Fatal Voyage (13 page)

 “I’m leaving for Bryson City.”

 “Boyd loves the highlands. He’d be great company.”

 “Look at him.”

 Boyd’s chin now rested on the window ledge, and saliva trickled down
the car’s outside panel.

 “He’d be protection.”

 “That’s a stretch.”

 “Really. Harvey didn’t like unexpected visitors, so he trained Boyd to
sniff out strangers.”

 “Especially those in uniform.”

 “The good, the bad, the ugly, even the beautiful. Boyd makes no
distinctions.”

 “Isn’t there a kennel where he can board?”

 “It’s full.” He glanced at his watch, then gave me his most beguiling
choirboy look. “And my flight leaves in an hour.”

 Pete had never refused when I’d needed help with Birdie.

 “Go. I’ll figure something out.”

 “You’re sure?”

 “I’ll find a kennel.”

 Pete squeezed both my arms.

 “You’re my hero.”

 There are twenty-three kennels in the greater Charlotte area. It took
an hour to establish that fourteen were fully booked, five did not answer, two could not
accommodate a dog over fifty pounds, and two would take no dog without a personal interview.

 “Now what?”

 Boyd raised and cocked his head, then went back to licking my kitchen
floor.

 Desperate, I made another call.

 Ruby was less fastidious. For three dollars a day the dog was welcome,
no personal audience required.

 My neighbor took Birdie, and the chow and I hit the road.

 Halloween has its roots in the pagan festival of Samhain. Held at the
onset of winter and the beginning of the Celtic New Year, Samhain was the time when the veil
between living and dead was thinnest, and spirits roamed the land of mortals. Fires were
extinguished and rekindled, and people dressed up to frighten away the unfriendly departed.

 Though the holiday was still two weeks off, the residents of Bryson
City were into the concept in a big way. Ghouls, bats, and spiders were everywhere. Scarecrows
and tombstones had been erected in front yards, and skeletons, black cats, witches, and ghosts
dangled from trees and porch lights. Jack-o‘-lanterns leered from every window in town. A couple
of cars had rather realistic replicas of human feet protruding from their trunks. Good time to
actually dispose of a body, I thought.

 By five I’d settled Boyd into a run behind High Ridge House, and myself
into Magnolia. Then I drove to the sheriff’s headquarters.

 Lucy Crowe was on the phone when I appeared in her doorway. She waved
me into her office, and I took one of two chairs. Her desk filled most of the small space,
looking like something at which a Confederate general might have penned military orders. Her
chair was also ancient, brown leather and studded, with stuffing oozing from the left arm.

 “Nice desk,” I said when she’d hung up.

 “I think it’s ash.” The sea-foam eyes were just as startling as on our
first meeting. “It was made by my predecessor’s grandfather.”

 She leaned back, and the chair squeaked musically.

 “Tell me what I’ve missed.”

 “They say you’ve damaged the investigation.”

 “Sometimes you get bad press.”

 Her head did a j-stroke. “What have you got?”

 “That foot was walking the earth at least sixty-five years. No one on
the plane had that privilege. I need to establish that this was not crash evidence.”

 The sheriff opened a folder and spread its contents on her blotter.

 “I’ve got three missing persons. Had four, but one turned up.”

 “Shoot.”

 “Jeremiah Mitchell, black male, age seventy-two. Disappeared from
Waynesville eight months ago. According to patrons at the Mighty High Tap, Mitchell left the bar
around midnight to buy hooch. That was February fifteenth. Mitchell’s neighbor reported him
missing ten days later. He hasn’t been seen since.”

 “No family?”

 “None listed. Mitchell was a loner.”

 “Why the neighbor’s concern?”

 “Mitchell had his ax and the guy wanted it back. Visited the house
several times, finally got tired of waiting, went to see if Mitchell was in the drunk tank. He
wasn’t, so the neighbor filed an MP report, thinking a police search might flush him.”

 “And his ax.”

 “A man’s nothing without his tools.”

 “Height?”

 She ran a finger down one of the papers.

 “Five foot six.”

 “That fits. Was he driving?”

 “Mitchell was a heavy drinker, traveled by foot. Folks figure he got
himself lost and died of exposure.”

 “Who else?”

 “George Adair.” She read from another form. “White male, age
sixty-seven. Lived over to Unahala, disappeared two weeks ago. Wife said he went fishing with a
buddy and never came back.”

 “What was the buddy’s story?”

 “Woke one morning and Adair wasn’t in the tent. Waited a day, then
packed up and went home.”

 “Where was this fatal fishing trip?”

 “The Little Tennessee.” She swiveled and stabbed at a spot on a wall
map behind her. “Up the Nantahala Mountains.”

 “Where’s Unahala?”

 Her finger moved a fraction toward the northeast.

 “Andwhere’s the crash site?”

 Her finger barely moved.

 “Who’s contestant number three?”

 When she turned back, the chair sang another verse.

 “Daniel Wahnetah, age sixty-nine, Cherokee from the reservation. Failed
to show up for his grandson’s birthday on July twenty-seventh. Family reported him missing on
August twenty-sixth when he pulled a no-show for his own party.” Her eyes moved down the paper.
“No height reported.”

 “The family waited a month?”

 “Except in winter, Daniel spends most of his time out in the woods. He
has a string of camps, works a circuit hunting and fishing.”

 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 she riffing 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.

 “Howya 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 honey
combing 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 Sewer-rat 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 ” 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.“