Crowe's hand flew to her mouth.
A face, purple and bloated, eyes milky and half closed. Cracked lips, a bulging tongue pressed to the plastic like a giant leech.
Noticing an oval object at the base of the throat, I brought my light close. A pendant. I pulled out my knife and slit the plastic. The hiss of escaping gas was followed by an overpowering stench of putrefaction. My stomach recoiled, but I didn't pull back.
Holding my breath, I teased back the plastic with the tip of the knife.
A male silhouette was clearly visible on a small silver medal, arms crossed piously at the throat. Engraved letters formed a halo around the head. I held the light obliquely to bring out the name.
Saint Blaise.
We had found the missing fisherman with the ailing throat. George Adair.
This time I suggested a different route. Crowe agreed. Leaving Bobby and George to secure the site, the sheriff and I drove to Bryson City and pulled Byron McMahon from a football game he was watching on the parlor TV at High Ridge House. Together we prepared an affidavit, which the special agent took directly to a federal magistrate judge in Asheville.
In less than two hours McMahon called Crowe. Based on the probability of a hate crime, and on the possible involvement of federal lands, due to the proximity of a reservation and national parks, a search warrant had been issued.
It fell to me to phone Larke Tyrell.
I found the ME at home, and, from background noise, guessed he was involved with the same football game.
Though Larke's words were cordial, I could tell my call unnerved him. I did not take time to assuage his anxiety, or to apologize for the lateness of the hour.
The ME listened while I explained the situation. Finally, I stopped. Silence stretched so long I thought we'd been disconnected.
“Larke?”
When he spoke again, his tone had changed.
“I want you to handle this. What do you need?”
I told him.
“Can you pick it up at the incident morgue?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want personnel?”
“Who's still there?”
“Maggie and Stan.”
Maggie Burroughs and Stan Fryeburg were death investigators with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill, deployed to Bryson City for the processing of Air TransSouth 228. Both were graduates of my body recovery workshop at the university, and both were excellent.
“Tell them to be ready at seven.”
“Roger.”
“This has nothing to do with the plane crash, Larke.”
“I know that. But these are dead bodies in my state.”
There was another long pause. I heard an overwrought announcer, a cheering crowd.
“Tempe, I—”
I did not help him out.
“This has gone too goddamned far.”
I listened to a dial tone.
What the hell did that mean?
I had other things to worry about.
The next day I was up at dawn, at the Arthur house by seven-thirty. The scene had been transformed overnight. A sheriff 's deputy now stood guard at the kudzu gate, others at the front and back doors. A generator had been activated, and every light in the house was on.
When I arrived, George was helping McMahon load books and papers into cardboard boxes. Bobby was covering the mantel with white powder. As I passed on my way to the kitchen, McMahon winked and wished me good luck.
I spent the next four days like a miner, descending to the basement at dawn, surfacing at noon for a sandwich and coffee, then descending again until after dark. Another generator and lights were brought in to illuminate my underground world, so day and night became indistinguishable.
Tommy Albright arrived on the morning of day one. After examining and photographing the bundle I was certain contained George Adair, he released the body for transport to the Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva.
While Maggie worked the decomp stain inside the courtyard wall, Stan helped me photograph the cellar floor. Then we exhumed the alcove burial, slowly exposing the corpse, recording body position and grave outline, and screening every particle of dirt.
The victim lay facedown on a gray wool blanket, one arm twisted beneath the chest, the other curled around the head. Decomposition was advanced, the organs soup, the head and hands largely skeletonized.
When the remains were fully uncovered and documented, we began removal. Transferring the cadaver to a body bag, I noted that the left pants leg was badly torn, the leg missing below the knee.
I also noticed concentric fractures in the right temporo-parietal region of the skull. Linear cracks radiated up the sides of the central depression, turning the whole into a spiderweb of fragmented bone.
“Somebody really blasted this guy.” Stan had stopped screening to look at the skull.
“Yes.”
My outrage was building as it always did. The victim had been dealt a skull-shattering blow, then dumped in a hole like last year's mulch. What kind of monster did such things?
Another thought pierced through my anger.
This corpse was buried only inches below the ground surface. Though putrefied, considerable soft tissue remained, indicating a relatively recent death. Did earlier victims lie beneath? In other alcoves? I kept my eyes and mind open.
Maggie joined us in the basement on day two, having excavated a ten-foot square to a depth of twelve inches around and below the courtyard stain. Though the job was tedious, her efforts paid off. Two isolated teeth turned up in the screen.
While Stan finished sifting dirt from the alcove burial, Maggie and I probed every inch of the cellar floor, testing for the presence of buried objects and for differences in soil density. We found eight suspicious locations, two in the original alcove, two in the main chamber, and four in a dead-end tunnel off the chamber's west side.
By late afternoon we'd dug a test trench at each location. The suspect spots in the main room yielded only sterile soil. The other six sites produced human bone.
I explained to Stan and Maggie how we would proceed. I would request help from the sheriff 's department with photography and screening. Stan would continue in the alcove. Maggie and I would begin with the tunnel sites.
I directed my crew with professional detachment, the calm of my voice and the composure of my face wildly out of sync with my pounding heart. It was my worst nightmare. But what was that nightmare? How many more bodies would we unearth, and why were they there?
Maggie and I were excavating the first two tunnel disturbances when a figure appeared at the entrance, caught between our spots and a light in the main chamber. I couldn't make out the silhouette, and wondered if a member of the transport team was coming to ask a question.
One step and I knew.
Larke Tyrell walked toward me, gait precise, back ramrod straight. I rose but did not greet him.
“I've been trying your portable.”
“The press have me on autodial.”
He did not pursue it.
“What's the count?”
“At this point, two decomposed bodies and two skeletons. There's bone in at least four other locations.”
His eyes moved from my face to the pits where Maggie and I were uncovering skeletons, each with tightly flexed limbs.
“They look like prehistoric bundle burials.”
“Yes, but they're not.”
His gaze swung back to me.
“You would know that.”
“Yes.”
“Tommy sent the two decomps to Harris Regional, but they're not going to want their autopsy room tied up. I'll order everything transferred to the incident morgue and keep the place operational for as long as you need.”
I did not reply.
“You will do this?”
“Of course.”
“Everything is under control?”
“Here it is.”
“I'm looking forward to your report.”
“I have excellent penmanship.”
“I thought you'd like to know that the last of the Air TransSouth passengers has been identified.”