Two hours after that angry exchange, the department’s pickup came jouncing across the valley floor, with Miranda at the wheel, Art riding shotgun as navigator, and Sarah folded into the jump seat behind them. I motioned them around to the front of the helicopter,d so the headlights illuminated the smashed interior. “Wow,” Miranda said as she hopped out, her orange cast practically glowing in the dark. “That kudzu tunnel is incredible. So Tuscany—the whole grape arbor effect — with a big ol’ East Tennessee twist.” She seemed relaxed and happy. Was it the adrenaline rush of a field case, or had she somehow bonded with Sarah on the drive up? Either way, I was relieved. “Three years and fifty death scenes, and this is the coolest.” She unlatched the window on the cap that covered the bed of the truck and began unloading gear one-handed.
Art waved hello and gave a big wink, which must have been code for something, but I had neither the time nor the privacy to ask him what it meant. Then Sarah extricated herself from the cramped jump seat. The smile she gave me still looked awkward, but the embarrassment in her smile couldn’t hold a candle to the excitement in her eyes. Perhaps I hadn’t bungled things forever after all.
The two hours it took them to reach the scene had seemed like an eternity. The fact was, though, even if they’d arrived sooner, we couldn’t have started excavating the chopper until the wreckage had cooled, and it still felt almost too warm to touch.
I had just finished introducing my helpers to Williams — I was surprised Art hadn’t met the deputy already, on one of the Cooke County visits he’d made with me — when Art pointed toward the mouth of the valley. “Bill, did you order pizza?”
A Crown Victoria eased into the valley and idled across the field toward where we stood. I knew it wasn’t pizza, unless Domino’s had begun recruiting drivers from the ranks of active TBI agents.
Williams and I had almost come to blows over calling in the TBI. As soon as the rotor wash from LifeStar had settled, I had pulled out the satellite phone to call them. “Hell, no,” the deputy said, when I told him what I was doing. “I’m in charge here, and I say no.” It was true that with the sheriff incapacitated and the chief deputy dead, Williams was the ranking law enforcement officer on the scene — and in the whole county, for that matter. But he was a commander without subordinates, and he seemed unsure how to proceed. When he balked at the TBI, I suggested the Tennessee Highway Patrol instead, but he said no to them as well. “Well, somebody’s got to take jurisdiction,” I snapped. “We’re not on federal land, so we can’t call in the feds. Seems like our best bet is your new pals at the TBI.”
I hadn’t meant to say that; it just slipped out in the heat of the moment. Williams went ghostly pale, then angry red; my attempt at an explanation — that I’d been returning a library book to the downtown library, and happened to see him talking with Steve Morgan on the steps of the federal building — sounded lame even to me. “Look,” I’d finally said, “somebody just shot the sheriff’s brother. You don’t have the resources for a big investigation. Call in some reinforcements. It’s your best hope for catching whoever did this.” He still looked unhappy, but he didn’t stop me from making the call.
The front doors of the Crown Vic opened in unison. A grim-faced Steve Morgan emerged from the driver’s side; Brian “Rooster” Rankin exited the passenger side. His cover now thoroughly blown, Rankin had traded his feed cap and overalls for a sportcoat and silk tie.
Williams and Morgan nodded awkwardly to one another, in the way of people who know each other but hate to acknowledge it — like two ministers bumping into each other at a strip club. Rankin, on the other hand, made a point of introducing himself to Williams, which told me that the deputy had not met Rankin at the federal building. That made sense — he was still working undercover, after all. As Rankin shook his hand, Williams’s face betrayed a potent mix of confusion, shock, and fear. When I saw that, I knew that Rankin — the undercover version — must have rubbed elbows with the deputy in some unsavory or illegal context.
The two agents huddled briefly with all of us, first getting a brief recap from me, then asking Williams a few questions — where and when he’d learned of the shooting, when he’d arrived, and so on. Excusing themselves for a moment, they got back into their car, where they conferred in low, earnest tones. When they rejoined us, Morgan seemed to have taken charge of things. “Here’s how we’d suggest proceeding,” he said, in a tone that didn’t actually invite feedback or questions. “I’ll stay here with Dr. Brockton and his team as they excavate the chopper. Agent Rankin will ride back to the courthouse with Deputy Williams to get more background, go over the dispatch logs, and review any pertinent files.”
“I ain’t leavin’,” said Williams. “This is a Cooke County crime scene, I was the first officer on the scene, and that makes me the incident commander here.”
The TBI agents glanced at each other, then Rankin beckoned to Williams. “Leon—buddy—how’s about you come chew the fat with your ol’ pal Rooster fer a minute?” He pointed toward Leon’s Jeep, and they got inside. This time the voices — the deputy’s, at least — got pretty loud. Then, to my surprise, the Cherokee’s engine fired up and the vehicle fishtailed angrily across the field, taking the deputy and the undercover agent out of the valley.
Morgan flashed me a sunny smile. “Interagency cooperation,” he said. “It’s a wonderful thing.” I waited, hoping he might enlighten me about the leverage Rankin seemed to have with Williams, but he didn’t. “Don’t let me keep y’all from your work,” he said, looking toward the helicopter.
We started by mapping the crash site. I asked Sarah to sketch the main features of the scene as Art and Miranda plotted the coordinates of key landmarks. The advent of handheld GPS receivers had greatly simplified the job of scene mapping — with the push of a button, it was now possible to pinpoint the latitude and longitude of a body and even superimpose it on an onscreen map — but I wasn’t quite ready to dispense with old-fashioned maps and measurements quite yet. Batteries run down, displays burn out, circuit boards fail, even satellites go on the fritz. Besides, most GPS units have a one- to three-meter margin of error, meaning — in the worst-case scenario — that I could go back to a death scene six months later, stand or dig exactly where the gizmo indicated the body had lain, and be off by up to ten feet any direction. If you’re troweling for a missing hyoid bone, a twenty-foot circle — three hundred square feet — is an enormous area.
One obvious and unambiguous landmark for our coordinates was the house — specifically, the southwest corner of the front porch, the closest point to the wreckage. Art shot a compass reading to the center of the cockpit, calling out “255 degrees.” Sarah drew an arrow and noted the bearing on her map, then, when Art unspooled a long tape measure between the corner and the chopper, she added “87.5 feet” beneath the compass reading. For the second landmark, they chose a large hemlock tree, standing alone beside the small stream that ran the length of the valley floor before plunging into the kudzu tunnel. The chopper lay 74 feet, on a heading of 128 degrees, from the base of the hemlock. So unless the house were destroyed and the tree cut down, we’d be able to pinpoint the crash site with precision and certainty for years to come, GPS or no.
One advantage of the crash, if such a word could be used, was that most of the remains were contained within the shell of the cockpit. I had worked several crashes in the Great Smoky Mountains during my years in Knoxville. Those aircraft — a couple of propeller planes and a military air-refueling tanker jet — were traveling horizontally at high speeds when they hit; as a result, wreckage and body parts were scattered over hundreds of yards of hillside. Orbin’s helicopter, though, had dropped nearly straight down, so while there was considerable trauma to his body — first from the force of the crash, then from the fire — at least there was no scatter.