The Bone Thief (Body Farm 5)

“As Bogart said in Casablanca, ‘Destiny has taken a hand.’”

“Huh?”

“The media’s gotten wind of a fatal shooting at the Body Farm,” he explained, “and somebody at KPD or UT Hospital indicated that the FBI was involved. So we’re getting barraged by calls about that — but not just about that. We’re also getting grilled about allegations of fraud and misconduct at the Body Farm. So the SAC — the special agent in charge — talked to headquarters, and they agreed that it’s time to lay our cards on the table.”

I felt my breath catch as the implications sank in. “So this means we can finally tell Miranda what’s been going on? And the TBI?”

“We’re working on that now. Let us handle it. Just get yourself spiffed up and downtown.” He hung up without taking time to say good-bye.

* * *

The FBI’s skill at keeping things under wraps was matched — possibly even exceeded — by its knack for dramatically unveiling them, I decided shortly after the press conference began. The illegal trade in bodies and body parts was a nationwide criminal enterprise of titanic proportions, impenetrable secrets, and dire peril, according to the special agent in charge. Against all odds, he went on, the Bureau had managed to infiltrate this sinister plot and bring down its murderous mastermind, thanks to the brilliant strategy devised by one dedicated public servant. I glanced at Rankin, who’d masterminded the sting, glad that he was about to receive a pat on the back. But it wasn’t Rankin the SAC credited as the brains behind the sting — it was me. This new spin on events — the suggestion that I’d approached the FBI and offered to help, rather than having been dragged kicking and screaming into a role I hated — astonished me. I stared at Rankin, who grinned at me and winked, then gave me a big thumbs-up. After two or three urgings by the SAC and a couple of gentle pushes by Angela Price, I stepped forward to accept a handshake and a medal expressing the FBI’s gratitude for my service.

I stammered a few words of appreciation in return, but I demurred when asked to tell the story of the sting. Without missing a beat, Rankin stepped forward and gave a brief account, one that greatly magnified my foresight and courage in the face of deadly peril and that also — blessedly — omitted any mention of strippers, compromising photos, and amputated arms. Rankin’s summary was followed, to my surprise, by glowing comments from TBI agent Steve Morgan and UT general counsel Amanda Whiting.

During their comments I scanned and rescanned the faces of the small crowd gathered below the steps, hoping that Miranda might be there to hear such kind words about me. But, alas, she was not, and when the SAC stepped forward to say a few closing words, Rankin took the opportunity to tell me he’d been unable to reach Miranda. “I left her a voice mail and sent her an e-mail, but she seems to be off the grid,” he said.

I nodded and thanked him for trying, but the disappointment still stung.

As the event ended and the officials steered me toward the lobby of the Duncan Building, I heard a voice. “Dad. Dad!” The television and newspaper reporters parted, and Jeff dashed up the steps, followed closely by Jenny and their boys, Tyler and Walker. Jeff threw his arms around me, and Jenny threw her arms around me, and the boys hurled themselves against me, shouting, “Grandpa Bill! Grandpa Bill! You’re a hero!”

We walked three blocks from the Duncan Building up to Gay Street, to the S&W Grand, an ornate art deco cafeteria from the 1930s. Shuttered and decaying for decades, the S&W had recently been lovingly and spectacularly restored to its former glory. We had a very late lunch — or a very early dinner, or a really big afternoon snack. The food was fine, but the ambience was better, and the company was the best part. Afterward, walking back to the parking garage beside Market Square, we ambled through Krutch Park, where dogwoods and redbuds and tulips were on the brink of blooming. As Jenny and the boys took turns jumping across the park’s small stream, Jeff led me to a bench and beckoned me to sit. He took my hand — the same hand he’d let go of that night at Panera. “That was childish of me to walk out on you,” he said, “and spiteful not to return your phone calls. I’m sorry. You raised me better than that. Please forgive me.”

“I already have,” I said. “I’m sorry for my shortcomings as a father. Please forgive me for those.” I felt a sudden pang of very specific guilt. “Oh, and for not getting my tax records to you.”

“I already have,” he said with a laugh. “And I went ahead and filed for an extension. You’ve got until September fifteenth to bring me the rubble heap that passes for your financial records.” He looked me square in the eye. “Dad, you did a good job of raising me, and if you end up raising another kid, you’ll do a good job again. Tell me if there’s anything we can do to help you. And please come out to the house for dinner next Sunday.”

“Deal,” I said. “On both counts.”

CHAPTER 45

The wind gusted and shifted, flinging raindrops against the curved windshield of the helicopter. As the drops hit, they shattered into smaller droplets that rolled separately down the sleek glass like iridescent ball bearings. With each buffet I felt the helicopter shudder on the helipad. Through the headphones cupping my ears, I heard a faint click, then the voice of the pilot, a former army helicopter instructor named Mike Hawkins. “Y’all hold on back there,” he said. “It’s getting mighty lively outside.” Beyond the headset’s noise seals and above the rising whine of the turbine, the wind whistled and moaned.

Eddie had gotten The Phone Call from Dr. Alvarez an hour earlier. The good news was, Glen Faust’s hands — and his tissue type — made him an excellent match for Eddie. The bad news was, Faust’s heart was failing fast, and unless Eddie and Faust could be airlifted to Emory immediately, it was likely that Faust would finish dying and the hands would go to waste.

Faust’s motionless form — the brain definitively dead but the heart tentatively, barely alive — lay on the narrow gurney beside me in the helicopter’s patient bay. Taut nylon straps crossed his chest, hips, and legs, and another strap immobilized his head. An endotracheal tube snaked out of his mouth, and the bellows of a portable ventilator made his chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm. An IV tube led from one arm, and a bundle of wires ran from the gurney to a small monitor mounted behind the pilot’s headrest. The monitor’s pulse readout fluctuated between 77 and 83 as the beats traced a series of sharp little peaks across the screen. Perhaps it was only because I’d been told he was dying, but the peaks seemed provisional, as if even the monitor were already giving him up for dead.

I heard Hawkins press his transmit button. “LifeStar One to LifeStar Two.” I looked out the window; a hundred feet to our right was a second air ambulance, where Eddie Garcia lay strapped to a second gurney. The neighboring helicopter twitched on its skids in time with our own. “I don’t think we’re going anywhere,” said Hawkins glumly.

“Not for a while anyhow,” answered the second helicopter’s pilot.

“I don’t think we have a while,” said a female voice. It was the flight nurse, strapped into the rear-facing jump seat on the opposite side of the gurney from me. “His pulse is getting real thready. He’s barely hanging on.”

“Do we need to get him back to the ER?” It was the second pilot — Wimberly was his name, but his colleagues called him Wimby.

“I give this guy a couple hours, tops,” the nurse said. “If we take him back inside, he’ll be in the morgue by suppertime, and his hands will go to waste.”

“I’ve got faith in you, Nancy,” said Wimberly. “I’ve flown…what, fifty, sixty missions with you, and you’ve never lost a patient.”

“I’m telling you, Wimby, this guy’s close to coding.”

“If he codes,” asked Hawkins, “how much time do we have to get him to Emory?”

“None,” she answered. “Their protocol requires a beating-heart donor. They won’t take the hands if his heart’s stopped.”

From the helicopter base, the flight controller radioed with an update. “Radar?

??s showing a solid line of storm cells to the west, Hawk, stretching all the way to Nashville. Won’t blow through till tonight.”

“Well, crap,” said Hawkins. “This isn’t looking like our day. Or Dr. Garcia’s.”

For what seemed a long time, there was no sound but the steady whine of the turbine and the fluctuating lash of the weather. Then, over the radio, came a soft voice. “Please,” said Carmen Garcia, who was in the other helicopter alongside Eddie. “Please.” There was no hysteria or panic in her voice, only sorrow. “If we go now, my husband still has a chance to use these hands. If we don’t go, he loses them — he loses these hands.”

Neither pilot answered, and the silence was excruciating. The flight nurse gave me an agonized look.

“Please,” repeated Carmen. “I beseech you.”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” said Hawkins finally, “we can’t take off in this. We’d be breaking federal regulations. And we’d be putting people at risk. You and your husband. Dr. Brockton. The flight crews. People on the ground, if we crashed. We can’t take off in these conditions.”

Through the background hiss on the radio came the sound of ragged breaths. “Of course. I understand. Forgive me. Forgive me for being selfish.”

Across the gurney from me, the nurse removed her helmet and mask. Bending forward, she buried her face in her hands and wept.

I heard a long, shuddering breath, then Carmen’s voice, practically a whisper, hypnotic and incantatory in its cadence. At first I couldn’t make it out, but soon I realized she was speaking in Spanish. “Ave María, llena eres de gracia…” She was praying, I realized, and I recognized the prayer: “Hail Mary, full of grace…”

Suddenly the helicopter was buffeted by a ferocious gust of wind. The aircraft shuddered and rocked, and then I felt one skid lift off the pad as the wind swirled beneath the rotor from one side and flipped upward. “Jesus Christ,” said the pilot, “hold on,” and with that we were in the air. It wasn’t that the helicopter had lifted off; it was more that it had been ripped from the pad. The aircraft lurched and bucked, and the flight nurse and I grabbed for the handrails of the gurney and the vertical bars attached to the sides of the cabin. The outside world had vanished, as thoroughly as if the windows had been draped with white blankets. The helicopter slammed and lurched and whipped like a rat being shaken by a terrier. Finally the turbulence eased and the aircraft seemed to level off, or at least to find a reasonably stable zone of cloud. I heard a loud exhalation through the headset, and the pilot’s voice — shaken but relieved — said, “Y’all okay back there?”