The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel (14 page)

AS I STEPPED THROUGH THE GREEN-GLASS DOOR AND
into the green-glass lobby of San Diego’s federal courthouse, I had the odd sensation of plunging into an aquarium, surrounded on all sides by glossy walls, through which I could see brightly lit people outside in the open air, some of them peering through the glass at the submerged specimens. After days in the windswept wilderness atop Otay Mountain, being downtown and indoors was doubly disorienting. The tie I’d cinched around my neck felt more like a noose than a fashion accessory.

The FBI had scheduled a noon press conference at the courthouse to report the positive identification of Richard Janus’s body. The plan was straightforward: As the case agent, Prescott would make a brief statement, then hand the microphone to Maddox, the NTSB investigator, to summarize his preliminary crash findings; after that, I would explain the specifics of the identification. It was a no-nonsense, tightly scripted affair, one that would answer a few basic questions but leave others hanging, cloaked in the mystery of an ongoing investigation.

The media briefing would be Act Two, though. Before that, we had to get through Act One, a private briefing for Richard Janus’s widow. Prescott led Maddox and me into a conference room outfitted with thick carpet, warm paneling, and heavy drapes. Inside, at a large oak table, sat Carmelita Janus, flanked by a dark-suited man who looked to be a lawyer, and a woman who Prescott had told me was an FBI victim specialist.

Even in grief, Mrs. Janus was striking. I’d noticed it from a distance the day she’d stepped out of the helicopter, hair swirling in the rotor wash; I noticed it even more now, sitting four feet across a table from her. A black-haired, brown-eyed, olive-skinned beauty, she came from an aristocratic family in Mexico. I’d seen dozens of pictures of her in Airlift Relief’s newsletters—clad in cargo pants and a sweaty T-shirt, helping unload medical supplies and food for earthquake survivors in Peru; draped in a designer gown, mingling with celebrities at a Hollywood fund-raiser; wearing stained mechanic’s coveralls and wielding a wrench, helping Richard change the oil in a DC-3—and none of the pictures was unflattering. For this meeting, she wore a simple black dress, with a single strand of pearls around her neck. Her eyes were red-rimmed and weary-looking, but glittering with anger as well.

I had expected Prescott to make introductions, but the lawyer-looking guy spoke first. “I’m Martin Janus, Richard’s brother and attorney and executor. I’m here today in that capacity, but also, primarily, as counsel for Mrs. Janus. Just so we’re clear, we won’t be answering any questions today, so don’t waste your time asking. This whole series of events has been unimaginably traumatic. The FBI’s heavy-handed tactics and intimidation drove a good man—a dedicated humanitarian—to his death.” I glanced at Prescott; I suspected this
had something to do with the FBI’s operation and with the interagency pissing contest, and I felt sure that Prescott knew exactly what the man meant. But if so, he hid his knowledge well, for his face was a chiseled mask, devoid of expression. “We appreciate the chance to hear what you’ll be releasing to the press. More advance notice would have been considerate, of course. But better to hear it face-to-face than on television. So. Tell us what to expect.” Having finished his curt speech, he sat back in his chair, laying a hand over one of Mrs. Janus’s and giving a quick, reassuring squeeze.

Prescott ignored the attorney, focusing entirely on the widow. “Mrs. Janus,” he began, his tone matter-of-fact, “these gentlemen are experts who are assisting us with the crash investigation.” He gestured first toward me. “This is Dr. Bill Brockton, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Tennessee. He’s an expert on skeletal trauma and human identification.” I half nodded, half bowed, conveying what I hoped was both professionalism and sympathy. Her eyes searched mine, as if trying to read my findings there, but Prescott kept going. “And this is Mr. Patrick Maddox, a crash investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board. Mr. Maddox has been analyzing the accident site, the aircraft debris, radio communications, and the plane’s flight path from the time it took off until the time it crashed.”

Maddox also nodded; Mrs. Janus’s eyes seemed to be searching his face—as if she were trying to place him from some prior meeting that she couldn’t quite recall—but then Prescott barreled ahead and her attention returned to him. “As you know, Mrs. Janus, we’ve not yet completed our investigation—of the crash
or
of your husband’s activities. But we have positively identified his remains in the aircraft wreckage, and we wanted to share that as soon as possible with you.”

One of her eyebrows arched upward cynically. “With me? Or with the media?”

Prescott ignored the jab. “As you know, from the media coverage and from your own visit to the crash site, the aircraft was almost completely destroyed by the impact and the fire. That made identifying your husband’s remains challenging. That’s why we brought in Dr. Brockton—he’s one of the country’s leading identification experts.”

She looked at me with what appeared to be a mixture of pain and doubt. “So Richard’s body was badly burned? ‘Burned beyond recognition,’ is that how you people say it?”

This wasn’t going to be easy, I realized. “Actually, Mrs. Janus, there was no body—not an intact one. There’s no delicate way to put this, I’m afraid, and I’m sorry about that. Your husband’s body was severely fragmented by the force of the impact. Fragmented and incinerated. Again, my apologies for being so blunt.”

Her gaze didn’t waver. “You’re saying that all you found were burned bits and pieces of him?” I winced, then nodded reluctantly. “Then how can you be sure it’s Richard? Have you done DNA testing?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “DNA tends to be destroyed by fire, although it’s possible we could find some in the teeth.” I touched the side of my jaw. “The molars can sometimes protect the DNA, if the fire’s not too hot. But the best way to make an identification in a case like this—the fastest and most reliable way—is to match the teeth to dental records.” I slid a manila folder across the table to her. “We’ve recovered almost all the teeth, and several of them had very distinctive features, which we were able to match to x-rays and photographs.” She opened the chart and looked at the top image—a close-up of the chipped incisors we’d found—and
then flipped to the second photo. When she saw it, she flinched, and I mentally kicked myself for not having warned her about the photo. It was an eight-by-ten enlargement of her husband’s smiling face, his lips parted in a broad, boyish grin, red arrows pointing to the chips in the central incisors.
Like seeing a ghost,
I thought, flushing at my insensitivity.
An annotated ghost.
Regaining her composure, she leafed more guardedly through the remaining images: more close-ups of teeth—the corkscrew-root canine and the Carabelli-cusp molar—followed by dental charts and x-rays. She paused when she came to a photo that showed a tangle of burned wires and circuitry. “That’s a spinal cord stimulator,” I told her, “or what’s left of it. According to your husband’s medical records, he had it implanted three years ago. To help alleviate back pain.”

“I am aware of why he had it implanted.”

Her rebuke was subtle, but it was there. And it was probably justified. She looked up at me, so I went on. “The next page is a copy of the spinal x-ray he had taken after the surgery. You can see the electrical leads going into the spine; the impulse generator was implanted just under the skin on his left hip.”

“I know where it was implanted,” she said—another rebuke—still studying the x-ray. “And you found this in his body?”

“Well,” I said, somewhat off balance, “as I mentioned, the body was . . . not intact. But yes, when we removed the frame of the pilot’s seat, we found the device with the bones of the pelvis and the spine. The teeth are really the basis for the positive identification of your husband’s remains; the spinal cord stimulator is just added corroboration.” I expected her to ask more questions, but she gave a brief nod, closed the folder,
and slid it aside to her brother-in-law. Prescott nudged me and nodded, so I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a small envelope. I had expected him to do this part, but he’d demurred, delegating it to me. “We also found this,” I said, handing her the envelope. “I think I’ve seen it in pictures of Richard. In the newsletter.”

“The newsletter?”

“Yes, ma’am. My wife and I are . . . We’re on the Airlift Relief mailing list.”

“I see,” she said, her tone neutral and her expression unreadable. As she turned the envelope to raise the flap, the chain inside shifted and slid, rasping softly. As she opened the envelope and tipped the pendant into her palm, she gasped and seemed on the verge of a sob, but she squelched it—fought it back might be more accurate—as if she felt it important not to reveal any weakness or emotion to us.

After a few moments of awkward silence, Prescott cleared his throat to get her attention. “Mrs. Janus, there’s something else we wanted to let you know before the media briefing,” he said. “In addition to your husband, we found the remains of another person at the crash site.”

Her eyes widened, and she clutched at her brother-in-law’s hand, the tendons in her hand pulled taut as bowstrings, a spiderwork of ropy blue veins crisscrossing above them. “Who?”

“We don’t know his name yet,” Prescott told her. “But we believe he was an illegal immigrant from Mexico. Apparently—”

She cut in. “But who
was
he? What was he doing on the plane?”

“He wasn’t on it,” he said, and she looked baffled—as baffled as I had felt the day before, when we’d found the bodies of the man and the mountain lion. “Apparently he
was on the ground when the plane hit,” Prescott explained. “Wrong place, wrong time. We think he’d crossed the border recently—possibly even the night of the crash. If Dr. Brockton is correct, the man took a fall in the dark and was lying there, injured, when the plane hit.”

“My God,” she breathed. “That poor man.” Oddly, she seemed more upset by this stranger’s death than by her husband’s. I remembered Prescott’s questions about Richard’s life insurance policy, and for the first time I found myself wondering if she might have had something to do with her husband’s death.
Was she unhappy in the marriage? Could she—a Mexican, after all—be the real link to the drug lord Guzmán?
I felt her eyes on me, and I realized that I was staring at her intently. I flushed, hoping she wasn’t able to read my suspicious thoughts. After a moment, she turned back to Prescott. “Are you sure that this other man’s death was just a coincidence?”

“Not a hundred percent,” Prescott conceded. “But it’s the best explanation for what we found. I’ll let Dr. Brockton explain it in more detail.”

She looked at me again, her face neutral and masklike now. Opening a second manila folder, I pulled out four photos and slid them across the table to her. “The picture on top shows the wreckage of the aircraft’s nose. The nose hit first, obviously, so it was the last layer we got to as we excavated down through the debris.” Her eyes flicked rapidly across the image, scanning and then lingering, scanning and then lingering, and I wondered if she was searching the image for traces of her husband’s remains. When she looked up, I continued. “The next picture shows what we found underneath the nose—crushed between the nose and the rock face of the mountainside.” She flipped to the second photo. As she studied the image, her eyes narrowed, and I could tell that in spite of
herself, she, too, was fascinated by the grim tableau. “As you can see, the man wasn’t alone on the mountainside when the plane hit. There was a mountain lion just above him—in the act of pouncing on him, as best we can tell—at the moment of impact. It’s like a freeze-frame image of the moment they died.” She shook her head slightly—not in doubt, I sensed, but in wonder. “The last two pictures are close-ups. As you can see from those, the man and the mountain lion were crushed directly against the mountainside—frankly, if you’ll forgive my bluntness once more, we had to scrape them off the rocks. That tells us they were definitely
outside
the plane, not
inside
.”

I was about to launch into more detail when I felt Prescott’s foot nudging me under the table, and he smoothly took the reins from me. “Obviously this was not the focus of our work up there, Mrs. Janus—far from it, but it’s the sort of thing the media is likely to play up, so we wanted to make sure you knew about it.”

Instead of acknowledging this, she turned to the NTSB investigator. “Mr. Maddox, I have two questions for you. First, was my husband’s crash an accident, suicide, or murder?”

Maddox blinked. “Well . . . I’m not sure we can answer that question. I can’t, at any rate.” He shot a quick look at Prescott, but Prescott ignored him, so he went on. “What I
can
do is tell you that I’ve seen no evidence of mechanical or structural failure, sabotage, explosives, or anything remotely suggesting an attack on the aircraft. I’ve also seen no signs that your husband ever lost control.” He seemed to shift gears—to take a step back into “briefing” mode—and continued, sounding more at ease. “He took off normally, made a climbing turn, changed course, and then leveled off. All those maneuvers were smoothly executed.” Maddox, too,
had brought a folder of visuals to the meeting, but unlike me, he doled out the images one by one instead of giving her the whole set at once. “These are diagrams showing the aircraft’s radar track and altitude, from just after takeoff until the moment of impact.” He slid the first image across the table to her. “This one shows the radar track, superimposed on a map of Brown Field and the surrounding area. The red arrows indicate significant events in the flight, as well as the time they occurred. As you can see, the radar picks up the aircraft almost immediately after takeoff. It flies northeast for three miles—about sixty seconds. Then, over Otay Lake, it turns south, toward Mexico, shortly before leveling off. It continues south for another thirty seconds, the remainder of the flight.” She looked up, her face grim but expectant, and he slid the next page across the table. “This second diagram plots the aircraft’s altitude against the profile of the terrain. As you can see, a mile from the summit, the plane levels off at thirty-three hundred feet”—he reached across the table and, with the tip of a pen, indicated a spot on the line—“but the terrain continues rising steeply. So on that particular course, at that altitude, the collision was inevitable.” He waved the pen over the pair of diagrams, as if it were a wand, conjuring up the plane’s final moments. “Taken together, these indicate that the aircraft was in controlled flight the entire time. Again, nothing wrong with the plane, as far as we can tell at this point. Nothing obviously wrong with the pilot, either, judging from the flight path—no indications that he suffered a heart attack or seizure or stroke.” He paused briefly, then asked, “Are you aware of any medical problems that might have incapacitated him?”