The Breaking Point (Body Farm 9)

The ticking—of the truck’s engine or of the more ominous cosmic machinery—seemed to grow louder, and just as I recognized the sound of footsteps, a face loomed in front of me. I jumped, and then realized, with a mixture of fear, relief, and embarrassment that the last, loudest ticking I’d heard—a split-second afer the footsteps—had been the sound of someone tapping on my window to get my attention. “Dr. Brockton?” I blinked, disoriented, then recognized the face of Steve Morgan, a former student who now worked for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

“Steve?” I rolled down the window. “You scared the crap out of me. Am I under arrest?” I said it as a joke—or thought I did—but in my skittish, spooked state of mind, it came out sounding more paranoid than humorous. I tried to smooth over the awkwardness with another joke. “Looks like I could learn a trick or two from the TBI. I never could motivate you to get to class by eight.”

This one didn’t fall quite so flat. He smiled, though in the watery light now coming from the eastern sky, the smile looked faint. “Doc, could I talk to you about something? A personal matter?”

I felt a rush of sympathy and relief. “Sure, Steve. I’m always happy to help a former student, if I can.” Rolling up the window and opening the door, I got out and shook his hand. For the first time I noticed the black Crown Victoria parked fifty yards away. “You been staking me out? Or did you just know I’d be up with the chickens?”

“I remembered you were an early bird,” he said. “But also, I couldn’t sleep. Figured I might as well come on down and wait for you.”

“You are in a state. Come inside.”

He frowned. “Mind if we stay outside? Walk and talk? I don’t want to bring this into your office.”

“Sounds serious. Sure, let’s go.” I clicked my key fob to lock the truck, then we started out along the narrow service road that circled the base of the stadium, weaving in and out of concrete footings and angled steel girders. We walked in silence a while; I didn’t want to press him, and he was in no hurry to begin.

When we reached the other end of the stadium—where an access tunnel led through the base of the grandstands to the playing field—I noticed that the chain-link gate was unlocked and standing open. Pointing to it, I walked through. We emerged at one corner of the north end zone. The transition—from the dark, narrow passageway to the vast bowl of the stadium opening before us—seemed to free up something in Steve.

“I don’t know much about marriage,” he began, stopping and leaning against the padding around the base of the goalpost. “Sherry and I have only been married three years. I’m still trying to figure out how it works.”

“Me, too,” I said, giving his shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. Sherry, his wife, had been my student, too; in fact, my osteology class was where they had met, and where Steve had first asked her out. “I’ve been married thirty years now, and sometimes I still find myself scratching my head, wondering what the hell just happened.” His only response was a ruminative grunt, so I went on. “What’s got you worried, Steve? Your marriage in a rough patch?”

“No, sir,” he said. “I think maybe yours is.”

I took a step back. “Excuse me?”

He turned to face me. “Do you know where your wife was day before yesterday, Dr. Brockton? What she was doing?”

I stared at him, baffled and filled with a sense of dread. “She was in the library at UT. Writing a journal article.”

“No, sir,” he said again, shaking his head with what appeared to be deep sadness. “She was in Nashville. At the Vanderbilt Plaza Hotel.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I saw your wife in Nashville that day, Dr. Brockton. At the Vanderbilt Plaza Hotel. With a man. They were having lunch. He was holding her hand.”

I felt confused. I felt sick. And I felt mad as hell at Steve. “You’re mistaken,” I said angrily. “Kathleen was here—on this campus, in the library—all day and most of the evening.” He shook his head, and I wanted to hit him. “You barely know her, Steve—you’ve seen her, what, two or three times in your life? I can’t believe you’d accuse her of something like this.” I spun and walked away, across the goal line, toward midfield.

“BDK 643,” he called after me.

I stopped in my tracks, then turned to look at him. “What did you say?” It was a reflexive question, one I needn’t have asked.

“BDK 643,” he repeated. “That’s the tag of the car she drove away in. Toyota Camry with a Knox County plate. I ran it. It’s registered to you.”

“I know,” I said. My knees had gone weak. I motioned to a bench by the sideline and sat down heavily. I felt as if someone—someone big, like a UT defensive lineman or cornerback—had just knocked me flat. “Tell me what you saw. Start at the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”

THIRTY MINUTES LATER, KATHLEEN OPENED HER office door. When she saw me sitting behind her desk, she dropped her keys. They clattered to the floor with unnatural loudness. “Bill. You scared me to death. What are you doing here?”

“Who is it, Kathleen?”

“What?”

“Who is it? Who is he? You’re having an affair. I want to know who the sonofabitch is.”

She gave me an odd look. There was no shame in it, as I’d expected there would be; instead, I saw . . . what? Grimness? Sorrow? Disappointment? “No,” she said after a moment. “I’m not having an affair.”

“Dammit, Kathleen, stop lying to me. You said you were in the library all day Monday. Writing. Trying to meet a submission deadline. That’s a lie. You were in Nashville.” Her eyes narrowed and her chin lifted slightly—a warning sign, one that might have given me pause under any other circumstances. “You were with a man at the Vanderbilt Plaza Hotel. Don’t even think about telling me you weren’t, because I know.”

“You’ve been spying on me?”

“No, I have not been spying on you,” I said. “Steve Morgan saw you there. Saw you holding hands with some man. He thought I deserved to know.” I shook my head. “I told Steve he was wrong—told him it couldn’t’ve been you, because you were here at UT, working in the library. But then he showed me a picture of your car, and your license plate. And then he showed me a picture of you and your boyfriend.” I had expected to stay furious—intended to stay furious—but I felt my anger crumbling, and I felt tears rolling down my face. “Why, Kathleen? You’re always talking about what a good life we have. What a good marriage we have. Why would you risk throwing all that away?”

“And you,” she said. “Why would you be so quick to doubt me?” Her briefcase fell to the floor and she slumped backward against the door, then hung her head, putting her face in her hands. I heard her breath grow ragged, and by the time she dropped her hands and looked up—only a few seconds later—she had aged a decade, her face slack and bleak. “Oh, honey,” she whispered. “I’ve been needing to talk to you. But I’ve been afraid to tell you . . . because it’s really hard . . . and I knew . . . it would make you . . . so sad.” She fought for breath, shaking her head slowly. “It’s not . . . what you think.”

I slapped the top of the desk, so hard it sounded like a rifle shot, and she flinched so hard the door rattled in its frame. “Jesus, Kathleen, don’t give me that crap,” I began, but she held up a hand, and the haunted expression in her face stopped me.

“It’s not . . . an affair,” she said. “It’s worse. Much worse.” She stared straight at me now. “All that cramping and bleeding I’ve been having? The nonstop period? I thought it was just menopause and fibroids, or maybe endometriosis. But it’s not. It’s cancer, Bill. A fast, mean kind of uterine cancer.” She drew a shuddering breath and held it for a moment, but when she breathed out, the exhalation sounded oddly steady; calm, even, as if saying the dreaded word had freed her from something. Meanwhile, as she regained her equilibrium, I began to lose mine. The room seemed to spin, the floor—the abyss—to open beneath me. “It’s called leiomyosarcoma,” she went on. “Smoo

th-muscle tumor. I’d never heard of it. Have you?” I just stared, and she suddenly smiled an ironic, heartbreaking smile. “That man in Nashville—my ‘boyfriend’? That was Dr. Andrew Spitzer, from Vanderbilt. He’s a gynecologic oncologist—a specialist in cancer of the lady parts. That hand-holding over lunch? That was when he gave me my test results. Gave me my death sentence.”

“What are you talking about? Stop,” I said, struggling to catch up, struggling to keep it together. “Tests can be wrong. We need to get a second opinion.”

She shook her head. “Spitzer was my second opinion. I saw my regular ob-gyn while you were out in San Diego. She referred me to Spitzer; got him to work me in on an urgent basis. I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to worry you with it.”

“I’m your husband, Kathleen. I want to be worried, if you’re worried. But this can’t be right.”

“It might not be right,” she said, “but it’s real. Remember last year, when I had that fibroid cut out?”