Cut to the Bone (Body Farm 8)

“Look at that,” I said, pointing out the right side of the windshield. “Nature’s flying buttresses.”

“Huh?” Tyler followed the direction of my point. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. Gotcha.”

“That’s it?” I shook my head. “A miracle of nature, and the best you can manage is ‘Gotcha’?” We were halfway up Jellico Mountain on a crisp, clear afternoon in late September; a hundred yards to the east of the interstate, a series of massive stone pillars — as plumb and parallel as stonemasons could have set them — jutted from the mountainside, each pillar rearing a hundred feet high against the reds and golds of the turning leaves. “Tyler, you have no poetry in your soul.”

“I’ve got no lunch in my belly, either,” he grumbled, “and it’s three o’clock. Hard to hear poetry over the growling of my stomach.”

“Not my fault you didn’t eat at noon,” I pointed out.

“It’s not? Wasn’t it you who told me to finish grading those exams by two?” He did have a point there. “Besides, we’ve passed a dozen fast-food places since we left UT.”

“Yeah, but the sheriff called thirty seconds after you finished grading,” I said. “And we don’t have a lot of daylight left.” I glanced again at the sun, already nearing the ridgeline. “A couple hours, tops, now that the days are getting short.” I did feel bad about dragging him to a death scene unfed, though. “Look in the glove compartment,” I told him. “I think there’s a Snickers bar in there somewhere.”

He pushed the button; the door popped open and a box of surgical gloves launched itself at him, latex fingers twitching in midair. Tyler rooted through the recess. “Papers. Registration, insurance, maintenance records, owner’s manual,” he itemized. “No Snickers.”

“Keep digging,” I said. “I could swear there’s one in there.”

“Oh,” he said after a moment. “Yeah. Down here in the Jurassic stratum, I think I’ve discovered a fossilized candy bar.” He fished out a Snickers, the wrapper rumpled and misshapen, and peeled it open. Inside was a cylinder of graying chocolate, misshapen from numerous cycles of melting and resolidifying. Tyler eyed it with distaste. “Oh, did I say candy bar? I meant coprolite.” I had to admit, the lumpy extrusion did look remarkably like fossilized poop. He chomped down on it and wrestled a chunk free. “Mmm,” he mumbled sarcastically. “Tasty.” He took another bite.

The traffic was crawling. The right lane was slowed by a flatbed trailer hauling a bulldozer up the mountain; I had no idea what a bulldozer’s top speed was, but I suspected it couldn’t be much slower than the snail’s pace at which the truck was transporting it. In the left lane, cars were bunched up behind a coal truck, which was creeping past the bulldozer at what appeared to be half a mile an hour faster.

“Wish they’d warned us about the rolling roadblock,” Tyler mumbled through the caramel. “We could’ve zipped in and out of that Hardee’s back at Lake City without losing any time. Forensic anthropology, NASCAR style.”

“If you want to jump out and run back, go for it,” I said. “You could probably catch up with me by the top of the mountain.” He grunted and popped the last lump of the Snickers into his mouth.

Just as we crept over the lip of the mountain, the coal truck eased into the right lane, allowing the long line of cars to begin passing. As we drew nearer, I noticed both trucks turn and lumber down an exit ramp. “Nice,” Tyler fumed at the coal truck. “Cause a bottleneck for dozens of cars, just so you can get to the exit two seconds ahead of the bulldozer.”

“No point getting mad,” I said. “Doesn’t get us there any faster, and it sure doesn’t hurt the truck driver. Just makes you feel worse. Don’t they teach you that kind of stuff in yoga? Ommmm and all that?”

Tyler turned and stared at me. “Where was that laid-back vibe two hours ago, Mr. Mellow, when you were flogging me to get those papers graded?”

“That’s different,” I pointed out. “Those trucks aren’t in my power. You, on the other hand…” I didn’t need to finish the sentence; Tyler knew better than anyone that “graduate assistantship” was synonymous with “indentured servitude.”

He tapped his window and pointed. “Classy,” he said. I looked out and saw the coal truck and the bulldozer-hauler both turning into the parking lot of a garish, neon-lit store — XXX Adult World — advertising books, videos, novelties, and Live Girls, Girls, Girls. “Also classy,” he said, now pointing to a corrugated metal building that was overshadowed by a gargantuan corrugated cross. “Not exactly Saint Peter’s, is it?”

“Not exactly,” I agreed. “But I suspect the Vatican’s art and architecture budget was a little bigger than these folks’.” Tyler grunted, glancing down at the directions the sheriff had given me.

A mile or so later, Tyler pointed to a road sign. “That’s our exit,” he said. “Stinking Creek Road. One mile.” I passed another lumbering coal truck, then signaled and eased into the right lane, just in time to catch the exit. “Left onto Stinking Creek.”

As we coasted down the ramp, Tyler leaned forward and looked out my window. “I’d like to build a house like that someday,” he said.

I glanced to the left, and then at the outside mirror. “What, a house filled with rock salt?”

“No, a house made from a Quonset hut. Actually, a house made from two Quonset huts, crossing in the middle, like a big plus sign. Like a cathedral, with a nave and a transept. Earth sheltered, for natural insulation; walls of glass at all four ends; a big skylight above the intersection, for plenty of natural light.”

“So,” I said, making a left at the bottom of the ramp, “the floor plan of a cathedral, the elegance of a drainage culvert? Classy. How does Roxanne feel about the idea of living in a burrow?” He frowned, which might have meant that he hadn’t asked, or might have meant that he had, and that she wasn’t wild about the idea.

Just then we rounded a curve and nearly rear-ended a Campbell County sheriff’s cruiser, which was parked at the edge of the pavement with its rear end angling into the road. In front of it was another cruiser and, ahead of that, an unmarked black sedan — Meffert’s TBI-issued Crown Victoria. Just beyond the Crown Vic was a bridge spanning a narrow gorge — a gorge carved, I assumed, by Stinking Creek. Midway across the bridge, a

figure I recognized as Meffert leaned over the railing, looking down.

I tucked the pickup behind the cruisers, trying to feel for the margins of the shoulder through the tires. Tyler opened his door and looked down, frowning. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Did I not leave enough room?”

“Plenty of room. For a mountain goat.”

The door of the nearer cruiser opened and a uniformed officer got out. “He’s here,” I heard him saying into the mic of his two-way radio, the coils of the cord stretched to their limit. “Just pulled up.” He released the mic, which the cord yanked from his hand, and closed the door. “Dr. Brockton?”

“That’s me.” I extended my hand, walking toward him.

“Sheriff Grainger.” He took a few steps toward me, and we shook hands midway between the two vehicles — a tiny patch of neutral ground. I’d never had any territorial squabbles with law-enforcement officers — any “whose-jurisdiction-is-bigger contests,” as Tyler called such things — but it never hurt to observe a few unwritten rules of courtesy and common sense. Meet in the middle, as equals; don’t kowtow to the cops, but don’t rub their noses in your Ph.D., either.

I introduced Tyler, and then Sheriff Grainger led us toward the bridge. A steady breeze was funneling up the narrow valley of Stinking Creek, spooling across the roadway and humming up the ridge. The temperature was dropping along with the sinking sun, and I was grateful for the sweatshirt I’d added beneath the windbreaker. I sniffed the air and caught the nutty smells of autumn leaves, fall acorns, and a faint, acrid scent that might have been sulfur from the creek. I didn’t pick up any trace of decomp in the air, but unless the two dozen buzzards overhead were badly mistaken, it was there; definitely there. Some of the birds wheeled above the ravine; others hovered, surfing the wind that rippled up the ridge.

Just as we reached the bridge, a shotgun boomed, loud and near. I dropped to a crouch beside the Crown Vic, and Tyler scuttled into the gap behind it. The sheriff laughed. “Sorry, Doc,” he said. “That’s just Aikins, shooing off the buzzards.” He pointed skyward, and I looked up just in time to see the last of the birds hightailing it over the ridgeline. “I should’ve warned you about that. My bad.”