The Bone Thief (Body Farm 5)

“Give me a break,” I snapped. “I was mortified when I saw those pictures. If I could have bricked up the doorway and welded the damn drawer shut, I would have. Yes, I’m sure they were both locked.”

He leaned down and inspected the edges of the drawer. “Doesn’t look like it’s been forced,” he said. “So who else has keys?”

Before I could answer, the phone rang. The display announced the caller as Peggy. “My secretary,” I said, lifting the handset by reflex.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re there,” she said. “A Dr. Raymond Sinclair’s on the line for you. Something to do with funding for a research project he says he’s sponsoring. This is the third time he’s called this afternoon. He says it’s urgent he speak with you today.”

“Dr. Sinclair?” Given Ray Sinclair’s apparent scorn of advanced degrees, I could only assume the “Dr.” was designed to carry weight with Peggy. I looked to Rankin for guidance. He raised his left hand to his head — his thumb at his ear, his pinkie near his lips — as if the hand were a telephone. He nodded, spinning his right forefinger in a rolling, forward motion that meant go. “Oh, yes,” I said to Peggy. “I do need to speak with Dr. Sinclair. Please put him through right away.” I heard the line click. “Ray, are you there?”

“Hello, Bill,” he said. “How the hell are you?”

I caught Rankin’s eye and pointed toward the speakerphone button on the phone, raising my eyebrows in a question. He shook his head emphatically, so instead I angled the handset slightly away from my ear. The agent leaned close, his ear practically touching mine.

“How am I? How do you think I am, Ray? I’m a little off balance. I had an unpleasant surprise this afternoon.”

“I’m surprised to hear you say that. I thought you’d thank me.”

“Thank you? Why?”

“For sending you mementos of that swell evening we had in Las Vegas. You looked like you were having quite a time while I was out of the room.”

“How did you get those pictures, Ray?”

“A sweet young thing gave them to me. I believe her name is Marian. Marian, Madame Librarian.” He chuckled at the joke.

“And what do you plan to do with them?”

“Do with them? I don’t plan to do anything with them, Bill.” Rankin flashed a thumbs-down sign, which I took to mean he was unhappy to hear that. “I just thought you’d appreciate taking a walk down memory lane. A walk down lap-dance lane. Oh, but you don’t mind if I share them with our friends at The Library, do you? Those would be a nice addition to their Web site.”

“You must be joking,” I said. “Those pictures on the Web?”

“What, you don’t like that idea, Bill? You don’t want your colleagues and students and family to see what a great time you were having?”

“You know I don’t want those circulating on the Internet — or anyplace else. You know that would be very painful to me.”

“So here’s what’s very painful to me,” he shot back, the phony cheerfulness gone from his voice. “You said you’d provide me with bodies, and you haven’t. You thought you had me by the balls, and you got greedy. But who’s got the tighter grip, Bill? Tell me, how does it feel?”

“It feels like you’ve got me,” I admitted.

“Damn right I’ve got you.”

“So what do you want, Ray?”

“I want two bodies by Tuesday,” he said. “On ice, in Newark.”

“Tuesday? That’s not much time,” I protested. “What if I can’t get them to you that fast?”

“Did I mention there’s video, too? You know what I think, Bill? I think you’re gonna be the next big hit on YouTube if I don’t get those bodies Tuesday. By the way, Bill, how’s your cardiovascular health? Any history of heart attacks in your family?”

Before I had a chance to respond — even before I remembered that the FBI’s previous informant against Sinclair had died of a massive coronary — Sinclair hung up.

Rankin flashed me a thumbs-up. I did not share his sense of success.

He made a call from his cell phone. “Did you get all that?” He nodded as he listened. “And the audio quality’s good?” He nodded again. “Great. You guys are the best.”

He hung up smiling, but then he remembered, and he frowned. “So the photos,” he said. “We really need those. Think hard. Where else might you have put them?”

“I’m telling you, they were locked in the drawer. I’d stake my life on it.”

“And who else has keys to the drawer?”

“No one. Well, almost no one. My secretary, Peggy. Some old guy, years ago, in the maintenance department.”

Then it hit me, the day’s third tsunami. “And Miranda.”

* * *

That night I had a dream, and in my dream I was walking a wide, sandy trail in a park — maybe in Florida — with lots of palmetto trees. Some slight movement at my feet caused me to look down. There, an inch-long worm of some sort thrashed wildly on the sand, in a series of violent movements — as if a tiny whip were somehow cracking itself. After a few seconds, the convulsions stopped and the worm slithered off into the grass. I was puzzled: What had triggered the spasms, and why had they suddenly stopped? Then, two feet farther up the trail, I saw a second worm thrashing. This one was covered, from end to end, with fire ants from a nearby anthill. It managed to fling off a few of the ants, but dozens more clung to it and still more flocked to it. As I watched in fascinated horror, the worm’s thrashing ebbed. It trembled a few times and then lay still, except for the quivering swarm of insects feeding on its dying body.

I awoke before dawn, trembling and drenched with sweat.

* * *

I’d been up for three hours, but the sun had been up for only one, when my home phone rang. It was Eddie Garcia, calling to say that he’d just heard from the Emory hand surgeon. “They’ve approved me,” he said. “I’m on their list — first on their list — when they find a matching donor for me.”

“That’s great news, Eddie.”

“That’s not all. She — Dr. Alvarez, the surgeon — just got a big research grant from the federal government. The grant will fund the cost of everything — the surgery, the postoperative care, the physical therapy. It even covers the immunotherapy meds I’ll have to take for the rest of my life.”

“That’s wonderful. Congratulations. Does she have any guess when she might be able to do the surgery?”

“No. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next year, maybe five years from now. There’s no way to know.”

I knew that some wait-listed transplant recipients spent months or years in limbo, inching up the list and praying for a match. Some died waiting and praying. But Eddie’s situation was different: He wouldn’t die from the wait, unlike someone whose heart was failing. What’s more, his time in limbo might be far briefer than a heart or a kidney patient’s, he pointed out. “The surgery’s still experimental,” he explained, “so the wait list is short. Very short, in fact — I’m the only one on it so far.” He laughed. “So as soon as Emory gets a donor whose hands are a good match, it can happen.”

“And what now? You just wait for the word? The proverbial Phone Call?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “Dr. Alvarez says the blood vessels in my right wrist have probably regrown and recovered by now. She wants me to come back to Atlanta so she can reverse the pedicle graft and tidy up the stump. That way I’ll be ready whenever she finds a donor.”

“How soon does she want you to come?”

“Today. Carmen will drive me down this afternoon, and Dr. Alvarez will detach th

e graft tomorrow morning.”

Eddie also had an update on Clarissa Lowe’s death. The CDC — the Centers for Disease Control — had done a genetic profile on the tissue sample Eddie had sent after the autopsy. The CDC lab had identified the bacterium in Lowe’s bone graft as Clostridium sordellii, a particularly toxic species. “They plan to look for other cases of bone grafts linked to toxic shock recently,” he added, “in case there’s a wider problem with improperly sterilized cadaver tissue.”

Eddie himself had pinned down the manufacturer of the bone graft Lowe had received. “The graft itself was made by OrthoMedica,” he said, “but OrthoMedica made it from bone they bought from a supplier — a tissue bank.” He named the four tissue banks OrthoMedica regularly bought cadaver tissue from. I’d never heard of the first three he mentioned — Gift of Life, BioLogic, and Donor Medical Services. But I’d damn sure heard of the fourth one: Tissue Sciences and Services, Incorporated. Given the bad blood between Ray Sinclair and Glen Faust, I was surprised to hear that Tissue Sciences did business with OrthoMedica. But just as blood was thicker than water, perhaps money was thicker than blood — even bad blood.

After Eddie hung up, I called the FBI to relay his findings to Rankin. If Tissue Sciences was the source of the bacteria-laden bone, it was possible that the company’s penchant for playing fast and loose included other crimes besides black-market body buying. I didn’t know what federal statutes — if any — governed how a tissue bank was required to process or sterilize cadaver tissue, but if anybody was in a position to find out quickly, it was surely Rankin. Rankin promised to look into it. “By the way,” he added, “we arrested Sinclair. Last night. I thought you’d want to know.” He was right. I began to see light at the end of the tunnel.