Fatal Voyage (17 page)

 Boyd continued to amble and snuffle, oblivious to my tension. I wrapped
the leash around my palm, tightened my grasp.

 Within yards, the wall made a ninety-degree turn. Crowe rounded the
corner and I followed, my grip so tight I felt my nails dig into my palm.

 The trees ended three quarters of the distance up the wall. Crowe
stopped at the verge of the woods and Boyd and I caught up.

 Ahead and to the left I spotted another walled enclosure, the rock
face

 rising in the distance beyond. I had my bearings. We’d approached
from

 the rear of the property; the house lay ahead of us, its back to
the

 escarpment. The wall we’d been skirting surrounded a larger area I

 hadn’t noted on my first visit. The courtyard was within the larger

 enclosure.

 “I’ll be damned.” Crowe reached down and released the safety on her
gun.

 She called out as I had done. Called again.

 Eyes and ears alert, we proceeded to the house and climbed the
steps.

 The shutters were still closed, the windows still draped. I was gripped
by the same sense of foreboding as on my first visit.

 Crowe stepped to the side of the door and gestured with an arm. When
Boyd and I had moved behind her, she knocked. Still no answer.

 She knocked again, identified herself. Silence.

 Crowe raised her eyes and looked around.

 “No phone lines. No power lines.”

 “Cell phone and generator.”

 “Could be. Or the place could be deserted.”

 “Do you want to see the courtyard?”

 “Not without a warrant I don’t.”

 “But, Sheriff ”

 “No warrant, no entry.” She looked at me, her eyes unblinking. “Let’s
go. I’ll buy you a Dr. Pepper.”

 At that moment, a light rain began to fall. I listened to drops tick
softly on the porch roof, frustration seething in me. She was right. It was nothing but a hunch.
But every cell in my being was telling me that something important lay close at hand. Something
evil.

 “Could I run Boyd around the property, see if he has any thoughts?”

 “Keep him outside the walls, I’ve got no objection. I’ll check for
vehicular access. If folks are coming here, they must be driving.”

 For fifteen minutes Boyd and I crisscrossed the brush to the west of
the house, much as I had on my first trip. The dog showed no reaction.

 Though I was beginning to suspect the squirrel hit had been a fluke, I
decided to make one last sweep, skirting the edge of the forest up to its terminus at the second
enclosure. This would be virgin territory.

 We were twenty feet from the wall when Boyd’s head snapped up. His body
tensed, and the hair prickled along his back. He rotated his snout, testing the air, then growled
in a way I’d heard only once, deep and feral and vicious. Then he lunged, choking and barking as
though possessed.

 I staggered, barely able to hold him.

 “Boyd! Stop!”

 Spreading my feet, I grabbed the leash with both hands. The dog
continued to pull, muscles straining, forefeet scrabbling inches above the ground.

 “What is it, boy?”

 We both knew.

 I hesitated, heart pounding. Then I unwrapped the leash and let it
fall.

 Boyd flew to the wall and exploded in a frenzy of barking,
approximately six feet south of the back corner. I could see that the mortar was crumbling at
that point, and that a dozen stones had tumbled free, leaving a gap between the ground and the
wall’s foundation.

 I ran to the dog, crouched at his shoulder, and inspected the gap. The
soil was moist and discolored. Overturning a fallen stone, I saw a dozen tiny brown objects.

 Instantly, I knew what Boyd had found.

 I DID NOT GO TO THE SWAIN COUNTY COURTHOUSE ON MONDAY. Instead,

 I recrossed the mountains west to Tennessee, and by mid-morning was
approximately thirty miles northwest of Knoxville, approaching the entrance to the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory. The day was wet and gloomy, and my wipers slapped a steady cadence back and
forth, clearing two fans on the misty windshield.

 Through the side window I could see an old woman and toddler feeding
swans on the bank of a small lagoon. At the age of ten I’d had a run-in with an ugly duckling
that could have taken out a commando force. I questioned the wisdom of their outing.

 After showing ID at a guardhouse, I drove across a vast parking area to
the reception center. My host was waiting, signed me in, and we returned to the car. Another
hundred yards, and my new ORNL badge and license plates were verified at a third checkpoint
before I was allowed to pass through a chain-link fence surrounding the compound.

 “Pretty tight security. I thought this was Department of Energy.”

 “It is. Most of the work involves energy conservation, computers and
robotics, biomedical and environmental conservation, medical radioisotope development, that sort
of thing. We maintain security to protect DOE intellectual property and physical equipment.
There’s also a high-flux isotope reactor on-site.”

 Laslo Sparkes was in his thirties but already nurturing a stout
paunch.

 He had short, slightly bowed limbs and a round face, pockmarked on the
cheeks.

 Oak Ridge began as a World War II wonder baby, constructed in just
three short months in 1943. Thousands were dying in Europe and Asia, and Enrico Fermi and his
colleagues had just achieved nuclear fission in a squash court under the stands of the football
stadium at the University of Chicago. Oak Ridge’s mission had been simple: build the atomic
bomb.

 Laslo directed me through a labyrinth of narrow streets. Turn right
here. Left. Left. Right. Except for its vast size, the complex looked like an apartment project
in the Bronx.

 Laslo indicated a dark brick building identical to a score of other
dark brick buildings.

 “Park here,” he said.

 I pulled over and cut the engine.

 “I really appreciate your doing this on such short notice.”

“You were there when I asked for help.”

 Years earlier, Laslo had needed bone for his master’s research in
anthropology, and I’d provided samples. We’d kept in touch throughout his doctoral work and
during the decade he’d been a research scientist at Oak Ridge.

 Laslo waited while I retrieved a small cooler from the trunk, then led
me into the building and up the stairs to his lab. The room was small and windowless, every
millimeter crammed with battered steel desks, computers, printers, refrigerators, and a million
machines that glowed and hummed. Glass vials, water containers, stainless-steel instruments, and
boxes of latex gloves lined the countertops, and cardboard cartons and plastic buckets were
stacked below.

 Laslo led me to a work space in back and reached for the cooler. When I
handed it to him, he removed a plastic bag, peeled off the tape, and peeked inside.

 “Give this to me again,” he said, sniffing the bag’s contents.

 As I explained my trek with Lucy Crowe, Laslo poured dirt from the bag
into a glass container. Then he began entering information onto a blank form.

 “Where did you sample?”

 “I collected where the dog indicated, under the wall and under the
stones that had fallen out. I figured that soil would be most protected.”

 “Good thinking. Normally the corpse acts as a shield for the soil, but
stones would have had the same effect.”

 “Does rain create problems?”

 “In a protected environment the heavy, mucoidlike secretions produced
from anaerobic fermentation bind the soil together, making dilution al factors from rainfall
insignificant.”

 He sounded like he was reading from one of his articles in the Journal
of Forensic Sciences.

 “Keep it simple, please. This is way off my field.”

 “You spotted the de comp stain.”

 “Actually, my dog did.” I indicated a plastic vial. “The pupae are what
tipped me.”

 Laslo withdrew the jar, twisted off the lid, and shook a number of
casings into the palm of his hand. Each looked like a miniature football.

 “So maggot migration had taken place.”

 “If the stain is from a de comp espisode.” I’d had all night to worry
over Boyd’s discovery. Though I was sure his nose and my instincts were correct, I wanted
proof.

 “Maggot pupae definitely suggest the presence of a corpse.” He replaced
the casings. “I think your dog was right on.”

 “Can you determine if it was an animal?”

 “The amount of volatile fatty acids will tell us if the body was over
one hundred pounds. Very few mammals get that big.”

 “What about hunting? A deer or bear could get that big.”

 “Did you find any hairs?”

 I shook my head.

 “Decaying animals leave behind tons of hair. And bones, of course.”

 When an organism dies, scavengers, insects, and microbes take an
immediate interest, some munching from the outside, others from within, until the body is reduced
to bone. This is known as decomposition.

 Ruby would talk in terms of dust to dust, but the process is much more
complicated than that.

 Muscle, comprising 40 to 50 percent of the weight of a human body, is
composed of protein, which is composed of amino acids. At death, the fermentation of fat and
protein yields volatile fatty acids, or VFAs, through bacterial action. Inside the gut, other
microbes do their part.

 As putrefaction advances, liquids ooze from the body, carrying with
them the VFAs. Death investigators call the mixture soup.

 Laslo’s research focused at the microbial level, analyzing organic
components contained in the dirt under and around a body. Years of work had demonstrated a
correlation between the decay process and VFA production.

 I watched him filter soil through a stainless-steel sieve.

 “Exactly what do you look for in the dirt?”

 “I don’t use soil, I use soil solution.”

 I must have looked blank.

 “The liquid component between soil particles. But first I have to clean
it.”

 He weighed the sample.

 “As body fluids flow through, the organic matter becomes bound to the
soil. I can’t use chemical extract ants for separation, because that would partially dissolve the
volatile fatty acids from the decomposing body.”

 “And alter their measurements.”

 “Exactly.”

 He placed the soil in a centrifuge tube and added water.

 “I use deionized water in a ratio of two to one.”

 The tube went onto a vortex for one minute to mix the solution. Then he
transferred it to a centrifuge and closed the lid.

 “The temperature inside is held at five degrees. I’ll centrifuge for
forty minutes, then filter the sample to remove any remaining microorganisms. After that it’s
simple. I’ll check the ph, acidify with a formic acid solution, and pop the thing into the gas
chromatograph.”

 “How about a crash course.”

 Laslo finished adjusting settings, then gestured to a desk and we both
sat.

 “O. K. As you know, I’m looking at the products of muscle and fat
breakdown called volatile fatty acids. Are you familiar with the four stages of
decomposition?”

 Anthropologists and death investigators think of corpses as being in
one of four broad stages: fresh, bloated, decayed, or skeletal.

 I nodded.

 “There’s little change in VFAs in a fresh corpse. In the second stage,
a body bloats due to anaerobic fermentation, primarily in the gut. This causes skin breakage and
the leakage of fermentation byproducts rich in butyric acids.”

 “Butyric acids?”

 “Volatile fatty acids include forty-one different organic compounds, of
which butyric acid is one. Butyric, formic, acetic, propionic valeric, caproic, and heptanoic are
detectable in soil solution because they’re soluble in water. Two of them, formic and acetic, are
too abundant in nature to be of much use.”

 “Formic is the one that causes pain from ant bites, right?”

 “That’s the one. Caproic and heptanoic are only found in significant
amounts during the colder months. Propionic, butyric, and valeric are my boys. They’re released
from a decomposing corpse and deposited in soil solutions in specific ratios.”

 I felt like I was back in Biochem 101.

 “Since butyric and propionic acids are formed by anaerobic bacteria in
the gut, the levels are high during the bloat stage.”

 I nodded.

 “Later, during decay, aerobic bacteria join the act.”

 “So at stage three there’s a surge in all VFA formation.”

 “Yes. Then there’s a rapid fall-off at the onset of stage four.”

 “No flesh, no bacteria.”

 “The soup kitchen closes.”

 Behind us the centrifuge hummed softly.

 “I’ve also found that all fatty acid values are highest just after
maggot migration.”

 “When larvae abandon the corpse to pupate.”

 “Yes. Until that point the presence of the insects ‘ to restrict the
flow of body fluids into the soil.”

 “Doesn’t pupation occur at approximately four hundred ADD?”

 ADD stands for “accumulated degree days,” a figure calculated by
summing average daily temperatures.

 “With some variation. Which brings up a good point. VFA production is
temperature dependent. That’s why it can be used to determine time since death.”

 “Because a corpse will produce the same ratios of propionic, butyric,
and valeric acids for any given accumulated degree days.”

 “Exactly. So the volatile fatty acid profile can provide an estimate of
TSD.” TSD is the investigator’s shorthand for “time since death.”

 “Did you get the National Weather Service data?”

 He went to a set of shelves and returned with a printout.

 “It was amazingly fast. Normally it takes much longer. But we do have a
slight problem. For a really accurate TSD estimate I need three things. First, the specific
fatty acid ratios.”