Flesh and Bone (Body Farm 2)

“I didn’t kill Dr. Carter,” I said. “I had no reason to.”

“I don’t give a damn,” she said. “I’m glad she’s dead, and I hope they give you the death penalty. The paper said they might try.”

The conversation was not going quite the way I had hoped it would. I tried to imagine what Detective John Evers would do if he were interrogating Mrs. Willis, but the only thing that came to mind was the feeling of his knee crowding the space between my legs, edging up toward my crotch and making me extremely uncomfortable. It was not a tactic I could use with a woman-especially a woman holding a pair of pruning shears.

“I think there might be a connection between your son’s death and Dr. Carter’s,” I said, hoping to appeal to her more maternal instincts. “Dr. Carter and the Chattanooga police were working to solve his murder when she was killed.” She didn’t say anything, but she lowered the shears to her side. I took that as an encouraging sign. “You got any idea who might have killed him?”

“I already talked to them detectives from Chattanooga,” she said. “Like I told them, I can’t imagine why anybody would have wanted to kill Craig.” I could think of some reasons, but it didn’t seem wise to mention them at this particular moment.

Something Miss Georgia Youngblood had said to me about pedophiles occurred to me-the phrase “Shit flow downstream,” which had gotten linked in my mind somehow with the phrase “Each one teach one”-and I wondered if Mrs. Willis could shed any light on her son’s pathology. “Mrs. Willis, can you think back to when Craig was about ten years old? Do you remember him at that age?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “I remember him at every age. Why?”

“I’m wondering if maybe something happened around that time. Something that might have been very frightening or upsetting to him.” Her eyes darted back and forth as she thought, and it seemed to me that she fixed on something, because they stopped darting and she looked away, her jaw clenched. “An incident, maybe, that might explain things that have happened more recently.”

She looked at me now. “What kind of incident? What are you talking about?”

I didn’t see any alternative but to put it out there. “Maybe an incident in which…in which an older male might have…done something to Craig. Something sexual.” She stared at me. “The reason I ask,” I floundered, “is that sometimes, when that happens to a boy, after he grows up, he…might be inclined…”

Even if I could have put the rest of the sentence into words, I didn’t get the chance. With a low snarl, she flung herself at me, pruning shears and all. Luckily, she didn’t wield them point-first; instead, she swung them like a club or a baseball bat, and I was able to put up a hand in time to block the blow and grab the shears. We wrestled over them for a moment, but I was considerably stronger than she was, and it wasn’t hard to take them from her. When I did, she came at me with her fists, as she had done to Jess. I dropped the shears and grabbed her, spinning her around so her back was to me, and wrapped her in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides.

“Let me go!” she cried. “Let me go or I’ll scream. I’ll scream bloody murder, and they will haul you away in handcuffs.”

She had a point there. I could imagine the lead-in to the nightly newscast: “He’s already on trial for one murder. Did Dr. Bill Brockton try to commit another today?” I let her go, but as I did, I placed a foot on the pruning shears lest she grab them and use them more effectively this time. “Don’t you care who killed your son, Mrs. Willis?”

She glowered at me, her chest heaving, tears beginning to run down her face. “Of course I care,” she said, “but nobody else gives a good goddamn. You think I don’t know how the police feel about…people like Craig?”

It was an admission of sorts. “No matter what they think,” I said, “they’ll still try to solve his murder.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the cop that arrested him was the one that killed him.”

I was startled that she’d thought that through, although I suppose I shouldn’t have been. She’d undoubtedly spent far more time turning over the possibilities in her mind than Art and I had. “Who else could have?”

She gave me a look of undisguised contempt. “Gee, Mr. Fancy Ph.D., let’s think about that.” She shook her head. “It’s done. Nobody will ever be caught. Get the hell out of here and don’t come back. If I see you again, I’m calling 911. In fact, if you’re not gone in thirty seconds, I’m calling 911. Maybe even if you are.”

I bent down and picked up the pruning shears. Suddenly she looked frightened. With an underhanded toss, I lobbed them over the hedge and up near her front porch, just in case she was still inclined to take another run at me. Then I held up one hand and backed away, across the street, and got into the Taurus. I locked the doors first, then started the engine. As I eased away from the curb, I glanced back just in time to see Mrs. Willis hurling the pruning shears in my direction. They hit the trunk lid with a scraping clatter that I knew had left a nasty gouge. At least it’s a rental, I thought. Then I remembered that I had declined the supplemental insurance.

Once I was safely out of the neighborhood, I paged Art. He rang me right back. “Hey, how’d it go with Mrs. Willis?”

“Not so good,” I said.

“You mean she didn’t confess?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“What’s another way?”

“Let’s just say that if all you’ve got is a pair of pruning shears, everything looks like a hedge.”

“Oh, that good?”

“That good.”

“You lose any body parts?”

“No. Only the last of my dignity. You get a chance to talk to the guy that caught Craig Willis in the act?”

“Not yet. He’s kind

a hard to reach.”

“Because?”

“Because he’s been in Iraq for the past four months. He’s in the Guard, and his unit got called up right after the Willis thing.”

“Damn. So I guess that clears him, huh?”

“See, I knew you had a knack for detective work,” Art said. “You got a Plan C?”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I don’t much like it. Tell me what you think.” I laid it out for him.

Art didn’t much like it either, but he agreed we needed to grit our teeth and give it a try at the end of the day.

CHAPTER 38

I WAS LUNCHING ALFRESCO-wolfing down a drive-through deli sandwich at a picnic table in Tyson Park, a long strip of grass and trees near the UT campus-when the cellphone rang. The display read BURTON DeVRIESS, LLC. When I answered, I was pleasantly surprised to hear Chloe instead of Burt on the other end. “Dr. Brockton?” My bubble was swiftly burst. “Mr. DeVriess would like to speak with you. Can you hold while I put him on the line?”

“Sure, Chloe,” I sighed, “though I’d rather talk to you.”

“But you need to talk to him. I hope you’re doing well.”

“I’m still a free man, so things could be worse.”

“That’s the spirit. Hold on for Mr. DeVriess.”

I held on. I’d been holding on a lot lately. Mostly by my fingernails. “Bill? It’s Burt. How are you?”

“Ask me at the end of the phone call. What’s up?”

“Can you come in this afternoon? I’d like to go over two pieces of evidence we’ve obtained in the course of discovery.”

“What kind of evidence?”