Flesh and Bone (Body Farm 2)

“What I’m talking about is this,” she said. “If you’re going to play what-if-which, by the way, is a huge waste of time and energy, not to mention an act of supreme, center-of-the-universe narcissism-you have to play it both ways. If you’re going to imagine yourself as an accidental villain, you have to give yourself equal time as an unwitting hero. As somebody who prevented God-knows-what dire disaster simply by doing exactly the things you did. And who knows,” she added, “maybe the physicists are right; maybe there really are zillions of parallel universes. And maybe in those parallel universes, all the improbable scenarios we imagine really do happen, and all the wild conspiracy theories we imagine really are true.”

She’d lost me by now, but at least she’d taken my mind off my misery for a minute. It was time enough to allow me a gulp of emotional oxygen, like a swimmer turning his head between strokes to bite a mouthful of air.

There was a rap at the door of the decomp and Garland Hamilton walked in, looking tense. He glanced at me, then eyed Miranda steadily. “Oh,” she said. “I need to go…do…something.” She laid the skull down on a tray lined with paper towels and hurried out.

“Tell me about it,” I said. “Tell me about Jess.”

“Are you sure?” I nodded. “She was killed by a gunshot to the head,” he said. “Small caliber, probably a.22, maybe a.25. The ballistics guys will be able to tell. No exit wound-the bullet ricocheted around inside the cranium, so it chewed the brain up pretty bad. The good news, I guess, is that she died almost instantly once she was shot.”

“Why do you say, ‘once she was shot,’ Garland? Is there some bad news besides the fact that somebody killed her?”

“It’s possible she was raped,” he said. “There were traces of semen in the vagina.”

His comment hit me like a UT linebacker. Perhaps she had indeed been raped, but perhaps Hamilton had merely found residual traces of my own lovemaking with Jess from several nights earlier. I considered mentioning that possibility, but it seemed too personal-a violation not only of my privacy, but of Jess’s, too.

“Anything else that might help? Fingernail scrapings? Hair or fibers?”

“Her nails looked clean, but I did collect a few hairs and fibers. Bill…” He hesitated. “I know you don’t hold my work in the highest regard, but I gave this everything I had. I don’t think any pathologist anywhere could have been more thorough than I was. The police have a bullet, a DNA sample, and hair and fibers to work with. I have a feeling they’re going to find this guy pretty quick. As an ME, Jess was a friend and ally to cops. Jess was like family. They’re going to work this hard.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said.

“Count on it,” he said.

It was 9 P.M. by the time I turned onto my street in Sequoyah Hills. It felt like 3 A.M. My heart and lungs felt filled with cement; my head hurt so badly I thought I might throw up; and every blink felt like burlap scraping across my eyes.

As I rounded the curve of the circle and my house came into view, I hit the brakes, hard, and my truck screeched to a halt on the asphalt. Four SUVs-one from each of the Knoxville television stations-were parked in front of the house. Several cameramen and reporters stood chatting in my yard. As I sat and pondered what to do, one of the cameramen swiveled his lens in my direction and everyone’s head followed its lead. Soon all four video cameras were aimed at my truck, and I felt like an animal that knows it is being hunted.

Finally I forced down my fear and took my foot off the brake, idling toward my driveway. As I turned in, the cameramen took their cameras off the tripod and converged on my truck. The reporters followed a few feet behind, so as not to block the shot. I drew a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped out.

Even before I had both feet on the asphalt, one of the reporters said, “Dr. Brockton, what can you tell us about the murder out at the Body Farm?”

“I’m afraid I can’t talk about it,” I said. “The police have asked me not to.”

“Can you tell us who the victim was?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” I said. “They need to notify the next of kin before they release the identity.”

“Did you know the victim?”

“I…I’m sorry, I can’t say.”

“Was it a man or a woman? Surely you can tell us that much?”

“No.”

“How was he killed? How was she killed?” This time I just shook my head and headed along the curving brick walk toward my front door as cameramen scrambled to get ahead of me so they could capture my face.

As I put my key in the lock and opened the front door, the same reporter who’d asked the first question fired off a final one. “Do the police consider you a suspect, Dr. Brockton?”

That one stopped me in my tracks. Standing in my open doorway, I turned and faced the eight people and four lenses. “Good God,” I said, “of course not.” And with that, I stepped inside and closed the door.

CHAPTER 27

THE JUMBLE OF DRAB boxes that constituted KPD headquarters possessed just enough windows to highlight how blank and unbroken most of the walls were. The biggest expanse of glass was the entryway, which doubled as a corridor connecting the police department with the municipal traffic court. Outside, a mix of cops and traffic scofflaws smoked as equals.

I took a right inside the lobby and p

resented myself to the desk sergeant under glass. He nodded in recognition at my name, then buzzed someone to escort me upstairs. My escort proved to be a short detective with the build and the personality of a fireplug. Though I’d never seen a fireplug with a half-chewed toothpick dangling from what would be its face. If fireplugs had faces. Fireplug’s name was Horace Bingham, a name I thought particularly unfortunate-particularly since he pronounced it “horse”-though I had the good manners not to call Horace’s attention to the gracelessness of either his name or his enunciation.

Horace showed me into a cinder-block room outfitted with a table, three metal folding chairs, and a video camera high in one corner, then closed the door. Twenty minutes crept past.

The beep of my cellphone made me jump. It was Art.

“How are you? Where are you?”

“Funny you should ask. I’m in an interview room on the fourth floor of KPD, waiting for Detective Sergeant John Evers.”

“Evers is working this?”

“Yeah. Maybe with the help of this fireplug-looking little guy.”

“Oh, you mean Horse?”

“Yeah. Horse.”

“Well, Evers is good. Best thing I can say about Horse is that he hangs back and lets Evers do most of the work. They got any leads that you know of?”

“They haven’t said. I’m gonna suggest a couple.” Just then the door opened and Evers walked in, accompanied by Horace. “Listen, they’re here to talk to me. I gotta go.”

“Hang in there. Call me later.”

“Thanks, Art.” As I folded the phone shut, I said, “Art Bohanan. He had good things to say about both of you.”

Evers nodded and smiled briefly. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Dr. Brockton. We’ve been fielding a lot of media calls, as you might expect. Not much to say at this point; we try to limit what goes out, especially in the early stages of an investigation, but you still gotta give ’em a couple sound bites, or they get snippy.”