Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel bf-2

by Jefferson Bass

  “You need to lawyer up.”

  “Who should I call?”

  “David Eldredge is good,” he said. “Smart. Respected. So is Herb Greene. Herb has cross-examined me three or four times in murder trials. Thorough. Kinda dull, though. A plodder. He’s no Clarence Darrow. He’s ain’t gonna win the hearts and minds of the jurors for you.”

  There was an uncomfortable thought buzzing around my mind. I tried swatting it away but it kept coming back. “There’s another name occurs to me,” I said, “though I shudder to think about it.”

  “Me too,” he said, “but he’s the first one I thought of. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it.”

  We spat it out in unison: “Grease.”

  “Art, I swear, I would never have imagined I might stoop to hiring that guy. But then again, I never dreamed I might need to.”

  “I would never have imagined stooping to recommend him,” he said. “Bottom line, though, is he’s got the best win record, despite the worst clients.”

  “Yeah, but hiring Grease is like taking out a billboard ad along I-40,” I said, “with my face and the words YES, I DID IT in ten-foot letters over Jess’s corpse.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “If things get bad and you’ve hired a lawyer you respect, you might find yourself sleeping soundly in prison. If you’ve hired Grease, you’ve got a pretty good shot at tossing and turning in your own bed for the rest of your nights. Sure, everybody will assume you’re guilty. Doesn’t make it so, though. Suck it up and call the bastard.”

  “I’ll think about it. Let me see how it goes once Evers comes back and starts asking questions again.”

  “Okay. Call me later. I don’t know what I can do to help, but I’ll try.”

  “You already have,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “That’s what friends are for. You want me to sing it?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t. Talk to you soon.” I hated to hang up. Art’s voice felt like a lifeline, and it was tough to let go. But I heard the doorknob rattling, and I knew I had no choice.

  Evers and Bingham filed in and sat down, and Evers cranked up the recorder again. I felt his knee wedging itself between both of mine.

  “Dr. Brockton, in your initial statement out at the scene, you told us you arrived at the Body Farm at approximately eight A.M. yesterday morning.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” I said.

  “And you told us that again in our interview in this room about an hour ago, did you not?”

  “I think so. I’m pretty confident it was around eight. Give or take a few minutes. Doesn’t 911 automatically record the date and time of emergency calls?”

  He ignored my question. “And before that, when were you last out there?”

  “When was I last out at the Body Farm?”

  “Yes, when? Think carefully.”

  I did. “Last Thursday afternoon. End of the day. A little after five. I was there to check on the condition of that research body. The one tied to the tree.”

  “You’re saying you were last there one day before your dinner with Dr. Carter?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “And you’re saying you were not out there at any time between Thursday night and Monday morning-yesterday morning-at approximately eight A.M.”

  “That’s correct.”

  Evers smacked the table again. “You are lying to me, Dr. Brockton. And there is nothing I hate worse than being lied to.”

  “The hell I am!” I shot back in frustration. “What makes you think I’m lying?”

  He swiveled and looked at Horace as if it were the most insulting thing anyone had ever said to him. “You hear that?” Horace nodded grimly. “You think I should tell him what makes me think he’s lying?” Horace shrugged, then-as Evers continued to stare at him-nodded again. Evers turned back to me, his face so close to mine I could count the pores on his nose. “What makes me think you’re lying, Doctor, is that I just watched a surveillance video that shows your truck-your truck, Doctor-driving through the gate of the Body Farm at five A.M. yesterday morning. Three hours before you called 911 to say you’d found her body.”

  “That’s not possible,” I said.

  “Don’t you dare fuck with me!” he shouted. Specks of spittle flew from his mouth onto my face. “It is on the goddamn tape! Your truck, Doctor.”

  I wiped my face. Evers’s spit was mixed with a layer of sweat that had suddenly coated my forehead.

  “I was not there,” I said. “I was at home, in my bed asleep, at five A.M.”

  “Can you prove that in a court of law?”

  “Do I need to? Are you saying I’m a suspect?”

  “Not a suspect, Doctor. The suspect.”

  “Should I get a lawyer?”

  “Do you need a lawyer?”

  “If you think I’m a killer, then I think I need a lawyer.”

  He suddenly leaned back, out of my face, and scooted his chair back, withdrawing his knee from between my legs. He drew a deep breath and blew it out between pursed lips. “Here’s the thing, Doc,” he said in a weary, regretful voice. “If you want to stop talking to me until you’ve got an attorney present, you have that right. Absolutely. No question about it. But if I shut off this tape recorder and stop this interrogation now, then from here on, I’m gonna come after you with both guns blazing. Balls to the wall. If you’ll tell me everything right now-tell me what went wrong, tell me how it escalated, tell me what made you do it-I might be able to help you. Might even be able to get you a deal for second-degree or manslaughter. Can’t promise that, but I can recommend it. That’s a onetime offer, though, and it ends the instant we stop talking.”

  I stared at him, and then at the impassive face of Horace, and then at Evers again. “You’re asking me to confess to a murder I didn’t commit?”

  “I’m asking you to explain a murder you did commit.”

  “And this isn’t what you’d call coming at me with guns blazing? Accusing me, spitting in my face, slamming things around, jamming your knee up my crotch?”

  He smiled, in a sinister sort of way, and shook his head slowly. “Heavens no, Dr. Brockton. Not by a long shot. I have not yet begun to bear down on you. You think I’ve invaded your personal space? That was minimally invasive. I am fixin’ to get maximally invasive. Wouldn’t you agree, Horace?”

  Horace considered it, then grinned nastily. “Y’all could share the same pair of grippers. If I was you, Doc, I’d try to clear things up right now. Tell us the truth. Don’t make it harder on yourself.”

  I looked from one to the other and saw focused hostility and determination in both faces. I took a deep breath, then another. “Okay,” I said, “I do want to clear things up. But this isn’t an easy thing for me to say.” Evers and Horace leaned forward; both detectives were practically in my lap now. “The truth is, I thought the world of Dr. Jess Carter. The truth is, I did not kill her. And the truth is-and this is the thing I have the hardest time saying to two police officers-I will not answer any more questions without an attorney present.”

  Evers slammed his hand on the table for the third time, but this time I did not flinch. Then he snatched up the recorder and said, “This interrogation was terminated when suspect exercised his right to counsel.” He spat out the time and snapped off the machine with an angry click.

  Evers stood up so abruptly his chair toppled backward, then spun and walked out of the room. Horace got to his feet more slowly.

  “Are you finished with me?” I asked.

  Horace snorted. “We have not even started with you,” he said. “But you can go, for now. Have your attorney contact us at his earliest convenience.” He said the last two words in a sarcastic sneer. He led me out of the room and to the elevator, and used his key to authorize the car to descend from the fourth floor down to the lobby. He pointed me to the front door. “We’ll be seeing you, Doc,” he said. “Real soon.”

  As I walked out the door into the parking lot, I realized I had no vehicle.
It had been seized as evidence, and it would be combed for anything they could use against me.

  CHAPTER 29

  I COULD SEE BURT DeVriess’s office gleaming on the far side of the valley from the hilltop where KPD hunkered. Lacking another way to get there, I set out on foot. DeVriess’s office was near the top of Riverview Tower, a twenty-four-story ellipse sheathed in bands of green glass and silvery steel. Bands that were the colors of money.

  The building soared above the river bluff at the south end of Gay Street, Knoxville’s main drag. I crossed the valley to Gay Street on the Hill Avenue bridge, whose parabolic concrete arches spanned a messy knot of lanes and ramps where the Hill Avenue interchange tangled with James White Parkway and Neyland Drive.

  Riverview Tower was one of a pair of side-by-side office towers built by the Butcher brothers, bankers Jake and C. H. Butcher, in the early 1980s, just before their financial empires collapsed in a rubble heap of criminal fraud. Longtime Knoxvillians still referred to the angular black-glass tower as “Jake’s bank” and to the curving green and silver one as “C.H.’s place,” but the buildings retained no connection to the disgraced bankers except as a fading stain on their architectural pedigrees.

  I entered the lobby by way of the revolving door off Gay Street and rode the elevator up in the company of people in power suits and spring dresses. I was pretty sure I was the only one aboard who was about to be charged with murder, but then again, perhaps none of my fellow passengers imagined me as a fledgling felon, either.

  The entrance to DeVriess’s suite of offices spoke of money and sophistication befitting Knoxville’s most successful defense attorney. Most high-end law offices were lined in an excess of walnut or mahogany veneer, but Burt’s inclined more to chrome, frosted glass, and other touches of Art Deco. His receptionist, a correspondingly stylish woman somewhere in her thirties, looked up and greeted me with a smile. “Hello, may I help you?”

  “Is…Mr. DeVriess in?”

  “Do you have an appointment?” She took a quick glance at her computer screen.

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “I’m sorry, we don’t really take walk-ins,” she said, looking genuinely regretful. “Would you like to make an appointment for a consultation, Mr….?”

  “Brockton,” I said. “Bill Brockton.”

  Her face brightened. “Oh, Dr. Brockton, of course,” she said. “I knew your face looked familiar. I’m Chloe Matthews.” She held out her hand and gave mine a firm shake. “Mr. DeVriess has a meeting with a client in just a few minutes, but I’m sure he’ll want to say hello to you.” She disappeared around a corner, and a moment later she reappeared with Burt DeVriess-my nemesis, on whose mercy I had come to throw myself.

  “Hello, Doc,” he said, giving me the simultaneous hearty-handshake-and-shoulder-pat combination that was supposed to underscore how very glad he was to see me. “What brings you clear up here?”

  “Could I speak with you about…something?” I began awkwardly.

  His eyes took on a startled expression, which he quickly masked. “Come with me,” he said, turning and heading back down the hallway. As I followed, I made one final survey of my options, considering whether there might be some other way to protect myself. I came up dry again, and again I cursed the circumstances that had brought me to this.

  Asking Burt DeVriess to represent me in a murder investigation might just be the hardest request of my life. Although I had testified for him on one occasion-when Garland Hamilton’s botched autopsy had caused DeVriess’s client to be wrongly accused of murder-my feelings for Grease could best be described as variations on a theme of loathing. DeVriess tended to defend the lowest of the low: child molesters like Craig Willis; notorious drug dealers; even one admitted serial killer. Cops and judges unanimously despised Grease. Yet his powers of pretrial maneuvering, courtroom confrontation, and media manipulation were so prodigious he nearly always succeeded in getting his clients off scot-free, or with remarkably lenient sentences. The serial killer’s trial had ended in a hung jury, thanks largely to DeVriess’s success in having the man’s confession suppressed. As a result, the only thing keeping an admitted monster behind bars was a series of rape convictions.

  It had run counter to every instinct I possessed to stop answering John Evers’s questions-I’d spent years talking with homicide detectives, answering every question they asked as completely and candidly as possible. I told them everything I knew about crime scenes, bodies, bones, time since death, and manner of death. Tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may: as a forensic scientist, I had always lived by that creed. It had served me well, and it had served the criminal justice system well. Now, I had forced myself to say to a homicide detective, “I refuse to answer any more questions without an attorney present.” And now I had come to ask DeVriess to be that attorney.

  Grease led me to an office walled in the same gleaming metal and frosted glass as the entryway and opened the door for me. Inside was a huge desk sculpted of similar materials. On its spotless glass top rested a sleek black phone, a sleek black laptop, a sleek black notebook, and a sleek black fountain pen. He ushered me in and closed the door, then motioned me toward a sleek chair of chrome and black leather.

  We eyed each other warily, each knowing perhaps a bit too much about the other’s business and sentiments. DeVriess spoke first. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I need an attorney,” I said. “A criminal defense attorney.” He waited. I thought I saw his eyes glitter. “The medical examiner from Chattanooga was killed sometime over the weekend. Her body was put at the Body Farm. The police seem to think I killed her.” Still he waited. He wasn’t making this easy for me. “I’d like to hire you to represent me.”

  He smiled at that. “Bill Brockton, you are the last person on earth I would have expected to find myself representing in a murder case.”

  “Well, I’m as surprised as you are,” I said. “Astonished to be suspected of murder; amazed to be hiring you. But you have a remarkable track record. Good as you are at getting guilty clients off, you should have a pretty easy time representing an innocent man.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them.

  DeVriess looked away, then back at me. “Why, you smug, self-righteous son of a bitch,” he said. “You have the nerve to look down on me, to judge me, while you come to me for help in a murder case? I ought to throw you out right now.”

  I felt a rush of shame, mixed with fear. “You’re right,” I said. “I apologize. That was rude.”

  “You’re damn right it was rude,” he said. “I do my best for every client I have. When I was admitted to the Tennessee bar, I promised to represent my clients to the best of my skill and abilities. Whether they’re pure as virgins or guilty as sin, it’s my job, my duty, within the American legal system, to fight like hell for my clients. You know why? Because the prosecution will fight like hell to convict them, whether they’re guilty or not. You’ve seen that yourself-your DA friend Bob Roper tried to send Eddie Meacham to the chair for killing Billy Ray Ledbetter, even though that was an accidental death. If they decide they can convict you of this woman’s murder, he’ll try to do the same to you. After that Meacham case, you, of all people, ought to know better. Unless you’re one of the twelve people in the jury box, or unless you’re God the Father Almighty, you have no right to judge me or my clients.”

  Now it was my turn to be mad. I had apologized, and sincerely, but instead of accepting it, he had rubbed my nose in it and gotten up on his lawyerly high horse. “You know, that all sounds really noble, Grease. But I sat across from Susan Scott a few days ago as she howled like some dying animal. You remember Susan Scott, don’t you? Mother of Joey Scott, little kid who was raped by your client Craig Willis? Joey Scott, who will spend years in therapy and still never completely recover? You’re telling me I have no right to judge Craig Willis, a child molester caught in the act? You’re saying I should feel a warm glow of civic pride that you cut him
loose to prey on other kids? And you’ve got the nerve to call me smug and self-righteous?”

  DeVriess’s eyes flashed and his jaw muscles clenched and unclenched as if he were attacking a piece of gristle. For a moment I thought he might actually come across the desk at me. Finally he said, “Shit, Doc. Goddamnit.” He looked away, and when he looked back at me, I could see pain in his eyes. “There’s half a dozen cases keep me awake at night. That’s number two on the list.”

  “Let me take a guess at number one,” I said. “The case where the little girl was abducted, and then killed, while you delayed the search of the suspect’s car?”

  “Yes, damn you, that’s number one. Are you satisfied?” He sighed wearily. “I like to believe that the good cases make up for the bad ones. Like clearing Meacham of a murder he didn’t commit.”

  “Can’t hurt,” I said. “You just need some more like that.”

  “And is this a case like that?”

  “Yes. I didn’t kill Jess Carter.”

  “You know I’d defend you just as vigorously if you did.”

  “I know. I want to hire you in spite of that, not because of it.”

  “Defense lawyers have a saying, Doc: ‘There is no client so dangerous as an innocent man.’ Know why?”

  “No; why?”

  He thought a moment, then shrugged. “You know, it beats the hell out of me.” He smiled ruefully. So did I. He picked up the phone and hit a button on the console. “Chloe, cancel the rest of my appointments for the afternoon,” he said. “Yes, even him. And draw me up a letter of engagement with Dr. Brockton. Yes, the standard retainer, twenty thousand.” I felt my sphincter muscles clench at the mention of the sum. “Thank you, Chloe.” He set the handset back in its cradle. “Okay, tell me about it,” he said, opening the leather notebook and uncapping the fountain pen. “Start at the beginning.”