Reichs, Kathy - Fatal Voyage

She jotted a note.

“And be discreet. If the rest of the body is out there and someone's responsible, we don't want to tip them into finishing what the coyotes began.”

“I hadn't thought of that,” she said, her voice chalky.

“Sorry.”

Again the head movement.

“Sheriff, do you know who owns property about a quarter mile west of the crash site? A house with a walled garden?”

She gazed at me, the eyes like pale green marbles.

“I was born in these mountains, been sheriffing here almost seven years. Until you came along I had no idea there was anything up that hollow but pine.”

“I don't suppose we could get a warrant, have a look inside.”

“Don't suppose.”

“Isn't it odd that no one knows about the place?”

“Folks keep to themselves up here.”

“And die in their beds.”

Back at High Ridge House, I took Boyd for a long walk. Or he took me. The chow was psyched, sniffing and baptizing every plant and rock along the road. I enjoyed myself on the downhill lap, awed by soft-focus mountains rolling to the horizon like a Monet landscape. The air was cool and moist, smelling of pine, and loam, and traces of smoke. The trees were alive with the twitter of birds settling in for the night.

The uphill run was another story. Still enthused, Boyd continued to pull on the leash like White Fang mushing across the Arctic. By the time we reached his pen my right arm was dead and my calves ached.

I was closing the gate when I heard Ryan's voice.

“Who's your friend?”

“Boyd. And he's seriously vicious.” I was still out of breath, and the words came out chopped and ragged.

“In training for extreme dog walking?”

“Have a good night, boy,” I said to the dog.

Boyd concentrated on crunching small brown pellets that looked like petrified jerky.

“You talk to dogs, but not to your old partner?”

I turned and looked at him.

“How ya doing, little fella?”

“Don't even think of scratching my ears. I'm doing well. And yourself?”

“Splendid. We were never partners.”

“Did you do your age thing?”

“I was right on.”

I checked the lock, then turned to face him. “Sheriff Crowe's got three elderly MPs. Any scoop on the Bates Motel?”

“Nada. No one knows the place exists. If anyone's using it, they must beam themselves in and out. Either that or no one's talking.”

“I'm going to check the tax rolls as soon as the courthouse opens tomorrow. Crowe's following up on the MPs.”

“Tomorrow's Saturday.”

“Damn.” I avoided the impulse to slap my forehead.

Preoccupied with Larke's dismissal of me, I'd lost all track of the days. Government buildings are closed on weekends.

“Damn,” I repeated for emphasis, and turned back toward the house. Ryan fell into step beside me.

“Interesting briefing today.”

“Oh?”

“The NTSB has compiled preliminary damage diagrams. Come to headquarters tomorrow and I'll pull them up for you.”

“Will my presence cause you problems?”

“Call me crazy.”

The investigation had taken over much of the Bryson City area. Up on Big Laurel, work continued at the NTSB command center and temporary morgue established at the crash site. Victim identification was progressing at the incident morgue housed in the Alarka Fire Department, and a family assistance center had been set up at the Sleep Inn on Veterans' Boulevard.

In addition, the federal government had rented space in the Bryson City Fire Department and allotted portions to the FBI, NTSB, ATF, and other organizations. At ten the next morning Ryan and I were seated at a desktop computer in one of the tiny cubicles honeycombing the building's upper floor. Between us were Jeff Lowrey, of the NTSB's cabin-interior documentation group, and Susan Katzenberg of the structures group.

As Katzenberg explained her group's preliminary ground-wreckage diagram, I kept a wary eye out for Larke Tyrell. Though I was with the feds, and not really in violation of Larke's banishment, I didn't want a confrontation.

“Here's the wreckage triangle. The apex is at the crash site, then the trail extends back along the flight path for almost four miles. That's consistent with a parabolic descent from twenty-four thousand feet at approximately four miles per minute climbing to pure vertically down.”

“I processed bodies recovered more than a mile from the primary wreckage field,” I said.

“The pressure hull was breached in midair, permitting the bodies to fall out in flight.”

“Where were the flight recorders?” I asked.

“They were found with pieces of the aft fuselage, about halfway along the wreckage trail.” She pointed at the screen. “In the F-100 the recorders are located in the unpressurized fuselage aft of the rear pressure bulkhead. They went early when something blew out aft and up.”

“So the wreckage pattern is consistent with a midair disintegration sequence?”

“Yes. Anything without wings, that is, without aerodynamic lift generation, falls in a ballistic trajectory, with the heavier stuff going farther horizontally.”

She indicated a large cluster of items, then moved her finger along the trail.

“The initial wreckage on the ground would be the small, light stuff.”

She pushed back from the computer and turned to Ryan and me.

“I hope that helps. Gotta run.”

Lowery took over when she'd gone. The monitor's glow deepened the lines in his face as he bent over the keyboard. He entered commands, and a new pattern filled the screen, looking like a Seurat in primary colors.

“First we established a set of general guidelines to describe the condition of the recovered seats and seat units.”

He pointed out colors in the pattern.

“Seats with minimal damage are indicated by light blue, those with moderate damage by dark blue, those with severe damage by green. Seats classified as ‘destroyed’ are shown in yellow, those classified as ‘fragmented’ in red.”

“What do the categories mean?” I asked.

“Light blue means the seat legs, back, pan, and armrest are intact, as is the safety belt restraint system. Dark blue means there's minor deformation to one or more of those components. Green means both fractures and deformation are present. Yellow indicates a seat with at least two of the five components fractured or missing, and red indicates damage to three or more components.”

The diagram showed a plane interior with lavatory, galleys, and closets behind the cockpit, eight seats in first class and eighteen rows in coach, double on port, triple on starboard. Behind the last row, which was double on both sides, was another set of galleys and lavatories.

A child could have interpreted the pattern. The colors flowed from cool blue to flaming red as they spread from forward to aft, indicating that seats closest to the cockpit were largely intact, those in mid-cabin more damaged, those behind the wings largely demolished. The highest concentration of red was at the rear left of the plane.

Lowery hit the keys and a new chart came up.

“This shows passenger seat assignments, though the aircraft wasn't full and people might have moved around. The cockpit voice recorder indicates that the captain had not turned off the ‘Fasten Seat Belt’ sign, so most passengers should have been seated with their belts fastened. The voice recorder also indicates that the captain had released the flight attendants to begin cabin service, so they could have been anywhere.”

“Will you ever be able to tell who was seated and who wasn't?”

“Recovered seats will be examined for evidence of belt restraint, things like belt loading, belt cuts, occupant-related deformation. With data from the medical/anthropology group we'll try to correlate seat damage with body fragmentation.”