After a long, tense silence, Boatman finally spoke. “We can’t just stand here forever,” he pointed out. Then, without moving his feet, he leaned forward to study the object in Kimball’s hand. “So,” he said, “if it’s a detonator, why isn’t the pelvis blown to smithereens? And why isn’t the detonator blown to bits?” Slowly he shook his head. “I think it’s just a cell phone—or maybe an iPod—with what’s left of some earbuds.”
“No way,” Kimball insisted. “These wires aren’t long enough. Besides, they’re hardwired—soldered directly to the circuit board—not plugged into a jack. See?”
“Computer mouse, then,” replied Boatman. “The wires are the tail.”
Kimball shook his head doggedly. “Too short for that, too. And there’s no USB connector on the other end. Just these weird flat tabs of copper.”
“So the USB connector got sheared off,” said Boatman. “Or melted.” The pair of them made me think of an old, bickering married couple. He turned to look at me. “Doc? If you stare at that thing any harder, it might burst into flames. What are you thinking?”
I could feel gears turning in my mind—gears, or maybe combination-lock tumblers, their notches gradually aligning, one by one. “I think,” I said, as the last tumbler clicked home, unlocking an idea, “that it’s okay to move. I also think we’ll know in thirty minutes whether or not this is Richard Janus.”
KIMBALL AND I WENT TOPSIDE TO THE COMMAND center, taking the electronic gizmo and the camera with us. While Kimball transferred photographs from the camera to the computer, I showed the gizmo to McCready and Maddox and asked McCready to enlist some of Prescott’s field-office agents for a bit of quick research. A moment later he was on the phone, calling in the cavalry.
Meanwhile, I called my friend Helen Taylor in Knoxville, hoping I’d catch her still at work. The phone rang six times, and I feared she’d left early, but finally she answered. “East Tennessee Cremation Services.”
“Oh, good,” I said, relieved. “Helen, it’s Bill Brockton. I was afraid you’d left for the day.”
“No, just processing a cremation. How are you, Dr. Brockton?”
“I’m fine, but I need a favor. Can I send you some pictures of something that’s burned to a crisp and get you to tell me what it is?” If anybody could confirm my hunch about the incinerated object, I suspected Helen was the one.
“I will if I can,” she said. “Do you have our mailing address?”
“I’m in a hurry, Helen. Can I fax you the pictures?”
“Well, yes.” She sounded doubtful. “But they’d come through clearer if you e-mailed them—as scans, or image files, attached to a message. Can you do that?”
I turned to Kimball. “Can we send e-mail? With picture files as attachments?”
“With this computer, and the satellite data link we’ve got?” Kimball grinned. “We could just about send you as an attachment.”
“Yes, we can e-mail them,” I told Helen. “What’s the address?” I jotted it on a notepad beside the computer. “Check your in-box in about thirty seconds. The message will come from”—I looked at Kimball as I spoke—“an FBI address?” He nodded, so I confirmed it. “Yeah, from an FBI address.”
“FBI? This gets more interesting all the time. Can you tell me anything more about the pictures? Give me a little hint what I’ll be looking at?”
“I have an idea,” I said, “but I don’t want to skew your thinking. Call me once you’ve had a look, and we’ll see if we agree.”
By the time I hung up, Agent Kimball had already hit “send.”
I’D HOPED WE’D HAVE THE ANSWER IN THIRTY MINUTES, but I was wrong.
We had it in twenty.
Helen had called back in just five minutes—but it took another fifteen for Prescott’s staff to track down the information I’d requested as a result, and to e-mail a response. Kimball opened the message, then clicked on the attachment, and a ghostly gray image filled the screen. McCready studied it closely, comparing it to the burned object Kimball had plucked from the frame of the pilot’s seat. Maddox, the NTSB crash expert, peered over McCready’s shoulder with keen interest, but he let the FBI agent ask the questions. “So tell me again what it is—and what the hell it does?”
“It’s a spinal cord stimulator,” I repeated. “It’s like shock therapy for chronic back pain. The gizmo is called a pulse generator. It sends weak electrical signals out these wires, to electrical leads at the ends. The leads are surgically implanted in the epidural space of the spine, right by the spinal cord. The way I understand it, the electrical stimulation distracts the nerves—short-circuits them, sort of—so they can’t send pain messages to the brain.”
“Sounds scary. But it works?”