The Hatching (The Hatching #1)(31)
It was a woman. Or it had been a woman. There was still enough fabric left of her skirt for Mike to be clear about that, but the rest of her body was destroyed. Her legs were bent, one of them broken and turned at an angle that probably would have made him gag had he been a newbie, though that wasn’t as disturbing as the burns. She was charred and damaged beyond expectations. On her head there were a few tufts of hair, burned short but still showing some color, but her face and torso were shredded. Her skin was a mixture of black flakes and pink ooze, pitted in places and disturbingly raw. Clearly she’d been thrown through the cabin, and Mike figured that when the autopsy was done they’d find that chunks of metal had torn away at her body. Regardless, she wasn’t Henderson, and the skirt, with the few scraps of white fabric that had been her shirt, looked like some sort of uniform. One of the stewardesses. No, flight attendant, he thought. Flight attendant.
He shined his flashlight at what had been the front of the plane, but there wasn’t much to see other than a gaping hole. Everything forward of the galley had been torn off. What a mess. He debated just ducking out of the plane and getting himself some stitches for the cut on his hand. The director said that another agency team was coming to take over, but as much as he wanted to just wait for them to come, the director had also been clear that this was a live wire. Waiting was not an option.
Mike tried flexing his hand. Fuck. It stung like a motherf*cker. He grimaced and then put the flashlight between his teeth so he could use his good hand to peel the blood-soaked tie from the cut on his other hand. As he pulled the tie away from the wound, the fabric stuck to the skin and the flap raised a little, blood pooling freely. Well, Mike thought, that was stupid, and he pulled the tie tight back against the palm of his hand. He should have just left it covered. At least it was his left hand, he thought, because once he was done here, assuming Fanny hadn’t shown up yet, he might have to head back to the hospital with Annie to get himself a few stitches. Shit. He was going to owe that kid ice cream and a trip to the toy store.
As if she knew he’d been thinking about her, Mike’s phone rang, and he pulled it out to see Fanny’s number.
“Come on, Mike,” she said. “Really? And you left her to play in an ambulance?”
“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 f*cked 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.