Bare Bones

6

AT 4 P.M. THE TEMPERATURE WAS NINETY-SEVEN, THE HUMIDITY roughly the same. Slam dunk for the record keepers.

The crash site was almost an hour north of town, in the far northeastern corner of the county. Unlike the Lake Norman sector to the west, with its Sea-Doos and Hobie Cats, and J-32s, this part of Mecklenburg was corn and soybeans.

Joe Hawkins was already there when Larabee and I pulled up in his Land Rover. The DI was smoking a cigarillo, leaning against a quarter panel of the transport van.

“Where’d she go down?” I asked, slinging my backpack over a shoulder.

Hawkins pointed with a sideways gesture of his cigarillo.

“How far?” I was already perspiring.

“’Bout two hundred yards.”

By the time our little trio traversed three cornfields, Larabee and Hawkins with the equipment locker, I with my pack, we were wheezy, itchy, and thoroughly soaked.

Though smaller than usual, the normal cast of players was present. Cops. Firemen. A journalist. Locals, viewing the proceedings like tourists on a double-decker.

Someone had run crime scene tape around the perimeter of the wreckage. Looking at it across the field, I was struck by how little there seemed to be.

Two fire trucks sat outside the yellow tape, scars of flattened cornstalks running up to their tires. They were at ease now, but I could see that a lot of water had been pumped onto the wreckage.

Not good news for locating and recovering charred bone.

A man in a Davidson PD uniform appeared to be in charge. A brass tag on his shirt said Wade Gullet.

Larabee and I introduced ourselves.

Officer Gullet was square-jawed, with black eyes, a sculpted nose, and salt-and-pepper hair. The leading-man type. Except that he stood about five-foot-two.

We took turns shaking.

“Glad you’re here, Doc.” Gullet nodded at me. “Docs.”

The ME and I listened as Gullet summarized the known facts. His information went little beyond that which Larabee had provided outside the autopsy room.

“Landowner called in a report at one-nineteen. Said he looked out his living room window, saw a plane acting funny.”

“Acting funny?” I asked.

“Flying low, dipping from side to side.”

Looking over Gullet’s head, I estimated the height of the rock outcrop at the far end of the field. It couldn’t have exceeded two hundred feet. I could see red and blue smears maybe five yards below the peak. A trail of scorched and burned vegetation led from the impact point to the wreckage below.

“Guy heard an explosion, ran outside, saw smoke rising from his north forty. When he got here the plane was down and burning. Farmer—”

Gullet consulted a small spiral notepad.

“—Michalowski saw no signs of life, so he hotfooted it home to call 911.”

“Any idea how many were on board?” Larabee asked.

“Looks like a four-seater, so I’m thinking less than a six-pack.”

Gullet apparently wanted to compete with Slidell for movie cop work.

Flipping the cover with a one-handed motion, Gullet slid the spiral into his breast pocket.

“The dispatcher has notified the FAA or the NTSB, or whatever feds need contacting. Between my crew and the fire boys, I think we can handle the scene here. Just tell me what you need on your end, Doc.”

I’d noticed a pair of ambulances parked on the shoulder where we’d pulled up.

“You’ve notified a trauma center?”

“Alerted CMC down in Charlotte. Paramedics and I took a peek once the fire was under control.” Gullet gave a half shake of the head. “There’s no one sucking air in that mess.”

As Larabee started explaining how we’d proceed, I snuck a look at my watch. Four-twenty. Visitor ETA at my condo.

I hoped he’d gotten my message saying I’d be late. I hoped he’d found a taxi. I hoped he’d spotted the key I’d asked Katy to tape to the kitchen door.

I hoped Katy had taped the key to the kitchen door.

Relax, Brennan. If there’s a problem he’ll phone.

I unhooked and checked my cell phone. No signal.

Damn.

“Ready for a look-see?” Gullet was saying to Larabee.

“No hot spots?”

“Fire’s out.”

“Lead on.”

Hating my job at that moment, I followed Gullet and Larabee through the cornrows and under the police tape to the edge of the wreckage.

Up close, the plane looked better than it had from a distance. Though accordioned and burned, the fuselage was largely intact. Around it lay scorched and twisted pieces of wing, melted plastic, and a constellation of unrecognizable rubble. Tiny cubes of glass sparkled like phosphorous in the afternoon sun.

“Ahoy!”

At the sound of the voice, we all turned.

A woman in khakis, boots, and dark blue shirt and cap was striding toward us. Big yellow letters above her brim announced the arrival of the National Transportation Safety Board.

“Sorry it’s so late. I got the first available flight.”

Draping a camcorder strap around her neck, the woman offered a hand.

“Sheila Jansen, air safety investigator.”

We took turns shaking. Jansen’s grip was anaconda strong.

Jansen removed her cap and ran a forearm across her face. Without the hat she looked like a milk commercial, all blonde and healthy and lousy with vitality.

“It’s hotter here than in Miami.”

We all agreed it was hot.

“Everything as it was, Officer?” Jansen asked, squinting through the viewfinder of a small digital camera.

“Except for dousing the flames.” Gullet.

“Survivors?”

“No one’s reported in to us.”

“How many inside?” Jansen kept clicking away, moving a few feet left and a few feet right to capture the scene from different angles.

“At least one.”

“Your officers walked the area?”

“Yes.”

“Give me a minute?” Jansen raised the camcorder.

Larabee gave a go-ahead gesture with one hand.

We watched her circle the wreckage, shooting stills and video. Then she photographed the rock face and the surrounding fields. Fifteen minutes later Jansen rejoined us.

“The plane’s a Cessna-210. The pilot’s in place, there’s a passenger in back.”

“Why in back?” I asked.

“The right front seat’s not there.”

“Why?”

“Good question.”

“Any idea who owns the plane?” Larabee asked.

“Now that I have the tail registration number I can run a trace.”

“Where’d it take off?”

“That could be a tough one. Once you come up with the pilot’s name I can interview family and friends. In the meantime, I’ll check whether radar had tracking on the flight. Of course, if it was only a VFR flight, radar won’t have an identifier and it’ll be harder than crap to trace the plane’s course.”

“VFR?” I asked.

“Sorry. Pilots are rated as instrument flight rule or visual flight rule. IFR pilots can fly in all kinds of weather and use instruments to navigate.

“VFR pilots don’t use instruments. They can’t fly above the cloud line or within five hundred feet of the ceiling on overcast or cloudy days. VFR pilots navigate using landmarks on the ground.”

“Good job, Sky King,” Gullet snorted.

I ignored him.

“Don’t pilots have to file flight plans?”

“Yes, if an aircraft takes off from a GA airport under ATC. That’s new since nine-eleven.”

Investigator Jansen had more acronyms than alphabet soup.

“GA airport?” I asked. I knew ATC was air traffic control.

“Category-A general aviation airport. And the plane must fly within specific restrictions, especially if the GA airport is close to a major city.”

“Are passenger manifests required?”

“No.”

We all stared at the wreckage. Larabee spoke first.

“So this baby may have been out on its own?”

“The coke and ganja boys aren’t big on regulations or flight plans, GA airport or not. They tend to take off from remote locations and fly below radar control. My guess is we’re looking at a drug run gone bad, and there won’t be any flight plan.”

“Gonna call in the Feebs and the DEA?” Gullet asked.

“Depends on what I discover out there.” Jansen waggled the digital. “Let me get a few close-ups. Then you can start bringing out the dead.”

For the next three hours that’s just what we did.

While Larabee and I struggled with the victims, Jansen scrambled around shooting digital images, running her camcorder, sketching diagrams, and recording her thoughts on a pocket Dictaphone.

Hawkins stood by the cockpit, handing up equipment and taking pictures.

Gullet drifted in and out, offering bottled water and asking questions.

Others came and went throughout the rest of that sweaty, buggy afternoon and evening. I hardly noticed, so absorbed was I with the task at hand.

The pilot was burned beyond recognition, skin blackened, hair gone, eyelids shriveled into half-moons. An amorphous glob joined his abdomen to the yoke, effectively soldering the body in place.

“What is that?” asked Gullet on one of his periodic visits.

“Probably the guy’s liver,” Larabee replied, working to free the charred tissue.

It was the last question from Officer Gullet.

A peculiar black residue speckled the cockpit. Though I’d worked small plane crashes, I’d never seen anything like it.

“Any idea what this flaky stuff is?” I asked Larabee.

“Nope,” he said, attention focused on extricating the pilot.

Once disengaged, the corpse was zipped into a body bag and placed on a collapsible gurney. A uniformed officer helped Hawkins carry it to the MCME transport vehicle.

Before turning to the passenger, Larabee called a break to enter observations on his own Dictaphone.

Jumping to the ground, I pulled off my mask, tugged up the sleeve on my jumpsuit, and glanced at my watch. For the zillionth time.

Five past seven.

I checked my cell phone.

Still no service. God bless the country.

“One down,” said Larabee, slipping the recorder into a pocket inside his jumpsuit.

“You won’t need my help with the pilot.”

“Nope,” Larabee agreed.

Not so for the pax.

When a rapidly moving object, like a car or plane, stops suddenly, those inside who are not securely fastened become what biomechanics call “near-flung objects.” Each object within the larger object continues at the same speed at which it was traveling until coming to its own sudden stop.

In a Cessna, that ain’t good.

Unlike the pilot, the passenger hadn’t been belted. I could see hair and bone shards on the windshield frame where his head had come to its sudden stop.

The skull had suffered massive comminutive fracturing on impact. The fire had done the rest.

I felt plate tectonics in my stomach as I looked from the charred and headless torso to the grisly mess lying around it.

Cicadas droned in the distance, their mechanical whining like an anguished wail on the breathless air.

After a moment of serious self-pity, I replaced my mask, eased into the cockpit, climbed to the back, and began sifting bone fragments from their matrix of debris and brain matter, most of which had ricocheted backward after hitting the windshield frame.

The cornfield and its occupants receded. The cicadas faded. Now and then I heard voices, a radio, a distant siren.

As Larabee worked on the passenger’s body, I rummaged for the remnants of his shattered head.

Teeth. Orbital rim. A chunk of jaw. Every fragment coated with flaky black gunk.

While the pilot had been speckled, the passenger was totally encrusted. I had no idea what the substance could be.

As I filled a container, Hawkins replaced it with an empty one.

At one point I heard workers setting up a portable generator and lights.

The plane reeked of charred flesh and airplane fuel. Soot filled the air, turning the cramped space into a miniature Dust Bowl. My back and knees ached. Again and again I shifted, fruitlessly searching for more comfortable positions.

I willed my body temperature down by calling up cool images in my mind.

A swimming pool. The smell of chlorine. The roughness of the boardwalk on the soles of my feet. The shock of cold on that first plunge.

The beach. Waves on my ankles. Wind on my face. Cool, salty sand against my cheek. A blast of AC on Coppertone skin.

Popsicles.

Ice cubes popping in lemonade.

We finished as the last pink tendrils of day slipped below the horizon.

Hawkins made a final trip to the van. Larabee and I stripped off our jumpsuits and packed the equipment locker. At the blacktop I turned for a closing look.

Dusk had drained all color from the landscape. Summer night was taking over, painting cornstalks, cliff, and trees in shades of gray and black.

At center stage, the doomed plane and its responders, glowing under the portable lights like some macabre performance of Shakespeare in a cornfield.

A Midsummer Night’s Nightmare.

I was so exhausted I slept most of the way home.

“Do you want to swing by the office to pick up your car?” Larabee asked.

“Take me home.”

That was the extent of the conversation.

An hour later Larabee deposited me beside my patio.

“See you tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Of course. I have no life.

I got out and slammed the door.

The kitchen was dark.

Lights in the study?

I tiptoed to the side of the annex and peeked around the corner.

Dark.

Upstairs?

Ditto.

“Good,” I mumbled, feeling stupid. “I hope he’s not here.”

I let myself into the kitchen.

“Hello?”

Not a sound.

“Bird?”

No cat.

Dumping my pack on the floor, I unlaced and pulled off my boots, then opened the door and set them outside.

“Birdie?”

Nope.

I walked to the study and flipped the wall switch.

And felt my mouth open in dismay.

I was filthy, exhausted, and light-years past niceness.

“What the hell are you doing here?”