The Bone Thief (Body Farm 5)

For someone born and raised in South America, Carmen spoke English with remarkable fluency. “Spooky sounds right. Sorry to spook you.”

She fluttered her fingers at me to dismiss the apology. “No, don’t be silly, Bill. If you stand there and talk for an hour, you will make me crazy, but for now enjoy it.”

I hummed, changing position slightly to move in and out of the acoustic sweet spot at the center of the semicircle. As I did, my voice got louder and softer. I switched from humming to clapping, and Carmen laughed. “That’s just what Eddie and Tomás love to do,” she said. Then, suddenly, Carmen was weeping, staring stricken at my hands. My hands froze in the air, and my heart went out to her as I saw a wave of grief crash over her. “Oh, Carmen,” I said, “I’m so sorry about all this.” I reached out to give her shoulder a squeeze, and when I did, she crumpled against me like a child.

Her breath was ragged, half choked. “Oh, Bill, I don’t know if I can bear it,” she cried. “What will become of Eddie? What will become of me? How do we go on?”

“I don’t know, Carmen,” I said. “I wish I did, but I don’t.” She began to sob — keening, shuddering sobs — and she clung to me. “I’m so sorry,” I repeated, wrapping my arms around her slight frame, stroking the back of her head with my right hand, the way I’d soothed my son when he was small. “So very sorry.”

As her sobs subsided, she reached up and took hold of my right hand with both of hers. I thought she was starting to disentangle herself, but instead her fingers began to trace my own, one after another, as if she were a blind woman taking the measure of an unknown object. My God, I realized, these are exotic things to her now: the hands of a man. The realization saddened me for both her and Eddie.

“Your husband is a very fine man,” I said. “And a very brave one, too.” I locked eyes with her. “I’m proud to be his friend,” I added. “And yours.” I kissed her on the forehead, then eased away. “I don’t know exactly how, but I believe that Eddie can get past this, and I believe you can, too. One thing I’m sure of: He has a lot better chance of reclaiming his health and his work — of reclaiming a life that’s worth living — with his family standing beside him.” Her eyes pooled again. “I see the light and the pride in his eyes whenever he talks about you and Tomás, Carmen. You both mean so much to him.”

She drew a deep breath, then another, blowing them out through pursed lips. She rubbed her face with her hands, then wiped her hands on her jeans. Stepping to the kitchen counter, she took a paper napkin from a stack and dabbed at her eyes, then blew her nose. It honked, and she laughed tiredly. “God,” she said, “I didn’t know I had any tears left in me. I was so afraid when he nearly died, and so sad when he lost so much of his hands.” She wiped and blew again. “I’ve cried so much, I hoped I was finished.”

I thought about the deepest losses in my own life, Kathleen and Jess, and about how suddenly and strongly the wounds could be reopened by some slight, unexpected trigger — catching a whiff of the perfume Kathleen wore for years, or seeing Jess’s signature on an autopsy report in a case file.

“I don’t think we finish crying until we finish living,” I said. I was reminded of something I’d read about joy and sorrow, about how the two are inseparably linked, like the opposite sides of an old-fashioned balance scale, one rising as the other falls. “But if we’re lucky,” I added, “we don’t finish laughing until then either.” I nodded at the teapot on the counter, a sleek, glossy vessel that would have looked at home in an art gallery or the Museum of Modern Art. “Any chance we could have that cup of tea now?”

She smiled, and I thought I saw a mixture of relief, gratitude, and sadness in it. “Of course. I didn’t mean to make you work so hard for it.”

“Nonsense, Carmen,” I said. “I’m proud to be your friend, too. I’ll go see if Miranda wants to join us for tea.” Retracing the path to the front door, I turned down the hallway and then called up the staircase. “Miranda?”

“Yes?”

“You want some hot tea?”

“If there are juice boxes, Tomás and I would prefer juice boxes,” she called down. I heard her make loud smacking, slurping noises as she clumped down the stairs, and Tomás giggled as she rounded the landing with him slung on her hip again, his head thrown back in burbling delight as she nibbled noisily on his neck. Miranda would make a splendid mom, I realized, and the notion hit me with surprising force. In all the years I’d known her, I’d never imagined Miranda having a baby or raising a child. Graduate assistant, Ph.D. candidate, promising young forensic anthropologist — these were all hats I regularly pictured on Miranda’s head. But the mantle of motherhood, that was a new one. It was an idea I should probably get used to, I decided.

Miranda froze with one leg in midair over the safety gate and looked at me sharply. “What?”

“What do you mean, what?” It was the very question she’d asked me half an hour earlier in the truck.

“You’re looking at me funny,” she said, echoing my earlier response. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” I said, my face breaking into a big smile.

Over tea and juice boxes, Miranda and I talked with Carmen about Eddie’s weeks in the hospital and his despair over the latest damage to his right hand. “He’s very discouraged again,” Carmen said. “He tries to sound positive when he talks to me, but of course he is devastated by this.” She hesitated. “And afraid.”

Miranda posed the question I was loath to ask. “Afraid of what?”

“Afraid he is too damaged to be whole again. Afraid he cannot accept his disfigurement and limitations. Afraid he cannot do his job adequately.” She looked down, studying the contents of her teacup. “Afraid he cannot love me adequately.” She closed her eyes. “Afraid I cannot love him still.”

Miranda reached across the table and took one of Carmen’s hands in both of hers. “Can I tell you something, Carmen? I admire you tremendously. You have such a big, brave heart. No wonder Eddie loves you so.”

Carmen gave Miranda’s hands a squeeze, then refilled her cup and my own and then turned the conversation to more pragmatic talk of Eddie’s job. She asked how critical his absence was becoming, and I did my best to reassure her. The state medical examiner’s office in Nashville had contracted with several pathologists in Johnson City and Nashville and Chattanooga — Jess’s former office — to perform the autopsies that ordinarily would be done in Knoxville. “They’ll be glad to have Eddie back whenever he’s able to return to work,” I told her, “but they’re fine for now, and for months, if need be. If he wants to ease back into it, even for just a few hours a week, that’ll be fine. Eddie was injured in the line of duty, so his insurance and worker’s compensation benefits will take care of him and the family. His job is safe, so you can cross that off your list of worries.”

Talk turned to the Garcias’ house, and to a few maintenance needs that had arisen during the past month. The tall cedar structure tended to take a beating from the sun, the rain, and the wildlife — the high, heated walls made it an attractive nesting place for squirrels and woodpeckers, Carmen explained — and the structure’s height, forty or fifty feet at the roofline, tended to scare away contractors. Miranda recommended a handyman she’d used for various carpentry and plumbing jobs. “He can fix anything,” she said, “and he goes rock climbing and rappelling for fun. He’ll love working on this house.”

Soon Tomás grew sleepy, so Miranda and I said our goodbyes. Carmen walked us out to the driveway. “Drive boldly,” she advised as we clambered into the truck. “Get a good, strong start down here, because it gets steeper as you go up.”

The tires shrieked as I gunned the throttle and fishtailed out of the parking area. “Boldly done,” said Miranda.

“Damn skippy,” I answered, rocketing up the narrow band of concrete and whipping onto the road, grateful that no one was coming from either direction. “That Tomás is a cutie,” I added. “And he clearly thinks you hung the moon.”

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sp; “Mutual, I’m sure. He’s a sweet boy.” She sighed. “He misses his daddy.”

“Yeah.” We made the rest of the drive back to UT in silence. Threading my way down to the one-lane service road ringing the base of the stadium, I pulled in behind Miranda’s white Jetta and put the truck in park, the engine idling. “Thanks for going with me, Miranda.”

“You’re welcome.” She opened the door and got out, then leaned her head back in. “By the way,” she said, “you’re right. Eddie is a very fine man. I’m proud to be his friend, too.”

CHAPTER 30

The gleaming white tractor-trailer inched along the edge of the parking lot, parallel to the fence of the Body Farm. The truck’s gears clashed when the driver wrestled the transmission into reverse, and then the clutch caught and the rig eased backward, scraping a few low branches that overhung the chain-link and the inner wooden fence. The driver stopped when the trailer’s rear end was just below the facility’s main gate. He got out, checked his parking job, and unhooked the connections between tractor and trailer. That done, he fired up the large diesel generator attached to the front of the trailer and began raising the front end of the trailer slightly, with a pair of powered jacks built into the trailer’s frame, to compensate for the slight grade of the parking lot.

Calling up the contacts stored in my cell phone, I punched in “F” and dialed the first number there. The call went to voice mail; there was no personal greeting, simply a computer voice telling me the number was not available and offering me the chance to leave a message. “This is Bill Brockton,” I said, “calling from Knoxville to say thank you. It feels like Christmas came early to the Body Farm this year.”