Fatal Voyage

by Kathy Reichs

She leaned back, and the chair squeaked a tune I didn’t know.

  “Looks like Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition. If it’s one of these guys, nail the race and you’ve got your man.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Folks pretty much stay put up here. Like the idea of dying in their beds.”

  “See if any of these guys had foot problems. Or if they left shoes at home. Sole imprints could be useful. And start thinking about DNA. Head hair. Extracted teeth. Even a toothbrush might be a source if it hasn’t been cleaned or reused. If there’s nothing left from the victim we could work with a comparison sample from a blood relative.”

  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.”

  I listened, knowing the bodies would be coded, just as the seats had been. Green: body intact. Yellow: crushed head or loss of one extremity. Blue: loss of two extremities with or without crushed head. Red: loss of three or more extremities or complete transection of body.

  “The autopsy reports will also show where passengers with penetrating materials, thermal burns, or chemical burns were seated within the cabin,” Lowery went on. “We’ll also try to correlate right-versus-left-side injury patterns with right-versus-left-seat deformation.”

  “What does that tell you?” Ryan asked.

  “A high degree of correlation would suggest that passengers remained seated through most of the crash sequence. A poor correlation would mean either they were not in their assigned seats, or they became separated from their seats fairly early in the sequence.”

  I felt a chill thinking of the terror-filled final moments of those passengers.

  “The docs will also give us data on anterior-versus-posterior injuries, which we’ll correlate to fore-versus-aft seat deformation.”

  “Why?” Ryan.

  “It’s assumed that the forward motion of the plane combined with the protective effect of the seat at the occupant’s back result in predominantly anterior injuries.”

  “Unless the passenger is separated from the seat.”

  “Exactly. Also, in crashes with forward velocity, forward-facing seats are deformed in the forward direction. In midair breakups, that pattern may not occur, since portions of the plane may have tumbled prior to impact.”

  “And?”

  “Of the seats recovered so far, over seventy percent show detectable deformation in the fore-aft plane. Of those, less than forty percent were deformed in the forward direction.”

  “Meaning in-flight destruction.”

  “No doubt about it. Susan’s group is still studying the mode of breakup. They’ll try to reconstruct the exact sequence of failure, but it’s pretty clear there was a sudden, catastrophic midair event. That means that parts of the fuselage tumbled prior to ground impact. I’m a little surprised there isn’t more variation among the various sections, but these things never follow the book. What is clear is that the seats in each section show nearly identical impact loading.”

  He worked the keys, and the original diagram filled the screen.

  “And there’s little doubt where the blast occurred.” He pointed to the splotch of fiery red at the left rear of the cabin.

  “An explosion doesn’t necessarily mean a bomb.”

  We swiveled to see Magnus Jackson standing at the cubicle entrance. He looked at me a long time but said nothing. The screen glowed rainbow bright behind us.

  “The rocket scenario has been given some new credibility,” Jackson said.

  We all waited.

  “There are now three witnesses claiming to have seen an object shoot into the sky.”

  Ryan crooked an arm over the back of his chair. “I’ve talked to the Right Reverends Mr. Claiborne and Mr. Bowman, and I’d estimate a combined IQ in the woolly worm range.”

  I wondered how Ryan knew about woolly worms but didn’t ask.

  “All three witnesses give times and descriptions that are virtually identical.”

  “Like their genetic codes,” Ryan quipped.

  “Will these witnesses take lie detector tests?” I asked.

  “They probably think a microwave will fry their genitals,” Ryan said.

  Jackson almost smiled, but Ryan’s jokes were beginning to annoy me.

  “You’re right,” Jackson said. “There’s a healthy suspicion of authority and science in the rural areas up here. The witnesses refuse to submit to polygraphs on the grounds that the government could use the technology to alter their brains.”

  “Give them upgrades?”

  Jackson did smile briefly. Then the investigator in charge studied me again, and left without another word.

  “Can we go back to the seating chart?” I asked.

  Lowery entered a sequence of keystrokes and the diagram filled the screen.

  “Can you superimpose the seat damage over that?”

  Another few keys and the Seurat was in place.

  “Where was Martha Simington seated?”

  Lowery pointed to the first row in first class: “1A.”

  Pale blue.

  “And the Sri Lankan exchange student?”

  “Anurudha Mahendran—12F, just forward of the right wing.”

  Dark blue.

  “Where were Jean Bertrand and Rémi Petricelli?”

  Lowery’s finger moved to the last row on the left.

  “Twenty-three A and B.”

  Fiery red.

  Ground zero.

  11

  FOLLOWING THE BRIEFING, RYAN AND I BOUGHT LUNCH at Hot Dog Heaven and watched tourists at the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad Depot as we ate. The weather had warmed, and at one-thirty in the afternoon the temperature was in the low eighties. The sun was bright, the wind barely a whisper. Indian summer in Cherokee country.

  Ryan promised to ask about progress in victim identification, and I promised to dine with him that night. As he drove off I felt like a housewife whose children had just started full-day school: a long afternoon of yawning until the troops reappeared.

  Returning to High Ridge House, I took Boyd for another walk. Though the dog was delighted, the outing was really for me. I was restless and edgy and needed physical exertion. Crowe hadn’t called, and I couldn’t get into the courthouse until Monday. As I was barred from the morgue and persona non grata with my colleagues, further research into the foot was at a standstill.

  I then tried reading but by three-thirty could take it no longer. Grabbing purse and keys, I set out, going somewhere.

  I’d hardly left Bryson City when I passed a mile marker for Cherokee.

  Daniel Wahnetah was Cherokee. Was he living on the reservation at the time of his disappearance? I couldn’t remember.

  In fifteen minutes I was there.

  The Cherokee Nation once ruled 135,000 square miles of North America, including parts of what are now eight states. Unlike the Plains Indians, so popular with producers of Western movies, the Cherokee lived in log cabins, wore turbans, and adopted the European style of dress. With Sequoyah’s alphabet, their language became transcribable in the 1820s.

  In 1838, in one of the more infamous betrayals in modern history, the Cherokee were forced from their homes and driven 1,200 miles west to Oklahoma on a death march christened the Trail of Tears. The survivors came to be known as the Western Band Cherokee. The Eastern Band is composed of the descendants of those who hid out and remained in the Smoky Mountains.

  As I drove past signs for the Oconaluftee Indian Village, the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, and the outdoor drama Unto These Hills, I experienced my usual anger at the arrogance and cruelty of manifest destiny. Though geared toward the dollar, these contemporary enterprises were also attempts at heritage preservation, and demonstrated the tenacity of another people screwed over by my noble pioneer ancestors.

  Billboards plugged Harrah’s Casino and the Cherokee Hilton, living proof that Sequoyah’s descendants shared his aptitude for cultural borrowing.

  So did downtown Cherokee, where
T-shirt, leather, knife, and moccasin stores elbowed for space with gift and souvenir emporiums, fudge shops, ice cream parlors, and fast-food joints. The Indian Store. The Spotted Pony. The Tomahawk Mini-Mall. The Buck and Squaw. Teepees sprouted from roofs and painted totem poles flanked entrances. Aboriginal kitsch extraordinaire.

  After several unsuccessful passes up and down Highway 19, I parked in a small lot several blocks off the main drag. For the next hour I joined the tourist mass swarming walkways and businesses. I appraised genuine Cherokee ashtrays, key chains, back scratchers, and tom-toms. I inspected authentic wooden tomahawks, ceramic buffalo, acrylic blankets, and plastic arrows, and marveled at the ringing of the cash registers. Had there ever been buffalo in North Carolina?

  Now who’s screwing whom? I thought, watching a young boy hand over seven dollars for a neon-feathered headdress.

  Despite the culture of commercialism, I enjoyed stepping back from my normal world: Women with bite marks on their breasts. Toddlers with vaginal abrasions. Drifters with bellies full of antifreeze. A severed foot. Goose-feather headdresses are preferable to violence and death.

  It was also a relief to step out of the emotional quagmire of puzzling relationships. I bought postcards. Peanut butter fudge. A caramel apple. My problems with Larke Tyrell and my confusion about Pete and Ryan receded to another galaxy.

  Walking past the Boot Hill Leather Shop, I had a sudden impulse. Beside Pete’s bed I’d noticed the slippers that Katy had given him when she was six years old. I’d buy him moccasins as a thank-you for boosting my spirits.

  Or whatever it was that he had boosted.

  As I was poking through bins, another thought struck me: Perhaps genuine imitation Native-American footwear would cheer Ryan’s spirits over the loss of his partner. OK. Two for one.

  Pete was easy. Eleven D translates to “large” in moccasin. What the hell did Ryan wear?

  I was comparing sizes, debating whether an extra large would fit a six-foot-three Irish-Canadian from Nova Scotia, when a series of synapses fired in my brain.

  Foot bones. Soldiers in Southeast Asia. Formulae for distinguishing Asian remains from those of American blacks and whites.

  Could it work?

  Had I taken the necessary measurements?