Carved in Bone (Body Farm 1)

I racked my brain. “It had two autopsy numbers on it — the original was from last year, but I don’t remember what came after the ‘A-2004.’ But Dr. Carter added a number when she looked at it the other day, A-2005-125, maybe.”

“Can’t be too many with double numbers. If it’s here, we’ll find it.”

We checked the cart. It wasn’t there, and my heart sank. Then I noticed the bag still dangling from Joey’s right hand. If I’d arrived a second later, it would have gone up in flames.

I bore the putrid organs before me with both hands, like the crown jewels on a velvet pillow. It wasn’t so much a gesture of reverence as a stance of caution: the bag had been punctured and was dripping steadily. Entering the decomp lab, I laid my prize on a countertop and sliced open the top. The contents slithered and plopped out onto the absorbent surgical pad.

I fished out the remnants of the heart, stomach, and intestines first, then what I believed to be the liver, then various other organs that were more or less recognizable as themselves, or at least as something other than lung. That left a mound of lung tissue, which looked like a chocolate pudding gone terribly wrong in the making.

The most efficient way to do this was also the messiest. Picking up the nearest blob of tissue, I began to squeeze, squishing it through loosely clenched fingers. Nothing. I repeated the process with half a dozen other lungish-looking blobs. Still nothing. I scooped up the last of the blobs and gave it a hard, frustrated squeeze…and when I did, something sharp jabbed the heel of my hand. It was a shard of bone, an inch long, a quarter-inch wide, and tapering to a wicked point. It had nicked my glove; I hoped it hadn’t also broken the skin. I rinsed it off, set it in a small pot to simmer, and then cleaned and disinfected my hands. The skin appeared unbroken, but I still gave it a pretty thorough marinade in Betadine.

Just as I was drying off, the door opened and in walked Miranda, sporting a bright orange fiberglass cast. She pirouetted, angling the cast in all directions. “UT orange,” I said. “Very sporty.”

“Thought it might get me a close-up on ESPN at the football game next weekend,” she said. “Any luck with our friend here?”

“Yeah, barely. Pure, blind, last-second luck.” I fished the bone fragment out of the pot with some tongs. She whistled appreciatively. “It wasn’t a knife that punctured his lung and made him bleed to death — it was a piece of his own rib.”

“And that happened eighteen days before he collapsed and died?”

“Assuming it splintered off during the stomping he took in that bar fight.”

“So the guy you’re helping…”

“…was helping his pal fight off the gang who did this. Unfortunately, he just happened to be on hand when Billy Ray finally collapsed. I’m sure DeVriess won’t have any trouble getting Dr. Carter to testify to that effect.”

I thought I saw a frown when I mentioned Jess Carter, but I didn’t pursue it. “You, Dr. Carter, and Grease,” Miranda said. “Strange bedfellows.”

“Very strange,” I agreed. I couldn’t help wondering if she meant more by “bedfellows” than just courtroom allies, but I let that slide, too. I wasn’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole. A pole of any length, for that matter.

CHAPTER 24

“You sure this is where we turn?”

Art swiveled and gave me his most withering dead-eyed cop stare. “Didn’t Waylon tell you to follow the signs for the church?”

“I don’t see a sign,” I said.

Art pointed toward the trunk of a big tulip poplar, then swung his finger down toward the ground. There, nestled amid some weeds, lay a rusted, bullet-riddled sign: “Cave Springs Primative Baptist Church.”

“Oh, how could I have missed it? I guess if you need the sign to find it, they don’t want you there.”

Art grunted. “I’m guessing if you get there by following a sign, they invite you to reach into the box and hand out the rattlesnakes.”

“I don’t think Primitive Baptists are snake-handlers,” I said. “I think that’s Church of Holiness with Signs Following, or something like that.”

“What does that mean, ‘Signs Following’? Besides, aren’t we doing some sign-following here?”

“It’s a reference to a Bible verse — signs of the true Christian, supposedly: healing the sick, sipping cyanide, handling vipers. Y’all don’t do that in the Episcopal church?”

Art shook his head. “Not so much. We keep in touch with the Lord by sipping wine and handling golf clubs.”

“So tell me again what this octogenarian caver told you about this place?”

“You listening this time?”

“I was listening last time. I just wasn’t remembering.”

“Lord, grant me patience,” he sighed. “Okay, he said it’s been a long time since he was up here — like, forty years’ worth of long time — but caves don’t change all that fast, you know? I told him one of the locals had called it Russell’s Cave, and I relayed the description just the way you gave it to me. He said he’s sure it’s the same one he mapped a long time ago. And he said your pal Waylon’s right: there is another entrance, right by the church, which is a lot easier to get to than the one the sheriff took you in. He said you went in the back door.”

“And where, exactly, is the front door?”

“I believe his last words were, ‘You can’t miss it.’”

“I’ve heard that phrase a lot of times before, and I’ve finally figured out what it means. It means, ‘You’re about to get hopelessly lost, sucker.’”

As we rounded a curve at a dip in the road, we came upon a small church nestled at the base of a bluff. Off to one side sat a small, weathered farmhouse, which I guessed might be where the pastor lived. We whipped into the gravel parking lot and skidded to a stop — the church had snuck up on us — and got out to have a look.

We had nearly clipped another sign. This one stood at the road’s edge, so close as to seem almost challenging, daring the heathen to vandalize it — or even just ignore it — at their eternal peril. It was laid up of smooth river rock, mortared into an approximation of a Greek pediment; cradled within the rock was a weathered wooden slab inscribed “Cave Springs Primative Baptist Church.”

The church matched the sign: river rock in shades of tan and brown, nestled deep in a matrix of mottled gray mortar. The building appeared to have been created by geologic action rather than human hands. The double doors set into the front were stout wood, silver with age; their black hardware was forged iron, the hammer blows still visible on its surface. A pair of metal license plates was nailed to the doors: “Jesus Is Coming R-U Ready?” asked one; the other read “Heaven OR Hell — Where Will You Spend Eternity?”

“Friendly crowd,” I observed. I tried the iron latch, but the door seemed to be bolted from the inside somehow.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” deadpanned Art, striking a Jesus pose. He rapped on the wood. “Ow! Looks like oak, feels like ironwood. Let’s see what we can see through a window.”

The windows were miserly — few, small, and high — minimizing the temptation, I supposed, to admire the trees instead of heeding the sermons. Luckily the stonework made it easy to climb the wall. Art and I hauled ourselves up a few feet and peered through a grimy pane. There wasn’t much to see: a dozen backless benches, a scattering of ragged hymnals, a battered upright piano, and a lopsided wooden lectern. “Now I see why they call it ‘primitive,’” I said. We clambered down and began circumnavigating the little building.

A wide, well-worn path ran alongside the church, then led to the base of the bluff out back. The pathway ended at a natural rock basin, waist-deep or so, filled with clear water. The surface rippled slightly in the center, where water from a fissure welled up continuously. At the back of the pool, the water gurgled over a lip in the basin and disappeared into an opening in the cliff. “Now I see why they call it ‘Cave Springs,’” Art said. “Handy for baptisms, huh?”

“Very. Okay, y

our spelunking friend was right — hard to miss.” The opening in the rock wall was an oval about eight feet high by four feet wide. A grate of rusting bars blocked the entrance, supported by iron hinges pounded into the rock; a stout padlock hung from the hasp. “Dang,” I said. “Now what?”

“Pray,” said Art as he moved to study the lock. I heard a jangling of keys, then the click of a lock popping open.

“Hey, how’d you do that?”

“God provides,” he intoned, looking heavenward as he slipped a master key back among its fellows and dropped the key ring into his pocket.