The Bone Thief (Body Farm 5)

“It did,” I agreed, adding, “You’ve done your homework.”

“I generally do, when we’re planning to invest half a million dollars in a research project.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Is that what you’re planning to invest here?”

“Could be.” The tripod with the camera caught his eye; he glanced from the equipment to the corpse of Maurie Gershwin. Most of the skin was gone from her skull, neck, and hands now; the fabric of her clothing hung loose and dark-stained on the bones of her torso and limbs. “Tell me about this?”

“Nothing too fancy,” I said. “Just using time-lapse photography to document this woman’s decomp. She’s been out here for about two weeks now. If this were August, she’d be bare bones by this point. But the blowflies are dormant if the temperature’s below fifty degrees, so there’s less insect activity in winter and spring. And the bacteria and enzymes that digest the body work slowly at lower temperatures.”

“Sure. Biochemistry 101: Heat accelerates almost every chemical reaction.”

I pointed toward a lower corner of the fence. “There’s some interesting research down this way,” I told him. “You see these concrete pads?” There were five of them, each measuring seven or eight feet square.

“I recognize those,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve seen those. From space.”

“I’m not following you.”

“They show up in satellite images,” he explained. “I peeked over your fence on Google Earth. It’s amazing what you can see in those satellite images. These concrete pads show up very clearly.” Pointing at a rumpled white body bag, which was draped atop a corpse, he added, “You can also see a couple of those. And I think maybe a body or two, but that might have been wishful thinking on my part.”

“Amazing. But I’m not sure I like the idea that just anybody can look over my fence from up in the sky.”

“You can only see it if you know where to look and what to look for. What sort of research is being done with those pads? Are there bodies buried underneath them?”

I nodded. “One of our graduate students was studying ground-penetrating radar and how the radar image — the signature — of a body changed as it decomposed. So she buried bodies at various depths, camouflaging some of them with debris, and then poured these concrete pads on top. She ran the radar rig across the pads once a week for several months. Looked sort of like she was using a floor polisher out here in the woods, but she was looking through the concrete, not cleaning the top of it.”

“How’d the images change?”

“To be honest,” I said, “to me they looked like clouds on a weather radar screen. Because I already knew they were bodies, I could see the outlines, and I could tell that they were collapsing as they decayed. But if I hadn’t already known what I was looking at, I’m not sure I’d’ve known what I was looking at.”

“Like me looking at the Body Farm from space,” he observed. “Research is tough. If you already knew what you were going to find out, you wouldn’t need to do the research. Sure does help to start out with an educated guess.”

We’d reached one of the lower corners of the facility. “Here’s our longest-running research project.” I pointed to a cluster of small stainless-steel pipes projecting slightly above the leaves and dirt. One of my former Ph.D. students, Arpad Vass — now a research scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory — had spent the past six years analyzing the cornucopia of chemicals given off by decaying bodies, I told Faust. He’d buried three bodies in this corner of the facility, running a grid of perforated pipes through the graves. To collect and analyze the chemicals, Arpad used a vacuum pump to draw gases out of the pipes and through a gas chromatograph — mass spectrometer.

“And what’s he found, after six years?”

“A lot.” I stooped down to disentangle a strand of Virginia creeper from one of the pipes. “I figured maybe he’d pick up thirty or forty different compounds, but so far he’s identified more than five hundred. Interestingly, some of the most prevalent ones are carcinogenic: cancer-causing organic compounds like toluene and benzene. Things the EPA regulates as hazardous chemicals when they’re used in factories or chemical plants.”

“And is this basic research he’s doing by analyzing these postmortem compounds, or does he have an application in mind?”

“Oh, very applied,” I assured him. “He’s recently developed a ‘sniffer,’ he calls it — a handheld instrument that looks a lot like a metal detector — to locate buried bodies and clandestine graves. Just a couple months ago, he used it to help me with an old case — we found the bones of a soldier who’d been killed and buried in Oak Ridge back in 1945, during the Manhattan Project. He also used it on a modern case down in Florida — Caylee Anthony, the two-year-old who went missing in Florida. Arpad was able to show that the carpeting in the trunk of the car contained chemicals from a decaying human body.”

“That reminds me of your electron-microscope case,” he said. “Using high-tech science to solve real-world crimes and real-world problems. That’s what I find most rewarding about my job. Well, that and the chance to fly that airplane every now and then.”

I laughed. I liked Faust. He was funny, smart, and unpretentious.

I checked my watch. “Uh-oh. I need to get you to Engineering. You’ve got an eleven o’clock meeting there, don’t you?” He nodded, so I steered him toward the gate and locked it behind us.

On the drive across the river to the main campus, I worked up my nerve. “Mind if I ask your advice about something?”

“My advice? Sure, ask away. Just remember, though, it’s worth what you pay for it.”

I hesitated, unsure how much background to give. “I have a colleague here,” I began. “A pathologist — the medical examiner, actually. He suffered traumatic injuries to his hands recently. He lost the thumb, index finger, and middle finger of his right hand and all of his left hand.”

He nodded. “I remember reading about this. Gamma-radiation burns, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” I was surprised; he really had done his homework.

“That’s a shame. Devastating blow for a physician. Would’ve been worse if he were a surgeon, though. At least he can’t do any harm to his patients, since they’re already dead.” He made a face. “Ouch, that sounded harsh. I apologize. What I meant—”

I waved the apology aside. “It’s okay. I’ve had the same thought a dozen times. I’ve even thought, ‘Too bad he’s not a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist could get by without hands.’”

“Could be,” he said, “but every psychiatrist I know is already pretty strange. Can you imagine how it would mess with the mind of a shrink to lose his hands?”

I tried picturing it — a Freudian analyst on his own couch, staring at the empty cuffs of his tweed jacket — and in spite of myself I laughed. “We are both bad men,” I said. “Both going to hell.”

“If a little gallows humor is a burning offense, we’ll have lots of company,” he responded. “So tell me about your pathologist friend and about the sort of advice you think I might be able to give.”

“One of the options he’s considering is a prosthesis called the i-Hand,” I said. “A bionic hand. If you take off the rubber skin, you can see a metallic version of bones through the fingers. They’re made of some high-tech engineered plastic, and they’re rigged to flexors and extensors and little motors that mimic the tendons in a living hand.”

He nodded. “I’m familiar with the i-Hand,” he said. “It’s a good prosthesis, but I do have one thing against it.”

My heart sank on Garcia’s behalf. “What do you have against it?”