Flesh and Bone (Body Farm 2)

“Did you see anybody else out here this morning when you arrived, either inside the fence or out in the parking lot?” I shook my head. “Driving away from the parking lot?” Again I shook my head.

“Was the gate open or closed when you got here?”

I had to think for a moment; my arrival seemed a lifetime ago. “It was open,” I said. “That was the first thing out of the ordinary.”

“It’s normally locked?”

“Yes, with two locks-one on the chain-link gate, one on the wooden gate.”

“What else was unusual?”

“There was a note for me on the inner gate.” I suddenly remembered it was in my pocket. I reached for it, then caught myself before I touched it. “I’ll let one of your evidence technicians get it out of my pocket and bag it. It’s a note from Dr. Carter. Or at least, supposedly from Dr. Carter. Saying, ‘I’m inside. Come find me.’ It’ll have my fingerprints on it, from when I pulled it off the gate and read it. But maybe it’ll have the prints of whoever put it there, too.”

He nodded, and drew a box around the word NOTE, with arrows pointing at each corner of the box, for extra emphasis.

“So when you found the note, what did you do?”

“I came inside and looked around, called Dr. Carter’s name. I went down that way first”-I pointed to the lower area, where Jess sometimes put bodies to skeletonize-“and then I walked up that path leading to the research project. And that’s when I found her. Her corpse. Tied to the other one.”

“What did you do when you saw her?”

“Nothing, at first. I just stared. I couldn’t process it; I couldn’t think. Finally-I mean, it was probably only a minute or two, but it felt like forever-I called 911.”

“And after you made the call, what did you do? Did you approach the body? Did you ever touch the body?”

I shook my head. “No. I know better than to disturb a death scene.”

“How close were you?”

“Six feet. Maybe eight or ten.”

“So how did you know she was dead?”

I looked up at him; met his gaze for the first time, really. “Detective, I’ve spent the past twenty-five years studying the dead. I’ve seen corpses by the hundreds. I recognize the vacant, clouded eyes. I know the difference between shallow breath and no breath; between an unconscious person and a lifeless body.” I could feel my voice starting to rise, but it seemed to be someone else’s voice, not my own; a voice that was beyond my control. “I know that when blowflies are swarming around a woman’s bloody corpse, crawling in and out of her open mouth, I don’t need to feel for a pulse to tell me that woman is dead.”

Evers’s eyes were locked on mine in horror and fascination. In my peripheral vision, I became aware of other eyes staring at me as well. I glanced toward the gate and saw a dozen people looking in my direction, their expressions all registering various degrees of shock. I took a deep breath and rubbed my eyes and forehead. “I’m sorry,” I said. “This is very upsetting.”

“I’m sure it is,” said Evers. “No need to apologize. Listen, I need to go up the hill to the scene. And we’ll probably be tied up here most of the day. But I’d like to talk to you in more detail tomorrow, if you wouldn’t mind. Get more background on Dr. Carter, her colleagues, her activities. Okay?”

“Of course,” I said. “Anything I can do to help. What time do you want me there?”

“Ten o’clock?” I nodded. “All right. Thank you, Dr. Brockton. Take it easy today. You’ve had quite a shock.”

“Yes, I have. Thank you. Do your best on this one.”

He smiled broadly, flashing me a band of teeth so white they’d have made a great ad for Crest. “I always do, Doc. I always do. Oh, one last thing. Sit tight for just another minute and let me find a forensic tech to get that note out of your pocket.”

I stayed put, and he returned in a few minutes, accompanied by a forensic technician clad in a white Tyvek biohazard suit from head to toe. The technician used tweezers to pluck the note from my shirt pocket, then sealed it in a ziplock evidence bag and labeled it. “You know where to go tomorrow, right?” asked Evers. I nodded. “Meantime, we’ll try to keep a pretty tight lid on this. We’d appreciate it if you’d help us with that. If you get media calls, which you probably will, just refer them to us.”

“I will.”

Evers stood up, which I took to be my cue to do likewise. He walked me to the gate and raised the yellow and black tape for me so I didn’t have to duck so far. He turned to a uniformed officer who was posted just outside the gate, holding a clipboard. “I’m not leaving,” he said, “but he is. This is Dr. Bill Brockton of UT. Dr. Brockton was already inside when the scene was secured, so he’s not on your log yet. You need to add his name; put ‘N/A’ as his sign-in time; and sign him out at”-he checked his watch-“nine thirty-eight.” The officer nodded and obliged.

Twenty or more emergency vehicles, many with lights still strobing, jammed the northeast corner of the parking lot. Some were tucked into parking spaces amid the cars of hospital employees; others jammed the aisles between rows and filled the strip of grass along the east edge of the lot. A hundred yards away, in a taped-off area at the southeast corner, I noticed a gaggle of media vehicles-news crew SUVs, mostly, but also a couple of broadcast trucks, their antenna masts aloft. Crowding the yellow tape were half a dozen tripods topped by half a dozen cameras, their lenses all trained on me. I turned

and walked around the back of my truck, opened the driver’s door, and backed out of my parking space.

As I eased down the hill toward the exit of the parking lot, a black Chevy Tahoe emerged from the direction of the morgue and sped toward the Body Farm. As it passed, I caught a glimpse of the driver. It was Garland Hamilton: one medical examiner racing to a death scene where the body of another medical examiner awaited him.

CHAPTER 25

LIKE A SLEEPWALKER, I shuffled through my forensic anthropology class, which met less than an hour after I left the scene of Jess’s murder. I considered canceling class, but if I canceled class, what was I to do for that hour instead? So I taught. Or went through the motions of teaching. At the end of class, I couldn’t have said what topic I’d just spent an hour lecturing on. The only thing I noticed was that Jason Lane, my creationist student, was conspicuously absent.

After class, my autopilot carried me back to my office; luckily, the sidewalks and ramps from McClung Museum to the base of the stadium all ran downhill; otherwise, I might not have had the energy or will to make it. The two flights of stairs up to my sanctuary nearly overwhelmed me. Once inside, I closed the door-a rare gesture for me, and a sign of serious trouble. Slumping in my chair, I stared out the grimy windows, through the crisscrossed girders, at-what? Not at the river, although it continued to flow through downtown and alongside the campus. Not at the hills above the far shore, though they remained green and solid. Not at the sky or the sun, though they remained inexplicably, unfeelingly bright.

I could not recall ever before sitting in my office idly, doing nothing. It wasn’t that I had nothing to do-I had a stack of tests to grade, I had at least a dozen articles to review for the three anthropology and forensic journals on whose editorial boards I served. Then there was the textbook revision I’d agreed to do nearly a year ago, a chore that always seemed to take a backseat to forensic cases. Cases like my forensic examination of Craig Willis’s battered skull. Trouble was, I couldn’t get past the fact that I’d been asked to conduct that exam and write that report by Jess Carter. And now Jess was dead.