“Could someone have given a ticket away? Or sold it?”
“You're required to show a picture ID.”
“What if the ticketed passenger checks in, shows ID, then passes the ticket to someone else?”
“I'll ask.”
I finished my pickle.
“Or could someone have been transporting a biological specimen? This foot looks muckier than the stuff I've been processing.”
He looked at me skeptically. “Muckier?”
“The tissue breakdown seems more advanced.”
“Isn't decay rate affected by the environment?”
“Of course it is.”
I dabbed up ketchup and popped the last of my sandwich into my mouth.
“I think biological specimens have to be reported,” Ryan said.
I recalled times I'd flown with bones, boarding with them as carry-ons. In at least one instance I'd transported tissue sealed in Tupperware so I could study saw marks left by a serial killer. I wasn't convinced.
“Maybe the coyotes got the foot someplace else,” I suggested.
“Such as?”
“An old cemetery.”
“Air TransSouth 228 nosed into a cemetery?”
“Not directly into one.” I remembered my encounter with Simon Midkiff and his worry about his dig, and realized how absurd I must sound. Nevertheless, Ryan's skepticism irked me. “You're the expert on canids. Surely you're aware that they drag things around.”
“Maybe the foot took a jolt in life that makes it look older than its actual age.”
I had to admit that was possible.
“And more decomposed.”
“Maybe.”
I gathered napkins and utensils and carried our plates to the sink.
“Look, how 'bout we stroll Coyote Canyon tomorrow, see if anyone's pushing up daisies?”
I turned to look at him.
“Really?”
“Anything to ease your troubled mind, cupcake.”
That's not how it went.
I SPENT THE NEXT MORNING SEPARATING FLESH INTO FOUR INDIviduals. Case number 432 came from a burned segment of fuselage that lay in a valley north of the main crash site. Inside the body bag I found one relatively intact corpse missing the top of the skull and the lower arms. The bag also contained a partial head and a complete right arm with a portion of mandible embedded in the triceps muscle. Everything was congealed into a single charred mass.
I determined that the corpse was that of a black female in her early twenties who stood five feet seven at the time of death. Her X rays showed healed fractures of the right humerus and scapula. I classified number 432 as fragmented human remains, recorded my observations, and sent the body on to odontology.
The partial head, a white male in his late teens, became number 432A, and was also forwarded for dental analysis. The jaw fragment belonged to someone older than number 432A, probably a female, and went on to the dentists as number 432C. The state of bone development suggested that the unrelated arm came from an adult over twenty. I calculated upper and lower limits for stature, but was unable to determine gender since all hand and arm bone measurements fell into the overlap range for males and females. I sent the arm to the fingerprint section as case number 432D.
It was twelve-fifteen when I looked at my watch. I had to hurry.
* * *
I spotted Ryan through a small window in the morgue's back door. He was sitting on the steps, one long leg outstretched, the other raised to support an elbow as he spoke into a cell phone. Opening the door, I could hear that his words were English, his tone agitated, and I suspected the business was other than official.
“Well, that's the way it's going to be.”
He turned a shoulder when he saw me, and his answers grew terse.
“Do what you want, Danielle.”
I waited until he had disconnected, then joined him on the porch.
“Sorry I'm late.”
