Autopsy (Kay Scarpetta, #25)(57)

Snaking through another open hatch, he enters the airlock where two sets of disassembled white spacesuits eerily float about. It’s obvious that the Thor scientists hurried out of them, the torsos, pants, helmets and boots stirred by fans blowing.

“I’m wondering how long it might have taken them to return to the airlock, repressurize and then take off their suits?” I look around the Situation Room. “Because it can’t be an easy feat even under optimal conditions.”

“If they went out the hatch, turned around and came right back?” NASA says. “At least thirty minutes and more like forty, and that’s doing an extremely expedited suit doffing.”

Grabbing a spacesuit torso size small, Chip looks it over carefully, announcing there are two holes in the upper right side of it. He maneuvers himself so his body-mounted camera shows us what he’s talking about, and we can see the images on the data walls.

The holes in the heavy fire-retardant fabric are perfectly round and about the diameter of a dime. They correspond with the location of the two holes in the female’s upper right side and shoulder, and she and her crewmate bled out considerably based on the amount of blood I’m seeing.

I suspect that whatever hit the female crewmate nicked a major blood vessel, and she hemorrhaged, the blood drying quickly, most of it carried away by the fan-stirred air. I’m noticing right away that the two perforations in the torso of the spacesuit seem identical, as if made by the same hole puncher.

I wouldn’t expect that necessarily if we’re dealing with space debris that likely varies considerably in size and shape. Rather much like shrapnel from a pipe bomb, and rarely are the entrance wounds perfectly round when caused by that.

“Chip, what about exit holes or tears?” I ask as suspicions gather. “If you look at other areas of her spacesuit, are there any defects that might be from the projectiles exiting?”

“Negative, not seeing them,” he reports from inside the airlock. “But it was just their luck that whatever hit them somehow managed to miss the integrated impact shielding,” he adds as I doubt that luck had anything to do with it.

Next, he inspects the male crewmate’s spacesuit, size extralarge, first the torso, then the pants. There are two similar perforations in the right shoulder and arm, and one in the right thigh. They correspond with what Anni looks at in the lab as she levitates near the bodies, and the picture I’m getting is an awful one.





CHAPTER 23


THE CREWMATES MUST HAVE taken off their suits before making their way to the lab section where the medical supplies are kept. Perhaps they lived long enough to help themselves or at least try before they couldn’t anymore, and the implication is unforgivable.

“Their suits, the EMUs have holes in them, indicating they were wearing them when they were injured,” I summarize to the Situation Room. “That much is a fact.”

“Would they have survived long?” the president asks.

“I can say this much at this point,” I answer. “They weren’t disabled instantly. But I won’t know until I have a better sense of their internal injuries, as much as that’s possible under the circumstances.”

“What did Horton do to help them?” asks the secretary of state.

“What I can tell you is the victims bled extensively, based on what we’re seeing.” I look around at the grim faces staring up at morbid images. “You don’t continue bleeding unless you have a blood pressure. The longer they bled, the longer they were alive.”

“Are there any signs that first aid was attempted?” the vice president asks me.

“Nothing I’m seeing,” I reply.

“But who turned off all the cameras, the radios?” More questions and comments erupt around the table.

“Horton. Who else?”

“Why?”

“So that he could make his getaway undetected until it was too late to stop him.”

“The cameras were turned off hours before he made his getaway,” Benton reminds everyone.

“How is it possible his crewmates didn’t realize that was happening? That suddenly they were disconnected from Houston?” the secret service asks.

“We may never know the answers to some things,” Benton says.

“Horton has a lot to answer for,” the FBI decides. “But good luck making much sense of the disaster up there,” addressing this to me. “I’m not sure what else we can do beyond taking care of the bodies. It’s not like we can bring them back down here for autopsies.”

There are no good options for how to handle the Thor crewmates’ bodies. They couldn’t be stored or returned to Earth. We don’t have morgue coolers in orbit, and forget loading the bodies onto a spaceplane and carrying them to the ISS. Then what? They can’t be left at room temperature inside the trash room.

It’s also out of the question leaving them inside the Thor orbiter to decompose, abandoning the laboratory-habitat. That would be a multibillion-dollar loss, not to mention the years of research and development. The only real solution at this time and under the circumstances is to litter in space, which no one is supposed to do.

The director of the FBI doesn’t elaborate on the protocol for handling human remains in space, and he may not know. But I certainly do. Outlining plans for such unpleasantries, and finding shortcuts to determine what killed someone, is my responsibility on the Doomsday Commission.