“But the orange fiber is acrylic,” I reminded him. “Not nylon.”
“That’s correct, Dr. Scarpetta,” he said. “I’m giving you background in order to demonstrate the unique properties of the fiber in question. The fact that it is acrylic versus nylon, the fact that bright colors such as orange are almost never used in automobile carpeting, assists us in excluding the fiber from a number of origins–including Plymouths manufactured in the late seventies. Or any other automobile you might think of.”
“So you’re never seen anything like this orange fiber before?” Marino asked.
“That’s what I’m leading up to.” Hanowell hesitated.
Wesley took over. “Last year we got in a fiber identical to this orange one in every respect when Roy was asked to examine trace recovered from a Boeing seven forty-seven hijacked in Athens, Greece. I’m sure you recall the incident,” he said.
Silence.
Even Marino was momentarily speechless.
Wesley went on, his eyes dark with trouble. “The hijackers murdered two American soldiers on board and dumped their bodies on the tarmac. Chet Ramsey was a twenty-four-year-old Marine, the first to be thrown out of the plane. The orange fiber was adhering to blood on his left ear.”
“Could the fiber have come from the interior of the plane?” I asked.
“It doesn’t appear so,” Hanowell replied. “I compared it with exemplars of carpet, seat upholstery, the blankets stored in the overhead bins, and didn’t come up with a match or even a near match.
Either Ramsey picked up the fiber someplace else–and this doesn’t seem likely since it was adhering to wet blood–or possibly it was the result of a passive transfer from one of the terrorists to him. The only other alternative I can think of is that the fiber came from one of the other passengers, but if so, this individual would have to have touched him at some point after he was injured. According to eyewitness accounts, none of the other passengers went near him. Ramsey was taken to the front of the plane, away from the other passengers, and beaten, shot, his body wrapped in one of the plane’s blankets and thrown out onto the tarmac. The blanket, by the way, was tan.”
Marino said it first, and he wasn’t good humored about it, “You mind explaining how the hell a hijacking in Greece is connected with two writers getting whacked in Virginia?”
“The fiber connects at least two of the incidences,” Hanowell replied. “The hijacking and Beryl Madison’s death. This isn’t to say that the actual crimes are connected, Lieutenant. But this orange fiber is so unusual we have to consider the possibility there may be some common denominator in what happened in Athens and what is happening here now.”
It was more than a possibility, it was a certainty. There was a common denominator. Person, place, or thing, I thought. It had to be one of the three, and the details were slowly materializing in my mind.
I said, “They were never able to question the terrorists. Two of them ended up dead. Another two managed to escape and have never been caught.”
Wesley nodded.
“Are we even certain they were terrorists, Benton?” I asked.
After a pause, he answered, “We’ve never succeeded in tying them in with any terrorist group. But the assumption is they were making an anti-American statement. The plane was American, as were a third of its passengers.”
“What were the hijackers wearing?” I asked.
“Civilian clothes. Slacks, open-neck shirts, nothing unusual,” he said.
“And no orange fibers were found on the bodies of the two hijackers killed?”
I asked.
“We don’t know,” Hanowell answered. “They were gunned down on the tarmac, and we weren’t able to move fast enough to claim the bodies and fly them over here
for examination along with the slain American soldiers. Unfortunately, I got only the fiber report from the Greek authorities. I never actually examined the hijackers’ clothing or trace myself.
Obviously, quite a lot could have been missed. But even if there had been an orange fiber or two recovered from one of the hijacker’s bodies, this still wouldn’t necessarily tell us the origin.”
“Hey, what are you telling me?” Marino demanded. “What? I’m supposed to think we’re looking for an escaped hijacker who’s now killing people in Virginia?”