Cut to the Bone (Body Farm 8)

JANUARY 1993

CHAPTER 54

Brockton

“I still can’t believe it,” Jeff squawked, for the third time — or was it the fourth? — since we’d sat down in Calhoun’s. “That guy really needs to fry.” He punctuated his opinion by licking a blob of barbecue sauce from his thumb.

“Jeff.” Kathleen’s voice was soft, but it carried an unmistakable motherly reprimand — one she underscored by wagging a finger at him. It was her pinky finger — an eighth-inch shorter than before, its range of motion still limited, but on the mend, thank God. “We’re here to celebrate,” she added,” not second-guess the jury.”

“I know. Sorry, Mom; sorry, Dad,” he said. Through the plate-glass window behind him, I watched a towboat bulling a raft of barges upriver, the wake angling out from the stern and rushing toward the pilings on which the restaurant rested. Jeff plucked a French fry from his plate and raised it toward his mouth, then began gesturing with the potato, like a symphony conductor with a baton. “But he killed six people — six people that we know of — including his own mother and stepfather. If a guy like that doesn’t deserve to die, I don’t know who does. They sure didn’t deserve to die.”

“They didn’t,” agreed Kittredge, “but it’s not just about whether he deserved it.” The KPD detective had joined us for the post-sentencing lunch; so had Janelle Mayfield, who’d fought Satterfield for her life and had won. With Kittredge’s support, Janelle had been hired by KPD as an advocate for victims of sex crimes — a brave move on the part of both KPD and Janelle, I thought. “If he’d gotten a death sentence, he might never be executed anyhow,” Kittredge went on. “There’d be appeals — years and years of appeals. Millions of dollars worth of appeals. Maybe it’s just as good, and a lot cheaper, to lock him up and throw away the key.”

I checked my watch; it was twelve forty-five. “Roxanne, what time’s your flight?”

“Not till three thirty,” she said. “If Tyler and I head for the airport by two thirty, we’ll be fine.”

“Are you kidding?” I teased. “The way he creeps along in that truck? You should’ve left forty-five minutes ago. Be quicker to walk.”

“Ha ha,” said Tyler. “You’re just jealous because I won’t sell it to you.”

“What, that old thing?” I retorted. “No shoulder harnesses, no air bags — that thing’s a death trap, man.” I grinned, but then I felt a pang. I was going to miss Tyler — miss his work, and miss his company. “You sure you don’t want to rethink, now that your thesis is done? Maybe take the spring and summer off, then decide?”

“Bill.” Kathleen’s voice was soft — even softer than it’d been with Jeff a moment before. I knew when to shut up, and the time was now.

“Another thing,” said Jeff, taking advantage of the momentary lull. “How come Satterfield gets a free lawyer? A really mean free lawyer? That guy DeVriess—‘Grease’—man, he was fierce. Made it sound like Dad was the scumbag on trial.”

“Jeff.” This time Kathleen’s voice made no pretense at softness. This time even Jeff got the message. Across the table, Jenny’s hand reached for Jeff’s, her fingers giving his a squeeze. Chiding, or affectionate? Maybe both, I realized, when Jeff looked at her with a sheepish smile. Their communication — much of it conveyed by looks and touches — seemed surprisingly evolved for a pair of high-school kids. Was that because they’d had a brush with death? Or was it just because they were smart, good-hearted, and happy with one another? Whatever the reason, I was pleased for them.

“Show them,” Jeff said to her.

“Now?” Jenny blushed, suddenly looking shy.

“Sure, why not? Show ’em.”

“Show us what, sweetheart?” asked Kathleen.

“Oh, nothing, really,” she said. “Just… a couple of sketches I did in the courtroom today.” Jeff nudged her, and she reached down beside her chair and retrieved a small leather portfolio, setting it in her lap and opening the flap. She took out two pieces of drawing paper. “Janelle, one’s for you.”

“For me?” Janelle looked nervous. “Why?”

Jenny smiled. “You remember the drawing I did that day at the police department?”

“How could I forget?” said the woman. “Scared the crap out of me when I saw that awful face staring up from the page.”

“Not the drawing of him,” said Jenny. “The drawing of you.”

“Honey, I am talking about the drawing of me,” Janelle replied, drawing a good laugh from all of us. Then her face turned serious. “Sure, I remember the drawing you did of me. I looked pretty bad, too.”

“Not bad,” said Jenny. “Scared. Hurt. Sad. Mad.”

Janelle nodded. “Sounds about right.”

“Today I drew you again.” Jenny handed her the top sketch. I couldn’t have said which sprang to Janelle’s face first, the smile or the tears. She tried to speak, but quickly gave up. Instead, she laid one hand on her heart; with the other, she held up the drawing so we could all see it. There were still traces of hurt — more lines around the mouth and eyes than a woman her age should have, and a zigzag scar across the cheekbone — but mostly, the face gazing out from the page radiated courage and confidence.

“That is beautiful,” said Kathleen. “A perfect likeness.”

Jenny beamed at Kathleen and Janelle, then looked at me. “Dr. B, the other one’s for you.”

“Me? Why’d you waste a perfectly good piece of paper drawing me?”

“It’s not of you,” she said. “It’s for you.” She handed me the drawing, facedown. I hesitated, then turned it up.

It was like nothing I’d ever seen: A girl’s face — the unidentified strip-mine girl’s face — turned upward, toward the sky. Her features were serene, almost beatific; underneath them, the skull shone through, faintly but distinctly, in a way that somehow did not diminish or detract from the beauty of the face. She was shown in profile, one eye open wide, the other hidden by the bridge of the nose. But from that other, unseen eye grew a tree: a miniature but fully formed tree, its crown luxuriant with leaves and blossoms and songbirds. In the background, and on all sides, other trees grew, from ground that had once been scarred and barren, but had long since softened and gone to green. Beneath the ground, the trees were linked by a web of roots — roots that entwined delicately, seamlessly, with the girl’s golden hair; roots that somehow were the girl’s golden hair. Amid death, the image seemed to suggest ?

? in spite of death, or perhaps even because of death, in some mysterious way I did not yet understand — there was life.

Even life abundant.

Author’s Note: On Fact and Fiction

Those of you who are astute at arithmetic may have noted that Dr. Bill Brockton, our fictional hero, is slightly younger — by some thirty years — than Dr. Bill Bass, who turned a remarkably youthful eighty-five in August 2013. Making Brockton so much younger has much to recommend it, fictionally speaking, as it allows Brockton (and us!) to be still employed, rather than retired.

But all choices have consequences, and in this book’s case — specifically, the case of the Body Farm’s genesis — Brockton’s relative youth has required us to fudge the birth year of the real-life research facility. In Cut to the Bone, we give that year as 1992. In real life, it’s considerably earlier, as well as more complex. The sow barn described in the book is quite real, but it was back in 1971 that it became the location for the Body Farm’s first incarnation: a distant, smelly place where decomposing bodies could be stashed before they were processed into clean skeletal remains.

The Body Farm’s second incarnation — its metamorphosis, to borrow an entomological term from the realm of blowflies and maggots — didn’t occur until a decade later. In the spring of 1981, the first research project began in a new sixteen-by-sixteen-foot chain-link cube at the facility’s current location, behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center, on the south shore of the Tennessee River. That project, which commenced with donated body 1-81, was a pioneering study of insect activity in human corpses. Corpse 1-81 and its successors (2-81, 3-81, and 4-81) served as the research subjects for a master’s degree thesis by Dr. Bass’s student William Rodriguez. Rodriguez’s pioneering research, documenting the relationship between the insects’ activity and the cadavers’ decay rates, remains a classic — one of the most frequently cited studies in both forensic anthropology and forensic entomology.