Flesh and Bone

by Jefferson Bass

  As I took out a handkerchief and wiped pie from my eyes, I saw the UT police officers racing toward me. They formed a circle with their backs to me, their arms and hands outstretched. The TV cameraman scrambled to the edge of the circle, zooming in on my dripping face. I looked at the protesters, their expressions a mixture of joy and hatred, and then I looked at the crowd of spectators and students, who now far outnumbered the picketers. Suddenly a young woman pushed through the crowd and jogged toward me, holding a crudely made sign high over her head. It was Miranda Lovelady, and the sign bore a hand-drawn image I recognized from a bumper sticker on her car: a stylized fish, its body filled with the word DARWIN; below the body, the fish had sprouted legs.

  A cheer erupted from the students, and they fell in behind Miranda. The officers fanned out into a wedge, and we walked forward—the police, the students, and I—through the picket line and into the building.

  I made a quick stop in the restroom to clean the pie off my face and neck. Then, for the next ninety minutes, I taught, and I’d never felt prouder or more privileged to be a teacher.

  CHAPTER 18

  MY PHONE RANG JUST as I was getting into bed. It was my son Jeff. “Turn on Channel 4,” he said.

  “Why? What’s on?”

  “Local news. The tease, just before they went to a commercial, mentioned you, creationism, and a mouthwatering controversy, whatever that means. Did you go looking for trouble today?”

  “Oh, hell,” I said, “no, trouble came looking for me. Sort of. I guess you might say I did some pot-stirring last week. But not enough to justify what happened today.”

  “Yikes,” he said. “Sounds serious. Call me back after the story airs.” With that, he clicked off.

  I pulled a bathrobe over my boxers and made my way into the darkness of the living room, where I switched on the floor lamp beside the recliner. The remote was, as always, on the arm of the chair. I settled heavily into the leather, leaned halfway back, and switched on the television. I caught a loud local spot for a group of car dealerships out by the airport calling themselves the “Airport Motor Mile,” followed by an equally noisy ad for a wholesale furniture ware house, then the newscast resumed.

  Characteristically, though, they didn’t start out with the story about the protest. It was one of the things that annoyed me most about television news: the way they’d repeatedly tease a story they figured lots of people would stick around to watch—something involving cute animals or slapstick comedy or a racy scandal—and not show it until the very end of the newscast. I chafed through weather, sports, and, oddly, a reprise of the weather (which I tuned out the second time as well) before the announcer—who tended to look cheery even when relating the death of a child—assumed a concerned expression and asked, “Is Tennessee headed for another monkey trial?” The picture then switched to a full-screen close-up of the guy in the gorilla suit, followed by a series of shots of other protesters, singly and in twos and threes and sixes. The way they strung the images together, without zooming out to show the group as a whole, made it appear as if scores, maybe even hundreds of people were wielding picket signs, rather than the dozen or so that had actually picketed. The reporter played up the “controversy,” splicing in angry accusations by protesters; he mentioned “an angry counterprotest” as the camera showed Miranda arriving with her DARWIN sign.

  Then came something I didn’t expect. During a series of short interviews with bystanders, Jess Carter’s face flashed onto the screen, with her name and title superimposed as well. I hadn’t even known she was there today. “These people are a small minority of small-minded, self-righteous busybodies,” Jess said directly to the camera lens. “If they want to check their brains at the door, fine, but they shouldn’t be trying to force other people to do that, too. Dr. Brockton does more good in the world than this whole group of anti-intellectual protesters put together. They need to get back on the bus they rode in on and head back to what ever Kansas backwater they crawled out of.” I smiled at her feisty eloquence and her defense of me, but at the same time I winced, and hoped she didn’t get tangled up in this mess along with me. In the background, over her left shoulder, I could see Jennings Bryan, the lawyer who was orchestrating the event. For the most part, his face was an expressionless mask, but I saw his eyes lash with anger as she spoke. Bryan’s sound bite, which followed hers, decried the co-opting of public education by soulless intellectuals and secular humanists whose chief aim was persecuting people of faith. Damn, I thought again, me and my big mouth. But then I thought, No, I’ve got nothing against faith—just against willful, bullying ignorance.

  The story’s final shot, played in excruciating slow motion, showed a screen-filling cream pie arcing toward my face and then smashing into it. Filling slowly radiated from the edges of the pan; streams of yellow and white dripped lazily from my nose and chin. The picture froze at the moment I wiped my eyes and blinked out through the mess. The announcer came back on-screen, his earlier look of concern now replaced by merriment. “If the protesters have their way,” he said, “Professor Brockton, whose classroom comments set off the controversy, might soon be eating his words, too.” His eyes twinkled. “That’s it for this edition of Nightwatch. Good night—and good eating!”

  I clicked off the television in disgust and called Jeff. “Not exactly a shining moment for higher education, was it?” I said.

  He laughed. “Well, no, but at least you’re not getting burned at the stake, like Copernicus.”

  “Not yet, anyhow,” I said. “But that wasn’t Copernicus. Copernicus died quietly in his sleep, I think. It was Bruno who got toasted for spelling out the implications of the Copernican theory—for speculating that there might be other worlds, orbiting other stars, inhabited by other, more intelligent beings.” I sighed. “Sometimes we don’t look like particularly stiff competition.”

  “But hey,” said Jeff, “that Dr. Carter—she seems pretty bright. Leapt to your defense mighty strongly, too. Isn’t she the one you were planning to bring with you to my house for dinner a few months ago?”

  “The same,” I said. “She has a way of getting paged anytime I have a dinner date with her. Happened again last week—I was actually cooking dinner for her at my house. Just as the coals were getting hot—in more ways than one—she got beeped.”

  “Maybe you should let me fix you up with Sheri,” he said.

  “Who’s Sheri?”

  “One of the accountants at my firm. Completely unavailable three months out of the year, but starting April 16, she’s got a lot more time on her hands. And I have never, ever paged her. Not a whole lot of emergencies come up on tax returns. Except for yours.” This was an unexpected and unwelcome turn in the conversation. “Dad, I’ve been through this box of what passes for your financial records, and I can’t find bank statements for August, October, or December.”

  “Look again,” I said. “They must be in there somewhere.”

  “Dad, I’ve looked twice.” I could tell he was upset; he tended to preface his sentences with “Dad” whenever he was put out with me. I heard “Dad” a lot every year at tax time. “I’ve sorted and organized everything. Dad, they are not there.”

  “Dang,” I said. “Then I have no idea where they are.”

  “Clearly.”

  “Maybe they got lost in the mail,” I offered. “Can’t you just call the bank and ask them to send you copies?”

  “No,” he said, “they can’t do that; it’s not my account. Why don’t you just go online and download copies, then e-mail them to me?”

  “Online? That stuff ’s online?”

  “Only for about the past ten years,” he said. “You should have a user name and password filed away somewhere.”

  “Well, I don’t know where. Check that stuff I brought you. Maybe somewhere in there.”

  “Dad, you’re hopeless,” he groaned. “I’d fire you, except that I’m the only thing standing between you and the complete loss of my inheritance.”
r />   “And what makes you think you’re in my will, smarty-pants?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Lucky guess, maybe. Or maybe it was that copy of the will that was stuffed into this pile of papers.”

  “Ah,” I said, “I was wondering where I’d put that. Hang on to that for me, would you? I need to see how best to cut you out of it.”

  “Right. Okay, I’m hanging up now. Good night. See if you can program yourself to dream where those bank statements might be. Oh, and Dad?”

  “Yes, son?”

  “Good luck with Dr. Carter.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Good luck with my tax return.”

  The next morning I called Jess at her office. “Hey,” I said when she picked up, “thanks for leaping to my defense on the news.”

  “Do I get Brownie points for that?”

  “Thousands,” I said. “What were you doing there? I didn’t even know you were in Knoxville.”

  “Quick trip,” she said. “I came into the morgue early that morning. Couple unattended deaths up your way, and things were quiet down here, so I dashed up on the spur of the moment. I was just getting back into my car to head back to Chattanooga when Miranda came rushing out and asked for a ride to campus. She made the Darwin poster on the drive over.”

  “Well, I appreciate the show of support,” I said. “I just hope they don’t cram a pie in your face, too.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t mind that part. I like banana cream pie. It’s the other stuff I’d like to avoid.”

  “What other stuff?”

  “I got half a dozen phone calls last night,” she said. “Same guy every time.”

  “What guy? Did he say his name? Did you recognize his voice? Did you get a number on your caller ID?”

  “No name, blocked number, muffled voice.”

  “Tell me about the calls.”

  “Well, after the nasty names he called me during our first chat, I decided to let the rest of the calls go to voice mail. Some of the messages just consigned me to a very unpleasant afterlife. Others promised me some pretty hellish experiences this side of the grave. Leading to the grave, too.”

  “Death threats? My God, Jess, did you call the police?”

  “Naw, it’s just some pissed-off coward blowing off steam,” she said. “Not worth wasting any more time or energy on it.”

  “Don’t take any chances,” I said. “Call the cops.”

  “If I called the cops every time somebody hassled me, I’d be the girl who cried wolf. If it keeps up, I’ll call the phone company and get a block or a trace. If anything else happens, I’ll tell the police. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, but it didn’t feel okay.

  “Uh-oh,” she said. “I gotta go—Amy’s making her ‘Somebody important is calling’ face at me. Talk to you soon.”

  “Okay. Be careful, Jess,” I said. “Bye.”

  “I will. Bye.”

  CHAPTER 19

  AS I REACHED INTO my briefcase, I thought, This could be my best work ever. Thirty seconds later, I was certain I’d been right.

  I’d just taken a huge bite of my masterpiece—possibly the finest sandwich ever made—when the phone on my desk rang. I briefly considered spitting the mouthful into the trash, but the individual ingredients were splendid on their own—smoked turkey, smoked Gouda cheese, spicy brown mustard, crisp kosher pickle, and tomato on nutty oat bread—and the whole was even tastier than the sum of its parts. In short, I couldn’t bear to waste it. Instead, I gave three quick chews as I reached for the receiver, then two more as I slowly raised it, jamming wads of food into my cheek pouches. “’Lo, ih Dah Rockuh,” I mumbled.

  “Bill? Is that you?” I was relieved to hear that it was just Art.

  “Eh, ih ee,” I grunted.

  “Are you sick? Are you hurt? Hang on. I’m calling 911.”

  “Nuh,” I said. “’Ait ussa min’t. Ea’in unh.” I gave a few more hurried chews, then swallowed the first of three installments. “’orry. ’ang on.” Chew chew swallow; chew chew swallow. “Okay, sorry. Had a mouthful there.”

  “Bill, Bill, have you forgotten everything you learned from Gomer Pyle?”

  “What? Gomer Pyle? You called me up to talk corny old sitcoms?”

  “No. I’m just thinking you did not chew thirty-four times before swallowing, like Grandma Pyle taught Gomer to do. Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame.”

  “Well, Shazam,” I said, “call Barney Fife and have me arrested.”

  “Wrong jurisdiction. Barney’s over in Mayberry. Anyhow, the reason I called is, we got lucky on the prints.”

  “Tell me,” I said, my sandwich suddenly forgotten. “Who was he?”

  “Well, for starters, he was a teacher.”

  “So his prints were on file from his background check? Damn. I hate to think a teacher got killed just because he liked to dress funny.”

  “He had another set of prints on file, too. The guy was also a pedophile, Bill. He had an arrest record for aggravated sexual battery.”

  I sat bolt upright in my chair. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “I thought that wasn’t supposed to be possible. I thought the whole point of the background investigations and fingerprint checks was to keep people like that from working with kids.”

  “It is,” he said, “and it did. Sort of. The system worked, within its limits. The guy was a teacher first, and a pedophile second. At least, that’s the order in which he was printed. Reality is, he probably became a teacher so he’d have easy access to kids. But he’d never been caught at the time he was hired.”

  “How much information did you get?”

  “Enough to know the basics and start tracking down the details. Guy’s name was Craig Willis; thirty-one years old. He applied for a teaching job three years ago—in Knoxville, by the way, not Chattanooga. Got hired just down Middlebrook Pike from you, at Bearden Middle School.” I felt my insides go cold. That was the school my son had attended. Jeff was there three de cades ago—he was a student at Bearden Middle around the time this Craig Willis was born—but the coincidence brought the danger closer to home somehow. “He taught English and social studies for two years,” Art went on. “Then, last summer, he was arrested for molesting a ten-year-old boy at a day camp where he was a counselor.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “How come I don’t remember reading about that in the newspaper?”

  “Wasn’t in the newspaper,” said Art. “His lawyer—guess who?—managed to keep it all very quiet.”

  “Grease?”

  “None other. He got a gag order on the arrest information, claiming his client would suffer irreparable damage if the arrest were made public, and then he got the case dismissed on a technicality—apparently the arresting officer was so upset he manhandled Craig and forgot to read him his rights. But the judge refused to expunge the arrest record, and the school system dropped him like a hot potato. He moved to Chattanooga last fall.”

  I was almost afraid to ask, but I did. “And what was he doing in Chattanooga?”

  I heard Art draw a long, deep breath, which he exhaled in a slow, angry hiss. “He had just opened a karate school. Like teaching, only better, for his purposes—doesn’t require a background check. And it’s mostly boys in the classes.”

  I thought at once of my grandsons, who were five and seven—and who were both taking karate lessons in West Knoxville. “God help us,” I said.

  “Maybe he did,” Art replied. “They say he moves in mysterious ways. Maybe it was a mother’s prayer that steered some queer-hater with a violent streak to cross paths with our boy Craig when he was all dolled up like a tart.”

  “See, I don’t buy that,” I said. “I think the buck stops here on earth; good and evil arise from the choices we make, the things we do. I don’t pretend to understand why some people are motivated to do wonderful things, while others are driven to commit unspeakable acts. But I think we’re the ones who do the deeds, and we’re the ones who deserve what ever credit or blame comes due.�
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  “Mostly I agree,” said Art. “Couldn’t be a cop if I didn’t believe in holding people accountable. Anyhow, it sure adds an interesting twist to this case.”

  “Did you call Chattanooga yet—the detective, or Jess?”

  “Nope. You found the skin that gave me the prints, so you earned the first call. I’ll phone Jess right now.”

  “Wait. One more question before you go.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I’m assuming you still haven’t gotten any hits on that thumbprint you got from Craig’s severed penis?”

  “Right.”

  “So the killer’s prints aren’t in the AFIS database either in Tennessee or at the FBI?”

  “Maybe not,” he said, “but then again, even if the print’s right, the size could be wrong.”

  “Huh?”

  “We can’t be certain that the size of the pecker when I printed it was the same as the size when the killer grabbed it,” he said. “So I need to shoot some enlargements and reductions of the thumbprint, send those in, too. What I send in has to be within ten percent of the size of the prints on file, or AFIS won’t see it as a match.”

  “You know,” I said, “it would be quite a coup to ID both the victim and the killer from the prints on a husk of skin and an amputated penis.”