“She’s in France for the summer,” I yelled. “Left a couple days ago. On a dig with some fancy French archaeologist.” Whatever expression my face was showing, it made him laugh.
“Doc, do you know Dave Pendergrast, from our Sevier County office?”
“I didn’t, but I do now. Good to meet you.” I shook Pendergrast’s hand.
“This is Special Agent Craig Drucker, of the FBI,” Steve went on. He turned and nodded toward a man striding toward us from the ruined building. “And Special Agent Robert Stone of the Drug Enforcement Administration.”
I smiled. “No need to introduce me to this guy,” I said. “Rocky Stone and I go way back. Last time we worked together was that big meth-lab explosion that killed a couple guys up in Scott County. That was, what, three, four years ago, Rocky?”
“Ha. More like six or eight.” He grinned. “My oldest kid was being born while you were piecing those two bodies together.” I smiled, remembering how antsy Rocky had been to get to the hospital to see his wife and the baby, and how proud he’d been the next day when I dropped by the maternity ward to see them. “Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Rocky said. “Sorry we kept you in the dark on the ride over.”
“Hey, I’m not complaining,” I assured him. “I’ll do just about anything for a helicopter ride.”
The subdivision wasn’t just an aviation nut’s dream; it was also, the DEA agent explained, a drug runner’s dream. “For the past year,” Rocky said, “we’ve been investigating a smuggling ring based in Colombia. They’ve been flying cocaine into small airports all over the Southeast, changing the drop point every time. But this place is perfect as a more permanent base—a clandestine hub, I guess you could call it. No control tower, very little traffic, virtually no risk of detection. You land whenever you’ve got a shipment, taxi the plane into your own private hangar, lock the door, and unload in complete privacy. This operation could have run without a hitch for years.”
“So what happened?” I asked, nodding at the smoking ruins. “Turf war? A raid that got too hot to handle?”
“I wish,” Rocky said. “One of our undercover agents had infiltrated the operation. What’s left of him is there, in what’s left of the hangar. We’ve got an arson investigator coming, but we’d like you to examine the body. See if he died during the fire or died before the fire. We need to know if it was an accident or a homicide.”
“Dr. Garcia’s the medical examiner,” I pointed out. “He’s got primary jurisdiction here.” Dr. Edelberto Garcia—Eddie—served as ME for Knoxville, Knox County, and several surrounding counties.
“Actually, we called Dr. Garcia just before we called you. He says if the body’s rotten or burned, you’re the guy to look at it.”
“That’s damned decent of Eddie,” I joked, “letting me have all the good ones.” All four agents smiled.
“The scary thing is,” Rocky said, “the Doc’s not being sarcastic. He actually means it.”
The truth was, Rocky was right. I actually did.
THE DEAD AGENT WAS MAURICE WATSON, ALIAS “Perry Hutchinson,” whom the DEA had planted as the manager of the airpark. Six months before, working through the drug smugglers’ distributors in Atlanta, Hutchinson had offered them a sweet deal: a house, a hangar, and a key to the gas pump in exchange for a small cut of the profits.
“They brought in the first load two weeks ago,” said Rocky. “It was small—just a test run. Smooth as silk. They were planning another run next week. A big load. We were all set to come down on them. But somebody got spooked—or got tipped off.” He shook his head grimly. “You ready to take a look?”
“Sure. Let’s go.”
The intense heat of the fire had reduced the hangar to scorched brick walls and sagging steel roof trusses silhouetted against blue sky and gray smoke. Entering through a side door, I found myself sloshing through an inch of muck—a slimy mixture of water, ash, soot, and petrochemicals—and I was grateful that I’d put on my waterproof boots before delivering corpse 49-12 to the Body Farm.
Occupying one side of the hangar was a blackened Ford pickup; on the other side was a scorched plane, a V-tailed Beechcraft Bonanza; and tucked between them was a riding lawn mower, its gas cap removed. Lying on the floor next to the mower, faceup in the muck, was the corpse, its facial features all but obliterated, its left hand still clutching a five-gallon gasoline can. The heat of the fire had shrunk the flexor muscles of the arm, locking the man’s fingers around the handle in what was, quite literally, a death grip. “So, looks like an accident,” Stone said. “Might even have been an accident.”
“Mighty convenient accident,” I said, “the way the fire just happened to break out so close to so much gasoline.”
“Damned convenient,” Rocky agreed.