Carved in Bone

by Jefferson Bass

  My next call was a quick one to Art. I told him what I thought I should do, and he concurred, so I pressed the switchhook, pressed “8” again for another outside line, and dialed the number on the business card I fished from my wallet. “FBI,” snapped a no-nonsense male voice. I identified myself and asked for Agent Price. “One moment, I’ll see if she’s in,” he said, swiftly parking me on hold.

  Ten seconds later, Angela Price picked up. “Dr. Brockton, how are you?” Price’s voice was crisp but cordial. “You’re not calling with a field report from another cockfight, I hope?”

  “No, I’m calling from my office at UT. Somebody’s just broken in and stolen the postcranial skeleton from my Cooke County murder case.”

  “Postcranial?”

  “Everything below the skull, or nearly everything. Luckily, I had the cranium and the hyoid bone—the bone from her throat that shows she was strangled—in a classroom with me. So those are still safe, for the moment.”

  “What would you like me to do, Dr. Brockton?”

  “Well, you said to let you know if anything else cropped up, and this sure counts as cropping up in my book. Does this merit sending the Bureau’s crime scene wizards over to take a look? Just informally, of course. I’m also wondering if you folks could take temporary custody of the skull and hyoid for me, too? It’s easy to get into a professor’s office, but I can’t imagine somebody breaking into the FBI’s evidence vault.”

  “Hang on a second.” She, too, was quick with the “Hold” button; must’ve been emphasized in the curriculum at Quantico. I hung in limbo for several minutes. Just as I was about to hang up and redial, she picked back up. “I’m not trying to dodge you, Dr. Brockton, but Steve Morgan, your former student? He already knows his way around that labyrinth over there. He’s on his way now, and some TBI evidence techs will be right behind him in a mobile crime lab.” She must have sensed some disappointment on my end of the line. “We just don’t have either the jurisdiction or the resources right now, and TBI does. Can you understand that?”

  “I reckon I’ll have to.” I regretted the petulance of that as soon as I said it. “Sorry. Yes, of course.”

  “Do you feel safe there?”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me to worry about that. “Yes, I think so. Thanks for asking. A UT officer should be here any minute. In fact—yes, there’s his car now.”

  “Good. Keep in touch. Don’t give up on us.” She rang off without another word, and I met the campus cop at the door. He looked young enough to be a student himself; his gun was drawn and his hand was shaking. When I explained that a TBI team was on the way, his big eyes got even bigger. Mercifully, he holstered the trembling weapon, then scurried back to his patrol car and returned with a roll of crime scene tape. With it, he fashioned a big X across the open doorway. When Steve Morgan arrived ten minutes later, he eyed the crime scene tape and sized up the eager young cop. “Anybody been in here besides Dr. Brockton?”

  “No, sir,” said the young patrolman, all but saluting.

  “Good work,” smiled Morgan. “We’ll take it from here. Thanks.”

  The young man’s face fell. “You don’t need me here?” Morgan looked surprised by the question, maybe faintly amused. I felt bad for the UT officer, but he wasn’t ready to slink away just yet. “I, um, was sort of hoping to watch—to observe—how the TBI works a crime scene.”

  Morgan smiled. It hadn’t been all that long since he was standing in my office apologizing for classroom hijinks. “Now that I think about it, Officer, if you’ve got time to stick around and control the perimeter here, the TBI would be much obliged.”

  The lad practically trembled with excitement as he fished out his radio. “Unit Three to Dispatch,” he blurted. When the dispatcher responded, he snapped to attention, as if she could see him. “TBI is requesting officer assistance at the scene.”

  “Copy that,” drawled the dispatcher, not nearly as impressed as he’d hoped. “Holler when you’re done. We’re starving, and we need somebody to make the deli run.”

  It wasn’t long before two TBI techs arrived, light sources and evidence kits in hand, and began surveying the room methodically. Morgan and I stepped out into the hallway, but I leaned into the doorway to watch the techs at work. When they turned on the ultraviolet lights, purple prints showed up on every surface. Most of them were mine, I knew, and probably the rest belonged to graduate students. “Excuse me, sir,” said one of the techs, “can you tell me where this door leads?”

  “Sure, it leads to the skeletal collection room.”

  He wiggled the knob—it was locked, I knew from checking it myself—and inspected the frame for signs of forced entry. Finding none, he turned his attention back to my desktop.

  Morgan cleared his throat to get my attention, then began a litany of questions—when had I left my office, how long was I gone, who knew my class schedule, how many different exits could the thief have taken, did I see anybody or anything suspicious, and so on, and so on. Finally, when he’d exhausted my factual knowledge, he asked the question that had been hanging in the air all along: “So who do you think might have done it?”

  “Well, my first thought is the sheriff, of course. I still think he’s afraid of where the murder investigation is leading.”

  “Has he ever been here before?”

  “No, but it wouldn’t be hard to find out where it is.”

  “Yeah, but that’s only half the battle,” said Morgan. “This office isn’t exactly easy to get to. You’re tucked away about as far from the rest of the Anthropology Department as you can get without burrowing clear under the AstroTurf.”

  “Makes it easier to hole up and concentrate,” I said defensively.

  “I’m not criticizing; just thinking out loud. Is there anybody who has been here before that might have an interest in stealing that skeleton?”

  “Well, there’s the sheriff’s deputy, Leon Williams.”

  “A deputy?” Morgan sounded dubious.

  “You asked, and he’s been here before. He could have come to fetch it for the sheriff.” Suddenly I remembered Art’s Scenario E, the unknown possibility: “Or he could be working some angle we don’t even know about. Maybe he’s setting up the sheriff for a fall?” The more I thought about it, the surer I was that this was Williams’s handiwork.

  “ ’Scuse us,” Morgan said to the UT policeman, taking my elbow and steering me into the stairwell. He checked the flight of stairs above and below the landing where we stood, then leaned close to me and spoke in a near whisper. “Listen, you didn’t hear this from me—if it got out that you did, I’d be in deep shit with Agent Price—but I guarantee you Williams was not the one who broke into your office and took those bones.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “Yes I can,” he hissed.

  “How?”

  “Because he’s spent the last two hours in a roomful of FBI and TBI agents, that’s how.”

  I had to admit, it was a pretty good alibi.

  “Then it’s got to be the sheriff. Or maybe his brother. Orbin doesn’t seem the sort who would shrink from a little breaking and entering. Can’t you guys please get some sort of surveillance going on them?”

  He checked the stairs again. “The paperwork’s in motion even as we speak,” he whispered. “Office, homes, vehicles. Should be in place within a week.” He gave my arm a sharp squeeze. “Remember, we did not have this conversation.”

  I nodded, grateful that we hadn’t.

  CHAPTER 27

  STILL AGITATED AFTER THE TBI crew left, I phoned Jim O’Conner to tell him about the theft of the bones. He sounded shaken and angry. “Listen,” I said, “I wonder if you could give me some more background on the Kitchings family. I can’t help thinking at least one of them is behind this, but I can’t figure out which one, or why.”

  “I don’t think we should talk about this over the phone,” he said. “Drug seizure money up here has bought all sorts of fancy equipmen
t in the past few years.” I’d ridden a top-of-the-line ATV and had seen the helicopter parked behind the courthouse, so I knew what he was talking about. “Electronics, too,” he said. “I don’t say anything on the phone I’m not willing for anybody in the county to hear.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s one-fifteen now. I’ll need to hit a drive-through on the way up, but I could be there by two-thirty.”

  “Let me send Waylon to meet you at the exit.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “Last time Waylon picked me up, I ended up headfirst in a barrel of dead chickens, covered in blood, vomit, and tobacco juice.”

  He laughed. “Makes a hell of story, doesn’t it?” I had to admit it did. “And he helped get you out of the cave,” he reminded me. Despite misgivings, I agreed to give Waylon one more chance at chauffeuring.

  He rumbled to a stop in the gravel lot beside the Pilot station as I wolfed down the last of my lunch. As I hoisted myself up into his cab, he flashed me a grin. “Howdy, Doc. You don’t look any the worse for wear from your spe-lunkin’. Glad we ain’t put you offa Cooke County for good.”

  “I’m back. But no more cockfights—and no more Copenhagen.”

  I heard a wheezing sound coming from Waylon’s direction; it built to a snicker, then exploded into a booming, truck-shaking roar of laughter. He pounded the steering wheel with one mammoth fist, then wiped tears from his eyes with a camouflaged shirt sleeve. “Doc, I wisht you coulda seen yourself pitching over into that trash barrel. I b’lieve that’s the funniest damn thing I ever saw. That, and the look on all them fellas standing around as you was keelin’ over. If I had me a video of that, I bet I’d win the ten grand on that TV show for funny videos.”

  First the TBI, then O’Conner, now Waylon. Apparently I was never going to live this down. My only consolation was that my colleagues and students at UT hadn’t witnessed the debacle. “Well, if you hear of somebody else who caught it on tape, I’d probably pay ten grand myself, just to take it out of circulation.” Waylon looked thoughtful, doubtless searching his memory banks in hopes of dredging up a video.

  Halfway toward O’Conner’s place, Waylon turned off the river road onto a narrow track of dirt. “Way-lon,” I said, “this isn’t the way.”

  “I just got to stop by and see my cousin Vern real quick. He’s the one I was bettin’ on the cockfight for. Come on, Doc, this won’t take but a few minutes.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” I said. “I’ve been down this road with you before.”

  “Naw you ain’t,” he said. “The cockfight was over by Gnatty Branch. This here’s Laurel Branch.”

  “You know what I mean. No more side trips!”

  “Hell, Doc, don’t make me feel worse’n I already do. It’s real important—if I don’t do this, Vern’s gonna have his ass in a sling big-time. No joke—this is a genu-ine family emergency. Besides, we’re already here.” We lurched to a stop and Waylon shut off the mighty diesel.

  I looked out the windshield. There wasn’t much “here” here: a rutted turnaround, from which a narrow footpath led into the woods. Waylon got out and headed down the trail. “Hey, wait up,” I called. Fifty yards down the path, I was surprised to see trees posted with KEEP OUT and NO TRESPASSING signs. Running beneath them were shiny strands of barbed wire. Waylon pressed down on the top strand and stepped over the fence, then motioned for me to follow.

  “Waylon, I think whoever put up this fence and these signs means business.”

  He laughed. “Oh, he means business, but he don’t mean us. We’s family.”

  The trail angled through a stand of pines—all dead, decimated by a pine beetle infestation three years before—which bore additional menacing signs. I looked at Waylon doubtfully, but he just grinned and motioned me forward. As I neared the edge of the pine thicket, Waylon slowed, then stopped. “Doc, watch your step here—be sure you don’t catch that war.”

  “War? What war?”

  “That war about a foot off the ground there, couple steps ahead.”

  I looked where he was pointing. A taut monofilament line—invisible unless you happened to catch a glint of sunlight through it—stretched across the trail about knee-high. To my left, it was wrapped around the trunk of a dead pine; to the right, it disappeared into a pile of deadfall. Looking closer at the deadfall, I detected two small dark circles, rimmed in bluish-black metal. “Waylon, is that what I think it is?”

  He nodded. “Double-barrel Remington twelve-gauge. For them that can’t read.”

  Waylon was already moving down the trail, so I high-stepped over the trip wire, very carefully, to keep up with him. “What are we doing here, Waylon, and why’s your cousin Vern so antisocial?”

  “He’s got a note comin’ due that I got to help him with. He’s a small farmer, you might say, and he don’t like people gettin’ in his crops or messing in his business.”

  “But he’s not gonna mind us? Or me?”

  “Naw. I’m blood, and long’s you’re with me, you’re awright. Matter of fact, he’s heard about you, kindly wants to meet you. Duck your head, Doc. Duck, damnit!”

  I ducked, just in time to avoid getting snagged by a series of triple-ganged fishhooks, suspended at various approximations of eye level, from more monofilament line. I guessed the reasoning was, if you didn’t read the warning signs, you didn’t need your eyesight. I renewed my vow never to travel with Waylon again, even if it meant walking back to Knoxville.

  The trail followed the hill’s contour lines, and now it arced through a small hollow strewn with boulders, ranging in size from television sets to trailer trucks. As we approached a narrows hemmed by rocks, Waylon stopped again. “You see them leaves in that low spot yonder?” I nodded. “You’re gonna wanna jump clean over them. Got it?”

  “Got it. Why do I want to do that?”

  “So you don’t get bit by them copperheads curled up right there.”

  Looking closely, I could just barely make out the fat, mottled shapes of three copperheads coiled on the bed of leaves. “How’d you know they’d be there?”

  “ ’Count of them fishhooks in their tails. Keeps ’em close to home, you know?”

  “Fishhooks? You mean they’re staked out in the middle of the trail? Damn, Waylon, how many more booby traps between us and Cousin Vern? And what if he’s rigged up some new ones you don’t know about?”

  “This here’s the last ’un, coming in this-away. And Vern ain’t rigged up no more, ’cause he ain’t the one rigs ’em.” He said this with a mixture of matter-of-factness, modesty, and the proprietary pride of an artist displaying his handiwork. I should have known.

  We wound down the hollow, which gradually widened into a small bowl. At the center, there appeared to be a sunlit clearing, though as we got closer, I saw that much of it was occupied by small trees, ten or twelve feet tall. At one edge of the opening stood a small cabin—more of a hut, really—with a wisp of smoke curling up from a rusted flue. Suddenly I understood: the clearing wasn’t a thicket of small trees, but a patch of huge marijuana plants, some of them with stalks as thick as my wrist. Of course—why else would a trail in the woods be booby-trapped with shotguns and copperheads? This lush, blue-green foliage waving in the breeze was the linchpin of Cooke County’s underground economy.

  While we were still a hundred yards away, Waylon gave a piercing whistle. A deep baying emanated from the hut, and a rickety screen door screeched open and then slapped shut. Loping toward us on legs nearly as long as mine was a huge red hound, lop-eared and goofy-looking. The beast charged up to Waylon and reared up like a stallion, then placed immense paws on his shoulders. He stood eye to eye with Waylon and licked him square on the mouth. Waylon laughed, making no effort to dodge the dog’s slobbery tongue.

  After he’d had his fill of kissing, the dog dropped to all fours and trotted over to sniff my crotch. Luckily, the smell didn’t inspire him to French-kiss me. “Best keep him and your girlfriend apart,” I said. “One of them’s li
able to get jealous.”

  Waylon thumped the dog’s rib cage. “This here’s my buddy. Hard to believe it now, but a year ago, he could fit in the palm of my hand. Not much of a coon hound, turns out, but he’s a real sweet dog, ain’t you, Duke?” As if in answer, Duke slobbered happily on Waylon’s palm.

  The door screeched again, and a skinny, stunted echo of Waylon slouched toward us. “Hey, Vernon,” Waylon called. “I got the Doc here with me. He’s that genius bone detective I was telling you about.”

  Vernon nodded hello. I nodded back. “You’uns ain’t just come from a chicken fight, is you?” Vernon snickered at his own humor, and I shot Waylon a baleful look.

  Waylon fished a wallet from somewhere. “Here’s two hunnerd. I thought I’d be a little flusher, but I didn’t make out as well last Sunday as I planned.”

  That was my fault, I realized—if I hadn’t collapsed at the cockfight, Waylon could have stayed longer and wagered more.

  Vernon took the money and shook Waylon’s hand. “I ’preciate you. I hate to ask, but we’re still having a bad time with Ralph. He’s my least-un,” he explained to me. “He’s pale as a ghost, he won’t eat, and he’s got blood in his pee and his shit—’scuse my language, Doc. Waylon, he don’t look good at all. We’re afraid he ain’t gonna make it.”

  With good cause, I thought—it sounded like the child might have leukemia, but I hesitated to bring up the subject. Maybe I could talk about it with Waylon later.

  Waylon clapped Vern on the shoulder, then folded him in a bear hug, almost completely enveloping the smaller man. A muffled sob issued from the vicinity of the big man’s chest. “It’s gone be all right,” Waylon said. “Y’all just hang in there; everthing’s gone be all right. Listen, I got to get the Doc over to Jim’s.”