The Breaking Point (Body Farm 9)

“You’re right,” said Prescott, his voice suddenly a little thick. “I did, too. And yeah—as good as they get.”

I got to my feet, but the movement caused a searing pain in my head, and when I rubbed it, my hand came away sticky with blood.

“We need to get that looked at,” said Prescott. “I think Maddox’s pistol flew out of his hand and whacked you in the head, but we oughta get that wound cleaned up. Maybe get an x-ray, too. Before we do anything else, though, I gotta ask one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You yelled ‘Take the shot.’ How the hell did you know we had a sharpshooter up there?”

“I didn’t,” I said. “You did?” He looked as confused as I was, then he nodded. “I was totally bluffing,” I told him. “He was about to shoot Hickock. I was hoping to distract him long enough to let Hickock get off a shot. Guess it didn’t work.”

“Actually, it did,” Prescott said. “You can’t see it now, because of the exit wound from the rifle round, but Hickock nailed him. Maddox was walking dead when the rifle bullet hit him.”

I turned and looked again at the body of the DEA agent. “Hickock said he was trying to protect me. And by God he did, didn’t he? He died waging war.” Prescott nodded. “So now I gotta ask one thing,” I said. “How the hell did you know to put a sharpshooter out here?”

“We had a GPS tracker on your car. And a tap on your cell phone. We even managed to get a shotgun mike up on that ridge in time to record that last part of Maddox’s little speech.”

I was impressed, but I was also confused. “You did all that? Why?”

“One of our partner agencies—the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department—shared a key piece of new evidence with us yesterday. A skull fragment, which confirmed that Richard Janus was murdered. That took the investigation in a new direction. It also suggested that the killer might attempt to . . . uh . . . contact you.”

I pondered the implications of all this. “Are you saying you used me as bait for a killer, Agent Prescott?” I remembered a brief bit of banter from our first ride down Otay Mountain weeks before and gave him a grin. “Did you just throw me under the bus?”

“Of course not, Dr. Brockton,” he said, grinning back. “We never throw anyone under the bus. And if a forensic consultant just happens to fall under the bus? While we’re standing nearby with our hand on his back? We do our very best to pick him up and dust him off and remind everyone how glad we are that he’s okay.” He paused to let that sink in, then added, “I’ll be recommending to SAC that we hold a joint press conference tomorrow, together with the DEA and the sheriff, to update the media and set the record straight on Richard Janus’s case. I’d like to get Mrs. Janus there, too, if she’s willing to accept an olive branch and bury the hatchet. If you could find it in your heart to join us, there might even be a letter of commendation in it for you. A very lavish letter.”

“When you say lavish,” I said, “do you mean embossed with the FBI seal? In color?”

“You know the Bureau doesn’t make promises,” he said. “But I’ll recommend color and embossing. In the strongest possible terms.”

Knoxville, Tennessee

WE HELD KATHLEEN’S MEMORIAL SERVICE AT SECOND Presbyterian Church in late August, a week after the university’s fall semester began—a long time after her death, but the only way to include the university community that had meant so much to her. Jeff, Jenny, and the boys sat with me in the front row. So did Carmelita Janus and helicopter-jockey Skidder, who had given up his law enforcement job to become chief pilot for Airlift Relief International. Carmelita was getting the organization back on its feet again, thanks to Kathleen’s bequest and a flood of other donations in Richard’s honor, which began pouring in once the media began portraying him as a misunderstood and martyred saint, of sorts. Last but not least, in a wheelchair parked at the end of our pew, was KPD Captain Brian Decker, still weak but out of the woods and expected to recover from his close brush with death.

Behind us, in the second pew, sat Kathleen’s colleagues from Nutrition Sciences. At my request, they all wore their academic robes as a way of honoring Kathleen as a teacher and scholar. The sight of them reminded me yet again that Kathleen’s death was a loss to many people, in many walks of life—some of them children in faraway places. They would never lay eyes on her, but they would see the world itself, as a result of her foundation’s eyesight-saving work.

My own colleagues and students turned out in droves, too. So did the dean, UT’s provost and president, and even the sharptaloned legal eagle Amanda Whiting, who had actually worked behind the scenes to rally legislative support for the Body Farm: Amanda had enlisted police chiefs, county sheriffs, and district attorneys from throughout the state in a campaign to remind their senators and representatives that the Body Farm’s research helped solve murders throughout the great state of Tennessee, and that voting against the Body Farm might be perceived as getting soft on crime. The strategy worked brilliantly, and the legislative assault on the facility ended not with a bang, or even a whimper, but with utter silence.

The service itself was fairly brief. I wasn’t able to say much—I choked up pretty quickly, so about all I was able to get out was something about what a privilege it had been to share thirty years of my life with such a wonderful woman. Jeff did better than I did, but the real prizewinner was Jenny, who talked about becoming family with Kathleen: about finding a haven, and a friend, and a role model, and a hero all rolled into one in this remarkable woman. Amen, I thought.

The receiving line, after the service, lasted for nearly two hours. By the end I was exhausted, having trouble recognizing faces and remembering names. The last person in line was a young woman, and when I looked at her, I drew an utter blank. She looked to be around twenty or so, an attractive redhead with lively eyes. She had probably taken one of my intro classes; by now, thousands of UT students had.

“Hello,” I said, extending my hand, as I had hundreds of times in the past two hours. “Thank you for coming.”

“We haven’t met, Dr. Brockton, but we’ve talked on the phone,” she said, and I knew her voice instantly. She must have seen the shock of recognition on my face, because the next thing she said was, “Yes. I’m Red. I’m not really a reference librarian, and I apologize for misleading you. The phone was ringing, you seemed to need some help, and . . . I . . . I just got carried away. It was just so . . . fascinating.”

“Fascinating,” I said, smiling. “I’ve been hearing that word a lot lately. It’s my new

favorite word.”

She looked confused, which was understandable. “Anyhow, I’m very sorry you lost your wife.”

“Thank you. Me, too.”

“And I’m sorry I tricked you.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “You helped me a lot, too. A lot more than the actual reference librarian I talked to, out in Otay Mesa.”

“Otay Mesa? That’s the place where El Chapo—you know, ‘Goose Man’—ran that underground railroad under the border from Tijuana!”

“See,” I said. “You’re good, Red. The offer’s still open. If you want to switch fields—turn anthropologist—let me know.”

She blushed, and she smiled shyly. “Actually,” she said, “I’ve sent in my application.”

“That’s great,” I said. “I’ll look for it. Will I find it filed under R, for Red?”

“No,” she said. “You’ll find it in the Ls. Under Lovelady. Miranda Lovelady. Does this mean I’m in?”

“I’m like the FBI, Miranda,” I said, grinning. “I don’t make promises. But I’ll recommend you to myself. In the strongest possible terms.”

During ten years of writing Body Farm novels, I’ve often noted the blurred boundary—the semi-permeable membrane; the oft-crosssed border—between fact and fiction in the books. Given that the stories are informed by years of Dr. Bill Bass’s forensic casework, how could it be otherwise?

This book is no exception. One factual underpinning is the death of Ann Bass, Bill’s first wife, who died in 1993. Our fictional character Kathleen Brockton is not interchangeable with the late Mrs. Bass, but she obviously shares traits with her, just as Dr. Brockton—who is not exactly interchangeable with Bill Bass—shares many traits in common with him. The specifics of Kathleen’s illness and of Dr. Brockton’s grief are products of my own writerly imagination.

Tragically, the 1991 crash on Otay Mountain that’s mentioned in the book was not a product of my imagination. Country music singer Reba McEntire lost seven musicians and her band’s road manager in the early morning hours of March 16, 1991, when a twin-engine jet—piloted by a crew unfamiliar with the mountainous terrain to the east of San Diego—took off from Brown Field Municipal Airport and slammed into the dark peak of Otay Mountain. Astonishingly, in October 2004, another twin-engine jet—this one an air ambulance—hit the mountainside in the dark, killing the pilots and three medical crew members. After the 2004 crash, the Federal Aviation Administration revised its procedures and charts to reduce the chances of additional collisions with the dark, dangerous terrain lurking to the east of Brown Field.