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agent? Mafia member?
    She searched the body. Blood caked the torn shirt and suit coat—expensive clothing by the looks of it. Under the suit the chest was spongy, and the steaming innards had popped out through lacerations in the belly—bluish-green, translucent like twisted sausage.
    "This is all lab stuff," Kier called from just inside the plane. He was opening a thick three-ring binder, one of many.
    Jessie found nothing in the jacket or pants pockets, not even lint; it was as if the suit had been taken directly off the store rack. No I.D. This man was not law enforcement.
    As she moved back to the rear of the fuselage, Kier did not even look up from his reading.
    Inside and to the left lay seats for more than twenty people spaciously arranged. In the gray half-light she counted the bodies, some hanging lifeless in their belts, others squeezed between collapsed seats. Nine. Looking back, she saw Kier still studying the papers.
    ''We really shouldn't touch things," she said without conviction, knowing the plane could catch fire and burn, leaving nothing but a mystery.
    A feeling came over her that she'd forgotten something. She looked back outside the way she had come. There it was. Partially snow-filled footprints circled the jet, ultimately leading off into the brush. She hadn't noticed them before. Someone must have survived, or found the wreck before she and Kier did.
    "There are tracks," she called to Kier. "I saw. They're hard to read." He barely looked up from the black plastic binder. "What else haven't you told me?" ''I think the person doesn't want to be found.'' He shrugged. "He's long gone. Probably at the county road."
    "I can't believe anybody survived," she said. "What's in the binder?"
    "I'm not sure yet."
    "You're taking this awfully calmly."
    "The bland expression is hereditary." It struck her as the driest sort of black humor. She watched a moment longer as he pored over the pages.
    The smell of jet fuel stung her nostrils. Better hurry. Stepping gun first, she began making her way through the passenger cabin. Teal leather and rose carpets told her the decorator had an eye for the gaudy. Oxygen masks dangled from the ceiling. The fuselage of the jet was crushed in places, but she saw no complete breach, except at the large hole where she now stood, and at the midsection, where a stump had pierced the side of the plane. Exposed wires, like veins on a skinned carcass, ran fore and aft. Blood stained even the ceiling.
    The quiet was eerie—pregnant with tension, as if someone was waiting, watching. She took her uneasiness as a warning, and did not struggle with the illogic of it.
    Four bodies, facing one another in club seating, sat slightly aft of the midsection. The stretched seat belts were almost ripped from their fittings. Near the first body, Jessie found a gun on the floor. Bullet holes riddled the back of the man's suit.
    Struggling through his pockets, vomit tickling the base of her throat, she found no I.D. on this one either. On the other side of the aisle, the next body lay in the seats like a collapsed marionette without the strings. The way the body was compressed between the seats it would take a pathology team to pull it out and determine the cause of death. Only arms in camel-hair sleeves and legs in twill slacks remained visible.
    In the next row forward on the left side lay the other two bodies. One had his head back, tongue extended betweet clenched teeth, and a 10-mm. Glock with a silencer in his hand. She put her nose close and caught the smell of a fired weapon.
    Farther forward sat a macabre, five-person huddle—two women and three men who didn't seem to have guns. All of the men had wallets with ordinary-looking I.D., including drivers' licenses. They wore slacks and open shirts. One woman was dressed in a business suit, the other in a pantsuit. All the clothes looked middle-American plain, stuff that could have come from any mass merchandiser—nothing like the slick Italian suit