Kathy Reichs: Bare Bones

“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?”

7

RYAN OPENED ONE VERY BLUE EYE.

“Is that all you ever say to me?”

“I’m talking to him.”

I pointed a sooty finger at Boyd.

The dog was flopped at one end of the couch, paws dangling over the edge. Ryan lay propped at the other end, legs extended, ankles crossed on top of the chow.

Neither wore shoes.

On hearing my voice Boyd sat bolt upright.

I moved the finger.

Boyd slunk to the floor. Ryan’s size-twelves dropped to the cushion.

“Furniture infraction?” Both blue eyes were open now.

“I take it you found the key?”

“No problemo.”