His eyes searched my face for signs of sarcasm, and it was quite possible that he found them. As I packed and padded the teeth and bits of bone, giving a verbal accounting of the items, he stood at my side, watching closely, and he reread the evidence receipt three times before signing it, bearing down so hard that the point of the pen almost tore through the paper.
BY THE TIME I FINISHED CLEANING THE ANNEX—NOT only the slight mess I had made, but also the accumulated dust, dead bugs, and cobwebs of two prior years of neglect—it was six P.M.; I had been holed up for well over twenty-four hours, scrubbing and studying the teeth, my only sustenance the two apples and the three packs of peanut butter crackers I’d brought from home. Even though I was tired, hungry, and dirty, I hated to leave, because leaving meant plunging into the turbulence of the two storm systems swirling around me: the Janus case, where I was being made to look incompetent, and the Channel 4 ruckus—“Vet-Gate,” one newspaper reporter had dubbed it—where I was being portrayed as uncaring and unpatriotic. Not to mention the other problem, which wasn’t just painful but potentially deadly: Satterfield.
Raising the metal garage door, amid another chorus of metallic banshee shrieks, I stepped outside, blinking and stretching in the golden, slanting light. Drawing a deep breath, I smelled something unpleasant—something that I quickly realized must be me. I took a deep, analytical sniff and came to the conclusion that if I had been the subject of a multiple-choice exam question—“Which of the following does Bill Brockton stink of?”—the correct answer would be “(d) all the above.” Suddenly, to my surprise, I detected a delightful aroma amid the malodorous miasma, and my mouth began to water, as reflexively and reliably as those of Pavlov’s dogs. Ribs, I realized, my nostrils dilating, my head swiveling into the breeze like some ravenous, carnivorous weathervane. A quarter mile away, a thin plume of smoke spooled upward from the kitchen of Calhoun’s on the River and wafted my way. Do I dare, I wondered, dirty as I am? I took another deep drag of the divine scent. I do, I do, I decided; I could ask for an outside table, on the patio overlooking the water, and I could duck into the bathroom on my way into the restaurant and do a bit of damage control at the sink. Life was looking up.
Reflexively I reached for my cell phone to call Kathleen. She probably wouldn’t want ribs again so soon (had our anniversary dinner really been less than two weeks ago? It seemed like months). But my hand came up empty, and I remembered that I’d left my phone on the counter at home, so that Kathleen and I could both truthfully say that I didn’t have it with me. What was the phrase the CIA had coined back in the 1960s—when they were hatching political-assassination plots they didn’t tell the president about? Plausible deniability: the I-didn’t-know legal loophole. I’d left my cell phone at home so I could say I didn’t know that the FBI was looking for me, but now plausible deniability was circling back to bite me in the butt—or at least to make it hard to score a dinner date with my wife. “Crap,” I muttered, ducking back inside to call her from the annex phone.
Kathleen didn’t answer her cell or the house line. Finally I remembered that she’d mentioned being off the grid today, too—something about a journal article she desperately needed to finish writing. I dialed her office on campus, on the off chance that she was holed up there, now that everyone else had likely left for the day. No luck. “Crap,” I repeated, not wanting to eat alone. Deflated again, I backed my truck out of the corrugated cave, wrestled down the screeching door and locked it, heading for home and for leftovers in lieu of ribs by the riverside.
On an impulse, instead of heading directly home, I detoured to Kathleen’s building, hoping for a chance to tell her about my conversations with Maddox, Mrs. Janus, and Special Agent Billings. I didn’t see her car in the parking lot, though, and her office window looked dark. Only then did I remember that she had planned to hole up in the library.
I parked in a fire lane outside the library’s main entrance on Melrose Avenue, switching on the truck’s flashers in hopes that they might ward off a ticket or a tow truck. I took a quick spin through the coffee shop and the study areas on the main floor without spotting her, then peered through the doors of several study rooms, before it occurred to me that she might be downstairs in Reference. I didn’t see her there, either, but I did see a librarian I knew slightly, peering at a computer screen. Thelma? Velma? Neither of those names seemed quite right. “Hello there,” I said to her. “How long before actual books are a thing of the past?”
She looked up, reflexively smiling when she recognized me. Then something flickered in her eyes, and she looked slightly embarrassed, as if she’d remembered something unseemly about me. “Oh. Dr. Brockton. Hello.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen my wife in here this evening,” I said.
“No, but I’ve been staring at this screen pretty hard. Feel free to take a look around.”
“I already did. Didn’t see her. She’s working on an article, so I thought she might’ve needed help finding something.”
“Well, not that I know of, but if I see her, I’ll tell her you were looking for her.”
“Thanks.” I nodded and started away, but then stopped and turned back. “Oh, long as I’m here . . . is, uh, Red working tonight?”
“Who?”
“Red. That’s her nickname. I don’t know her actual name. Young woman. Smart. Sarcastic, but in a fun way.” Thelma/Velma/what’s-her-name was giving me a blank stare. “You know, Red,” I repeated. “I think that’s the color of her hair.”
“I can’t think of anybody who fits that description. Not in Reference, anyway. Maybe she’s in Periodicals?”
“No,” I said, feeling embarrassed and awkward—stupid, even—but also stubborn, not quite ready to give up. “Reference. I’ve talked to her two or three times. She was working the late shift one night a couple weeks ago when I called. June . . . twentieth, I think. Just before midnight. You could check the staff schedule.”
“I don’t need to,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t need to check the staff schedule to tell you that there was nobody named Red working late that night. Nobody named anything.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The library’s open till midnight during summer session,” she said, “but the Reference Desk is only staffed until ten.”
I STRIPPED IN THE GARAGE, TOSSED MY CLOTHES into the washing machine, and stepped into the shower in the basement bathroom. I stayed there, slumped under the spray, until the water turned cold. I was physically exhausted—I hadn’t slept in almost forty hours—but I was unmoored and off kilter, too, from the roller-coaster ride of all the recent revelations, confrontations, implications, and miscommunications: Prescott’s angry message, Maddox’s new information, Mrs. Janus’s mistrust of the FBI. The last two backbreaking straws had been my unsuccessful search for Kathleen, followed by the disquieting discovery that “Red”—to whom I had confided about the Janus case—was a stranger and an imposter of some sort, someone whose motives and machinations were utter mysteries to me.
Shivering as I stepped out from under the chilly water, I dried off, wrapped the towel around me, and trundled upstairs, where I found Tupperware containers of baked beans and potato salad deep in the fridge: the remains, I realized, of our anniversary dinner. The beans looked and smelled fine; the potato salad was slightly suspect, with a gauzy layer of mold floating above the chunky surface. It seemed more like a layer of ground fog than a deeply established colony of fungus, so I commenced a culinary version of an archaeological dig, removing the top stratum and setting it aside before excavating in earnest, shoveling it into my mouth.
By the time I’d finished the potato salad and baked beans, my whole body was buzzing with fatigue. Shuffling back to the bedroom, I pulled on a soft, ragged pair of sweatpants and a paint-spattered T-shirt, then returned to the living room and settled onto the sofa to watch a bit of the History Channel until Kathleen came home. Outside, the summer light be
gan to fade. Inside, the sights and sounds of World War II filled the room. Within minutes, the menacing growls of warplanes and the lethal clatter of machine-gun fire lulled me into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I AWOKE TO DAYLIGHT—BRIGHT MORNING DAYLIGHT—streaming through the living room windows. Surfacing from fathomless depths, I felt disoriented, staring around the room as if it were unfamiliar territory. The television screen was dark and silent, so evidently Kathleen had come in at some point during the war and switched it to peacetime mode. But why hadn’t she waked me, even if only to lead me to bed?
“Kathleen? Kathleen! Are you here?”
“I’m in the kitchen, honey. About to leave.”
Swinging my feet onto the floor, I levered myself into a sitting position and pushed myself off the couch. Rounding the corner into the kitchen, I saw Kathleen rinsing her coffee cup, her briefcase already slung over one shoulder. Still groggy, I moved toward her, hoping for a kiss. “Why didn’t you wake me up? What time did you get in?”
“Really late,” she said. “Midnight, maybe? You were really out of it—I could hear you snoring from down in the garage, as soon as I got out of my car—so I figured I should just let sleeping dogs lie.”
“I wish you’d woken me up. I really wanted to see you.”
“Sorry, hon. I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep if I woke you up. And I was desperate to get to sleep by the time I got home last night. After you left yesterday—no, day before yesterday; God, I’m so tired—the phone started ringing off the hook. Reporters and FBI agents calling all afternoon and half the night. So I didn’t get much sleep Sunday night. And yesterday was . . . well, intense.” She picked up her keys from the counter.
I glanced at the microwave clock. It read 8:15—later than my usual departure time, but earlier than hers. “Do you have to go right now?” I heard a note of petulance in my voice, and I realized that my feelings were hurt.
“I have a meeting at eight-thirty, darling.” She came and gave me a peck on the cheek, then slid off and headed downstairs for the garage. “I’ll talk to you this evening,” she called up the stairs. “Love you.”
“Love you, too,” I murmured to the empty doorway, my unheard voice a mix of wistfulness and resentment.
PEGGY GLOWERED WHEN I ENTERED THE ANTHROPOLOGY Department office at nine on Tuesday—not because I was an hour later than usual, but because I’d been AWOL for all of Monday, hunkered down in the abandoned annex. I knew she was about to light into me, but I held up a preemptive hand and shook my head. “Not now, Peggy. Messages on my desk?”
“A few dozen.” Her tone was as biting as a pair of fingernail clippers.
“Thank you.” I headed through the doorway into my administrative office—the one where I met with struggling students, frustrated faculty, and bean-counting bureaucrats—and gathered up the mound of pink messages. If anything, Peggy had understated the number. Curling them into a haphazard scroll, I cinched them with a fat rubber band and headed back out through Peggy’s office.
“You’re already leaving?”
“No. Just heading down to my other office to sort through all this. Buzz me if Kathleen calls. Or the dean. Or the FBI.” I sighed as a bleak thought occurred to me. “Or the general counsel, I guess. But reporters? I’m in an all-day meeting.”
“What meeting? You don’t have a meeting on your schedule.” It wasn’t like Peggy to be dense, so I suspected that she was subtly gigging me, slightly punishing me.
“The meeting between my butt and the chair at the far end of the stadium. The quiet end of the stadium.”
She opened her mouth, but—perhaps seeing the warning in my eyes—shut it and simply nodded.
I made it to the north end of the stadium without encountering another soul in the long corridor that curved beneath the grandstands. Breathing a sigh of relief, I unlocked the door of my private sanctuary, hung out the DO NOT DISTURB sign, and locked myself inside.
Ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door. I knew it wasn’t Peggy; in twelve years as my secretary, she had made the long, dark trek to this end of the stadium only twice—both times in her first week on the job. I considered who it might be. The last thing I wanted to do right now was talk to a graduate student. Or a colleague. Or anyone else, I realized, with the exception—the possible exception—of Kathleen. I ignored it. After a pause, the knocking resumed, louder this time. Again I ignored it. “Hello? Dr. Brockton? You in there?” I recognized the voice of Brian Decker, and I considered him friend, not foe.
“Oh, just a second, Deck,” I called, hurrying to open the door. “Hey. Sorry to keep you waiting. I was preoccupied”—I pointed an accusatory finger at the heap of phone messages—“trying to figure out which of these alligators is gonna take the biggest bite out of my ass. What’s up?”
“The plot thickens,” he said. “You were right.”
“Well, that’s not something I’ve heard much lately,” I said. “About what?”
“About running the print from that finger. That kid’s pinkie. I got a hit.”
“No kidding? The kid’s already got a record? He is a prodigy.”
“Not a criminal record,” he said. “An I.D. record.”
“I’m not following you,” I said.
“There’s been a big push, the last few years, to put kids’ prints on file,” he said. “So if a kid goes missing, we’ve got something besides photos to work with.”
“You mean if a body turns up?”
He frowned; nodded. “Yeah, but not just that,” he said. “Also, if the missing kid—or someone who might be the kid—turns up years later.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Like putting a computer chip in your dog’s neck, right?”
He nodded. “Like that. The new version of that is DNA—parents can buy DNA kits now—collect a cheek swab and send it off to a company that’ll run the profile and store it.”
“For a fee,” I said.
“For a fee. But fingerprints are free.”
“But we’re talking about Satterfield’s kid here,” I said. “So putting the kid’s fingerprints in a database seems like the last thing Mom and Dad would want to do.”
Decker raised his eyebrows. “Like I said, the plot thickens,” he repeated. “This isn’t Satterfield’s kid.”
“How do you know? And if it’s not his, whose is it?”
“It’s Tim and Tammy Martin’s kid,” he said. “And I know because I talked to them.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “And their kid’s missing a finger?”
“Unfortunately, their kid’s missing a lot more than that,” he said. “Their kid’s dead.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Murdered?”
He shook his head. “Accidental death. Two weeks ago. Riding his bike. A seventeen-year-old girl ran over him. She was dialing her cell phone.” I frowned, partly because I was appalled by the senseless death, partly because I couldn’t imagine how these puzzle pieces fit together. Decker reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out an index card, which he handed to me.
Except it wasn’t an index card, it was a photo: a headshot of a woman looking—scowling—directly at the camera. The woman was five feet seven inches tall; I could tell this from the inch-by-inch measurements stenciled on the wall behind her. I looked from the photo to Decker, puzzled. “This looks like a mug shot,” I said. “But if she’s seventeen, I’m not a day over twenty.”
“She’s not. Take another look.” I studied it again. She looked familiar, but I was having trouble placing her. Decker raised his eyebrows, watching me closely. “Recognize her? From Satterfield’s trial?”
I felt a mixture of excitement and dread rising in me. “My God, it’s her! The weird groupie woman?”
“Give that man a cigar,” he said. “Or a finger.”
I stared at him, baffled. “I still don’t get it, Deck. Connect the dots for me.”
“Think about it,” he said. “I’ll give you a hint. The kid
still had the finger when he was hit by the car.”
I was about to snap at him—about to tell him I didn’t have the time or energy for guessing games—when I realized that playing twenty questions with Decker was probably the most fun I would have all day. All day? Hell, maybe even all week, I thought, glancing again at the pile of angry, insistent messages.
“So the parents,” I mused. “I’m guessing they’re not connected to Satterfield, or the package—that they had nothing to do with cutting off their son’s finger.”
He shook his head. “They were horrified when I told them about it. And furious.”
My mind sorted through various possibilities. “So the girl runs over the boy. Somebody calls 911. The EMTs and the police—city, or county?”
“County. Sheriff’s deputies.”
“The EMTs and the deputies arrive. Is the kid alive or dead when he goes into the ambulance?”
“Alive. Dies on the way to the hospital. Head trauma—no helmet—and internal injuries.”
“Poor kid. But his finger’s still attached, you say.”
“Right.”
“And then he’s taken to the morgue. Is that where the parents first see him?”
“Yes. Took a while to track them down.”
I could feel the picture coming into focus. “So they I.D.’d the body at the morgue. And the finger must’ve still been on his hand then. Because if it wasn’t, they’d have noticed and started asking questions. And anyhow, Garland”—Dr. Garland Hamilton, the Knox County medical examiner—“would’ve pounced on that. An amputation that clean? He’d have been on that like a duck on a June bug.” Decker nodded, smiling slightly, and I continued, on a roll now. “So the boy still had the finger when he was in the morgue. But unless somebody dug up his body”—I felt almost as energized now as when I was working a death scene—“the finger must’ve been amputated between the time he left the morgue and the time he was buried.” Decker was beaming now. “My God,” I said, “so Satterfield’s groupie-woman works at the funeral home? She cut off the finger while she was embalming the boy’s body?”
The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel Page 21