Page 3 of Identity Unknown
“Nothing jumps out except he was a bit melancholy about his birthday.” I ward off another wave of remorse and disbelief. “He didn’t say much about what he would be doing during his trip, and that was typical. We never quizzed each other about our work, most of it not up for discussion.”
Lucy informs me that last night at seven, Sal met two colleagues at the Red Caboose several miles from Green Bank. An hour and a half later a security camera caught him leaving the restaurant in his pickup truck, an old blue Chevy with a grumbly diesel engine I tease him about. Presumably, he was headed up the mountain to the Allegheny Peak Lodge where he always stayed.
“He was due at the observatory before daylight this morning to track the radio waves of the rising sun,” Lucy is saying. “When he didn’t show up, it was discovered that he never checked into the lodge last night. It seems that shortly after he drove away from the restaurant he had an encounter of the wrong kind.”
“What about his truck?” I ask, a gurney trundling past.
“About two miles from there. Apparently, it plunged off the road with no one inside and is halfway down the mountain in a ravine. First responders report that the engine was running at the time of the crash, the doors locked, the front seat belts fastened but no sign of anyone.”
“How far is that from where his body somehow ended up?” I continue writing down the details.
“Ninety miles, in Augusta County.”
“The theme park has been abandoned how long?” I ask, and Lucy was in high school the last time I took her there.
“It was permanently shuttered at the beginning of COVID,” she answers. “Since then it’s fallen to ruin and been vandalized. As you remember, it’s off the beaten track in the Blue Ridge foothills. You’d have to know about it or you wouldn’t think to leave a body there. It’s not the only stop we’ll be making, and we’ll talk more later. I’m an hour out from Washington National.”
“Marino and I will be there with our gear.”
“A bad storm front is on the way, and it’s going to get nasty later in the day,” she adds. “You can expect a lot of turbulence and tricky maneuvering. He won’t be happy.”
“That’s an understatement. Fly safe,” I tell her.
I return the handset to its cradle, the long cord twisting and coiling like something alive. Reaching for my cell phone, I write a text to Pete Marino, a former homicide detective I’ve worked with most of my career. He’s my head of investigationsand hates flying in helicopters, especially when Lucy is at the stick.
Add bad weather to the equation, and he’ll be an ill-tempered mess. Introduce the subject of UAPs and I’ll never hear the end of it. An enthusiast of most things paranormal, including Bigfoot, ghosts and flying saucers, he’s quick to tell you about his close encounters. Marino will hope the UAP really is from outer space. At the same time, he’ll panic should that turn out to be the case.
I inform him that we’re needed at a scene some 150 miles west of our office here in Alexandria. Lucy will be flying us there and possibly to other locations. In addition to the usual equipment, he’s to bring Level-A hazmat protection. We’ll need total containment body pouches and a radiation detector. It would be a good idea to include toiletries and a change of clothing. I have no idea how long we’ll be gone.
You seen the weather report?!he fires back with emojis of a thunder cloud, lightning and a coffin.
Bring a rain jacket.
We’re better off driving & transporting the body ourselves.
Not an option,I answer.Lucy wants us with her. See you soon.
I work my hands into a pair of gloves as death investigator Fabian Etienne sharpens another knife on the far side of the room. In his late twenties, he’s exotically attractive, attired in his usual black scrubs, these with a spiderweb pattern. His long black hair is pinned up under a matching surgical cap, his arms and neck a tattoo gallery.
He’s been keeping busy since he got here this morning, fooling himself into thinking I don’t notice that he’s avoiding me.I understand better than most that some deaths are impossibly hard. It doesn’t matter that he grew up in the business, his father a legendary Louisiana coroner. Fabian is experienced and for the most part fearless. But he’s self-absorbed and overly sensitive. I motion for him that I could use some help.
He’ll be with me in a minute, he indicates. While waiting, I finish labeling test tubes and other evidence. I can’t stop seeing Sal Giordano’s keen eyes, his Einstein-wild hair. Thoughts enter my mind as if from him, and it won’t be the same when we’re not sitting next to each other at meetings. We won’t be grabbing lunch, a drink, or riding together and catching up.
È quello che è, amore.
It is what it is,he’d say. I imagine him telling me not to feel upset even as what I’m thinking seems heartless and disrespectful. As unlikely as it seems, I have no choice but to consider that he might have been inside a spacecraft of nonhuman origin. Possibly he was exposed to unknown pathogens or radioactive contaminants. I’ll be treating his remains like an extreme biohazard.
CHAPTER 2
Fabian heads in my direction as the buzzer sounds again from the wall-mounted security monitors at either end of the autopsy suite. On live video the vehicle bay’s huge door is clanking open to let in what looks like a windowless white cargo van with a rooftop ladder.
“I need you to finish up here,” I say when Fabian reaches me. “Do you think you can manage? I’m headed out of town.”
“No problem.” He can barely look at seven-year-old Luna Briley’s body, gutted of every organ, the curved ribs gleaming white.
Her face is pulled down like a tragic rubber mask, the top of her fractured skull sawn off. Supposedly, she was alone in her bedroom playing with her father’s pistol yesterday afternoon. He and the mother were outside in the yard when they heard the gun go off. But I have good reason to doubt the story.
They claim Luna removed the trigger lock, and that’s hard for me to fathom. Where did she find the key? And was the gun already cocked? If she shot herself, why was the trajectory pointed downward? Those are but a few of my questions, and when I attempt to envision what the parents claim, it doesn’t make sense.