Then, as we traveled deeper into the inner sanctum, the atmosphere changed along with the decor, as if we were following a photographer's gray scale from light to dark. Suddenly the big windows were gone, the carpet changed to tile flooring, and the institutional fluorescent lights hummed and flickered. Now we were in the lab, where forensics experts were just clocking in, busily covering their T-shirts and blue jeans with white lab coats. These people were getting ready to receive the vials of blood, tissue samples, and bits of trace evidence that would be taken from the bodies waiting for us downstairs, in the autopsy suite.
As we rushed downstairs, the uniform changed once again-the autopsy workers all wore light-blue surgical scrubs. Suddenly Dr. Peerwani stopped in mid-stride and we skidded to a halt, stacking up behind him. He turned and glanced at the three of us, then set off in another direction.
“Go change into scrubs before we go any farther,” he said, nodding in the direction of two well-marked bathrooms. Theresa and I found ourselves in a large room that looked like a health club locker room-large lockers lining one wall, shower stalls and toilet cubicles in the back. Tall shelves stacked with light-blue surgical scrubs in several sizes stood right inside the door. We quickly took off our jeans and T-shirts and slipped on the scrubs over our underwear. Back in the hall, we now resembled the other workers we encountered as we continued our tour, except that these other people wore turtlenecks, thermal underwear, and heavy socks under their gear. And for good reason: As we got closer and closer to the autopsy suite, the air got colder-and the smell got stronger.
I will never forget that smell. Nothing I had ever experienced-in the operating room, on the Body Farm, on the few cases I had worked-even came close to this overpowering aroma. The nauseating smell of burned flesh-which I'd never really gotten used to-was now enhanced by the rancid odor of kerosene and the acrid scent of gunpowder. And pervading it all was the putrid smell of decomposing bodies.
Bill, Theresa, and I rolled our eyes and glanced at each other. As Dr. Peerwani flung open the double doors of the autopsy suite, we were sure we'd see burned and rotting corpses stacked floor to ceiling. What else could explain that overpowering smell?
Nope. Nothing. At this early hour, the morgue was empty. Four or five large stainless steel autopsy sinks lined the walls, and a cabinet full of rubber gloves, face masks, and other protective gear stood just inside the door. I noticed that the floors were scrubbed clean, the sinks were shiny, and just a few lights were on. I began to understand that the smells from a mass fatality seep into microscopic pores of the floor, ceiling, and walls. Water can flush away the visible evidence of death-but not the odors. They linger for a long, long time.
Dr. Peerwani was about to lead us into the adjoining x-ray room when he suddenly glanced at his watch and again broke off in mid-sentence. “Come on,” he said once more, and the three of us found ourselves almost sprinting to keep up with him as he headed back to the conference room, where investigators were gathering for the seven-thirty a.m. briefing.
I knew how urgent it was to identify the bodies as soon as possible-bereaved families were waiting for the news, government officials were taking enormous amounts of political heat, and FBI investigators were still trying to determine what had really happened in the compound. So I didn't quite see why precious time was being taken out of the workday for a meeting.
Now, of course, I know that such briefings are standard protocol in any mass fatality, in which numerous agencies and large numbers of personnel are all working together at top speed. Everyone needs to be kept aware of the investigation as a whole, and it's important to have a time when the inevitable problems can be discussed and, hopefully, solved. Maybe a backlog in the x-ray department can be solved by pathologists being more selective in the views they request. Perhaps new phone lines need to be installed so that investigators can contact family members more easily. Or maybe more investigators are needed at the crime scene than in the morgue, requiring a reassignment of duty stations. It's also important, in a situation where so much is going on and rumors are flying madly, to keep the whole group informed with daily progress reports. It's good to start each day with a clear statement of where you are, what's not working yet, and what you hope to accomplish.
This day I saw yet another reason for a daily briefing: It gives the players on a very large team a chance to meet. Of the thirty or so people who filled the room, most had not even known each other, let alone worked together, before April 19. After only a week, though, they seemed very well acquainted, with Bill, Theresa, and I being the only newcomers. Then, to our surprise, we heard Dr. Peerwani saying our names.
“They're three forensic anthropologists just in from Tennessee,” he explained, “and we're going to team them up with the forensic pathologists in the morgue to help separate and identify the skeletal material.” Faces around the room nodded and smiled, and we smiled back gratefully.
I now know that many M.E.'s offices go along for years handling deaths in their own communities with no need for the specialized skills that my discipline can provide. Not until there's a mass fatality might they need some outside help. But if the M.E. doesn't quite know what forensic anthropologists do, it can be hard to coordinate the two disciplines.
Luckily, the Tarrant County M.E. 's office had an anthropologist on staff already, Max Houck. Max's primary job was as a trace-evidence analyst-someone who analyzes the tiny bits of evidence found at a crime scene, such as the hairs or paint particles left on a victim's clothes. But he had anthropological training, too, which meant that the pathologists in his office were used to teaming up with folks like us. Later, when I'd worked more mass fatalities, I'd realize what a huge difference that made. Max had given his colleagues a good idea of what they might expect from us, even though he wasn't at the briefing today-he was spending every possible minute out at the crime scene, locating and sorting the human remains.
Although I never worked the scene at Waco, I later learned what was involved in Max's assignment. In a fire like the one at Waco, there is a hierarchy of damage. Some victims emerge charred but relatively intact. Maybe their bodies were located on the periphery, or perhaps their remains were shielded from the inferno by falling walls, furniture, or even other bodies. Other victims have been reduced to fragments and body parts, which may have been scattered over a relatively wide area and mixed in with pieces from other people. The piles of charred torsos, the commingled arms, legs, and skull fragments, can be impossible to sort out completely at the scene, though Max and his team of Texas Rangers and medical investigators were certainly doing their best. Eventually, though, they simply had to bag and tag the remains they found, accepting that we at the morgue were going to get some body bags filled with the remains from several different people, all fused together from the heat of the fire. Or we might get a bag that held only the remnants of a hand, or perhaps a tiny T-shirt wrapped around a charred piece of skin and a baby bottle. Maybe we'd be able to match those fragments with pieces that came in other bags. Or maybe not.
Max and his team had worked out a system for keeping track of where each bag of remains was found. They'd created a crime scene diagram that enabled them to give each body bag its own number, showing us where the parts were found. We had a huge copy of this diagram posted prominently in a hallway next to the morgue, the body bag numbers marked out in red and the entire area sectioned off with an alphabetized grid. Knowing which body parts were found where could help pathologists and other investigators try to piece together exactly what had happened before, during, and after the fire-information that might be crucial at trial. And the diagram gave those of us in the morgue some common standard with which to begin the identification process. True, body parts might be blown across the site, with one person's hands in sector A and their feet in sector D; but, by and large, most people's remains tended to stay within a single sector. At least this way, we had a fighting chance of reuniting fragmented parts with their original owner, especially if someone had found a nearby torso or skull that we could identify. Hopefully, by the end of the investigation, every number would have a name.