Page 40 of Made of Steele
“Let me get into these coveralls.” Kelsey shook out her suit. “Any idea at all of where we might find this victim?”
“No,” Drew said. “He could still be alive for all we know, but the facts point to the opposite.”
Kelsey leaned on the van and tugged off a short boot and slid her leg into the coveralls, then into one of the rubber boots.
Her assistant returned with a drone. She looked at him. “Please go ahead and mark the property boundaries for the drone while I get set up.”
“On it.” The young guy left the drone next to the backpack and disappeared behind the van again then came out holding stakes and an iPad. His face pinned to the screen, he trudged off.
Drew turned his attention back to Kelsey. “Teagan told me you can find buried bodies with a drone, but I can’t begin to see how.”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” She laughed, a tiny tinkling sound, and she removed the other boot and then looked at them. “Seriously, the drone uses infrared imaging to detect bodies. It works both above and below the ground. And even if someone moved the body, the technology can also find where a corpse had been buried and removed up to two years after the removal.”
“That’s amazing,” Drew said.
“Saves me a lot of time. Before technology, I could walk right past a clandestine body without knowing it was there. Sure, I can look for other markers and use GPR, but the drone doubles my chance of finding the body.”
He wanted to offer to help with getting her last boot on, but she managed it with the ease of someone who often precariously balanced against a van. “I’m fascinated with forensic science. Are you free to share how it actually works?”
“Sure. It’s not often others want to know.” She tugged up the top of her suit. “The first thing you need to know is that bodies release carbon and nitrogen into the soil as they decay. That, in turn, decreases the amount of light the soil reflects. Initially, the flood of chemicals kills plants, traveling distances where vegetation roots absorb it, but that changes as time passes.”
She paused for a long breath and pulled on her suit’s zipper. “It soon disperses into the soil around the body and becomes a fertilizer that reflects a ton of light. It’ll also make the vegetation nice and lush and is often a telltale sign that we can also use to locate remains.”
“Okay, you send this drone up, then what?” he asked.
“Once I have a hit, I’ll pass over the ground using GPR to confirm if I think it’s needed, and then I start digging. It’s a precise process, and we won’t be tromping around and digging holes all over the place like you see on TV and in the movies.”
She grabbed the controller. “Ready?”
“Can’t wait to see it in action.” Drew’s enthusiasm was over the top, and he needed to cool it. He was beginning to sound like a fangirl.
She launched the drone, and the buzzing motor spiraled the device into the cold air filled only with a fine mist. “I’ll do a grid search following the property lines.”
Drew tracked the drone’s progress up and down the large open area. After six passes that covered the nearby area, Kelsey stepped to the end of the grid marked off by her assistant and started again. Each pass without locating anything made Drew’s heart sink more, and his gut gnarled into a knot like the roots of these massive trees.
She made these precise sweeps three more times until they had one grid left at the back end of the property.
“Looks like we might strike out,” Drew said to Teagan.
“We still have one more grid to go. Besides, if I was going to bury someone, I’d do it as far away from the road as possible so no one saw me, and that’s the section she has left to do.”
“Good point.” He watched the drone sweep back and forth like a soaring hawk, a hint of hope holding on in his heart when it was seeming more hopeless.
On the third pass, Kelsey let the drone settle into an overgrown area near bushes on the back side of the lot. “We have a hit.”
“Yes!” Drew fist bumped Teagan and caught her wide beaming smile.
Kelsey didn’t celebrate, but shrugged off her backpack and started unzipping the pocket as she walked to the location where she’d landed the drone. Drew and Teagan hurried after her.
She pulled stakes and a mallet from her backpack. Her assistant joined her. Without a word, they pounded the stakes into the ground, forming the shape of a human grave.
“Oh, oh,” she said and hurried over an overgrown shrub on the far edge of the markers. “I didn’t expect this.”
“What is it?” Not sure if he should follow her, Drew remained in place.
“A skull. Partially buried.”
“A human skull?” Drew asked.
