feet — is an enormous area.
One obvious and unambiguous landmark for our coordinates was the house — specifically, the southwest corner of the front porch, the closest point to the wreckage. Art shot a compass reading to the center of the cockpit, calling out “255 degrees.” Sarah drew an arrow and noted the bearing on her map, then, when Art unspooled a long tape measure between the corner and the chopper, she added “87.5 feet” beneath the compass reading. For the second landmark, they chose a large hemlock tree, standing alone beside the small stream that ran the length of the valley floor before plunging into the kudzu tunnel. The chopper lay 74 feet, on a heading of 128 degrees, from the base of the hemlock. So unless the house were destroyed and the tree cut down, we’d be able to pinpoint the crash site with precision and certainty for years to come, GPS or no.
One advantage of the crash, if such a word could be used, was that most of the remains were contained within the shell of the cockpit. I had worked several crashes in the Great Smoky Mountains during my years in Knoxville. Those aircraft — a couple of propeller planes and a military air-refueling tanker jet — were traveling horizontally at high speeds when they hit; as a result, wreckage and body parts were scattered over hundreds of yards of hillside. Orbin’s helicopter, though, had dropped nearly straight down, so while there was considerable trauma to his body — first from the force of the crash, then from the fire — at least there was no scatter.
The helicopter had hit sideways, which also made the excavation easier. If it had impacted right-side-up, the engine and rotor would have crushed the cockpit, forcing us to cut or pry our way in. As it was, I could lean into the cockpit, which remained largely intact, through the windshield opening.
As I stepped up to the JetRanger’s vacant windshield opening, I was choked by the smell of burned flesh. I knew that by the time I finished, my clothes and even my hair and skin would reek of the unforgettable smell: seared and foul but with a disturbing and sickening undertone of sweetness, too. Best just to get on with it, then. I leaned in and found myself face to face with the gaping skull of Orbin Kitchings.
The skull was propped against the door frame and the edge of the seat. The seat’s upholstery was gone, its charred frame and springs smashed flat on the left side by the impact. Orbin’s eyes — what had once been the eyes — had been reduced to blackened cinders within their orbits, looking more like chunks of charcoal than windows to the soul. But then, from what little I had seen, Orbin’s soul had a lot of blackness to it.
Most of the skull’s soft tissue had burned away, yet the mandible remained precariously attached at the hinge of the jaw, giving the mouth a gaping, ghoulish, shrieking banshee look. It was slightly reminiscent of Leena’s, I realized — and then I realized that it was more than just slightly reminiscent. Like her, Orbin Kitchings had no lateral incisors in his upper jaw. And as I studied Orbin’s teeth, another image flashed suddenly into my mind: the photo of Tom Kitchings, squeezing through the narrow part of the cave, his clenched teeth bared in a grimace of effort. “I’ll be damned,” I breathed. The gene pool in Cooke County was a remarkably small and shallow body of protoplasm.
Orbin had died strapped into his pilot’s harness. The harness’s nylon webbing had been consumed by the inferno, but Orbin, or what was left of him, remained at the helm of his ruined ship, looking like some pilot of the damned. Several of my students had researched the effects of fire on flesh and bone over the years, and I’d once watched one of them burn a human head in a barbecue grill. After only several minutes on a bed of hot coals, the skin across the forehead had split open and peeled backward. Judging by the gradations of calcination and color on Orbin’s skull — hues ranging from the ashy-white frontal bone to the caramel-brown occipital at the back of the skull — the deputy’s scalp had let go of his cranium only gradually, scalped in slow motion by some sadistic fire god.
We might be able to remove most of his body from the wreckage in one piece. If so, that would make the excavation far quicker and simpler. I didn’t want to risk damaging the skull, though, so I reached into my tool case and removed a scalpel. Tilting the skull gently backward with one hand, I worked the blade back and forth with the other, severing the burned remnants of ligamentous tissue and spinal cord. As I lifted the skull, I backed out of the wreck and turned to show the skull to my teammates.
Art whistled when he saw the hole at the center of the forehead. It measured nearly an inch in diameter; the edges were jagged, and fracture lines radiated from it like crooked spokes in a mangled wheel. “That’s a big entry wound,” he said. “Bullet must’ve mushroomed some when it hit the windshield. Damn good shooting, too,” he added. “Or incredibly lucky. I bet Orbin was looking the shooter right in the eye when he pulled the trigger. Talk about staring death in the face.”
“If he’d been Keanu Reeves in The Matrix,” said Miranda, “he coulda dodged the bullet.”
“If he’d been Christopher Reeve in Superman, it woulda bounced right off,” I said.
“If he’d been Superman, he wouldn’t have been flying a helicopter,” Sarah pointed out.
“That’s right,” chimed in Art. “And he’d’ve used his telescopic vision to spot the guy. And his heat vision to burn him up.”
“Enough, already,” I said. “These complex forensic hypotheses are making my head spin.”
I handed off the skull to Miranda, then leaned back in to determine whether how much of the body remained intact. The arms and lower legs, not surprisingly, had burned off — thin, cylindrical, and surrounded by oxygen, they were always the first to go in a hot fire. Some of those bones lay on the warped metal of the pilot’s door; others were fused into a bizarre aggregate with the Plexiglas that had shattered, then melted, then cooled and hardened into a lumpy black mess.
His ribs were almost completely exposed, except at the back, where they joined the vertebrae. There, the seat’s padding and leather had protected the flesh from the fire during its first several minutes, as it had beneath the buttocks and backs of the thighs. It would be an awkward, two-person job to wrestle his torso out through the windshield opening. “Miranda, y’all get a disaster bag open on the ground here,” I called out. “Art, are you gloved up?”
“Yeah,” he said, wiggling his fingers in a pair of purple gloves, “I’ve got the gloves on, but I couldn’t find my matching handbag anywhere. Whatcha need?”
“Come help me wrestle him out of here, would you?”
“Love to.”
As soon as Miranda and Sarah had unzipped the white bag and laid it open at my feet, I reached through the cockpit’s left side and slid my hands beneath the torso’s left hip and ribs. Art leaned in through the opening on the right, levering his hands behind the right shoulder and hip. “On three,” I said. “One, two, three!” As we grunted with the strain, the charred torso lifted free of the seat and door frame and lurched toward the windshield opening.
“Hang on a sec; I’ve got to shift my grip,” said Art, and with that, I found myself bearing the torso’s entire weight — admittedly, considerably reduced from what it once was, but still a hefty load for a middle-aged academic stooped at an awkward angle.
“Hurry, I can’t hold him long,” I gasped.
“Okay, got him; let’s go,” Art said, and I felt my burden ease.
As we maneuvered the
torso out the opening, a femur snagged on the windshield’s center post, throwing me off balance. I stumbled backward, into Miranda’s arms. The body cartwheeled downward, thudding onto my feet. “Damn,” I said.
“Good thing we aren’t EMTs,” said Art. “If he weren’t dead already, he would be now. Either that or speed-dialing his lawyer.”
I tugged the bag’s sides up around the torso, then zipped it closed. “Let’s each grab a corner,” I said, “and go ahead and get this into the truck.” Distributed among the four of us, the weight was surprisingly light — no more than twenty pounds apiece.
Miranda and Sarah reached the back of the truck with their end of the bag first. “Let’s set it down here on the tailgate, then climb inside and slide him in,” said Miranda. They scampered up and inside the low cap over the bed a lot more gracefully than I could have. “Oh, to be young and nimble again,” I said, lifting and sliding my corner toward them.
“Oh, to be tenured and tended by assistants,” shot back Miranda. In the dark interior of the cap, Sarah coughed back a laugh.
“It’ll never happen,” I said, “if you piss off the department head and he flunks you.”
“He wouldn’t dare. I’ve been propping him up for the last two years. He’d be lost without me.”
“True,” I said, “but I’m grooming your replacement right now.”
“I don’t think so,” said Sarah. “The pay’s lousy and the hours stink. So do the patients.” They emerged and hopped down from the truck.
“Ooh, that’s a new one,” I said. “Let me just retreat to my work while I compose a witty retort.” I went back to the cockpit to begin extricating bones that had separated from the corpse. The first one I pulled out was a humerus. “Looks like the impact tore his left arm off,” I said to Miranda. “Do you know how I can tell?”