The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel (15 page)

“No. Richard was a strong and healthy man.”

Maddox nodded. “Let me go back to the question I said
I couldn’t answer. Without any radio communications or other information that would shed light, I can’t say whether he hit the mountain accidentally or intentionally. On the one hand—the ‘accident’ hand—there’s no lights on that mountain, so even though it’s big, it’s almost invisible on a moonless night, especially if there’s any haze—and there
was
some haze that night. If he didn’t have a terrain warning alert on his GPS system, or if he hadn’t studied the aviation sectional chart closely—and frankly, the peak altitude of that mountain is printed in
very
small type—he might not have realized he was headed straight for it.” He paused, gave a pained frown. “On the other hand—the ‘intentional’ hand; the ‘suicide’ hand—if he
did
intend to take his life, he flew that plane in a way that would guarantee the outcome. And would minimize the risk of killing or injuring anyone else.”

“But he did,” she said. “He did kill someone else.”

“One-in-a-million odds,” Maddox replied. “One in a billion.”

To my surprise, she gave a small, ironic smile. “Not much comfort to that unlucky one.”

“No, ma’am, I suppose not.” A long silence ensued. Finally he prompted, “Did you have another question for me, Mrs. Janus?” She looked puzzled. “You said you had two questions for me. The first was whether it was murder, an accident, or suicide. Is there something else you’d like to ask me?”

“Ah. Yes. Was my husband’s death painful?”

Maddox shook his head emphatically. “No, ma’am. As I say, that mountain’s essentially invisible. He might not have seen it till the last second; maybe not at all. And at that speed—four hundred miles an hour—he would have died instantly. A millisecond. Less than the blink of an eye.”

She shifted her attention to me. “Dr. Brockton? Do you agree?”

“Absolutely,” I assured her. “He didn’t feel a thing.” I believed—and I prayed—that it was the truth.

PRESCOTT HAD SCHEDULED THE PRESS CONFERENCE
for the building’s largest courtroom. Even so, it was jammed. A forest of camera tripods had sprung up around the perimeter and in the aisles, and nearly every seat was taken. On the cameras, as Prescott led Maddox and me to a podium in front of the judge’s bench, I saw logos for CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, E!, and a dozen other cable networks and local stations.

“Good afternoon,” Prescott began briskly. “I’m Special Agent Miles Prescott of the FBI’s San Diego field office. With me are Mr. Patrick Maddox, a crash investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board, and Dr. William Brockton, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Tennessee. Mr. Maddox and Dr. Brockton will brief you on their findings, but before I turn the podium over to them, I’ll start by confirming that we have positively identified the remains of Richard Janus. Mr. Janus was the pilot of the jet that crashed the morning of June 19. He did indeed die in the crash, and he was the only person aboard the aircraft.”

The reporters shouted questions, but Prescott motioned for silence. “Please hold your questions until the end.” He then summoned Maddox to the podium to reprise what he’d told Mrs. Janus, and once Maddox was done, he brought me up to do the same. After I’d finished, Prescott opened the floor for questions. Maddox swiftly dispensed with the idea that the plane had been shot down or sabotaged or bombed, as well as the suggestion that Janus had lost control of the aircraft, and then I answered a few basic questions: yes, I was
confident that teeth were as reliable as DNA for purposes of identification; no, I didn’t think DNA testing would be possible, though we would certainly give it a try; yes, it was true that I ran a facility called the Body Farm, where corpses were allowed to rot in the name of research.

Then Prescott himself asked a question—one that he’d told me to expect, asking me to save my final images until he gave me the go-ahead. “Dr. Brockton,” he said, “did you find anything noteworthy at the crash site besides the remains of Richard Janus?” I raised my eyebrows inquiringly, to make sure I understood his cue correctly, and he gave a slight nod.

“Noteworthy? Yes,” I said. “In fact, I’d say it was quite remarkable. Under the wreckage, crushed by the nose of the plane, we found the body of another man—a Mexican immigrant, as best we can tell. We also found the body of a mountain lion, which appeared to be pouncing on the man at the moment of the crash.” The end of my sentence was nearly drowned out by a chorus of gasps, exclamations, and questions as I flashed the image of the two carcasses flattened against the rocks. If Prescott had intended to create a stir, his strategy had succeeded in spades. Catching my eye, he pointed to the screen and spun an index finger in a go-ahead signal. I clicked forward to the close-ups, and the room buzzed again. When the buzz subsided, I described in more detail how we’d found them—man and beast—plastered to the bluff’s bare rock, and how the insect activity confirmed the freshness of their deaths.

After a barrage of questions, Prescott returned to the podium, checked his watch conspicuously, and began winding things down. I was admiring his media-management savvy—if he’d scripted the entire event, it couldn’t have gone more smoothly—when a voice from the back of the room
interrupted brashly. “What about the FBI’s arrest warrant for Richard Janus?” Everyone, including Prescott, suddenly sought the speaker. The crowd parted slightly as a young reporter—the reporter the FBI agents had frog-marched to the TV news helicopter a few days before—stepped into the center aisle. “Mike Malloy, Fox Five News,” he announced. Prescott raised both hands, pointed to the rear corners of the room—corners where two FBI agents were standing—and then aimed both fingers at Malloy. “My sources tell me the FBI was planning to arrest Richard Janus the night he died,” Malloy shouted over the din. “What role did the FBI play in Richard Janus’s flight, and his crash? Did the FBI drive him to suicide?” By now the two agents had muscled through the crowd and taken hold of Malloy’s elbows. But the damage was done: half a dozen television cameras had swiveled toward the reporter and recorded the dramatic turn of events, and Prescott—his jaw clenched, a large vein at his forehead standing out like a purple tree root—gestured to the agents to release the reporter.

Prescott gave the microphone three quick, attention-getting taps—taps so hard, they popped like gunshots. “As most of you know,” he said, “we have a policy of not commenting on open criminal investigations. But in view of the inflammatory, irresponsible nature of the question, I will respond briefly.” The crowd fell silent. “We have no indication that Richard Janus meant to commit suicide. In fact, we believe he was attempting to flee to Mexico. As you’ve heard, he had filed a flight plan to Las Vegas, Nevada. Almost immediately after takeoff, though, he changed course, turning directly toward Mexico. He was less than two miles from the border when the aircraft struck the peak of Otay Mountain. A hundred feet higher and twenty seconds more, and he’d have
made it.” Again the room buzzed; again Prescott signaled for quiet, waiting for quite a while before he got it. “The night of his death, we were indeed preparing to take him into custody, on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering, among others. Behind the façade of a humanitarian organization, Richard Janus was a drug trafficker. He faced multiple felony charges; he faced millions of dollars in fines—and life behind bars.” Over the din of shouted questions and whirring cameras, Prescott raised his voice one more time. “That concludes this briefing. No more questions.” He stepped away from the podium, beckoned curtly to Maddox and me, and led us toward the side door.

We were followed by a hail of questions about the criminal allegations—amid the din, I heard the words “cocaine” and “DEA” and “cartel” and “Guzmán”—but Prescott paid no attention. As he opened the door, I glanced back at the clamoring throng, and suddenly I caught sight of a familiar face at the edge of the crowd—a face that looked oddly out of place in the scrum of scrubbed young journalists. The face belonged to a man who was fat and aging; even from a distance, his reddish-gray hair and sallow skin looked unkempt, unclean, and greasy. And somehow, over the noise of the crowd, I heard—or imagined I heard—a moist, whispering sound: the sound of labored breath, wheezing in and out of a mountain of flesh.

It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and I froze. A moment later, I felt Prescott’s hand on my elbow, leading me out of the room. Ten minutes later, still shaky, I was in a black Suburban, with one of the younger agents driving me to the airport. This time the airport was San Diego International, not Brown Field; this time my ride wouldn’t be the FBI director’s sleek Gulfstream, but a cattle-car commercial
airliner—one where I’d been assigned a middle seat in the last row.

But it didn’t matter. I’d done my job, as Kathleen had urged me to do, and I was finished.

I was headed home.

Home to Kathleen.

           
The Cudgel

               
No mortal could cross the threshold of birth or death until Janus had wielded both the objects he held in his hands: both the key and the cudgel. Passages and transformations are never easy or cheap, and the price is often reckoned in pounds of flesh and buckets of tears.

—
Sofia Paxton,
Ancient Teachings, Modern Wisdom

               
And the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” Then Satan answered the LORD, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Hast thou not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side?
Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to thy face.”

—Job 1:8–11

               
You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine.

—
Wallace Stegner,
Crossing to Safety

THE BLACK FBI SUV—THE ONE THAT HAD WHISKED
me from the press conference to the airport—screeched to the curb of San Diego International at 1:09. I was cutting it close; my flight was at 1:44, but I could see the Delta ticket counter just inside the glass doors, and the line was short. “Want me to wait?” asked the driver, another of Prescott’s seemingly infinite supply of young, well-groomed agents.

“Nah, I’ll be fine. Thanks for the lift.” I hopped out, scurried inside, and got in line with my bag and the plastic bin of teeth and bone shards. Only two people were ahead of me, and three ticket agents were working the counter.
Piece of cake,
I thought, hoping that the security screeners wouldn’t freak out and waylay me over the remains. One of the agents finished checking in a passenger, but then, instead of calling “next,” he turned and walked through a door, disappearing from view. I glanced at my watch; it was now 1:12. Suddenly nervous, I divided my attention between the two remaining ticket agents on duty, willing them to hurry. One of the agents was a sour-faced older woman who wasted no
time on pleasantries; the other, a pretty twentysomething, chatted and laughed with her customer, a lanky young man whose British accent she seemed to find charming. Sour Face quickly dispensed with one of the two people ahead of me; incredibly, Pretty Girl continued chatting with the Brit as if she had the entire afternoon to devote to the conversation. “Oh, I
love
London,” she gushed. “It’s so much more
continental
than our American cities.”
Oh, please,
I thought, and then—checking my watch again—
Oh, please hurry!
Her colleague, Sour Face, sent another traveler on his way and took the next in line. There was no longer anyone ahead of me, but I was running out of time. I waved my arms to catch the girl’s attention; it took a while, but finally she looked at me, and I tapped my watch. “Sir, I’ll be with you in a moment,” she said, her voice less animated than when she was chatting with the Brit. The man looked around and seemed to have a clearer sense of my problem, or more compassion, for he took his boarding pass, thanked her, and then gestured me toward the counter.

“Sorry to rush you,” I said, handing her my itinerary, “but I’m cutting it pretty close here.”

She studied it, frowning. “Sir, that flight leaves at 1:44,” she said. “That’s less than thirty minutes from now. I’m sorry, but I can’t check you in.”

“My watch says 1:14,” I said. I was fibbing, but only by two minutes. “And I’m not checking baggage. All I have is this carry-on.”

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s 1:15. And the thirty-minute cutoff is a TSA rule. Homeland Security.”

“Come on. Sixty seconds. Besides, I was in line with time to spare. If you hadn’t been flirting with that guy ahead of me, I’d have been standing here two minutes ago.”

She flushed, but she didn’t budge; in fact, her expression hardened. “Look at me,” I pleaded. “Do I look like a terrorist? I’m a college professor.” Fumbling at my waist, I unclipped my TBI shield and laid it on the counter. “Look. I’m a consultant to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. I just came from helping the FBI. I’m one of the good guys.”

But she had stopped making eye contact. “Sir, I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules. The best I can do is book you on the next available flight.”

I sighed. “When is that?”

“Tomorrow morning at six-thirty.”

I stared, dumbfounded. “You’re kidding me, right?” The look she gave me indicated that she wasn’t. “It’s still
lunchtime
. You mean to tell me there’s no way to get to Knoxville—no way even to
start
toward Knoxville—until tomorrow?”

“That’s correct, sir. Do you want me to book you on that six-thirty
A.M
. flight?” Her fingers clattered rapidly over the keyboard. “That would get you into Knoxville at . . . 3:53
P.M
.”

Unbelievable,
I thought. The idea of hanging around, killing time, for the next sixteen hours seemed unbearable. There had to be a way to get home sooner. “What about Los Angeles?”

“What about it? What is it you’re asking, sir?”

“How far away is L.A.?”

She shrugged, looking as if she might be getting irritated. “Two, two and a half hours by car. Fifty minutes by air.”

“Surely LAX has more flights today. When’s the next plane to LAX? If I caught that, could I get home tonight?”

Her fingers clacked and clattered, with more force this time. “The next flight to Los Angeles is at 1:46.”

“I’ll take it. Get me on it.”

“Sir, it’s now 1:17. That flight leaves in twenty-nine minutes. I can’t put you on it.”

“But I was standing right here at 1:15. Thirty-one minutes before the flight.”

“But you weren’t
booked
on that flight, sir. You still aren’t. And you
can’t
be—it’s not possible. Those are the
rules,
sir.”

I wanted to scream. Instead, through clenched teeth, I said, “And when is the next flight to L.A. that I
can
be on?”

More furious keyboarding. “Four
P.M
. Arriving 4:48.”

“And when could I get the hell out of Los Angeles for Knoxville?”

By now she, too, had given up all pretense of cheery politeness. “There’s an eleven
P.M
. to Detroit, with connections to Atlanta.”

“Come on, there has to be something earlier than that.”

“Yes, sir. There’s a 1:45 flight from LAX to Atlanta. But obviously you can’t take that. Then there’s nothing eastbound until eleven o’clock tonight.”

“Christ,” I muttered. “And what time would I get to Knoxville? If nothing went wrong in Detroit?”

“At 10:31 tomorrow morning.”

I no longer wanted to scream. Now I wanted to weep. Feeling more defeated than I had in ages, I fished out my wallet and sighed, “I’ll take it.”

EXITING THE TERMINAL AT MCGHEE TYSON AIRPORT
the next morning—after spending what felt like an eternity shoehorned in the last row of seats to Detroit and then again to Knoxville, directly in front of lavatories that seemed not to have been cleaned in weeks—I was stunned when I stepped into the swelter of Tennessee’s summer. On the sauna-dry
slopes of Otay Mountain, my sweat had evaporated almost instantly; here, it was as if I had swum into a steam bath. Or a sweat bath.
How soon we forget,
I thought, hunching a shoulder to mop my brow.
But how fast we’re reminded.

Heading toward the parking deck, I suddenly stopped, muttering, “Well, crap.” My truck wasn’t in the parking deck, I’d just remembered; it was parked a half mile away, at Cherokee Aviation, the charter air terminal where the FBI’s Gulfstream had swooped down to fetch me. Looking to my left, across a long ribbon of hot asphalt, I could just make out the truck, shimmering in the distance like a mirage. Slinging the strap of my boxy bag over my sleep-deprived shoulder, I began the trudge.

Ten sweaty minutes later, my sodden shirt plastered to my skin, I unlocked and opened my truck—the rubber weather stripping made a ripping sound as it pulled away from the hot metal of the door frame—and tucked the bag behind the front seat, then cranked the engine and put the air-conditioning on high. Leaving the truck idling, I stepped inside Cherokee to mop off and use the courtesy phone to call Kathleen, as my cell phone’s battery had died somewhere between California and Tennessee. But the courtesy phone appeared to be surgically grafted to the ear of a commercial pilot, a glossy-haired, pretty-boy Casanova type in a pseudomilitary uniform. I tried hovering, hoping he’d take the hint and finish his conversation; instead, he turned his back and cupped a hand around the mouthpiece. Judging by his quiet murmuring and occasional chuckles, the pilot wasn’t filing a flight plan; he appeared to be cooing to a woman he had just bedded or, more likely, hoped to bed, as soon as his next flight was over. Too weary to wait, I returned to my truck and headed toward campus. I would check in at my office, then go surprise Kathleen at hers.

I passed the medical center and crossed the Tennessee River, flowing green and welcoming beneath the high span of the Buck Karnes Bridge. Looking to my right—upstream, between the hospital and a condominium complex—I saw the three-acre patch of woods housing the Body Farm. Across the river, a bit farther upstream, loomed the towering oval of Neyland Stadium, which housed the dingy offices and classrooms and labs of the Anthropology Department.

The river separating these two odd offices of mine was, for reasons I didn’t entirely fathom, a powerful touchstone for me. As I crossed the channel on the high span of concrete, I filled my lungs and exhaled loudly—the sound somewhere between a sigh and a hum—feeling myself only now to have truly landed.
Home,
I thought. Smiling, I turned onto Neyland Drive and headed upriver, as reflexively and instinctively as some four-wheeled salmon. Making my way to the stadium, I threaded along the one-lane service road at the base of the grandstands and stopped beside the service tunnel that led to the field’s north end zone.

Reaching behind the seat, I unzipped my bag and removed the bin of teeth and bones, then entered the dim, echoing concrete stairwell and headed up one flight of steps: up to my private office, my sanctuary, my hideaway; the place where I holed up when I needed to focus on science and forensics, not bureaucracy. I set the bin on the hallway floor and turned the key in the lock of my door, tugging gently as I twisted, to loosen the deadbolt from the grip of the warped door frame. When the bolt rasped and thunked free, I turned the knob and hipped the door open, then bent down, picked up the bin, and set it on my desk. Then I dialed Peggy, my secretary, who kept watch over the Anthropology Department’s main office, a hundred yards away—all the way at the opposite end of the
stadium, beneath the south end zone’s grandstands. Peggy answered halfway through the first ring. “Anthropology,” she said, her voice sounding strange and strained.

“Hi, honey, I’m home,” I joked, hoping to ease the tension I heard in her voice.

“Good
God
, where have you been?” Over the past dozen years, I’d heard Peggy sound testy many times. But this was beyond testy—miles beyond it; light-years beyond it.

“San Diego, remember?” I was starting to feel some anxiety myself. “You don’t sound too happy to hear from me.”

“Three hours ago I would have been happy to hear from you,” she snapped. “Yesterday you told me you’d be in first thing this morning. I’ve been trying to call you for hours.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “There was a problem with my flight. And my phone died. I just got in. What’s wrong? Should I come up?”

“You mean to tell me you’re on
campus
?” It sounded more like an accusation than a question.

“Well, I am now,” I hedged. “My flight landed twenty minutes ago. I drove straight here. Came in the back door. Just now. Literally this minute. I’m down in my other office.”

“Would you please come to
this
office instead? Quickly?” The sarcasm would have dripped from her voice if the iciness of her tone hadn’t flash-frozen it first.

“You’ve got me feeling kinda gun-shy,” I said. “Want to tell me what this is about?”

“There is a television news crew here from Channel Four in Nashville. They have been camped in my office for the past
three hours
. Please come immediately. If not sooner.”