picture. I'd seen dozens at the lab, and recognized it instantly.
I looked at Ryan.
“It's a biohazard container.”
He nodded.
“Which wasn't on the manifest.”
“No.”
“And everyone thinks it held a foot.”
“Opinion is running in that direction.”
Boyd nudged my hand, and I absently held out the rest of the sandwich. He looked at me, as though assuring himself there was no mistake, then took the booty and moved off, opting for distance in case it was a misunderstanding, after all.
“So they're admitting that the foot does not belong to any passenger.”
“Not exactly. But they're opening up to the possibility.”
“What does this do to the warrant?” I asked Crowe.
“It won't help.”
She pushed back from the step, stood with feet apart, and replaced her hat.
“But something's reeking under that wall, and I intend to find out what.”
She gave her Sheriff Crowe head dip, turned, and walked up the path. Moments later we saw her bubble top wending down the mountain.
I felt Ryan's stare and brought my gaze back to him.
“Why did the magistrate nix the warrant?”
“Apparently the guy's a candidate for the Flat Earth Society. On top of that, he'll issue a warrant for obstruction if I so much as shed a skin cell.” My cheeks burned with anger.
Boyd crossed the porch, snout down, head moving from side to side. Reaching the swing, he sniffed up my leg, then sat and stared at me with his tongue out.
Ryan drew on his cigarette, flicked it onto the lawn. Boyd's eyes shifted sideways, then back to me.
“Did you find out about H&F?”
Ryan had gone to his “office” to phone Delaware.
“I thought the request might be processed more expeditiously if it came from the FBI, so I asked McMahon to make the call. I'll be at the reassembly site all afternoon but I can ask him tonight.”
Reassembly. The piecing together of the airplane as it had been before the event. Total reassembly is a tremendous drain on time, money, and manpower, of which the NTSB had precious little. They do not attempt it in every major, do so reluctantly when public clamor demands. They undertook it with TWA 800 because the Brits had done it with Pan Am 102, and they didn't want to be outperformed.
With fifty dead students, reassembly was a given.
For the past two weeks trucks had been carrying the wreckage from Air TransSouth 228 across the mountains to a rented hangar at the Asheville airport. Parts were being laid out on grids corresponding to their positions on the Fokker-100. Parts that could not be associated with specific sections of the plane were being sorted according to structure type. Unidentifiable parts were being sorted according to position of recovery at the crash site.
Eventually, every scrap would be cataloged and subjected to a range of tests, then reassembled around a wood-and-wire frame. Over time an aircraft would take shape, like a slow-motion reverse, with a million fragments drawing together to form a recognizable object.
I'd visited reassembly sites on other crashes, and could picture the tedious scene. In this case the process would move more quickly since Air TransSouth 228 had not been driven into the ground. The plane had come apart in midair and plummeted to earth in large pieces.
But I would not see it. I was exiled. My face must have registered my despondency.
“I can put off the meeting.” Ryan laid a hand on my shoulder.
“I'm O.K.”
“What are you going to do this afternon?”
“I'm going to sit here and finish my lunch with Boyd. Then I'm going to drive into town and buy dog food, razors, and shampoo.”
“Will you be all right?”
“I may have trouble finding the ones with double blades. But I'll persevere.”
“You can be a pain in the ass, Brennan.”
“See. I'm fine.”
I managed a weak smile.
“Go to your meeting.”
When he'd gone, I gave Boyd the last of the fries.
