The Bone Thief (Body Farm 5)

“You hear that, Glen? We’re both bastards,” said Sinclair. “Not just me. All our lives, you’ve rubbed my nose in the difference between us. You were the real son; I was the halfway version. But your precious Dr. Brockton’s right: We’re both bastards. Two sides of the same coin.”

“Our circumstances were different,” said Faust. “That wasn’t your fault, but it wasn’t mine either. It was our father’s. Put down the gun, Ray. You don’t have to shoot him. Just get out of here.”

“It’s too late for that,” Sinclair said to Faust, and then — to me — he added, “He wasn’t stealing the bones, Billy boy, he was putting them back.”

I was struggling to keep up. “Putting them back? Why would he be putting them back?”

“Because he’d gotten everything he needed from them, right, Glen? Because he likes to think of himself as one of the good guys, right, Glen?” Sinclair waved the gun at Faust. “Get off him.”

Faust released my arms and got to his feet. “Ray, listen,” he said. “If you walk away now, you can get out of here and get a fresh start someplace else.”

“It’s so touching,” said Sinclair, “all this brotherly love and brotherly wisdom. Do you have a big brother, Bill? A half brother? Doesn’t that term, ‘half brother,’ sum up the genetics and the dynamics of it perfectly? It’d be wrong to con a full brother into robbing graves and committing crimes, but it’s okay if he’s only a half brother, right, Glen?”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” said Faust. “I thought that together we could do great things.”

“No, you thought you could do great things, and you were willing to use me along the way. You were the beloved son, the golden boy, the stuff of medical school and engineering school. I was the bastard child, the dirty little secret your father never acknowledged. When I finally tried to join the family, you used me to do your dirty work. I got to get blood on my hands so you wouldn’t have to.”

“You didn’t have to kill that embalmer, Ray. You panicked.”

“Easy for you to say, Glen. You weren’t the one who’d helped him dismember one body and steal another. You weren’t the one about to take a fall.”

“We could have worked something out with him.”

“Bullshit, brother. That’s twenty-twenty hindsight and hundred-percent bullshit. I had a split second to make a decision, and you weren’t there to help me make it.”

“But I’m here now,” Faust said. “Let me help you make this decision. Dr. Brockton’s a good man. He does good work.”

“Helping the cops catch killers? Helping them catch scum like me?”

“Walk away, Ray. Give me the gun and get out of here. We’ll wait an hour, and then I’ll turn myself in. I’ll confess to the Roswell murder.”

Sinclair laughed bitterly. “Nice try, but you know it wouldn’t work. You’ve got an airtight alibi, remember? You were off delivering some keynote speech at Johns Hopkins or the Mayo Clinic when I tried to call you that night.”

“But you’d have a good head start.”

“A good running start?” Sinclair gestured at me with the gun. “Not with him alive. You really think he’d keep quiet to give me a break? He already set me up. I have several powerful reasons to shoot him.” He gave a bitter laugh. “If you really want to help me out, brother, you can confess to two deaths — the embalmer’s and Brockton’s.” He aimed the gun at my chest, and I saw his finger tighten on the trigger.

I heard someone — maybe Faust, maybe myself — shouting “No!” as I closed my eyes to die. Something slammed into my chest as the crack of the pistol tore the air. The force of the impact knocked me backward, and my head hit the floor hard enough to daze me. Then I felt weight and warmth and wetness on my chest — groping with a hand, I touched the sticky wetness of blood — but I felt something else on my chest, too, and as my head cleared, I realized that the blood was not my own blood: It was the blood of Faust, who’d flung himself between me and Sinclair as a shield. Blood spurted from a bullet wound in his left temple. I managed to squirm out from under him, and I placed my hands over the hole and pressed. Blood oozed between my fingers.

I looked up at Sinclair. His eyes had a wild, crazed look, and his chest was heaving. He pointed the gun at me again, and again I closed my eyes to die, but again I heard a shot that I did not feel. Sinclair crumpled to the floor, and Special Agent Rooster Rankin — his weapon still smoking — sprang into the room, snatching the gun from Sinclair’s slackening fingers.

Rankin’s shot seemed to rouse Faust; he groaned, and his eyes fluttered open. He stared at me, his gaze gradually coming into focus, and then it flickered sidelong, to the place where Sinclair had fallen. His lids closed tightly, and tears seeped from beneath them.

He opened them again and looked up at me. “Oh, dear God,” he said, “what have I done?”

“Don’t talk,” I said. “We’re calling an ambulance.” I checked the floor for my missing cell phone, but Rankin was already dialing 911 on his. “Just hang on,” I urged Faust.

“Please,” he said. “Let me die.” I felt his hands clutching mine.

“No,” I said. “I won’t let you die.”

Faust worked his fingers underneath my own, struggling to pry my hand off his head wound. I pressed harder, resisting his resistance, and I felt the strength ebbing from his hands and arms.

“Do something for me,” he gasped. “Promise me.” His voice was a whisper and fading fast. I leaned closer, my ear almost against his lips, to hear what he said.

I pulled my face away from Faust’s and stared into his eyes, astonished.

“I promise,” I said, redoubling the pressure on the wound as his eyes closed. “I promise.”

CHAPTER 44

I did let Faust die, though not on purpose. By the time the ambulance transported him the quarter mile from the Body Farm to UT Hospital, his heart had stopped. The ER trauma team managed to restart it — but by then Faust was brain-dead.

Ironically, that half-living, half-dead state now made it possible, in theory, to grant Faust’s second request, the one he’d whispered just before his heart had stopped. “Give my hands to your friend,” Faust had breathed. “Give my hands to Garcia.”

It was theoretically possible, but it was highly unlikely. For starters, Faust’s tissue type would have to match Eddie’s — UT was doing the needed tests now — and we’d already learned that having a potential donor wasn’t the same as having a good match. Even if the match proved good, though, the hands might not be usable. Emory’s hand-transplant protocol required a beating-heart donor, Dr. Alvarez had explained when I’d phoned her. If Faust’s heart wasn’t beating when he reached Emory, she couldn’t accept the hands, couldn’t transplant them to Eddie. And UT’s trauma team gave Faust’s weakened heart only fifty-fifty odds of surviving the trip to Atlanta.

In any case, Dr. Alvarez had explained, she shouldn’t be talking with me about this. “UT Hospital needs to tell the Knoxville organ-procurement agency that there’s a possible donor for a hand-transplant candidate in Atlanta. Then the Knoxville agency needs to call the agency here — LifeLink — and let them know. If it looks like a good match, LifeLink will call us. If, and only if, I decide to accept the hands, then I’ll make the phone call to Dr. Garcia.”

By the end of my brief phone call with the surgeon, my mood had swung from hope to despair once more, and I’d acquired at least a glimmer of insight into the emotional roller-coaster rides endured by countless organ-transplant candidates and their loved ones.

I didn’t have long to dwell on my discouragement, though. Rooster Rankin phoned. “Can you be downtown in an hour,” he asked, “looking professional but also dashing?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “In fact, I don’t think ‘dashing’ is an option no matter how much time you give me. Why?”

“We’re holding a press conference on the steps of the Duncan Federal Building at two o’clock.”

“What? Why? And why such shor

t notice?”