THIRTY-ONE
THE FOLLOWING MORNING THE FIRE AND BUILDING INSPECTORS CLEARED THE HANGAR, AND THE AIRCRAFT WAS DISASSEMBLED. The body, still sitting in the pilot’s seat, was taken to the medical examiner for the autopsy. The rest of the plane was taken to the police crime lab.
Ryan, eating a large, puffy glazed donut and carrying his coffee mug, arrived at the morgue shortly after the body was dropped off. He didn’t seem to notice the bits of icing on his cheek. Dead bodies never affected his appetite. However, the stench in the room was enough to make him gag, and the donut he was eating began to taste like a rotting, burnt corpse. He rushed to the trash can and spit out what was left in his mouth and tossed the rest of the donut and his coffee into the can.
The autopsy room smelled like a mixture of wet, burnt leaves and a rotting roadkill in the heat of August. The pilot’s seat, with the body still taped to it, had been placed on a low table, which was sitting on top of a large plastic evidence cloth. He would need to remove the body and place it on the slab to perform the autopsy. Walking around the plastic cloth, he examined the remnants of what he was certain was duct tape that had secured the upper arms and torso of the body to the seat. Whoever did this really wanted this guy to not only die but suffer in the process. Staring at the corpse, he realized his job had just gone sideways. He was going to need help getting the body out of the seat. Speaking softly to the corpse, he said, “You remind me of the guy in the wet suit. You must have really pissed off someone. How did you end up here?”
He wasn’t sure if Mark was in class or not, but he needed him. If all he could do was leave a voice mail, then that would have to be enough for now. And of course, the call went immediately to voice mail. “This is Dr. Davis,” he said. “Mark, what time can you get here? I need your help ASAP! Call me as soon as you get this message.” He hung up the phone and muttered, “Figures. That’s what I get for hiring medical students.”
Before he could put his cell phone back into his pocket, Mark returned his call. The medical school was buzzing with rumors about a body found in the fire at the airport, and Mark wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to work on this case. He was already in the school parking lot, running toward his car, when he called the coroner back. “Got your message, Doc. I am on my way.” He disconnected the call before Ryan could reply.
It was all he could do to drive within the speed limit and not run any red lights. Barely slowing down, he whipped into the medical examiner’s parking lot and parked his Mustang in the spot next to Ryan’s car. He jumped out and ran to the rear door of the morgue and, using his key card to get inside, ran in yelling for Ryan. “Doc! I’m here. Hey, I heard about this guy in class. Whoa, dude, it smells in here!” The odor stopped Mark in his tracks. He slapped his hand over his nose and looked around the room for Ryan.
Ryan came out of his office wearing a mask. Laughing at the med student, he handed him a box of masks. “You should have seen your face, kid! It was priceless! Here, put this on. It won’t stop you from smelling it, but at least it will make it a little better. If it smells like peppermint, it’s because I sprayed peppermint oil on it. It helps dull the smell. Won’t get rid of it, but hey, dull is better than nothing, right? Although you may never eat another candy cane without thinking of this guy.”
Ryan and Mark were able to get the body out of the seat after a couple of painstaking hours carefully removing the tape from around the victim and the pilot’s seat. The body didn’t come off the seat easily. It was as if it had melted into the leather. Ryan had to carefully peal the body away from the leather, leaving bits and pieces of fabric and skin from the corpse. Several samples were taken from the tape, fabric, and skin as well as the seat. What was left of the body, still in a sitting position, was placed in a CT scanner. After films were taken, it was placed on top of the autopsy slab. “Mark, look, you may want to leave for this part. I need the body to be flat to do the autopsy.”
Mark nodded his head. “OK, yes, but I am not leaving. So when will the rigor settle?”
“It won’t. I need to break the limbs, and even for me this is rough. I will understand if you want to take a break, no pun intended.”
“OK, I get it. Hmm, yeah, I’ll stay. I mean, someday this could be me doing one like this, and the guy is already dead. It is a guy?” Mark softly asked.
“Yes, it’s a guy, Mark.”
Ryan explained the process to break the limbs at the joint, while at the same time preserving the long bones. Once the two men had the body flat, additional x-rays were taken, including a panoramic film of the jaw.
“I think I know who this guy is, and I am hoping and praying I’m wrong. The quickest way to find out is a dental match. This guy has veneers on his front teeth. We can get this to the local dentists today or tomorrow at the latest. I’m ready to start the formal autopsy. Do you need a break? I know I do,” he said thoughtfully.
“Um, yeah, sure, I could use a soda.” Mark paused, looking at the body sitting eerily on the slab. “Doc, who do you think this guy is? Damn, what a way to go, huh?”
The men went to the employee break room where Ryan kept a supply of Diet Coke in the fridge. Everyone who worked there knew he didn’t care who drank the soda, as long as the last one wasn’t taken. He peered inside the soda box and was relieved to see the box was half full. He took out two and tossed one to Mark. They sat in silence drinking their sodas.
“Are you ready, kid?” Ryan quietly asked, breaking the silence. This body was getting to him. He couldn’t put his finger on it yet, but something about this guy was just wrong. It wasn’t that he died in a fire, and it wasn’t that he was strapped to the pilot’s seat. For all he knew, this was a mob hit. There was simply something else, and Ryan couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever it was, it was close.
Mark nodded his head and tossed the empty soda can into the trash. “Let’s do it, Doc!”
Ryan led the way to autopsy room, stopping first to put on a pair of blue paper overalls, blue foot covers, and a blue paper hat. Mark did the same. Once they were each dressed, with masks in place, Ryan motioned for Mark to turn on the recorder. Ryan stated the date and time for the recorder and gave a brief description of the body.
The limbs hadn’t been as difficult to break as Ryan had expected. Both he and Mark carefully removed whatever clothing they could. The body was fairly well burnt, and it wasn’t possible to remove all the clothing. Before Ryan performed the standard Y incision, he took photos of the corpse, but stopped when he noticed something unusual.
“Mark, come over here and tell me what you think of this guy’s upper legs and chest. Do you notice anything out of the ordinary?”
“Doc, this whole guy is out of the ordinary!” Mark said. Although visibly shaken, Mark was trying to sound confident. “I don’t know what I am looking for. It just looks burnt!”
Ryan pointed to the corpse. “Take a closer look at the legs and chest. I’ll have to send samples of these areas to the state crime lab, but if I am right—and I have no reason to doubt my findings—there are places on his legs and chest that look like the fire started in each area, then were extinguished and started a second time.”
Ryan leaned closer to the right upper leg, using a magnifying lens to assist him in his evaluation. “It’s barely noticeable, but one of the burns has a layered appearance. The only way this happens is if he was set on fire and then, for whatever sick reason, the fire was extinguished and restarted in the exact same place!” Ryan exclaimed while removing cloth and tissue samples from the legs and chest and placing them in a steel tray for Mark to label for evidence.
“You think he was set on fire? Couldn’t the same thing happen if the fire started and he caught fire in different areas at different times?” Mark asked as he labeled the samples.
“No, this could only happen if different parts of his body were set on fire at different times. I think he was the start of the fire. Think about it: Why was this guy duct taped to the seat? There appear to be areas that burned, but not as much as other areas. For example, this area on his right upper thigh. The clothes appear to have burned in a small circle, but the tissue under it isn’t. Yet the rest of his leg is burned. How did his pants burn, yet the skin under the pants didn’t burn, but the rest of the upper leg did? It looks like somehow this part was on fire, then the fire went out, and the rest of this started from another area. If I am right, this guy was tortured before he finally died. We need to find out who he is, or was, and soon.”
Ryan finished the autopsy and gave his initial cause of death as fire. He turned off the recorder and said to Mark, “Let’s get him into a body bag. The dental films will go out tomorrow. Until then, we wait. And I need to make a phone call.”
It was already late in the day when Ryan tried to reach Mac. If he didn’t answer his cell, he would try the sheriff’s office. Just as he expected, Mac didn’t answer, and he wasn’t at the office. After leaving messages for Mac to call him, he locked up and went home.
Mac was intentionally ignoring the calls from Ryan. He had spent the entire night of the fire with his deputies at the airport, and that was after spending the day at work. He waited until the body had been sent to the morgue and the crime lab had finished processing the hangar before going back to his office. As soon as he could leave the next day, he went home. After more than twenty-four hours at work, he needed a break. When he got home he showered and went straight to bed. As exhausted as he was, he was surprised that he had difficulty sleeping. Finally he did fall asleep, and when he did, he dreamt of the fire.