Carved in Bone (Body Farm 1)

“I reckon I’ll have to.” I regretted the petulance of that as soon as I said it. “Sorry. Yes, of course.”

“Do you feel safe there?”

It hadn’t even occurred to me to worry about that. “Yes, I think so. Thanks for asking. A UT officer should be here any minute. In fact — yes, there’s his car now.”

“Good. Keep in touch. Don’t give up on us.” She rang off without another word, and I met the campus cop at the door. He looked young enough to be a student himself; his gun was drawn and his hand was shaking. When I explained that a TBI team was on the way, his big eyes got even bigger. Mercifully, he holstered the trembling weapon, then scurried back to his patrol car and returned with a roll of crime scene tape. With it, he fashioned a big X across the open doorway. When Steve Morgan arrived ten minutes later, he eyed the crime scene tape and sized up the eager young cop. “Anybody been in here besides Dr. Brockton?”

“No, sir,” said the young patrolman, all but saluting.

“Good work,” smiled Morgan. “We’ll take it from here. Thanks.”

The young man’s face fell. “You don’t need me here?” Morgan looked surprised by the question, maybe faintly amused. I felt bad for the UT officer, but he wasn’t ready to slink away just yet. “I, um, was sort of hoping to watch — to observe—how the TBI works a crime scene.”

Morgan smiled. It hadn’t been all that long since he was standing in my office apologizing for classroom hijinks. “Now that I think about it, Officer, if you’ve got time to stick around and control the perimeter here, the TBI would be much obliged.”

The lad practically trembled with excitement as he fished out his radio. “Unit Three to Dispatch,” he blurted. When the dispatcher responded, he snapped to attention, as if she could see him. “TBI is requesting officer assistance at the scene.”

“Copy that,” drawled the dispatcher, not nearly as impressed as he’d hoped. “Holler when you’re done. We’re starving, and we need somebody to make the deli run.”

It wasn’t long before two TBI techs arrived, light sources and evidence kits in hand, and began surveying the room methodically. Morgan and I stepped out into the hallway, but I leaned into the doorway to watch the techs at work. When they turned on the ultraviolet lights, purple prints showed up on every surface. Most of them were mine, I knew, and probably the rest belonged to graduate students. “Excuse me, sir,” said one of the techs, “can you tell me where this door leads?”

“Sure, it leads to the skeletal collection room.”

He wiggled the knob — it was locked, I knew from checking it myself — and inspected the frame for signs of forced entry. Finding none, he turned his attention back to my desktop.

Morgan cleared his throat to get my attention, then began a litany of questions — when had I left my office, how long was I gone, who knew my class schedule, how many different exits could the thief have taken, did I see anybody or anything suspicious, and so on, and so on. Finally, when he’d exhausted my factual knowledge, he asked the question that had been hanging in the air all along: “So who do you think might have done it?”

“Well, my first thought is the sheriff, of course. I still think he’s afraid of where the murder investigation is leading.”

“Has he ever been here before?”

“No, but it wouldn’t be hard to find out where it is.”

“Yeah, but that’s only half the battle,” said Morgan. “This office isn’t exactly easy to get to. You’re tucked away about as far from the rest of the Anthropology Department as you can get without burrowing clear under the AstroTurf.”

“Makes it easier to hole up and concentrate,” I said defensively.

“I’m not criticizing; just thinking out loud. Is there anybody who has been here before that might have an interest in stealing that skeleton?”

“Well, there’s the sheriff’s deputy, Leon Williams.”

“A deputy?” Morgan sounded dubious.

“You asked, and he’s been here before. He could have come to fetch it for the sheriff.” Suddenly I remembered Art’s Scenario E, the unknown possibility: “Or he could be working some angle we don’t even know about. Maybe he’s setting up the sheriff for a fall?” The more I thought about it, the surer I was that this was Williams’s handiwork.

“ ’Scuse us,” Morgan said to the UT policeman, taking my elbow and steering me into the stairwell. He checked the flight of stairs above and below the landing where we stood, then leaned close to me and spoke in a near whisper. “Listen, you didn’t hear this from me — if it got out that you did, I’d be in deep shit with Agent Price — but I guarantee you Williams was not the one who broke into your office and took those bones.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Yes I can,” he hissed.

“How?”

“Because he’s spent the last two hours in a roomful of FBI and TBI agents, that’s how.”

I had to admit, it was a pretty good alibi.

“Then it’s got to be the sheriff. Or maybe his brother. Orbin doesn’t seem the sort who would shrink from a little breaking and entering. Can’t you guys please get some sort of surveillance going on them?”

He checked the stairs again. “The paperwork’s in motion even as we speak,” he whispered. “Office, homes, vehicles. Should be in place within a week.” He gave my arm a sharp squeeze. “Remember, we did not have this conversation.”

I nodded, grateful that we hadn’t.

CHAPTER 27

Still agitated after the TBI crew left, I phoned Jim O’Conner to tell him about the theft of the bones. He sounded shaken and angry. “Listen,” I said, “I wonder if you could give me some more background on the Kitchings family. I can’t help thinking at least one of them is behind this, but I can’t figure out which one, or why.”

“I don’t think we should talk about this over the phone,” he said. “Drug seizure money up here has bought all sorts of fancy equipment in the past few years.” I’d ridden a top-of-the-line ATV and had seen the helicopter parked behind the courthouse, so I knew what he was talking about. “Electronics, too,” he said. “I don’t say anything on the phone I’m not willing for anybody in the county to hear.”

“Okay,” I said. “It’s one-fifteen now. I’ll need to hit a drive-through on the way up, but I could be there by two-thirty.”

“Let me send Waylon to meet you at the exit.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Last time Waylon picked me up, I ended up headfirst in a barrel of dead chickens, covered in blood, vomit, and tobacco juice.”

He laughed. “Makes a hell of story, doesn’t it?” I had to admit it did. “And he helped get you out of the cave,” he reminded me. Despite misgivings, I agreed to give Waylon one more chance at chauffeuring.

He rumbled to a stop in the gravel lot beside the Pilot station as I wolfed down the last of my lunch. As I hoisted myself up into his cab, he flashed me a grin. “Howdy, Doc. You don’t look any the worse for wear from your spe-lunkin’. Glad we ain’t put you offa Cooke County for good.”

“I’m back. But no more cockfights — and no more Copenhagen.”

I heard a wheezing sound coming from Waylon’s direction; it built to a snicker, then exploded into a booming, truck-shaking roar of laughter. He pounded the steering wheel with one mammoth fist, then wiped tears from his eyes with a camouflaged shirt sleeve. “Doc, I wisht you coulda seen yourself pitching over into that trash barrel. I b’lieve that’s the funniest damn thing I ever saw. That, and the look on all them fellas standing around as you was keelin’ over. If I had me a video of that, I bet I’d win the ten grand on that TV show for funny videos.”

First the TBI, then O’Conner, now Waylon. Apparently I was never going to live this down. My only consolation was that my colleagues and students at UT hadn’t witnessed the debacle. “Well, if you hear of somebody else who caught it on tape, I’d probably pay ten grand myself, just to take it out of circulation.” Waylon

looked thoughtful, doubtless searching his memory banks in hopes of dredging up a video.

Halfway toward O’Conner’s place, Waylon turned off the river road onto a narrow track of dirt. “Way-lon,” I said, “this isn’t the way.”

“I just got to stop by and see my cousin Vern real quick. He’s the one I was bettin’ on the cockfight for. Come on, Doc, this won’t take but a few minutes.”