Identity Crisis

by Jefferson Bass

  Officially, my macabre laboratory was named the Anthropology Research Facility, but a few years before, one of McCready’s waggish FBI colleagues had dubbed it the “Body Farm,” and the moniker—­popularized by crime novelist Patricia Cornwell—­had caught on so thoroughly that even I, the facility’s creator, tended to call it by the catchy nickname. For several years now the FBI had been sending Evidence Response Team members to the Body Farm for training exercises like this one. With a ready supply of actual human corpses, plus plenty of privacy, the facility was the only place in the nation—­possibly in the entire world—­where forensic teams could hone their skills in such realistic scenarios.

  The three corpses just unearthed by McCready’s team had gradually attracted a cloud of blowflies, some of which strayed—­either at random, or in an excess of eagerness—­from the faces of the dead to the eyes and nostrils of the quick, causing the agents to squint and swat at the unwelcome intruders. Off to one side was a large mound of sifted dirt, plus piles of clay clods and rocks too big and too hard to pass through the quarter-­inch wire mesh. On the ground beside the dirt lay the screen and—­atop the mesh—­three cartridge cases, two cigarette butts, and one wad of chewing gum, plus a gum wrapper.

  I scrutinized the screen, then the bodies, then the hole in the ground, taking my time before turning to face the assembled agents. “That’s it? That’s all you got?” Their expressions, which had been confident and proud a moment before, turned nervous when I added, “So y’all just ran out of steam before you got to the fourth body?” Exchanging worried glances, they returned to the edge of the grave, their eyes scanning its floor and walls. I chuckled. “Kidding,” I said, and a chorus of good-­natured groans ensued. “Okay, so tell me what you’ve learned from the scene.”

  I pointed at Kimball, the eager young agent who’d cast the tire tracks. “Agent Kimball,” I said. “You like to make a good . . . impression.” More groans, as the dreadful pun sank in. “What else does that rut tell us, besides the fact that the puddle had dried up by the time the tracks were made?” McCready had texted me a few notes on the team’s findings, starting with their observations about the tire impressions. Kimball frowned, so I gave him a hint. “How many sets of tracks did you cast?”

  “Just the one,” he said. “That’s all . . .” He hesitated, his eyes darting back and forth, then the light dawned. “Ah—­they all rode in together.”

  “Bingo,” I said. “But they didn’t all ride out together. And what about the grave? What does the evidence there tell us?”

  “The cartridge cases are from two different weapons,” said one of the dirt sifters. “They’re all nine-­millimeter Remington, but there’s two different firing-­pin impressions. One’s round, the other’s rectangular.” I nodded approvingly; when I’d asked a friend on the campus police force for spent shells, I specifically requested shells from two different handguns, so I was pleased that the difference had been noticed. “Also,” he went on, “the cigarette butts are two different brands. So we might get two different DNA profiles from those.”

  “Good,” I said. “Maybe there’s DNA in the gum, too—­and maybe the gum chewer’s not one of the smokers. So there could be three DNA profiles, right?” Heads nodded. “Okay, let’s talk taphonomy—­the arrangement of the items you excavated. What did you learn as you unearthed the bodies?”

  “All three were killed with a single shot to the back of the head,” said a guy whose nerdy, Coke-­bottle glasses were offset by immense, chiseled muscles, gleaming with sweat and smears of clay. “Execution style.” I nodded, slightly self-­conscious about this part. The shots to the head were the least realistic part of the exercise, because the shots—­unlike the corpses themselves—­were fakes. It had struck me as unnecessary and disrespectful to fire bullets into donated bodies, so I’d settled instead for daubing a small circle of red dye onto the back of each head, and a larger circle on each forehead, to simulate entry and exit wounds.

  “What else?” A long silence ensued. “Did you find blood in the grave?” Heads shook slowly. “Did you find blood anywhere besides on the wounds themselves?” More head shaking; several of the agents now cast nervous sidelong glances at one another. “So what does that suggest to you?”

  The blond woman raised a hand. “It suggests they were killed somewhere else,” she said. “And then brought here.”

  I gave her a thumbs-­up. “Which explains why there was only one vehicle. Tell me—­how often do drug traffickers and drug buyers carpool to the place where the deal’s going down?” A few of the agents laughed, but Kimball, the tread caster, winced, as he should have: Kimball, of all ­people, should have given more thought to the absence of a second vehicle. “Also,” I went on, “how likely is it that only three bullets would be fired during a drug-­deal shoot-­out? All of them to the back of the victims’ heads?” I could see them rethinking the scenario. “Anything else?” The agents looked from the grave to the bodies and back to the grave, then at me once more. My questions made it clear that they were still missing something—­still failing to connect important dots—­but apparently they needed a hint. “Look closely at the three faces,” I said. “See any differences?”

  “Ah,” said the nimbus-­haired blonde. “The two ‘buyers’ look a lot better than our guy. A lot . . . fresher.”

  “Bingo,” I said. “They show no signs of decomposition, and no insect activity. Look at your ‘undercover agent.’ He’s a mess—­he’s starting to bloat, and he’s got maggots in his mouth and nostrils. Anybody look in there?” Several of the agents grimaced; most shook their heads sheepishly. “So if you compare the condition of the bodies, what does the difference in decay tell you?”

  “He was killed before the other two,” said Boatman, the agent who’d noticed the absence of mud spatter beside the tire tracks.

  “Exactly,” I said, pulling on a pair of purple nitrile gloves. “Also, your undercover guy was probably outdoors, or maybe stashed outdoors for a while—­someplace where the blowflies could get to him.” I pointed a purple finger at the puffed-­up face again. “Blowflies like to lay their eggs in the moist orifices of the body,” I went on. “The mouth, the nose, the eyes, the ears, even the genitals, if those are accessible. But especially, especially, any bloody wound.” I stooped beside the dead “agent” and lifted his head. I had gone to the trouble of mixing a bit of actual blood—­pig blood—­with the red food coloring on his head, and I’d brought him out to the Body Farm two days before I brought the other bodies. During that time, his “gunshot wound” had attracted legions of flies, and by the time I’d placed the bodies in the ground, maggots had begun colonizing his hair, forehead, and orifices. “Next time, check for maggots. And collect the biggest ones.” I bent down and plucked a quarter-­inch specimen from an eye socket, holding it in my palm for them to inspect. “A forensic entomologist could tell you that this maggot hatched three or four days ago. Which—­if I remember right—­is just about the time your undercover agent dropped off the radar screen. Is that correct, Agent McCready?”

  “That’s correct, Dr. Brockton.”

  I flicked the maggot into the woods. It was time to reveal the final plot twist in the scenario. When I first phoned to suggest the idea, McCready had sounded dubious. As we talked, though, he warmed to the idea, and by the end of the call, he’d embraced the scenario enthusiastically. “A good lesson in investigative skepticism,” he’d called it.

  “So,” I said to the team of trainees, “knowing that these other two guys were killed a ­couple days after your agent—­and knowing that all of them were brought out here and buried together . . .” I paused, giving them time to think and rethink before offering the final hint. “ . . . what does that tell you about your confidential informant?”

  “It tells us he’s a lying sack of shit,” Kimball blurted. His face was flushed and his tone was angry, as if the corpse really was a murdered
FBI agent, rather than a married insurance agent who’d had a heart attack during a tryst with his mistress. “It tells us the C.I.’s whole story is bullshit,” Kimball fumed, smacking a fist into an open palm. “Hell, maybe he even set up our guy—­ratted him out to the traffickers.”

  I nodded. “Maybe so. So be careful who you trust. Bad guys lie through their teeth. But bugs?” I pointed to the bloated face and the telltale maggots. “You can always believe them. Whatever they tell you, it’s the truth.”

  Chapter Two

  THE FAMILIAR ARC of a rib cage filled my field of vision as I leaned down and peered through the smoke. On the rack of my charcoal grill, two slabs of baby-­back ribs sizzled, the meat crusting a lovely reddish brown. Ribs were a rare treat these days—­Kathleen, invoking her Ph.D. in nutrition, had drastically cut our meat consumption when my cholesterol hit 220—­but she was willing to bend the dietary rules on special occasions. And surely this, our thirtieth wedding anniversary, counted as a special occasion.

  As soon as the FBI training at the Body Farm ended, I’d headed for home, stopping by the Fresh Market, an upscale grocery, to procure the makings of a feast, southern style: ribs, potato salad, baked beans, and coleslaw.

  As I fitted the lid back onto the smoker, I heard a car pull into the driveway, followed by the opening and slamming of four doors and the clamor of four voices. A moment later the backyard gate opened and Jeff, my son, came in. Leaning into the column of smoke roiling upward, he drew a deep, happy breath. “Smells great. Almost done?”

  “Hope so. The guest of honor should be home any minute. She’s been dropping hints all week about celebrating at the Orangery.” The Orangery was Knoxville’s fanciest restaurant. “Way I see it, only way to dodge that bullet is to have dinner on the table when she gets here.”

  “You know,” Jeff said, “it wouldn’t kill you to take Mom someplace with cloth napkins and real silverware once every thirty years.”

  I raised my eyebrows in mock surprise. “You got something against the plastic spork? Anyhow, I thought it’d be nicer to celebrate here.”

  The wooden gate swung open again—­burst open, whapping against the fence—­and Tyler came tearing into the backyard, with all the exuberance of a five-­year-­old who’d just been liberated from a car seat. “Grandpa Bill, Grandpa Bill, I could eat a horse,” he announced, wrapping himself around my left leg.

  A few steps behind came his younger brother, Walker, age three, grabbing my right leg and crowing, “I can eat a elephant!”

  Jeff’s wife, Jenny—­a pretty, willowy blonde, who carried herself with the easy grace of an athlete—­came up the steps after them, closing the gate. “Stay away from the grill, boys,” she called. “It’s hot. Very, very hot.” She leaned over the boys to give me a peck on the cheek. “I don’t know about the ribs, but you smell thoroughly smoked,” she said. “Are you sure you want us horning in on your anniversary dinner?”

  “Absolutely. What better way to celebrate thirty years of marriage?”

  “Hmm,” Jeff grunted. “Hey, how ’bout you and Mom celebrate with the boys while Jenny and I eat at the Orangery?”

  “Listen to Casanova,” scoffed Jenny. “For our anniversary, he took me to the UT-­Vanderbilt game. Super-­romantic.” She shook her head good-­naturedly. Then, with characteristic helpfulness, she asked, “What needs doing?”

  “If you could set the table, that’d be great. Oh, and maybe put the slaw and potato salad and beans in something better looking than those plastic tubs?”

  She nodded. “Hey, kiddos, who wants to be Mommy’s helper?”

  “I do, I do,” they both shouted, abandoning me to follow her through the sliding glass door and into the kitchen.

  “What on earth did you do to deserve her?” I asked Jeff as the door slid shut.

  “I think she likes me for the foil effect,” he said. “I make her look so good by comparison. Same reason Mom keeps you around.”

  I heard the quick toot of a car horn in the driveway then, followed by the clatter of the garage door opening. Kathleen was home.

  Soon after, delighted squeals—­“Grandmommy! Grandmommy!”—­announced her arrival in the kitchen.

  The slider rasped open and she emerged, her leather briefcase still slung over her shoulder. “Bill Brockton, you sneak. You didn’t tell me you were cooking.”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “I wanted to surprise you, too,” she said. “I made us a seven o’clock reservation at the Orangery.”

  “Oh, darn—­I wish I’d known,” I said. She shot me a dubious look, which I countered with an innocent smile. “That would’ve been nice, honey. But I guess you’d better call and cancel.”

  “I’ll call,” she said, “but I won’t cancel; I’ll reschedule, for Saturday night. You don’t get off the hook that easily. If I can survive thirty years of Cracker Barrel vittles, one fancy French dinner won’t kill you.”

  She turned and headed inside. The instant the sliding-­glass door closed, Jeff and I looked at each other and burst into laughter.

  Dinner was loud, rowdy, and wonderful, with three terrible puns (all of them mine), two brotherly squabbles, and one spilled drink (also mine). The ribs were a hit—­smoky, succulent, and tender.

  Sitting at the head of the kitchen table, I surveyed my assembled family, then, with my sauce-­smeared knife, I tapped the side of my iced tea glass. “A toast,” I said. The three adults looked at me expectantly; the two boys gaped as if I were addled.

  “Toast?” said Walker. “Toast is breakfast, silly.”

  “A toast,” Jenny explained, “is also a kind of blessing. Or a thank-­you. Or a wish.”

  Walker’s face furrowed, then broke into a smile. “I toast we get a dog!” His toast drew laughs from Kathleen and me, and nervous, noncommittal smiles from his parents.

  “A toast,” I repeated. “To my lovely wife. To thirty wonderful years together.”

  We clinked glasses all around. Kathleen looked into my eyes and smiled, but then, to my surprise, she teared up. “To this lovely moment,” she said, her voice quavering, “and this lovely family. The family that almost wasn’t.”

  Now I felt my own eyes brimming. We almost never spoke of it, but none of us—­Kathleen, Jeff, Jenny, or I—­would ever forget the near miss to which she was alluding. The grown-­ups clinked glasses again—­somberly this time—­and Kathleen reached out to me with her right hand. Instead of clasping hands, though, she bent her pinky finger, hooked it around mine, and squeezed. It was our secret handshake, of sorts: our reminder of what a sweet life we had, and how close—­how terribly close—­we’d come to losing it, right in this very room, right at this very table, a dozen years before. I lifted her hand to my face and uncrooked her finger, tracing the scar around the base and then giving it a kiss. By now the scar was a faint, thin line—­barely visible and mostly forgotten, except when something triggered memories of that nightmarish night, and that evil man: Satterfield, sadistic killer of women. Satterfield, emerging from our basement, gun in hand, to bind us—­Kathleen, Jeff, me, and even Jenny, Jeff’s girlfriend at the time—­to the kitchen chairs. Satterfield, putting Kathleen’s finger into the fishlike jaws of a pair of gardening shears and then closing the jaws in a swift, bloody bite.

  Odd, how memories can open underfoot in the blink of an eye, taking you down a rabbit hole of the mind to some subterranean, subconscious universe where different rules of time and space and logic hold sway. Part of me remained sitting at the table, my fingers smeared with barbecue sauce, but part of me had gone down that bloody rabbit hole.

  Kathleen’s finger, which had sent me spinning there, now beckoned me back. She stroked my damp cheek and smiled again. “Will you marry me, Bill Brockton?” she asked.

  “Yes, please,” I answered. “Again and again. Every day.” Half rising from my chair, I leaned ov
er and kissed her—­a grown-­up kiss, on the mouth, taking my time.

  “Gross,” said Tyler.

  “Gross gross gross,” agreed Walker.

  IT WAS TEN-­THIRTY by the time Jeff’s family was gone, the kitchen was clean, and Kathleen and I were showered and in bed. I rolled toward her on the mattress and cupped her face in one hand. “Not as romantic as the fancy French dinner you wanted,” I said, “but tasty.”

  “Says the man who thinks turkey jerky is a delicacy,” she said. “But yes, delicious. And it’s always so sweet to see Jeff and Jenny with the boys. They’re such good parents, Bill.”

  “They should be. You’re a great role model.”

  “You, too,” she said, and then, from nowhere: “You still sad we couldn’t have more?”

  “No,” I said, though that wasn’t entirely true; deep down, I would always wish I’d had a daughter as well as a son. “I’m the luckiest man alive. I couldn’t be happier.” I felt the stirrings of desire, and I slid my hand down to her hip. “Well, maybe I could be a tiny bit happier.”

  She smiled, but she also shook her head. Taking my hand from her hip, she brought it to her lips and gave it a consolation-­prize kiss. “I need a rain check, honey. Bad time of the month.”