The Bone Thief (Body Farm 5)

I eyed the nearer chair doubtfully. “Are you sure this thing will hold me up?”

“Hell, Doc,” he said, “that would hold up you and me both, with a couple hundred pounds of legal files sitting on our laps. If it breaks, sue me.” I laid a hand on the seat and gave an experimental push. The taut cords scarcely moved. I plucked one with a fingernail, and it hummed like a guitar string. “Go ahead, try it.” I sat, nervously at first, then with increasing confidence. I’d expected the cords to dig into me, but the chair was surprisingly comfortable. “Aren’t they cool? Designed by a Canadian architect in the 1950s. Manufactured by a company that made tennis rackets. Simple but elegant.”

“Don’t you worry that somebody might sit down with something sharp sticking out of a back pocket? I’m guessing that if one cord got cut, the whole thing would implode.”

“Hadn’t occurred to me to worry about that,” he said. “Remind me to frisk you next time you come in.” He tapped the file in front of him. “I dug up some interesting history on Ivy Mortuary. They were sued in 1999 by the widower of a woman who died and was cremated. Seems the cremains came back with a shiny set of dentures tucked inside the bag, but the deceased had died with a jack-o-lantern handful of rotting teeth. Turns out the funeral home swapped her cremains with those of a guy who wore dentures. Needless to say, the toothless guy’s family wasn’t real happy about the mix-up either. They sued, too.”

“Who won?”

“Both families settled out of court. The sum wasn’t disclosed, but I hear it was around fifty thousand apiece. I could’ve gotten ’em a lot more.”

It wasn’t an idle boast. DeVriess had won a huge class-action lawsuit against a Georgia crematorium that had dumped bodies in the woods instead of incinerating them — a move that, in the short run, saved fifty or a hundred bucks’ worth of propane per body but that eventually cost millions of dollars in legal claims, as well as incalculable emotional pain. DeVriess’s own Aunt Jean, in fact, had been one of the 339 bodies the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had found amid the pines. I vividly remembered the day I’d identified her remains in a refrigerated semi trailer, one of five that served as makeshift morgues at the site of the gruesome discovery, and I also recalled the deep distress the discovery had caused DeVriess and his Uncle Edgar.

“There was a prior case against Ivy, in 1997,” he went on. “Fancy funeral, open casket, the family’s saying their final goodbyes, and the widow faints when she sees maggots in the mouth of her dearly departed husband.”

“Jeez. How long had the corpse been lying around at the funeral home? Was he embalmed? Didn’t they have him in a cooler?”

“He’d only been at the funeral home for about twenty-four hours. But he’d died three days before that, down in Mississippi, fishing. Somebody found him floating in his fishing boat around midafternoon, and he’d launched his boat early in the morning.”

“So the flies had plenty of time to lay eggs in his nose and mouth while he was drifting around outdoors. That doesn’t sound like the fault of the funeral home.”

“Ha,” he said. “That might be true, but try telling that to a jury that’s been reduced to tears by the traumatized widow. The funeral home — actually, their insurance company — settled for half a million, and they were lucky to get off that easy.”

“I could’ve gotten ’em a lot less,” I said, and he laughed at the topspin I’d put on his earlier comment. “So are you planning to share this with Culpepper?”

“Already have.”

“My, my, aren’t you helpful, Counselor?”

He lifted his hands in a magnanimous gesture. “Ain’t it the truth, ain’t it the truth? Plus, I figure it’s probably wise not to blindside Culpepper with my next move.”

I should have known that Grease would be working some sort of angle. “And what’s your next move?”

“I want to exhume more of the people Ivy buried. Turn over a few more rocks, see what else crawls out.”

“You planning another class-action suit, Burt? The funeral home’s out of business, remember?”

“But their insurance company’s not.”

“And the insurance company’s still on the hook for claims, years after their client’s ceased to exist?”

“Arguable,” he conceded, “but there’s probably a case here. Statutes of repose cover how long the insurance company is on the hook. Of course, if it’s a clear case of fraud, rather than a mistake, the insurance company will argue that they’re not liable — fraud would be the action of an individual, not the mortuary. But I’ll argue that there’s a pattern of negligence, since there were multiple problems.”

“Sounds like a lot of arguing,” I said.

“It’s not a slam dunk, but it’s worth a try.”

“Is it, Burt? No offense, but you’re already rich. How much richer do you need to be?”

“This one wouldn’t really be about the money, Doc.”

I gave him a skeptical look.

“No, really,” he insisted. “It still makes me madder than hell to think how shamefully my Aunt Jean’s body was treated and how hurtful that was to my Uncle Edgar. I figure most funeral homes and crematories are honest and respectful. But I also figure it’s healthy for those to see why it pays to stay honest and respectful.”

“Like the instructive example of a public flogging, back in the good old days?”

“Something like that,” he said. “But instead of the lash, it’s the law, and instead of blood flowing, it’s money. And instead of the cobblestoned public square, it happens in the marbled and paneled courtroom.”

“Or the glass-walled office tower,” I said, “with the art deco lamps and the tennis-racket chairs.”

“There, too,” he said.

CHAPTER 15

I was just pulling in to the parking lot for a noon session with Dr. Hoover when my cell phone rang with a call from the bone lab. “Miranda, is that you?”

“It’s me.” Her voice sounded glum.

“What’s wrong?”

“Carmen Garcia just called. Eddie got some bad news this morning from the orthopedist.”

“What kind of bad news?”

“It’s about the i-Hand. He can’t get fitted with one next week after all.”

“Why not? When can he get it?”

“Maybe never. The i-Hand’s just been taken off the market.”

I was stunned by that news, but even more stunned by what she went on to tell me.

“The company that makes it was bought yesterday by OrthoMedica for ninety million dollars, and OrthoMedica announced today they’re suspending sales until further notice. Here, listen, this is from their press release: ‘We will continue to provide parts and service to patients already fitted with an i-Hand prosthesis, but we believe that our next-generation bionic hand, currently in development, offers sufficient advances to warrant Ortho Medica’s full, undivided attention.’ What do you suppose that means?”

I had a sinking feeling, and the words “revenue stream” were part of the weight pulling me under. “I suppose,” I said, “it means that OrthoMedica bought out the competition in order to kill it.” I thought back to my conversation with Glen Faust. What was it he’d said when I asked his advice about the i-Hand? I’d tell your friend to get an i-Hand, and get it pretty damn quick.

I’d planned to spend my therapy session with Dr. Hoover making peace with the idea that somewhere out there Isabella was running from the FBI, nursing burned hands, and heaving her way through a trimester of morning sickness. Now, instead of peacemaking, I spent my fifty minutes warring against the injustice of the universe — a universe that seemed to be dealing from a deck stacked mercilessly against the Garcias. My own troubles seemed, for the moment at least, comparatively minor, and as I drove back to campus, I offered up prayers — I wasn’t sure to whom or to what — on behalf of Eddie and his family.

Parking beside the stadium and drawing a deep breath to reorient myself, I headed into the Anthro