Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel bf-2

by Jefferson Bass

  “You think you can hold him,” I asked, “while I fasten his legs to the tree?”

  “Yup,” said Miranda, taking a turn of rope around one hand.

  Kneeling at the base of the tree, I pulled the feet close to the trunk and began tying them there. A yellowjacket circled my still-sweaty face, and with one hand I waved it away. Suddenly I heard a sharp exclamation-“Dammit!”-followed by a slapping sound. Then: “Oh, shit, look out!”

  With a thud, the corpse toppled forward, draping himself over my head and shoulders and knocking me flat. Wriggling like some giant bug, I lay trapped at the base of the tree, pinned by the garishly dressed corpse. “I am so sorry,” Miranda said, and then she began to snicker. But the snicker died suddenly, and I soon saw why.

  A pair of rattlesnake boots, topped by black leather jeans, entered my peripheral vision and planted themselves a foot from my face. I knew, even before she spoke, that the snakeskin boots were coiled around the feet of Dr. Jess Carter. After a moment, her right toe began to tap, slowly and, as best I could tell, sarcastically.

  “Don’t let him get you down, Brockton,” she finally said. “I think you can take him. Best two out of three?”

  “Very funny,” I said. “Y’all mind getting this guy off of me?”

  Jess reached down and grabbed the rope around the dead man’s wrists; Miranda seized a leg. Together they gave a heave that rolled the corpse onto his back beside me. I regained my feet and as much of my dignity as I could. Jess winked at me with the eye Miranda couldn’t see. I would have blushed, but my face was already red.

  “This wasn’t one of the questions you asked me to research,” I told her, “but I’m thinking maybe more than one person was involved in the murder. Pretty tough to tie his arms that high on the tree without some help.”

  “I see what you mean,” she said, “but the forensic techs couldn’t tell. Ground’s pretty rocky around there, and we had a dry spell for a couple weeks, so nothing useful in the way of footprints.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t in town when he was found,” I said. “My secretary said you called right about the time my plane was taking off for Los Angeles.”

  “Damned inconsiderate of you to help the LAPD with a case,” she said. “We may need to fit you with one of those electronic ankle monitors to make sure you don’t leave Tennessee.”

  “Can’t do it,” I said, pointing to my faded jeans and work boots. “It would spoil my fashion statement.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “Word is, Martha Stewart’s coming out with a designer line of corrections apparel and accessories. I’m sure the Martha anklet will look fabulous on you.” Jess handed me the rope. “Shall we try this again?” This time, once we’d hoisted the subject upright, I took the precaution of knotting the rope to the branch immediately. I tied off the legs, Jess pronounced herself satisfied with the positioning, and Miranda trimmed the loose ends of the rope.

  “The strange thing is, the head and neck were in better shape than I’d expected,” she said. “Lots of trauma, but not much decomp, considering how much blood there was to draw the flies. That would lead me to think he wasn’t out there all that long, except there was almost no soft tissue left on the lower legs.”

  “You think maybe carnivores did that? Coyotes or foxes or raccoons?”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but I didn’t see a lot of tooth marks. I’d like you to take a look at him, though, see if maybe I missed something.”

  “Sure,” I said, “I could probably come down to Chattanooga later in the week. One thing I was wondering about, though: Why are you even working the case? I checked the map, and Prentice Cooper State Forest is across the line in Marion County, isn’t it?”

  She smiled. “I bet you were a whiz at map-and-compass back during your Boy Scout days, weren’t you?” I grinned; she was right, even if she was just joking. “Cops got a report of an abduction from the parking lot of Alan Gold’s one night a couple weeks ago. Alan Gold’s is a gay bar in Chattanooga. Has the best drag show in East Tennessee. A female-or female impersonator-fitting the victim’s description was seen being forced into a car and speeding away. We’re working on the theory that the crime began in Chattanooga.” She paused briefly, as if considering whether to say something else. “Besides,” she said, “Marion County is rural and has a small sheriff’s office. They just don’t have the forensic resources to work this.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “Okay, I think we’re ready to let nature take its course here. We’ll check this guy every day, track the temperatures. The forecast for the next fifteen days-if AccuWeather can be believed-calls for temps about like what you’ve had in Chattanooga over the past couple weeks. So the decomp rate here should track the victim’s pretty closely. Once this guy’s condition matches your guy’s, we should know how long he was out there before that poor hiker found him.”

  Jess took another look at the corpse tied to the tree. “There’s one more detail we need to make the re-creation authentic.” I looked puzzled. “I didn’t tell you about this,” she said. “You were already skittish about the trauma to the head and face, so I figured this would send you clear over the edge.” Reaching down to her belt, she unsheathed a long, fixed-blade knife from her waist. She stepped up to the body, yanked down the black satin pan ties and stockings we’d tugged onto him, and severed his penis at the base.

  “Good God,” Miranda gasped.

  “Not hardly,” said Jess. “I’d say this was more the devil’s handiwork.” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Bill, you sure this guy is clean?”

  I struggled to speak. “Well, I can tell you he didn’t have HIV and he didn’t have hepatitis. That’s all we screen for, though. I can’t promise he didn’t have syphilis or a case of the clap.”

  She eyed the penis. “I don’t see any obvious symptoms,” she said. With that, she peeled off her left glove, dabbed her bare thumb on the severed end of the organ, then carefully rolled a print onto the shaft. As Miranda and I stared in disbelief and horror, she pried open the corpse’s jaw and stuffed the penis into the mouth.

  “There,” she said. “Now it’s authentic.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “KNOXVILLE POLICE.”

  I pulled the telephone receiver away from my ear and stared at it dumbly, as if KPD were the last place on earth I’d have expected to reach when dialing criminalist Art Bohanan. Art and I had collaborated on dozens of cases over the past twenty years. Besides being remarkably eagle-eyed at murder scenes, Art had shown himself to be a whiz in the crime lab as well, teasing out clues from minuscule bits of carpet fibers, upholstery, bullet trajectories, and random (to me, though not to him) spatters of blood. He had also become one of the nation’s leading fingerprint experts, devising equipment and techniques that even the FBI’s crime lab had adopted to reveal latent prints-including seemingly invisible ones on the skin of a body.

  “Knoxville Police Department. Can I help you?” The guy on the other end of the line-I pictured an aging, overweight sergeant easing toward his pension-sounded annoyed, despite his offer of help.

  “Oh, sorry,” I stammered. “I was trying to reach Art Bohanan. I expected either him or his voice mail.”

  “Sir, he’s not available. Can I take a message?”

  “Do you know when he’ll be in?”

  “No, sir, I do not. All I know is that he’s unavailable. Do you wish to leave a message or not?”

  “Uh, yes. Please. Tell him-ask him-to call Dr. Brockton when he gets a chance, if you would.”

  “Dr. Brockton? Hey there, Doc.” Suddenly the guy was all warmth and cheer. “This is Sergeant Gunderson. I was the one found that guy under the Magnolia Avenue viaduct about ten years ago. You ’member that case?”

  “I sure do,” I said, smiling at both the memory and my deductive powers. Gunderson was indeed a fat sergeant coasting toward retirement. One reason the case had been memorable was that it featured Gunderson in the unlikely act of running. “You were chasing
a burglar that night, if I remember right?”

  He chuckled. “Was, till I tripped over that damn body and went ass-over-teakettle. Scared the hell out of me. I ’bout messed my britches. Fellow I was chasing let out a yell just before I went sprawling, so he musta seed it, too.”

  “Pretty scary thing to stumble across in the moonlight,” I agreed. The body turned out to be one of the local winos. Judging by the advanced state of decomp-his skull was nearly bare, though a fair amount of soft tissue remained on his torso and limbs-he’d been ripening beneath the viaduct for about a week of midsummer nights and days. His outline was traced with greasy precision on the concrete by the dark fatty acids that had leached from his corpse, marking the splay of his arms and legs, even the spread of his fingers. There was heated speculation among the officers on the scene about who might have wanted him dead, and what sort of bludgeon had shattered his skull with such devastating force. Then I pointed to an uncapped empty bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 perched on the rail of the viaduct above us-a bottle Art later found to be covered with prints from the dead man’s hands and lips. I often used my slides from that case in police trainings, to underscore the importance of looking all around, and up and down, at death scenes.

  “Art’s on special assignment right now, Doc,” Gunderson said, “but I’ll page him and have him call you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Good to talk to you, Sergeant. Watch your step. You never know where the bodies are.”

  He chuckled again. “I’ve got a pretty good fix on where most of ’em are buried here at KPD, though. See you, Doc. Don’t be a stranger.”

  Two minutes later my phone rang. “Bill? It’s Art.”

  “Art Bohanan, Man of Mystery?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Who wants to know?”

  “Nobody, now that I think about it,” I said. “You available for a quick fingerprint consult?”

  “I’ve gotten sorta sidetracked, but I could spare a few minutes. You got something really gross, as usual?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of bringing you anything less.”

  “Got a pen?” I surveyed my cluttered desktop, finally found a nub of a pencil. “Close enough. Why?”

  “2035 Broadway. Come inside.”

  “Why? Where are you, anyhow? What are you doing?”

  “Can’t talk right now. Oh, you got a boom box there in your office?”

  I wouldn’t have called it a boom box-I kept it tuned to the UT public radio station, which played classical music, and the volume was cranked down so low it was almost subliminal-but I said yes.

  “Bring it.”

  “What for?”

  Art didn’t explain; he’d already hung up.

  For the second time in two phone calls, I found myself staring stupidly at the receiver in my hand. Then I hung up, too. My boom box was sitting atop a file cabinet just inside the door of my office. The cord, shrouded in cobwebs and dust, disappeared behind the cabinet, which was snugged tight against the wall, or tight against the plug, at any rate. Curling both hands behind the back of the filing cabinet, I gave a tug. It did not budge; many years and many pounds’ worth of papers had accumulated in it since I had plugged in the radio and shoved the cabinet back in place.

  I shifted my grip, crossing my wrists, which somehow seemed to equalize the force I could apply with each arm. Then I hoisted my left foot up onto the doorframe, nearly waist-high, where my hands clutched the cabinet, and strained to straighten my leg. With a rasping sound that set my teeth on edge, the cabinet scraped forward by six inches. Triumphantly I reached into the gap I had created, wiggled the plug free, and extricated the cord and my arm, both covered with cobwebs and grime. “This had better be good, Art,” I muttered.

  CHAPTER 3

  A CENTURY AGO, BROADWAY had been one of Knoxville’s grand avenues, lined with elegant Victorian mansions on big, shady lots. The street had long since gone to seed, though, especially in the vicinity of the address Art had given me. Heading north from downtown, I passed two of the city’s homeless missions. The missions didn’t open their doors for the night until five o’clock, so for most of the day their clientele roamed Broadway; some hung out, or passed out, in nearby cemeteries. A few neighboring streets, buffered from Broadway’s blight by a block or so of rental houses, had made a comeback over the past couple of de cades. Those pockets of gentrification, sporting pastel houses with gleaming gingerbread, were poignant reminders of how lovely Old North Knoxville had once been, before I-40 had cut a swath through its heart and Broadway itself had become a commuter artery lined with liquor stores and pawnshops.

  I was having trouble pinning down the location Art had summoned me to. “Dammit,” I groused to myself, “why don’t people put numbers on their buildings anymore?” I passed the turnoff to St. Mary’s Hospital-where my son Jeff had been born during a blizzard, back in the de cades before the planet’s thermostat had ratcheted upward-and finally spotted a number on one of Broadway’s few remaining mansions. It was now a funeral home, one that had sent a fair number of the Dearly Departed to the Body Farm.

  Judging by the funeral home’s address, which I should have remembered from all the thank-you notes I’d sent them, I’d overshot Art’s location by several blocks. I whipped into the parking lot, circled the gleaming black hearse, and doubled back toward downtown on Broadway. Traffic backed up behind me as I crept along, scanning for numbers. Finally, running out of options, I turned into a small, run-down shopping center whose anchor tenant was known throughout Knoxville as “the Fellini Kroger” because of the surreal cast of characters who shopped there. A fair number of graduate students lived in Old North Knoxville, since it was fairly close to campus and offered housing that tended toward interesting but cheap. One of my forensic students who’d never lost his interest in cultural anthropology liked to time his shopping at the Fellini Kroger to coincide with the delivery of Social Security disability checks. On those days, he swore, the line at the check-cashing counter could rival any circus sideshow on earth.

  Just down from the Kroger, I idled past a Dollar General Store numbered 2043-at last, a number! — and parked the truck. Feeling conspicuous and more than a little silly, I hauled the boom box off the passenger seat, as well as the small cooler Jess had brought from Chattanooga, and headed along the row of shops. At the far end of the shopping center, beside a kudzu-choked drainage ditch, I found myself facing a door marked 2035. The door and windows were coated with reflective film; a hand-painted sign on the window glass announced the store as BROADWAY JEWELRY amp; LOAN. Puzzled, I tried to enter, but the door was locked. I set the boom box and cooler down, pressed my face to the door, and cupped my hands around my eyes to screen out the sunlight; inside, I discerned a hulking man behind a counter. I rapped on the glass and he looked up, then pointed emphatically to my right. A doorbell-type button was mounted to the doorframe. “Good grief,” I muttered, but I pushed it. Inside, I heard a metallic buzz-I was mildly surprised that it worked-then a loud click in the doorframe. I picked up my belongings and pushed through the door. Within the narrow storefront, one wall was lined with shelves laden with stereos, televisions, and power tools; set out from the opposite wall was a long glass counter on which the guy who’d buzzed me in was leaning. His beefy forearms rested on a sign that read DO NOT LEEN ON COUNTER.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “I think I must have been given the wrong address.”

  He looked me over, then his eyes settled on the boom box. “Depends,” he said. “Who gave it to you?”

  “My friend Art. Art Bohanan. He’s with the police department.”

  The big man vaulted the counter like a dog going after a UPS guy. Before I knew what had happened, my nose was flattened on the glass, my right arm torqued up between my shoulder blades. “I want to know who the fuck you are, mister, and what you mean coming in here talking about the damn police.”

  “Bill? Bill, is that you?” Art’s voice floated out from the back of the store. “It’s okay,
Tiny. He’s on our side.”

  Tiny released my arm, milliseconds before the bone was about to snap. “Dammit, Tiffany, why didn’t you tell me you had somebody coming? And why’d you bring him here, anyway? You know better than that.”

  Tiffany? I was more confused than ever. Art emerged through a curtain at the back of the shop. “I’m sorry; I meant to tell you, I just forgot. Tiny, this is Dr. Bill Brockton. Bill, this is Tiny.”

  “Tiny and I have met,” I said, rubbing my arm.

  Tiny looked me over again, seeing something different this time. “You’re the Body Farm guy?” I nodded. “Hey, it’s an honor to meet you, Doc,” he said, seizing my hand and pumping my mangled arm. “I’m sorry I got a little excited there. You’re a better class of customer than what we’re used to dealing with here at Broadway Jewelry amp; Loan. You had me worried our cover was blown.”

  Suddenly I grasped where I was, and why Art had told me to bring the boom box. “So you’re running an undercover sting operation here? Dealing in stolen property?”

  “Tiny is,” said Art. “I’m camped out in the back, putting some of the inventory to good use. Come on in. Welcome to my world. And Tiffany’s.”

  As I stepped through the curtain into the back of the store, my eyes irised open to compensate for the dimness. The only light, besides what leaked around the doorway curtain, came from two large computer monitors. When I realized what was on them, I felt my stomach clench. “Oh Jesus, Art.” One screen showed a paunchy middle-aged man. He was stark naked, and he was not alone. He was with a girl who couldn’t have been more than eight or ten. The other showed the same man with a boy who appeared even younger, possibly even six or seven.