“Tim, I’m pretty—”
“Plane slammed into a rock face, then fireballed.”
“How many on board?”
“That’s unclear.”
“Can’t Joe help you out?”
“If the victims are both burned and segmented, it’ll take a trained eye to spot the pieces.”
This couldn’t be happening.
I checked my watch. Two-forty. Ninety minutes to touchdown.
Larabee was gazing at me with soulful eyes.
“I have to clean up and make a few phone calls.”
Larabee reached out and squeezed my upper arm.
“I knew I could count on you.”
Tell that to Detective Studpuppy, who’ll be hailing a cab in an hour and a half. Alone.
I hoped I’d make it home before he was sound asleep.
6
AT 4 P.M. THE TEMPERATURE WAS NINETY-SEVEN, THE HUMIDITY roughly the same. Slam dunk for the record keepers.
The crash site was almost an hour north of town, in the far northeastern corner of the county. Unlike the Lake Norman sector to the west, with its Sea-Doos and Hobie Cats, and J-32s, this part of Mecklenburg was corn and soybeans.
Joe Hawkins was already there when Larabee and I pulled up in his Land Rover. The DI was smoking a cigarillo, leaning against a quarter panel of the transport van.
“Where’d she go down?” I asked, slinging my backpack over a shoulder.
Hawkins pointed with a sideways gesture of his cigarillo.
“How far?” I was already perspiring.
“’Bout two hundred yards.”
By the time our little trio traversed three cornfields, Larabee and Hawkins with the equipment locker, I with my pack, we were wheezy, itchy, and thoroughly soaked.
Though smaller than usual, the normal cast of players was present. Cops. Firemen. A journalist. Locals, viewing the proceedings like tourists on a double-decker.
Someone had run crime scene tape around the perimeter of the wreckage. Looking at it across the field, I was struck by how little there seemed to be.
Two fire trucks sat outside the yellow tape, scars of flattened cornstalks running up to their tires. They were at ease now, but I could see that a lot of water had been pumped onto the wreckage.
Not good news for locating and recovering charred bone.
A man in a Davidson PD uniform appeared to be in charge. A brass tag on his shirt said
Larabee and I introduced ourselves.
Officer Gullet was square-jawed, with black eyes, a sculpted nose, and salt-and-pepper hair. The leading-man type. Except that he stood about five-foot-two.
We took turns shaking.
“Glad you’re here, Doc.” Gullet nodded at me. “Docs.”
The ME and I listened as Gullet summarized the known facts. His information went little beyond that which Larabee had provided outside the autopsy room.
“Landowner called in a report at one-nineteen. Said he looked out his living room window, saw a plane acting funny.”
“Acting funny?” I asked.
“Flying low, dipping from side to side.”
Looking over Gullet’s head, I estimated the height of the rock outcrop at the far end of the field. It couldn’t have exceeded two hundred feet. I could see red and blue smears maybe five yards below the peak. A trail of scorched and burned vegetation led from the impact point to the wreckage below.
“Guy heard an explosion, ran outside, saw smoke rising from his north forty. When he got here the plane was down and burning. Farmer—”
Gullet consulted a small spiral notepad.
“—Michalowski saw no signs of life, so he hotfooted it home to call 911.”
“Any idea how many were on board?” Larabee asked.
