Bare Bones by Kathy Reichs Page B

hundred feet of the ceiling on overcast or cloudy days. VFR pilots navigate using landmarks on the ground.”

    “Good job, Sky King,” Gul et snorted.

    I ignored him.

    “Don’t pilots have to file flight plans?”

    “Yes, if an aircraft takes off from a GA airport under ATC. That’s new since nine-eleven.” Investigator Jansen had more acronyms than alphabet soup.

    “GA airport?” I asked. I knew ATC was air traffic control.

    “Category-A general aviation airport. And the plane must fly within specific restrictions, especial y if the GA airport is close to a major city.”

    “Are passenger manifests required?”

    “No.”

    We al stared at the wreckage. Larabee spoke first.

    “So this baby may have been out on its own?”

    “The coke and ganja boys aren’t big on regulationsorflight plans, GA airport or not. They tend to take off from remote locations and fly below radar control.
    My guess is we’re looking at a drug run gone bad, and there won’t be any flight plan.”

    “Gonna cal in the Feebs and the DEA?” Gul et asked.

    “Depends on what I discover out there.” Jansen waggled the digital. “Let me get a few close-ups. Then you can start bringing out the dead.” For the next three hours that’s just what we did.

    While Larabee and I struggled with the victims, Jansen scrambled around shooting digital images, running her camcorder, sketching diagrams, and recording her thoughts on a pocket Dictaphone.

    Hawkins stood by the cockpit, handing up equipment and taking pictures.

    Gul et drifted in and out, offering bottled water and asking questions.

    Others came and went throughout the rest of that sweaty, buggy afternoon and evening. I hardly noticed, so absorbed was I with the task at hand.

    The pilot was burned beyond recognition, skin blackened, hair gone, eyelids shriveled into half-moons. An amorphous glob joined his abdomen to the yoke, effectively soldering the body in place.

    “What is that?” asked Gul et on one of his periodic visits.

    “Probably the guy’s liver,” Larabee replied, working to free the charred tissue.

    It was the last question from Officer Gul et.

    A peculiar black residue speckled the cockpit. Though I’d worked smal plane crashes, I’d never seen anything like it.

    “Any idea what this flaky stuff is?” I asked Larabee.

    “Nope,” he said, attention focused on extricating the pilot.

    Once disengaged, the corpse was zipped into a body bag and placed on a col apsible gurney. A uniformed officer helped Hawkins carry it to the MCME
    transport vehicle.

    Before turning to the passenger, Larabee cal ed a break to enter observations on his own Dictaphone.

    Jumping to the ground, I pul ed off my mask, tugged up the sleeve on my jumpsuit, and glanced at my watch. For the zil ionth time.

    Five past seven.

    I checked my cel phone.

    Stil no service. God bless the country.

    “One down,” said Larabee, slipping the recorder into a pocket inside his jumpsuit.

    “You won’t need my help with the pilot.”

    “Nope,” Larabee agreed.

    Not so for the pax.

    When a rapidly moving object, like a car or plane, stops suddenly, those inside who are not securely fastened become what biomechanics cal “near-flung objects.” Each object within the larger object continues at the same speed at which it was traveling until coming to its own sudden stop.

    In a Cessna, that ain’t good.

    Unlike the pilot, the passenger hadn’t been belted. I could see hair and bone shards on the windshield frame where his head had come to its sudden stop.

    The skul had suffered massive comminutive fracturing on impact. The fire had done the rest.

    I felt plate tectonics in my stomach as I looked from the charred and headless torso to the grisly mess lying around it.

    Cicadas droned in the distance, their mechanical whining like an anguished wail on the breathless air.

    After a moment of serious self-pity, I replaced my mask, eased into the cockpit, climbed to the