The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel by Jefferson Bass Read Free Book Online

organization’s name.
    The helicopter that awaited us, its turbine whining and its rotor spinning, was painted white, with blue lettering, but the paint did little to camouflage the craft’s military lineage: It was clearly a plainclothes version of the Huey, the U.S. Army’s helicopter workhorse during the Vietnam War. Nearing the whirling rotor, I ducked into a crouch—probably unnecessary; as far as I knew, no one had ever been decapitated because of good posture—but why take chances? Kimball and Boatman stashed their equipment and our bags in the back of the cabin, then clambered into the middle seats, leaving the seats directly behind the pilot to McCready and me. As we settled in, the pilot—a leathery deputy in aviator sunglasses—tapped his ear, then pointed to a pair of headsets hanging beside us. We nodded and tugged them on, their rubber seals shushing the urgent whine of the turbine and the jackhammer thud of the rotor. “Welcome, gentlemen,” he said. “Strap in and we’ll hop on up there.”
    The FBI’s jet had been equipped with simple lap belts, likea commercial jetliner—as if a lap belt would have done any good if we’d hit the ground at almost the speed of sound. The sheriff’s helicopter, on the other hand, was equipped with five-point, military-style harnesses. As I struggled with the fittings, McCready leaned over to help, tugging the straps so tight I could scarcely move. The instant I was clipped in we took off—an upward leap and a forward tilt so swift that I decided the pilot, like the aircraft, probably had some links to Vietnam service. Two minutes later we reached Otay Mountain, which lay only a few miles beyond the end of the runway. “There it is, gents,” said the pilot. “Want to look it over before we land?”
    “If it doesn’t cost extra,” McCready answered.
    Without another word, the pilot put the helicopter into a bank so steep the rotor blades were almost vertical; if not for the centrifugal force, and the harnesses holding us in our seats, we might have tumbled down against the cabin door. For the second time in a quarter hour, I found myself circling the column of black smoke. This time, though, I was much lower and closer, and the helicopter bucked in the vortex of turbulence generated by the fire, the wind, and the rocky terrain.
    Just as I was getting used to the steep bank, the helicopter plunged downward, dropping into a hover below the ridgeline, crabbing sideways, closer and closer to the mountainside. Looking out the right-side windows, I found myself at eye level with the wreckage of Richard Janus’s jet—a mess of mangled metal that appeared to have been run through a junkyard shredder, doused with gasoline, and then set ablaze. “Damn,” came McCready’s voice through the headset. “That’s what I call a crash.”
    “Nobody walked away from that one,” agreed the pilot. “I don’t get it. Richard was a damn good pilot.”
    “Friend of yours?”
    “I knew him. Flew with him a few times. He was too good a pilot to just auger in like that. Unless something went bad wrong. Or unless he did it on purpose.”
    “Why would he do it on purpose?” asked McCready, his voice neutral.
    “No clue. Beautiful wife, high-minded work, plenty of adventure. The perfect life, seems like. I guess you just never know.”
    I didn’t join the conversation; I was too busy wondering how the hell I’d recover a victim—or even identifiable parts—from the devastation that lay just beyond my window. Almost as if he’d read my mind, the pilot added, “I don’t reckon you guys’ll be needing a body bag. Couple sandwich bags, more like it.”
    Years before, I’d helped recover and identify remains from the wreckage of an air force transport that had hit a cloud-shrouded ridge in the Great Smoky Mountains at high speed. The debris from that crash had been strewn for half a mile, and—on the basis of that experience—I’d expected a similar debris field