After the first few bones, and the first few minilectures, we got into a quiet, efficient rhythm. Without even looking or turning or speaking, I’d hand pieces out to Miranda, who would verbally ID them. As Sarah got busy inking the bones on the skeleton diagram, Art took over bagging and labeling. Soon the ground was covered with brown paper bags, like some gruesome, cannibalistic picnic lunch.
I had gradually worked my way down to the pedals near the pilot’s floor bubble, or what had once been the floor bubble. “Hey, Art,” I called as I began extricating a handful of calcined foot bones, “I know the pedals on an airplane work the rudder, but what do they do on a helicopter, which doesn’t have a rudder? They don’t control the throttle, do they?”
“Naw,” he said, reaching around me to point at a twisted metal tube mounted in the center of the cabin floor, “throttle’s built into the stick here, which is called the ‘collective’ in a chopper. The pedals control the tail rotor, which works like a rudder, in a frighteningly complex way. To yaw—pivot—to the left, the pilot mashes the left pedal, which actually causes the tail rotor to shove the tail boom to the right. I tried to fly one of these contraptions once.”
“And?”
“And like the Lyle Lovett song says, ‘Once is enough.’ Most complicated hand–eye, brain–machine coordination I ever tried to do. I’d get one thing almost right, and in the process, I’d get two or three other things wrong enough to turn us upside-down or sideways. Flight instructor actually kissed the ground when we got back down alive.”
Something caught Art’s eye, and he took another look into the cockpit, pointing at a rectangular object. “Bill, mind if I reach in and grab that box?” I shook my head and stepped aside. Art leaned into the cockpit and extracted a charred rectangle, not much bigger than a cigarette pack, and laid it on the ground beside him. Then he leaned back in, peered around, and emerged with a larger metal case as well. He took both objects to Sarah and gestured with the smaller one at an evidence bag. She held it open as he tucked them inside.
“How do you want me to label this?” she asked.
“Label it ‘RF unit’ and put a question mark after that,” he said. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then walked to the back of my truck and ran his hands along the underside of the rear bumper. “Eureka,” he said, and yanked something loose. It, too, was a small metal case, with a wire dangling from one end.
I stared at it. I didn’t recognize it, and I’d looked under my bumper many times, retrieving the spare key I kept there in a magnetic case. “What’s that?”
“A beacon.”
“What kind of beacon?”
“An RF beacon. Somebody put a radio frequency transmitter on your truck.” I was still playing catch-up. “Like those radio collars biologists put on the wolves in Yellowstone.” Art pointed to the helicopter wreckage. “See those metal prongs sticking up from the roof of the cockpit? That’s a directional antenna array, which picks up the signal from this transmitter here. The boxes I found in the cockpit are the receiver and control unit. They pick up the signal from the beacon and compute your direction and distance. Orbin was tracking you, Bill.”
“Why would Orbin want to track me?”
“Well, maybe the sheriff and his boys figured you might lead ’em to O’Conner. Or maybe this was Orbin flying solo, so to speak, and he wanted to settle up with you for that day we got the drop on him and his brother. From what you told me about his visit to Cousin Vern’s pot patch, he wasn’t the type to forgive and forget.”
“The thought of Orbin tracking me like an animal gives me the shivers,” I said.
“Yeah, me, too,” he said. “But I’d say you got the better end of the deal. And now we know why Orbin showed up here right after you did.”
Steve Morgan didn’t say a word. But the TBI agent didn’t miss a syllable of the exchange between Art and me.
CHAPTER 37
I PARKED IN MY USUAL spot under the streetlight behind the Regional Forensic Center and let myself in the back door with the keypad combination lock. It was nearly midnight now, and my back and neck ached from leaning into the helicopter’s cockpit for three hours straight. The morgue looked deserted, though in fact it was never unattended. If I’d rung the loading bay doorbell, a video camera would have swiveled in my direction after a few moments, and a groggy morgue assistant would have buzzed me in. But since the assistant was probably a pathology intern—and therefore desperately short on sleep—I’d let myself in, and I moved through the hallways as quietly as possible, lest I disturb a much-needed nap.
Once in the basement of the hospital itself, I caught an elevator up to the seventh floor, which housed the cardiac care unit. The night duty nurse at the station smiled broadly when she saw me. “Hi, Dr. Brockton; good to see you,”