The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel

by Jefferson Bass

  “I know what she told you. She told you a lie.”

  He walked to the Blazer. “Ma’am? Sir?” He rapped the rear windshield with his knuckles. “I need you to get down off your vehicle and leave the premises.”

  Athena Demopoulos looked down, feigning innocence and surprise. “Is there a problem, Officer?” She was clearly stalling for time, and the cameraman kept shooting.

  “Yes, ma’am. The problem is, you don’t have permission to be here filming. I need you to turn off the camera and get down off of there. Right now, please.”

  “We don’t need permission,” she said. “This is public property.” Her colleague swiveled the camera slightly and adjusted his focus.

  “No, ma’am,” the officer replied. “Technically—legally—UT Medical Center is private property. I’ve asked you, as nice as I know how, to shut off that camera and get down from there. I’m going to ask you one last time, and if you don’t do it by the time I count to three, I’ll arrest you for trespassing. One . . .” She laid her hand lightly on the cameraman’s shoulder; he held up a just-a-second finger. “Two . . .” She gave the shoulder a squeeze. “Three.” The officer touched the radio transmitter on his shoulder. “This is Officer Edmonds,” he said, his head angled toward the mike. “We have a trespassing incident at the Body Farm. I need backup.”

  The cameraman straightened up and raised his hands. “Hey, everything’s cool,” he said. “No worries. Just takes a minute to power this thing down. We’re leaving right now, aren’t we, Athena?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. She looked at Edmonds coyly. “Help me down?” Edmonds folded his arms across his chest and glared. She turned to me, raising her eyebrows. I shook my head slightly. “I guess it’s true.” She sighed. “Chivalry really is dead.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “It died right after journalistic integrity gave up the ghost.”

  WAITING FOR THE CHANNEL 4 STORY TO AIR WAS LIKE waiting for a firing squad to raise their rifles and pull the trigger. Time seemed to move at a fraction of its normal speed, and I oscillated wildly between wishing the event simply wasn’t happening, and wishing it would just hurry the hell up and be done. I twisted in the wind like that for two days; on the afternoon of the third day, I got a phone call. “Bill, it’s Amanda Whiting,” I heard the general counsel say.

  “You’re calling to tell me you’ve gotten an injunction to block the story?”

  “Sorry; not possible,” she said. “I’m calling to tell you the story airs tonight. I just got a courtesy call from Channel Four’s attorney to let me know.”

  “Courtesy call,” I scoffed. “Well, that call is about the only courtesy they’ve shown. How bad’s the story?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”

  “Guess we’ll hear all about it tomorrow from friends in Nashville,” I said. “I’m glad it’s airing there instead of here.” She didn’t reply—she conspicuously didn’t reply—so after the silence dragged on a while longer, I said, “Amanda? What?”

  “It is airing here, Bill. Channel Four is NBC. The NBC affiliate here, WBIR, is picking it up, too.”

  “Channel Ten?” My heart sank; WBIR was Knoxville’s leading news station, and I’d always enjoyed a good relationship with reporters there. “I thought they liked me.”

  “I’m sure they do like you, Bill. But if their sister station in Nashville runs a big news story about you, WBIR can’t ignore it.”

  Why not? I heard a voice in my head shrieking. Why the hell not?

  AS THE NEWSCAST LOOMED, KATHLEEN TRIED HER best to cheer me up, but I wasn’t having any of it. She made one final attempt. “Should I pop some popcorn?”

  “Sure,” I grumbled. “But instead of butter and salt, give it some strychnine and arsenic.”

  “Oh, good grief,” she said. “Get down off that cross and come sit by me on the sofa. It can’t be as bad as you think.”

  During the Knoxville anchor’s lead-in, Kathleen appeared to be right. “The University of Tennessee’s ‘Body Farm’ is making headlines tonight in Nashville,” he began. “The research facility, created by UT anthropologist Bill Brockton, uses donated cadavers to study postmortem human decomposition. The Body Farm’s research helps homicide detectives make accurate time-since-death estimates.”

  Kathleen nudged me. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

  But the newscaster’s face turned serious as he continued. “But some critics are charging that the Body Farm’s research isn’t just macabre, it’s disrespectful—and possibly even unpatriotic. From Nashville, Athena Demopoulos reports.”

  The image switched to a row of neat white headstones in a military cemetery. Then the shot tilted up and widened to show many more tombstones, all identical, and a woman—my new nemesis—walking between them, speaking directly to the camera. “Most veterans rest in peace after death,” she began, “buried with honors in military cemeteries like this one in north Nashville.” The screen showed close-ups of several tombstones, then switched to four photographs of soldiers in uniform. “But for these four Nashville-area veterans—men who were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country—there is no peaceful burial. By rights, they should be here. Instead, after death, their bodies ended up at a gruesome Knoxville facility known as the Body Farm.” The peaceful cemetery images were replaced by sinister-looking shots of the Body Farm’s main gate and fence—wide shots, then close-ups zooming in on the gate’s rusting padlock, the heavy steel chain, and the barbed wire and concertina topping the fence. Then—in a sequence that Buck, the PR staffer had shot—I appeared on-screen. Walking up to the gate, I unlocked it and stepped inside, then closed the gate, vanishing from view. “The Body Farm is the creation of this man, Dr. Bill Brockton,” the reporter continued, “a University of Tennessee anthropologist whose obsession with death and decay drives him to perform macabre experiments on human bodies—including these four Nashville-area veterans. Dr. Brockton refused to allow us inside the grounds of the ghoulish facility.” Once more—this time in slow motion—I stepped through the gate and closed it, as if I were closing it in Athena’s face—“but reliable sources gave Channel Four disturbing details of the indignities inflicted upon the dead. Human bodies are tossed on the ground to rot. The remains are infested with insects, preyed upon by scavenging animals.”

  Suddenly the screen filled with the face—the tear-streaked face—of a thirtysomething-year-old man. The shot widened to show him walking across lush, carefully clipped grass, between tidy rows of tombstones at the Nashville military cemetery. “But one man is vowing to set things right, for his grandfather and other veterans as well. Adam Anderson—grandson of Lucius Anderson, one of the four Nashville veterans at the Body Farm—says he’ll do whatever it takes to get his grandfather back and give him the dignified burial he deserved.”

  “It ain’t right,” the young man said, shaking his head and wiping his eyes. “He served his country. He deserved better than this. We got to put a stop to this.”

  “Anderson isn’t the only one ready to do battle over the treatment of veterans’ bodies,” Demopoulos said. Now the camera showed a portly, glossy-haired man striding into an office lined with law books. “He’s found a powerful ally in Wayne Wilson, a state senator from Jackson, Tennessee.

  “I was shocked,” Wilson pronounced, “to hear what’s being done to these veterans—and to other deceased individuals—in the name of science.” He added, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not antiscience. There’s a place for it. But this isn’t science; this is just morbid obsession. And I believe the people of the great state of Tennessee would want their elected representatives in Nashville to right this grievous wrong.”

  I practically leapt up from the sofa. “Grievous wrong!” I sputtered. “What a load of crap! I’ll give you some grievous wrong, all right!”

  “Shhh,” said Kathleen. Latching onto my arm, she pulled me back to my seat beside her and patted my leg.

  The footag
e cut to a close-up of Athena Demopoulos’s face, filled with compassion. “Adam Anderson says he’s grateful for Senator Wilson’s vow to help. He just wishes it had come sooner—in time to help give his grandfather dignity in death.”

  The shot widened to show Anderson standing beside her in the cemetery. “It just breaks my heart,” Anderson told her, “that they’re allowed to treat him that way . . .” He wiped his eyes again, and Athena leaned closer, handing him a tissue and giving his shoulder a comforting squeeze. “It breaks my heart they’re allowed to treat anybody this way,” he said, his voice breaking. She nodded earnestly, then—when he put his face in his hands and wept—she enfolded him in a hug. Then she stretched out one hand, fingers raised and spread wide, to block the camera’s view—a gesture the lens captured in loving, lingering detail throughout her final, somber line of voice-over: “Athena Demopoulos, Eyewitness Four News.”

  Kathleen had been right: The story wasn’t been as bad as I’d thought it would be. It was worse. Much, much worse.

  UNABLE TO SLEEP, I REACHED FOR HER IN THE NIGHT. “Tell me you love me,” I said. “Tell me everything will be all right.”

  “I do love you, darling,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re home.” But a moment later, as my hand slid up her hip and toward her breast, she laid her own hand over mine, immobilizing it. “I’m still out of commission, honey. I’m sorry.”

  I pulled back to look at her in the dim light of the bedroom. “You still have your period? How can that be? It’s been almost two weeks. You need to go to the doctor.”

  “I called. Nothing to worry about. But if it keeps on much longer, I’ll go in.” She gave a short, ironic laugh. “Funny way for menopause to start, huh—the nonstop period? Like having a month of monsoons just before a forty-year drought sets in.”

  She was trying to be game about it, but her words gave me a sharp pang. Was it hearing her use the word “drought” to describe the change her womanly body was about to undergo? Or was it the combination of images—drought and flood, a pair of biblical-sounding plagues—that suddenly made me feel the grip of cold, bony fingers closing around my heart like some scaly and pitiless claw?

  IS IT POSSIBLE, AS PRIESTS AND MYSTICS BELIEVE, to conjure up evil beings simply by speaking their names—out loud, or even silently, in the fearful shadows of the heart and mind? Earlier in my life, I would have scoffed at the suggestion. Yet now, in my hand—my trembling hand—I held powerful evidence to the contrary. Unscientific evidence, yet no less convincing and frightening for all that.

  Satterfield read the return address on the padded envelope I had just taken from the mailbox. Nothing more, just the name. But the name was enough. More than enough.

  Standing there at the end of the driveway—one hand clutching the envelope, the other still holding the tab on the mailbox door, which I’d noticed was ajar when I’d walked out to retrieve the newspaper—I wheeled and scanned in all directions, as if Satterfield might somehow have slipped through the bars of his cell and returned to haunt us.

  Apart from the alarms shrieking in my head, it was an idyllic Sunday morning in a pretty, woodsy neighborhood. A few doors down the street, a dad in shorts and T-shirt jogged alongside a small bicycle, which a girl who looked about Tyler’s age was pedaling proudly. “Good job,” the dad praised. “Pretty soon you’ll be too fast—I won’t be able to keep up!” Behind me, in the small park across the street from our house, a young mother—the bicyclist’s mom?—was pushing a swing, evoking burbles of delight from the toddler cradled in the seat. My quiet street, shaded by maples and hemlocks, was the very picture of suburban safety and tranquility. It had been, that is, until I’d seen—until I’d silently said—the name on the envelope in my hand.

  Tucking the package back in the mailbox, I fished my cell phone from my jeans. Scrolling through my contacts, I found Brian Decker’s name and pressed “call.” After four rings he still hadn’t picked up, and I began mentally composing a voice mail—one I hoped would sound more rational than I felt—but on the fifth ring he answered. “This is Captain Decker,” he said.

  “Deck, it’s Bill Brockton,” I said.

  “Hey, Doc. How the hell are you? Haven’t talked to you in way too long.” He sounded pleased to hear from me, but there was an understandable undertone of sadness in his voice, too.

  Decker headed the Knoxville Police Department’s SWAT team. We’d met twelve years before, at the end of Nick Satterfield’s string of sadistic serial killings, when Decker arrived at my house just in time to help keep Satterfield from murdering my family and me.

  “Deck, can you check on a prisoner for me?” The words rushed out without preamble. “Make sure he’s still in custody?”

  “Sure, Doc. City, county, state, or federal?”

  “State. South Central Correctional Facility. In Clifton.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Prisoner’s name wouldn’t happen to be Satterfield, would it?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  He knew because no one understood Satterfield’s menace better than Decker, whose own brother had died while searching Satterfield’s house for booby traps. I heard a deep breath on the other end of the line. “You sound spooked, Doc. What’s going on?”

  “I’m standing at my mailbox, Deck. There’s an envelope here—a padded envelope—with a return address that just says ‘Satterfield.’ Nothing but the name.”

  “Shit—don’t open it!” I’d never heard alarm in Decker’s voice before, but I was hearing it now, loud and clear.

  “Okay, I won’t open it.”

  “Put it down—very gently—and get away from it.”

  “You think it’s a bomb?”

  “The guy has a thing for explosives.”

  “He has a thing for snakes, too,” I reminded him, “but I don’t think this envelope has room for either a bomb or a boa constrictor. Anthrax or ricin, maybe. But it’s probably just a hateful letter. What I want to know—besides is the guy still behind bars—is how the hell he got this to me?”

  Decker didn’t speak for a moment; in the background, I heard computer keys clattering. “Hang on. I’m checking on him.” More clattering. “Well, according to this—the state’s Felony Offender Information database—he’s still there. And I sure haven’t heard anything about an escape. Which I would have. And so would you. ‘Serial killer breaks free’? You know the media would go nuts over that.”

  He had a point there, I had to admit. “So how was he able to send this to me? Can convicted killers just mail stuff to anybody they please?”

  “Unfortunately, yeah,” he said. “There are a few rules, but they’re pretty minimal. Basically, inmates aren’t supposed to send threats to victims or victims’ families.”

  “Wait. Did you say ‘rules’? And ‘supposed to’? The system assumes a serial killer’s gonna play by the rules for good mail manners?”

  “Sounds lame,” he conceded. “But there’s a safety net, sort of. If the warden thinks a piece of mail poses a threat, he can have it opened. But that requires a bunch of paperwork, and prison wardens probably have enough paperwork already, without creating more for themselves. Still, Satterfield’s no ordinary prisoner, and the warden would know that the two of you aren’t exactly pen pals.” There was a pause, then: “It’s Sunday. Did you not check your mail yesterday?”

  “I did,” I said, the realization—no mail on Sundays—hitting me for the first time as I checked for a postmark. “Shit. This wasn’t mailed. This was hand delivered.”

  “Listen, Doc, the safest thing would be to get the bomb squad over there.”

  “That would freak Kathleen out,” I said. “I don’t even want her to know about this, much less think it’s about to blow our house to smithereens.”

  “So take her out for brunch. Stay gone for a couple hours, let the guys check it out, then we give you a call once we’re gone.”

  “And the neighbors wouldn’t notice a thing, right?” I pictured the series of scared
and angry phone calls we’d get. “She’d be twice as mad at me—first for tricking her, then for upsetting everybody in Sequoyah Hills.”

  “Well, we gotta do something with it, Doc. And you damn sure shouldn’t just tear into it. What do you suggest?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the dad and the girl on the bike looping back toward me, thirty yards away and closing fast. “Hang on just a sec,” I said to him, then took a casual step sideways, putting my body between the envelope and the child. Decker was right; we had to do something, and fast—get the package out of the neighborhood, away from innocent bystanders. “I’ll take it to the forensic center,” I told him after they had passed. “We’ve got a portable x-ray machine; I can wheel it outside, onto the loading dock, and shoot an x-ray. If it shows any wires, I’ll call the bomb guys. If it doesn’t, I can take it inside and open it under an exhaust hood, in case it’s some sort of nasty powder.”

  “I don’t like this,” Decker grumbled.

  “I don’t like it either,” I said. “But the less fuss the better. Like I said, it’s probably just a hateful letter.”

  “Then how come it’s not in a regular envelope?” I didn’t have a good answer for that. “Let me come get you, Doc.”

  “Just meet me at the forensic center, Deck.”

  “I’m on my way,” he said. “How soon can you be there?”

  “I’ll leave right now. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” I thought about how to explain my abrupt departure. “I’ll tell Kathleen the M.E. needs me to come look at a skull fracture.”

  “Hurry up, but be careful, Doc. Don’t handle it any more than you have to. I don’t suppose you’re wearing gloves?”

  “Come on, Deck. Do you put on gloves when you go to the mailbox? Does the mailman wear gloves? The mail sorters?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he groused.