Carved in Bone

by Jefferson Bass

  I did, barely: two mammoth hemlock trees arched over the right-hand side of the highway, and running between them, as if they were some great gateway, a gravel road turned off and disappeared into the forest.

  The road was deceptive: unobtrusive, but smooth and well-maintained, free of the ruts and mud holes that plague most gravel roads in the mountains. The Great Smoky Mountains are classed as a temperate rain forest, with up to eighty inches of precipitation a year, so it’s a rare mountain road that doesn’t have a few wallows and washed-out spots. This one was firm, dry, and well-drained by ditches and culverts everywhere that drainage might be a problem. There were no weeds in its center, either, a sign of frequent traffic or regular grading.

  “This is a good road. The county keep it up like this?” I tried to sound offhand.

  He swiveled his bearlike head at me. Perhaps I hadn’t managed to sound quite as casual as I’d hoped. “Naw,” he said. “This here’s what you might call a private drive.” After a moment, I heard a low, rumbling growl that seemed to shake the entire vehicle. I glanced over to see him chuckling. “Private drive,” he mumbled again, and chuckled some more at his wit. Then he flashed me a delighted, speckled smile. Lord God, what have I got myself into, I thought, shaking my head. Then I felt myself chuckling, too, at the absurdity of the situation.

  But the chuckle died in my throat a moment later when the big man said, “Stop the car right here, Doc.” I felt myself freeze up, unable to speak or act. The world seemed to shrink, until nothing remained but a green tunnel, a gray gravel track, and a steering wheel gripped by a pair of white-knuckled hands that might or might not have been my own. Another hand reached in from somewhere and cut the ignition switch. The car drifted to a stop on the gravel, the only sounds the crunch of gravel under the tires and the rush of blood in my head. Then even those sounds were gone, and the tunnel of green faded to black.

  WHEN I AWOKE, I felt myself curiously confined. The air was dank and hot and close against my face, depleted of oxygen, yet my arms were cooled by a breeze. The darkness was softened by fuzzy globules of light. As my eyes shifted focus, instinctively seeking some definable shape, the globules sharpened into myriad pinpoints of daylight, viewed through the weave of fabric. My thoughts regained their focus, too, and I recognized the damp, acrid smell of sweat. A pungent camouflage cap was stretched tightly from my chin to my forehead. My arms twitched as if to bat it away, but they would not move. I jerked against whatever was restraining them and began thrashing my head.

  “Easy, there, Doc, you’re gonna hurt yourself that way,” rumbled the deep voice to my left. “We’re nearly there, so just sit tight a minute. I told you I weren’t gonna hurt you, and I ain’t, but they’s some things you need not to see, in case somebody was to ast you about ’em later.”

  I slumped back against the seat and fought to rein in my panicked breathing.

  The car stopped, and the cap came off of my face. I shut my eyes against the light, then opened them to see Waylon leaning toward me with a hunting knife. He reached down and deftly flicked the knife against strips of duct tape—printed, like the rest of his ensemble, with a camouflage pattern—binding my wrists to my thighs.

  “Sorry I had to do that,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to fight you to get you here. That wouldn’t be healthy for you, and Big Jim wouldn’t be none too happy with me, neither.”

  Big Jim? I could scarcely imagine the immensity of a man that a behemoth like Waylon would refer to as “Big.”

  He got out of the Cherokee and came around to open the door for me, as if he were some backwoods chauffeur instead of an abductor. I paused, struggling to make sense of it all, then gave up and got out and followed him.

  We had parked in a small clearing of grass, surrounded on all sides by kudzu, a vine that is notorious in the South for engulfing trees, barns, broken-down vehicles, and—I’d heard it sworn to be true—even the occasional napping cow. At one edge of the clearing stood a weathered farmhouse, its sides and front porch fringed with vines. More of the ropy tendrils were already creeping onto the roof at the back of the house and spiraling up the mast of a small satellite dish. As I followed Waylon up the steps, he kicked at the vines snaking around the base of the porch. “Damn stuff grows two foot a day in the summer,” Waylon said. “Turn your back on this house for a week, and it’d be gone. You’d never find it again.”

  The side of Waylon’s fist tapped the door frame twice, and the house shuddered. “Boss? We’re here,” he called through the screen door into a dark room beyond.

  “Thank you, Waylon. How about keeping an eye on things to make sure we’re not disturbed?”

  “Yessir.” With a swiftness and stealth that belied his size, Waylon slipped off one end of the porch and melted into the kudzu vines hanging from what had once been trees at the edge of the clearing.

  The screen door screeched open, and a man stepped onto the silver-gray boards of the porch. “Dr. Brockton, I’m Jim O’Conner. Thank you for coming. I apologize for sending Waylon to shanghai you that way.”

  I felt an almost electric jolt go through my body. My captor stood perhaps five-five in his cowboy boots; if he didn’t take them off to weigh, he might tip the scales at one-forty. If I’d seen him up in horse country, I’d have taken him for a jockey. “You’re Big Jim?”

  He smiled, a touch ruefully. “ ’Fraid so. It started out as a joke, when I was a kid,” he said. “Seems to have stuck.”

  But the name somehow seemed to fit. The small man positively radiated authority and power, from his piercing blue eyes to his whipcord forearms and springy legs. It wasn’t the sort of brutish, aggressive force wielded by bullies and cowards; it was the quiet, confident strength of a man sure of who he was and what he could do under almost any circumstances.

  “By the way, I’ve read about a lot of your forensic cases. It’s quite an honor to meet you, sir.” He held out a sinewy hand. Out of years of reflex, I took it, but I cocked my head and gave him a questioning, dubious look, the one I use on students I suspect of some sort of fraud. He met my gaze openly, like a man with nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of, and his grip tightened briefly. Then he nodded slightly, smiled faintly, and let go.

  “Please, have a seat. I’ll tell you why I needed to see you.” He motioned to a pair of oak rockers on the porch, and planted himself in the farther one. I sat, stiffly at first, then found myself rocking in time with O’Conner’s slow arcs.

  “Cooke County’s a funny place, Doc. The most fearless, loyal people you’ll ever meet—and the meanest, orneriest sons of bitches on the face of the earth. Being an educated man, you probably know that back during the Civil War—the ‘War of Northrun Aggression,’ as some of my South Carolina kinfolks persist in calling it—Cooke County stayed loyal to the Union.” I nodded, wondering where he was going with this. He continued rocking and talking. “The citizens of Cooke County actually tried to secede from the state of Tennessee. We always got by without slaves, figured other folks could, too. Couldn’t see dying for some rich Memphis cotton kings. At one point, a band of Confederate vigilantes came in to teach us a lesson. Never came out again.”

  He paused to watch a hawk circling above the valley floor. I took advantage of the opening. “I’m not sure I quite take your point.”

  “Not sure I do, either. Guess I haven’t quite stumbled onto it yet. Please forgive me for rambling.” He was an oddly courteous kidnapper. “I parted company with the law a long time ago, Dr. Brockton. I won’t go into all the reasons; all I’ll say is that it was my family that first stood against the Confederacy. That, and it’s damned hard to make a law-abiding living in these mountains.” I thought I detected something like sadness in his voice and his eyes. “But there’s certain lines I’ve never crossed. One of them is murder. I killed when I was a soldier in Vietnam. After I got home, I swore I’d never do it again. It hasn’t always been easy up here, but I’ve kept that vow for over thirty years.” He rocked in silence.
>
  “Exactly what is it you want to talk to me about, Mr. O’Conner?”

  “You hauled a body out of Russell’s Cave the other day. I suspect I’m being set up to take the fall for that killing. There’s some petty politics and some bad blood stretching way back in this county, and I figure this looks like a good chance to settle some scores. No matter what anybody tells you, I didn’t do it, Dr. Brockton. I guess all I’m asking is that you keep an open mind. Doubt everything except what you can verify for yourself.”

  “Including your claim of innocence?”

  He considered, then nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “I’m a scientist,” I said. “That’s how I work.”

  He reached into his shirt pocket and handed me a piece of paper. “Here’s two phone numbers. Please call me if I can help in any way. Offhand, I don’t know who this guy was, but seems like he shouldn’t be too hard to track down.”

  I took a moment to consider whether what I was about to say might compromise the investigation. I made my words and tone as neutral as I could. “So you’ve also heard that it was a man?”

  O’Connor sat motionless for a moment, then turned to face me. “Ah. I’d just assumed. Possibly a woman? Well, that would certainly change the picture. Perhaps ol’ Lester Ballard is alive and well in Cooke County.”

  “Lester Ballard?”

  He waved off the question. “Never mind—I shouldn’t’ve said that. Silly and completely inappropriate. Seriously, though, I can think of several men in this county who might need killing, and a few more who wouldn’t bat an eye at doing some killing. But I can’t think of any local women who’ve gone missing recently.”

  “How about not so recently? Tall? Blonde?”

  His brow furrowed for a moment, and then the look of puzzlement vanished, replaced by a realization that was swift and terrible. His gaze—so clear and confident before—was suddenly stricken. He looked away. “Oh, Jesus, no,” he breathed, staring out across the valley. “Oh, God, not her.” Tears welled in his eyes, then rolled down his cheeks. He made no move to wipe them away, gave no sign that he even noticed them.

  I waited what seemed an eternity. “Mr. O’Conner?”

  He seemed not to hear, so I spoke his name again, louder. When he answered, he sounded years older and a lifetime away. “Yes?”

  “Is Jim your first name?”

  “No. Middle.”

  “Mr. O’Conner—Lieutenant Thomas J. O’Conner—you want to tell me what your dog tag was doing around a dead woman’s neck?”

  When he finally turned to face me once more, his eyes were as cold and lifeless as the waxy spheres I had washed from the face of the dead woman and rinsed down the drain of the morgue.

  CHAPTER 11

  WAYLON AND I RODE BACK to the highway in silence. He didn’t duct-tape me this time, but he did cover my face with his rank cap again, giving me a look of sheepish apology as he doffed it and leaned over to hook it under my chin. O’Conner hadn’t spoken another word to either of us; he’d simply waved us away with that dead look still in his eyes. Waylon looked scared, like a child who’s seen his parents fighting or his mother weeping.

  He left me sitting in the Cherokee, and a minute or so later Williams appeared, rubbing a visible bump on the back of his head. He, too, was silent the rest of the way into Jonesport. We seemed to have adopted a don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy regarding the last half-hour. I wondered if Williams was too embarrassed to speak of what had happened to him. I also suspected it was more than just coincidence that he’d made his pit stop where and when he did.

  Kitchings was pacing his small office when we entered. “Where the hell have you-all been? You shoulda been here an hour ago.”

  I kept quiet. Williams cleared his throat. “My fault, Sheriff. I pulled off to take a leak down by the river. Slipped on a wet rock and fell pretty hard. Musta been out longer than I thought.”

  Kitchings studied Williams, who was rubbing his head and grimacing, then turned to study me. “He was gone quite a while,” I said. “I reckon I fell asleep. Next thing I knew, he was getting back in the car with that goose egg on his noggin.” I didn’t understand why I was covering for Williams; then it occurred to me that I might actually be covering for O’Conner. I didn’t understand that, either. Then again, maybe it was really myself I was covering for, somehow. But what had I done, or what was I thinking of doing, and why?

  Kitchings looked disgusted. “Ever time I send him after you, something goes wrong. I don’t know which one of you’s to blame, but damned if I’ll let it happen again.”

  “Sheriff, the minute we can wrap up this case, I’ll be glad to head back to Knoxville for good.”

  “Yeah. Well. Whatcha got so far?”

  “Well, it’s pretty much what I thought from the beginning: white female, twenty to twenty-three years, unusually tall—somewhere between five-ten and six feet in stature. Blonde hair, fairly long. No dental work; small, unfilled caries—cavities—in two of her molars and one of her canines. Only sign of skeletal trauma was multiple fractures of the hyoid.”

  “Fractures of the what-oid?”

  “The hyoid.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Means she was strangled. The hyoid’s that small, wiggly bone just above your Adam’s apple.” I demonstrated, and the sheriff and his deputy jiggled their hyoids from side to side. “Hers was crushed. Pretty sure sign of manual strangulation.”

  He looked grim. “Anything else unusual?”

  “Well, she was wearing a U.S. Army dog tag around her neck.” I paused, giving him a chance to process the information. “I took it to Art Bohanan, the resident fingerprint guru at KPD, in hopes he might pick up a print from whoever had his hands around her neck.”

  Kitchings took in a breath and leaned toward me, his eyes blazing. “And?”

  “Nothing.”

  He exhaled. “Shoot. But was the tag still legible?” I nodded. “What’d it say?”

  It was my turn to take a breath. “It said Lt. Thomas J. O’Conner.”

  Kitchings turned away. “That cocksucking son of a bitch,” he whispered. “I am gonna nail his sorry ass to the cross.”

  I waited. “Sheriff?” He turned. “Any idea who she was?”

  I was conscious, at the edge of my field of view, of Williams, motionless but tightly coiled. Kitchings drew in a long breath, let it out, and shook his head. “Hard to say, Doc. Real hard to say.”

  I was getting that impression. Maybe not so hard to know—at least, to insiders—but damned difficult to say, at least to outsiders. He was hiding something, I felt sure; I wondered if it was the girl’s identity, and if so, why. I turned to Williams with an inquiring look, but the deputy just shrugged and shook his head. I decided to play the card Jim O’Conner had just handed me. “Sheriff, does the name Lester Ballard mean anything to you?”

  He looked up at the ceiling, as if the answer might be found somewhere in the peeling plaster. “Lester Ballard? No, can’t say as it does. Why?”

  “Hard to say. It just sorta came up.”

  He eyed me suspiciously, sensing some subtext but not sure what it was.

  “There’s some Ballards over in Union County, I believe, but I don’t know of any Lester. I damn sure know of a Thomas J. O’Conner, though.”

  I nodded. “Sheriff?” He looked annoyed. “What’s he like, this O’Conner?”

  Kitchings made a face, shook his head. “Smartass. Thinks he’s better and brighter than the rest of us.”

  “Wouldn’t be too bright to strangle a woman and hang his name around her neck, would it?”

  He shook his head dismissively. But it was clear that he wasn’t dismissing the notion of O’Conner’s guilt. He was dismissing my question, and he was dismissing me. Just to make sure I got the message, he spun on his heel and walked out, before I had a chance to tell him about the cavewoman’s pregnancy. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d have told him even if I’d gotten the chance.

  CH
APTER 12

  BY THE TIME I GOT back to campus, night was falling. The autumnal equinox was only a few days away, and the days were markedly shorter. Not so long ago—was it one lifetime, or two?—I’d have hurried home, stopping in my office just long enough to phone Kathleen and apologize for running late. Now, the habitual impulse to call still popped up, but only for an instant: just long enough to remind me that there was no reason to call, no one there to answer the phone.

  She’d been gone for two years now, but the ache and the emptiness still cut to the bone.

  I sat at my desk, staring into space and time—time long past—for what might have been a minute or an hour. I forced my thoughts back to the Cooke County case: I had an unknown victim—unnamed, at any rate—an unknown killer, and people on various sides of the law who seemed to know more than they were telling. I kept coming back to two names: Jim O’Conner and Lester Ballard. I knew who O’Conner was now, at least superficially. But Ballard, whom O’Conner had mentioned, was a mystery. “Lester Ballard,” I said aloud. “Calling Lester Ballard. Come in, Lester Ballard.”

  A knock at my door made me jump. “Excuse me, Dr. B.?” It was Sarah, my bright 101 student. In one hand she was carrying a briefcase, in the other, a well-worn copy of my osteology field guide, the bone identification handbook I made all my forensic graduate students commit to memory.

  I smiled sheepishly. “You’re not Lester Ballard.”

  She laughed. “Not quite. I am considered eccentric, but I’m pretty tame compared to him.”

  “Wait—you’ve actually heard of Lester Ballard?”

  “Sure. He’s great.”

  “Great how? He’s not a murderer or something?”

  “Well, yeah, he is a murderer, among other unsavory things, but he’s a great character.” I might have looked baffled. She definitely looked amused. “Fictional character. He’s in a novel.”