The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel

by Jefferson Bass

  “Okay, I’ll talk to the man upstairs.” He tapped a shoulder-mounted radio mike. “Hey, Mac, it’s Kimbo. We’ve got the first layer mapped. Doc says he’s ready to dig in. You want to send down the other guys, so we can start moving some metal?” He listened, nodded, and gave me a thumbs-up. I took a deep breath and blew it out, relieved that the standing and waiting was over, glad to be getting into the game.

  Kimball and I started back toward the blasted base of the bluff. As we neared it, a shadow flowed across the ground toward us, then enveloped us, eclipsing the sun. I looked up to see a large rectangular silhouette, rotating slowly beneath the outstretched boom of the crane. As I watched, the rectangle grew larger, and larger still, descending toward us: a wooden platform, suspended from the steel cable. It was framed of stout lumber; it was decked with heavy-duty plywood; and it was laden with six FBI evidence-recovery specialists. As it came down, I stepped to one side to avoid being crushed.

  OUR SYSTEM FOR RETRIEVING AND REMOVING wreckage was simple—primitive, even—but it made sense, given the challenging terrain. Four of the evidence techs were assigned to work directly with me, combing the central debris field for human remains and other potential evidence. Kimball and Boatman would float: using the Total Station to map significant or unusual finds, but also photographing and logging our progress. The other two would fan out across the crash site to scan for evidence of explosive devices, retrieve scattered wreckage, and load it onto the platform. The platform had a foot-high plywood rim all the way around it, to keep pieces of debris from falling off. In addition, at its center was a sort of corral or fence, sized to hold a five-gallon plastic bucket securely in place. The bucket would be the repository for whatever pieces of bone and soft tissue we could find and bag, as well as any small objects the agents considered forensically significant. As soon as either the rack or the bucket was filled, the crane would haul up the load. Topside, Maddox and two other FBI evidence techs would transfer the aircraft wreckage to a pair of shipping containers that had arrived shortly after the crane: one container for large chunks, the other—in which shelves had been hastily installed—for the countless small pieces. Whatever human material we found, on the other hand, would be taken from the bucket and stored in coolers in the command center, for transport to the San Diego County medical examiner at the end of each day. The FBI might trump the locals when it came to crime-scene investigation, but it was the M.E., not the Bureau, who had the authority to issue death certificates.

  Apart from the crane and the high-tech nature of the artifacts we were collecting, our system reminded me of my early summers in field archaeology: field digs where local workers had hauled dirt in buckets, and graduate students had placed potsherds in baskets. Like most physical anthropologists, I had paid my grad-school dues in the trenches of archaeology, excavating sites that were hundreds or thousands of years old, unearthing the past year by year, century by century, burrowing deeper and deeper into the basement of time. In every dig, the topmost layer is “now”; the deeper you dig, the farther back in time you travel, inch by inch, foot by foot—and sometimes skull by skull.

  Excavating the Janus crash would likewise mean traveling back, but through a far, far thinner slice of time. The surface layer of debris—“now”—was the tail, the final part of the plane to hit, and the deeper we dug, the earlier in the crash event we’d be. But the interval we would cover, from end to beginning—from the uppermost scrap of tail debris down to the lowermost layer of nose cone—would span only a single second. Not even, I realized. A fraction of a second. I did some rough, quick calculations in my head. Four hundred miles an hour was . . . upwards of five hundred feet a second, if my math was right. Maddox had told us the Citation was about fifty feet long. That meant the entire plane, nose to tail, had crumpled in less than one-tenth of a second. I blinked. The blink of an eye, I realized. That’s how quick it can all come crashing down.

  All these things ran through my mind as I approached the main debris field. Its center appeared to be a spot near the base of the cliff—a wide, shallow crater now—where the nose of the jet must have first hit, followed—a hundredth or a thousandth of a second later—by the nose of the pilot himself.

  Shards of twisted metal and tangled wires radiated outward from the ground beneath the crater. Mixed and mingled throughout, I assumed, were cinders of flesh and bits of burnt bone. The only way to find them would be bit by bit, piece by piece—removing the metal, shaking and perhaps even scraping the scraps, scouring everything for bone shards and teeth.

  McCready had assigned two of the ERT techs to work the perimeter of the debris field, gathering scattered wreckage to load onto the rack and hoist up at intervals. Four more—plus Boatman and Kimball, when they weren’t mapping things with the Total Station—would help me dissect the heart of the debris, in search of human remains. Before we began, I reiterated what I’d said earlier, up top, in my minilecture on osteology. “We won’t find much that’s recognizable,” I reminded them. “Look for bone shards and tissue, but teeth are the big prize. The soft tissue—even the bones—might be too burned for DNA testing. But teeth are tough. Our best shot at a DNA profile is inside the teeth—the molars, especially. But even if we can’t get DNA out of the teeth, we can still make an identification, if we can find fillings or bridgework or something that matches our guy’s dental records.” They nodded and fanned out, and in near-perfect synchrony—as if we’d all been transported to a church service in the smoldering shell of a ruined cathedral—we dropped to our knees.

  Four hours later, we were still on our knees, but my prayers of finding Richard Janus had gone unanswered. Over the course of the afternoon, our plywood platform had been filled, hoisted, emptied, and lowered time and again. The two wider-ranging agents had also sent up load after load of bigger pieces on their rack—turbine blades; wheels; sections of wing and tail—and my four assistants and I had contributed plenty of smaller pieces as we’d picked our way into the central pile of debris. But the five-gallon bucket designated for human material remained empty—stubbornly, frustratingly, accusingly empty—and I’d begun to feel less like an anthropologist than like a miner, or a trash picker in a scrapyard. Kathleen and I had recently watched a documentary about poverty-stricken Brazilians who lived beside an immense landfill in Rio de Janeiro, and the people—men, women, even children—spent ten hours a day, every day, picking through load after load of garbage dumped at the landfill—some seeking plastic bottles, others seeking circuit boards, still others in search of scraps of wire: lifetimes of drudgery, dredging through the detritus of modern materialism. Not long before—less than twenty-four hours before, in fact—these bits of smoldering scrap had been a multimillion-dollar jet aircraft. But in one catastrophic instant the Citation had been reduced to trash, and we had been reduced to trash pickers.

  Hour by tedious hour, the shadows grew long, and the mountainside began to cool. When the freshly emptied rack descended once more, demanding to be filled again—for the fifteenth time, or the fiftieth?—McCready leaned over the rim and called down to us. “Hey, guys. Six o’clock. Quittin’ time. Come on up.” He didn’t have to tell us twice. Hours before, I had rappelled down, but now that we had an elevator, I would ride up. The ERT techs and I clambered aboard the swaying platform. They sat around the perimeter, legs dangling into space; I stood at the center, straddling the still-empty bucket, and braced myself by holding the cables bolted to the platform’s four corners.

  Overhead, the crane rumbled and whined, and with a slight lurch we began rising up the rock face. After we cleared the rim, the crane’s boom pivoted and began easing us down toward the concrete pad—my third landing of the day, I realized, this one a bit more primitive than the prior ones in the Gulfstream and the helicopter. As we hovered briefly, McCready threw us a mock salute, then called out, “You guys look like that painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware.” Glancing around, I saw the visual resemblance—the aging general, my stance
wide, surrounded by a boatload of loyal troops. But Washington’s boat had been carrying the Stars and Stripes, while all we had was a plastic bucket. As the platform settled, the cables I was holding went slack, and I staggered forward; only the quick reflexes of the closest agents kept me from falling. “More like Brockton going overboard,” I said, but the joke came out sounding bitter, and it fell as flat as I had nearly done. As I disentangled myself from agents and cables, I said what was really on my mind. “So what if there was nobody in the plane?” Everyone turned, eyeing me intently. “We haven’t found any remains so far. Is it possible he jumped? Maybe he was having engine trouble and bailed out?”

  Maddox spoke before McCready or Prescott had a chance. “Jump?” he said. “From a Citation? At four hundred miles an hour?” He gave an amused, dismissive grunt. “First off, you can’t do it,” he said. “The cabin door pivots forward to open; can’t be done in flight—too much air pressure. Second, even if you could do it, which you can’t, it’d be guaranteed suicide to bail out—you’d hit the left engine about a millisecond after you did. Easier to stay on the ground and just blow your brains out. Third, he didn’t do it—that cabin door was sealed tight as a drum.”

  “You sure about that?” asked McCready. Prescott was listening closely.

  “Here, I’ll show you.” Maddox crooked a finger, beckoning, and led us across the cracked concrete pad to one of the shipping containers, which by now was half filled with mangled metal. Tugging at a wadded-up chunk that was leaning against one wall, he laid it flat and dragged it toward the container’s opening, where the light was better. “This came up a couple hours ago,” he said. “It’s the cabin door. Some of it, anyhow.” He pointed to a crumpled lever. “This is the latch. Banged up and burned, but you can still tell that it was in the ‘closed’ position. Also”—he pointed to one edge of the door, which was fringed with torn metal—“here’s a piece of the door frame, which got ripped apart by the impact. See these bolts?” He tapped two metal rods, which—despite their thickness—were bent, their ends crowned with jagged aluminum. “When the door latches, a dozen of those bolts—spaced around the rim of the door—slide out and lock into the frame.”

  “Like the door of a bank vault?”

  He nodded. “Or a watertight door on a ship. The whole hull is pressurized, so the latches and seals have to be really robust.” I could feel myself starting to recalibrate—to get interested in the puzzle pieces again—when he added, “Look, he’s gotta be in there. You’ll find him. You just gotta keep digging.”

  He was right—in my heart of hearts, I knew he was right—but I was tired, and my back hurt, and his confidence and encouragement seemed slightly condescending, so my frustration returned, this time as annoyance. Prescott didn’t help my mood any when he said, “Maybe you’re looking too close, you know what I mean?”

  I turned and stared at him. “No,” I said. “I have no idea what you mean.”

  If he sensed my anger, he didn’t let on. “You know how, if you look at a photograph through a microscope, you might not be able to recognize the picture?”

  I stared at him. “So you think maybe we’ve all been stumbling over a body down there, but nobody’s noticed it, because we’re too close to see the shape of the arms and legs and head?”

  “No, I don’t mean that,” he hedged. “I’m just wondering if you might get a better feel for the bigger picture—for how things are . . . arranged—if you take a step back, get into a groove, and get some momentum going.”

  “Three years ago—after 9/11—I spent ten days sifting through rubble from the World Trade Center,” I told him. “In those ten days, I saw four intact long bones. Four.” I held up my right hand, fingers splayed, for digital emphasis. “I didn’t see a single complete skull. Mostly what I saw were shreds and splinters. Even the teeth were in bits and pieces. I could be wrong—Pat, please correct me if I am—but I’m guessing this crash is like a scaled-down version of that rubble. Yes? No?”

  Maddox hesitated, looking reluctant to choose sides. “Well, I hadn’t thought about it in those terms. But a straight-on impact at that velocity?” He considered it only for a moment. “The pilot probably fragments from the initial impact. Then the rest of the plane slams into him like a pile driver. Then comes the fire.” He shrugged at Prescott in what seemed a sort of apology. “This reminds me of some military crashes I’ve seen. Fighter jets. Sometimes all they leave is a smokin’ hole.” He gave us all a conciliatory smile. “But hey, tomorrow’s another day, right? A juicy steak and a good night’s sleep, and we’ll be raring to go again.”

  I couldn’t help wondering: Which “we”? The “we” in the air-conditioned command center, or the “we” doubled over like field hands? Still, I appreciated his sticking up for me, and I suspected I’d enjoy trading stories with him over dinner. “You eating with us, Pat?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, I hear you guys are staying in Otay Mesa. Close to Brown Field. I’m booked somewhere in San Diego. Pain in the ass to get there, but hey, a good soldier goes where he’s sent.” He flashed us a peace sign and turned to go, leaving me with the FBI agents.

  JOUNCING DOWN FROM THE CRASH SITE, BACK toward town, I was so grateful to be riding shotgun that I mostly forgave Prescott for criticizing our work pace. He was at the wheel of the vehicle, with McCready, Kimball, and Boatman in the back—a place where I’d have gotten carsick within minutes. Our Suburban, followed closely by the other one, was bucking and lurching down Otay Mountain Truck Trail—a rough-hewn route whose chief virtue, as best I could tell, was the honesty of the label TRUCK TRAIL. Between bumps, I marveled anew at the fleet of assorted vehicles that had managed to make the climb—especially the crane and the mobile command center—and I made a mental note to express my admiration to their drivers. As if to make sure I didn’t forget, the Suburban tilted suddenly to the right, then abruptly to the left, whapping my head against the window. I thought longingly of the swift, smooth hop the helicopter had made from the airfield to the summit: two minutes; three, tops. Yesterday’s travel was a lot cushier than today’s, I thought. Suddenly, astonished, I realized: No—that was today, too. I was eating breakfast in my kitchen in Knoxville this morning.

  As we descended, the kinked switchbacks relaxed, opening up into looser, looping curves, and the primitive truck trail evolved into an actual gravel road. By the time we came off the mountain’s flank and into the valley floor, we had picked up enough speed to churn up a dense, dun-colored plume, and I was glad to be in the lead vehicle rather than any of the trailing ones, which had vanished inside the dust storm we were creating.

  Shortly after turning onto a wide paved road, we passed a side road marked by a large sign. The sign, made of wooden boards framed by rough-hewn rock, read DONOVAN STATE PRISON. I was just about to ask Prescott about it when his cell phone rang. He frowned at the display but took the call. “No,” he said tersely, “not right now.” Then: “All right. . . . I said all right. . . . Fine. See you then.” He closed the phone with an angry snap.

  “Trouble?”

  He made a face of minor distaste, or perhaps disdain. “Just a friendly little jurisdictional discussion. Otherwise known as a pissing contest.”

  “With the sheriff’s office?”

  He shook his head. “I wish. It’s easy to outpiss the locals. Nah, this is with some of our federal brethren.” He glanced at me, saw the question on my face. “Nothing serious,” he said. “Case like this gets lots of media attention, so everybody wants to share the glory. ’Course, if things go south—if something goes wrong—those same glory hounds’ll run for cover. Pausing only long enough to throw us under the bus.” He looked into the rearview mirror and gave his backseat colleagues a slight, ironic smile. “Not that we would ever do that, if the tables got turned. Right, fellas?” Kimball and Boatman and McCready, jammed in the backseat, swiftly agreed that no, they would never run for cover or throw anyone under the bus.

  “Bus? What bus? I see no bus,�
�� said Kimball, his tone all mock innocence. “Pay no attention to that large, fast-moving vehicle!” The agents laughed the laugh of the righteous and confident, and I assured myself that I didn’t need to worry, as long as I looked both ways before crossing streets.

  “HOME SWEET HOME,” PRESCOTT ANNOUNCED, pointing through the windshield. Looking down in the direction of his point—we were on an overpass, crossing a six-lane freeway—I spotted a Quality Inn. Drab, aging, and ironically named, it huddled in the corner formed by the freeway and the overpass. Only the four out-of-towners were staying here; Prescott and the local evidence techs had the luxury of sleeping in their own beds, and Maddox, the NTSB investigator, was staying somewhere downtown. He’d made it sound like he was disappointed not to be staying with us, but now that I saw our lodgings, I suspected he wasn’t all that torn up about it. Too bad, I thought again, wishing I’d had the chance to swap stories with him. I’d always been fascinated by planes, and flight; I’d even taken a few flying lessons years before, but I’d failed the medical exam because of my Ménière’s disease, an inner-ear disorder that occasionally laid me low, sometimes for days on end, with bed-spinning vertigo and racking nausea.

  “Doc?” Prescott had stopped the Suburban at the motel’s entrance. He was looking at me, waiting.

  “Sorry; what’d you say?”

  “You ready to eat? These guys are starving. There’s a Carl’s Jr. on the other side of the expressway, and we’re jonesing for burgers.”

  I was hungry, too, I realized. “Sure.” Then, as an afterthought, I checked my watch. It was nearly seven, though the sun was still well above the horizon, thanks to the combined wonders of daylight saving time and the approach of the summer solstice. “On second thought, you guys go ahead. It’s close to bedtime in Knoxville, and I’d like to talk to my wife before she goes to sleep.”