“Good question.”
“Any idea who owns the plane?” Larabee asked.
“Now that I have the tail registration number I can run a trace.”
“Where’d it take off?”
“That could be a tough one. Once you come up with the pilot’s name I can interview family and friends. In the meantime, I’ll check whether radar had tracking on the flight. Of course, if it was only a VFR flight, radar won’t have an identifier and it’ll be harder than crap to trace the plane’s course.”
“VFR?” I asked.
“Sorry. Pilots are rated as instrument flight rule or visual flight rule. IFR pilots can fly in all kinds of weather and use instruments to navigate.
“VFR pilots don’t use instruments. They can’t fly above the cloud line or within five hundred feet of the ceiling on overcast or cloudy days. VFR pilots navigate using landmarks on the ground.”
“Good job, Sky King,” Gullet snorted.
I ignored him.
“Don’t pilots have to file flight plans?”
“Yes, if an aircraft takes off from a GA airport under ATC. That’s new since nine-eleven.”
Investigator Jansen had more acronyms than alphabet soup.
“GA airport?” I asked. I knew ATC was air traffic control.
“Category-A general aviation airport. And the plane must fly within specific restrictions, especially if the GA airport is close to a major city.”
“Are passenger manifests required?”
“No.”
We all stared at the wreckage. Larabee spoke first.
“So this baby may have been out on its own?”
“The coke and ganja boys aren’t big on regulations
“Gonna call in the Feebs and the DEA?” Gullet asked.
“Depends on what I discover out there.” Jansen waggled the digital. “Let me get a few close-ups. Then you can start bringing out the dead.”
For the next three hours that’s just what we did.
While Larabee and I struggled with the victims, Jansen scrambled around shooting digital images, running her camcorder, sketching diagrams, and recording her thoughts on a pocket Dictaphone.
Hawkins stood by the cockpit, handing up equipment and taking pictures.
Gullet drifted in and out, offering bottled water and asking questions.
Others came and went throughout the rest of that sweaty, buggy afternoon and evening. I hardly noticed, so absorbed was I with the task at hand.
The pilot was burned beyond recognition, skin blackened, hair gone, eyelids shriveled into half-moons. An amorphous glob joined his abdomen to the yoke, effectively soldering the body in place.
“What is that?” asked Gullet on one of his periodic visits.
“Probably the guy’s liver,” Larabee replied, working to free the charred tissue.
It was the last question from Officer Gullet.
A peculiar black residue speckled the cockpit. Though I’d worked small plane crashes, I’d never seen anything like it.
“Any idea what this flaky stuff is?” I asked Larabee.
“Nope,” he said, attention focused on extricating the pilot.
Once disengaged, the corpse was zipped into a body bag and placed on a collapsible gurney. A uniformed officer helped Hawkins carry it to the MCME transport vehicle.
Before turning to the passenger, Larabee called a break to enter observations on his own Dictaphone.
Jumping to the ground, I pulled off my mask, tugged up the sleeve on my jumpsuit, and glanced at my watch. For the zillionth time.
Five past seven.
I checked my cell phone.
Still no service. God bless the country.
“One down,” said Larabee, slipping the recorder into a pocket inside his jumpsuit.
“You won’t need my help with the pilot.”
“Nope,” Larabee agreed.
