Fatal Voyage (36 page)

 “What the hell’s that?” I asked, squinting into the dark.

 “Let’s go.”

 “We should hit your magistrate with everything we can.”

 I picked my way toward the point where I’d seen the flash. Crowe
hesitated a moment, followed.

 A long bundle lay tucked against the base of the wall. The bundle was
wrapped in shower curtains, one transparent, one translucent blue, and tied with several lengths
of rope. I approached and ran my light over the surface.

 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 Trans South 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 god damned 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 de comp 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 auto dial 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 deco mps 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 Trans South 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 Jose. 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 Trans South 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 Trans South 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 Trans South 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.”