“Then I’d have to say no,” I said.
“And did you examine your research subject, the one you stabbed in the back, for evidence of scoliosis?”
I felt my cheeks flush. “No,” I said. “He appeared to be a normal individual. He was a marathon runner. I don’t imagine someone with scoliosis would have an easy time running marathons.”
“You ever see photos or news stories about amputees, wearing artificial limbs, running marathons?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you imagine they have an easy time doing it?”
“No, I don’t. I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at, though.”
“What I’m getting at, Dr. Brockton, is this: You don’t actually know for a fact that Billy Ray Ledbetter’s spine was normal, and you don’t know for a fact that your research subject’s spine was identical in shape to Mr. Ledbetter’s. What I’m getting at is the fact that a knife could have followed a different path in Mr. Ledbetter’s body than in the body of your experimental cadaver if their spines were curved differently. Couldn’t it, Dr. Brockton?”
I was not willing to back down completely. “Slightly,” I said. “If one of them had severe curvature and the other did not. But neither of them had severe curvature.”
“You’ve just said you didn’t measure or X-ray either spine for scoliosis,” he shot back.
“I haven’t measured or X-rayed your spine, either,” I said, “but that doesn’t keep me from noticing that you probably have some anterior deterioration and compression in your cervical disks. That’s why your head juts slightly forward of your shoulders. Do you have neck pain? You might be a good candidate for cervical fusion.”
“We are not here to talk about my spine, sir,” he all but shouted at me.
“No, sir, we’re not,” I said levelly. “What we’re here to talk about is truth and competence, and what I’m getting at is that after studying thousands of skeletons, I don’t have to take X-rays and measure angles to notice a deformed spine. Neither of these two individuals had a deformed spine.”
He sputtered a bit, and tried to regain his advantage, but he had clearly played his one trump card, and it wasn’t quite the ace he’d hoped it would be. After a little more sparring, the physician who was leading the hearing called a halt, thanked me, and pronounced me free to go.
As I left the hearing room, I noticed Hamilton’s attorney rubbing his neck; the sight made me smile. Then I caught the stenographer looking from me to the attorney and back again. She gave me a wink and a smile; she crossed her legs at the same time. I wasn’t sure if that was just a happy coincidence, or if it was some sort of reward for providing a bit of entertainment. Either way, I smiled bigger and returned the wink.
Then I saw Garland Hamilton looking at me. I met his gaze, and he gave me a brief nod. It wasn’t as friendly as his greeting had been, but it was fairly cordial, considering that his professional life was on the line here and I was part of the effort to terminate it.
The state’s lawyer led me out of the hearing room. In the marbled hallway, seated on a bench outside the double doors, was Jess Carter. If I’d given the matter any thought, I’d have realized Jess would be testifying as well, since she had reautopsied the body of Billy Ray Ledbetter before I examined the bones. But I’d been too preoccupied with the Chattanooga case, and with my heavy-handed treatment of my creationist student, to think about it.
“Hey, stranger,” she said. “Fancy seeing you here. You free by any chance to night?”
This was the second question today that had caught me off-balance.
“Well, I could be,” I said, my thoughts lagging half a beat behind my words. “I mean, I am. I think. Are you?”
She laughed at my clumsiness. “Ah. Sorry, no. Some guy in the hospital for routine foot surgery died the night he checked in, and the family’s screaming lawsuit. I gotta get back and do his autopsy this afternoon.”
“Oh. Right. Me too, now that I think about it. I mean, not an autopsy. I have some test papers to grade, so I can give them back tomorrow morning.”
“I thought UT was out on spring break this week?” She raised a quizzical eyebrow at me. Underneath both brows, her eyes were dancing.
Damn. Why did her processor always seem to work so much faster than mine? I was glad it hadn’t been Jess cross-examining me in there just now. “Don’t let me keep you from your testimony,” I said, nodding at the state’s attorney, who was looking anxious.
“Oh, what I have to say won’t take long,” she said. “I’ll just tell them how I took one look at those rotting remains and handed them straight over to the eminent Dr. Brockton.”
She winked, turned, and disappeared through the doorway. In her wake she left a swirl of hair, perfume, and female pheromones. Also an unmistakable aura of wit, intelligence, and professional competence.
CHAPTER 10
I WAS HALFWAY THROUGH a stack of a hundred test papers, and already my stomach was paging me. I checked my watch; it said ten-thirty, which was too early for lunch even by my standards, though not by much. Besides, the nearest cafeteria, in the athletic building across the street, didn’t start serving lunch until eleven. If I stayed focused, I could grade the remaining fifty papers-it was a multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank test-and still be the first person through the lunch line.
There was a knock at my door. I always kept the door ajar when I was in, and most students just barged right in. Not this time. “Come in,” I said. Miranda leaned her head around the door and scanned the room. “Since when do you knock?” I asked.
“Since I walked in on you kissing someone,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Ah,” I said, regretting the question. “That was a once-in-a-lifetime lapse. I was overcome with grief at the time. She was just trying to comfort me.” Unfortunately-mortifyingly-“she” was an undergraduate student who had asked a question that had released a flood of sadness over my wife’s death. In trying to console me, the young woman had given me a kiss that began as compassion but swiftly turned to passion. It was probably fortunate that Miranda had appeared in my doorway when she had; otherwise, I might have crossed even farther over the line.
“Comfort, huh,” Miranda snorted. “Hmm. Sort of like that jailer I read about in the News Sentinel last week? The guy caught comforting one of the female prisoners? She was grief-stricken over being arrested for prostitution, if I remember the story right.”
“No,” I said, “not like that. There was no nakedness involved in this comforting.”
“Might’ve been if I’d walked in five minutes later,” she said. “Speaking of the capable and comforting Miss Carmichael, how is she? Still at the top of her class?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s taking two cultural anthropology classes this semester. I hope she hasn’t gone over to the Dark Side.”
“Hmm. I suspect she’ll circle back to physical anthropology. She just seems the physical type, you know?” Miranda smiled sweetly as she said this, to let me know she was joking. Sort of.
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” I said with an answering smile. “I was getting worried about her. You’ve given me such…comfort.”
She glared, then laughed. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Truce. I’m not still jealous of her.” She paused for half a beat. “Smart, cute little bitch.” She laughed again. So did I. Miranda had a way of tipping me off-balance, then catching me just before I went sprawling. “Actually, I didn’t come by just to stomp on your feet of clay,” she said.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I was so enjoying it. What other delights await me?”
“Our research subject, oh-five thirty-one?” I was instantly alert; 05–31 was the case number we’d assigned to the corpse tied to the tree at the Farm, because he was the thirty-first forensic case of 2005.
“What about him?”