“I didn’t have much choice, Fanny. She’s okay. Just do me this favor, okay, it’s important, and get here as soon as you can.”
He hung up, knowing that he’d pay for it later, but yet another uncomfortable conversation with his ex-wife seemed preferable to having the full weight of the agency come crashing down on him. Even if, as seemed clear, it was just an accident, he needed to make sure it looked like he had given the maximum effort. Maybe, if he handled it right, he’d come out ahead on this, looking good, but he knew for sure that if he fucked it up, the director would bury him. Cutting his day with Annie short wasn’t ideal, but it was the way it would have to be. Ice cream, the toy store, and the bookstore, Mike decided.
He couldn’t decide if his hand was throbbing or burning where he’d ripped it open, but it hurt. He was careful not to touch any more sharp edges as he shuffled to the opening and looked out at the circle of ambulances. Annie was still sitting on the bumper, and she happened to look up and see him. He waved at her, and she waved back. She’d be okay with it, Mike thought. She wouldn’t complain about Fanny picking her up. She was a good kid. An easy kid. She understood his job could be demanding. The divorce had been tough, but she never made him feel shitty about it. It was funny, he thought, how quickly kids adjusted to new situations, how whatever was happening in their lives was what they thought was normal. He wished he’d been able to adjust to the divorce as quickly as Annie. Or, for that matter, as quickly as his ex-wife. He’d had a couple of casual things, but hadn’t really tried dating seriously, and yet Fanny was already happily remarried. And, evidently, expecting.
The blond EMT caught his eye and called out across the grass that they were good, and Mike yelled back that Annie’s mom would be there in about ten minutes. The EMT gave him the thumbs-up—at least he hoped it was the thumbs-up and not the finger—and Mike turned back to the guts of the plane.
He stepped past what was left of the flight attendant, mindful of the debris on the cabin floor. He couldn’t stop from stepping in the ashes, however, and was unsettled by the crunching and popping sounds beneath his feet. Like walking on peanut shells. He tried to be careful in case it ended up being a crime scene after all. At least it hadn’t been a passenger jet. That was one saving grace. He’d known friends who worked disaster sites or mass graves, and they all said the sound of bones breaking underfoot was not something you got over.
The inside of the jet was hot, much hotter than it was out in the sun. Mike couldn’t help but think it was residual warmth from the fire that had burned in the cabin. He was sweating already, his shirt sticking to his back, and he wished he’d thought to take off his suit coat outside. He glanced at his watch. It was less than half an hour since the jet had crashed. As his flashlight beam came to rest on the charred body buckled into a seat in the middle of the cabin, Mike thought that for all the good it did Bill Henderson, the director was right: when a billionaire fell from the sky, it was handled a little differently.
He felt something tickle his left wrist and realized that despite the tie wrapped around his hand, the cut was bleeding through. He wiped the blood on his suit coat and then stepped closer to the body.
It was Henderson. No question.
The bottom half of his body was a mess of burns and exposed bone. The flesh and muscle and fat were completely stripped on one of his legs, and more than fifty percent gone on the other. Oddly, Mike realized he was more disturbed by Henderson’s torso: from waist to neck, other than a few flecks of ash on the long-sleeved T-shirt, Henderson looked as undisturbed as a mannequin in a department store. Thankfully, what natural light came in through the windows and the rent in the side of the plane left the man’s head hidden in the shadows. Mike played the beam of the flashlight on the wall and ceiling around Henderson. It must have been hell in here, he thought. The plastic was melted and buckled, scorched from the flames. Mike was just guessing, but he thought that probably fuel from the engines had spilled into the cabin. If they were lucky, they were dead from the crash before the flames reached them.