Cut to the Bone

by Jefferson Bass

  Jiminy Cricket, he thought, I’m talking to flies now? I am totally cracking up.

  Leaving the enclosure, he latched and padlocked the chain-link door. “Yeah, right,” he muttered, snapping the lock shut. “As if someone might want to steal a stinking corpse swarming with maggots.” He’d parked a ways from the trees—hotter than the shade, but a lot less likely to get bombed by the birds.

  The truck was on a slight incline, facing downhill, so instead of cranking it, he floored the clutch, put the transmission in second gear, and coasted down the slope. Just before he reached the bottom, he switched on the key and popped the clutch to roll-start the engine. The truck lurched as the clutch caught, and then the cylinders fired up. He used to tell himself he did this to lessen the wear and tear on the starter, but the truth—the real reason he did it—was that he got a kick out of it. Every single time. He hummed, then began to sing: “Back in nineteen fifty-eight . . . We drove an old V-8 . . . And when it’d gone a hundred thou we got out and pushed it a mile. . . .”

  HE WAS LICKING THE last of the mayonnaise and mustard off his fingers when Dr. B walked into the bone lab, looking surprised. “Tyler—I thought you were in lockdown across the river.”

  “I tunneled out,” Tyler said. “Actually, I’m about to do an experiment.” He reached into his backpack and fished out the jar. “These are my guinea pigs. I mean, my rigorously screened research subjects.”

  “What’s the research question? What’s your hypothesis?”

  “The question is, how far away can blowflies smell a corpse? My hypothesis is, if I release these little guys over here, they’ll follow their noses and show up over there again. Maybe even before I do.”

  “Hmm. Interesting.” Brockton took the jar from him and peered through the glass, scrutinizing the bugs. “How will you know? I’m sure their mommas can recognize ’em, but to me, they look just like every other blowfly I’ve ever seen.”

  “Maybe now, but in five minutes, I bet that anybody—even you—can pick these flies out of a lineup.”

  “You’re on,” said Brockton. “I need to run upstairs and check the mail. When I come back, we’ll put your recognition hypothesis to the test.” He ducked out the steel door of the basement lab, and Tyler heard his footsteps jogging up the two flights of stairs to the Anthropology Department’s main office.

  Ten minutes later he heard footsteps jogging back down, and the steel door banged open. “Time’s up. You ready?”

  “One. More. Second. Okay, ready.” Tyler straightened and rolled his chair sideways, so Dr. B could get at the jar. “There’s been a slight revision to the research protocol,” he added with exaggerated academic pomposity, “due to attrition in the study sample size. The original cohort was eleven. Now the n is five.”

  “Five?” said Brockton. “Out of eleven? Good God, your research subjects are dropping like flies.” Tyler groaned, as Brockton had surely hoped he would. “Remind me never to be one of your guinea pigs.” Dr. B picked up the jar and carried it to the large bank of windows lining the lab’s south wall. Holding it up to the light, he tilted it, turned it, and then grinned at it. Six flies lay dead or dying in the bottom of the jar, but the other five were buzzing or crawling, vigorously and vividly. Each of them sported a small but prominent dot on its thorax: a distinctive dab of UT orange.

  “GOD DAMN IT,” TYLER muttered, pinching the sides of his nose fiercely. He had scarcely settled back into his folding chair after his lunch break, and already his nostrils were being invaded again. The first fifty times it had happened, he’d puffed air out his nose to blast the intruder loose without inflicting damage. By now, though, he was in a murderous mood, and was more than happy to turn his nasal passages into death chambers. Releasing the nostril that had been violated, he blew, and the crushed fly shot out and landed on the concrete. Tyler leaned down, the nail of his middle finger circling to the tip of his thumb, coiled to flick the fly through the fence and into the woods. Then he froze, staring, and burst into a laugh. “I’ll be damned,” he said.

  The dead fly was wearing UT orange.

  CHAPTER 17

  Brockton

  “EXCUSE ME?” I SAID into the telephone handset.

  “I said, ‘Good fences make good neighbors,’ ” the dean repeated, the edge in his voice growing even sharper.

  “I heard what you said,” I told him, “and I even know it comes from a poem, but I don’t quite get what you mean by it.”

  “I mean what the hell were you thinking?”

  “I’m sorry,” I floundered, “but I still don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean I just spent half an hour on the phone with one of the groundskeepers from the Medical Center,” he snapped. “He’s trimming weeds at the edge of a parking lot, and he steps into the woods to take a leak. Guess what he sees?”

  I had an uneasy feeling that I knew, but I decided to play innocent, in hopes that I was wrong. “Uh . . . a marijuana patch?”

  “No. Wait—what? Are you growing pot in the woods now, too?”

  “No!” Perhaps I should’ve chosen my alternative scenario more carefully. “No, of course we’re not growing pot in the woods.”

  “Well, thank God for small favors,” he said. “So this poor, unsuspecting bastard goes behind a tree to pee and nearly craps his pants instead, because he suddenly finds himself face-to-face with a human corpse. A very nasty-looking, nasty-smelling human corpse.”

  “Ooh,” I managed. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “You’ll be even sorrier if he files a lawsuit. Which he’s threatening to do.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “I’m really sorry to hear that.” That was no exaggeration, though I said it not so much from contrition as from a sense of foreboding. “Reckon it’d help if I go see him? Grovel awhile—apologize a lot—and explain how important the research project is?”

  “Try the groveling on me, first,” he grumbled. “And while you’re explaining, don’t forget to explain the fence project.”

  “What fence project?”

  “The new fence you’re going to build around that whole patch of ground. Eight feet high. Wood, and solid—so nobody else gets traumatized.”

  Christ, I thought, where do we get the money for that? Fencing in the wooded area would cost far more than building the chain-link cube had cost. I was about to make that point to the dean—before embarking on the groveling and apologizing he’d demanded—when I heard a bloodcurdling shriek just outside my office door. This did not bode well as a first-day experience.

  Ten feet away, my new secretary, Peggy something-or-other—Williams? no: Wilhoit—had settled into her chair and begun scaling the months-high mountains of mail, memos, and other departmental detritus that had accumulated over the past several months. For the past hour I’d heard her clucking and sighing her way through the task, lobbing an occasional question across the divide and through my open door. “Do you want to order personalized pocket protectors for all the faculty?” she lobbed. I didn’t. “Do you want this catalog from the Edmund Scientific Company?” I did. “Do you already know about the faculty meeting next Tuesday?”

  “What faculty meeting?”

  That was when she shrieked: a full-throated, long-lasting scream. Hastily hanging up on the dean, I leaped up and rushed through the door to the outer office. My new secretary had pushed as far away from her desk as she could get, the back of her chair pressed against the windowsill. Her arms were extended in front of her, her fingers spread, her hands shaking. In front of her, in the small, semicircular clearing of desktop she’d managed to create, I saw an oversized manila envelope, an eight-by-ten photograph pulled halfway out of the opening. I didn’t need to see the rest of the photo to recognize it—or to know why it had prompted such distress.

  The photo showed a nude woman—a nude dead woman—lying on a hillside in the woods. Her legs, which had no fe
et, were opened wide, splayed on either side of a small tree; her crotch was jammed tightly against the sapling’s trunk, in what appeared to be a shocking pose of sexual violation.

  I snatched the envelope from the desk and quickly slid the picture back inside.

  “Why?” whispered Peggy hoarsely.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. Reaching behind me, through the doorway, I tucked the envelope into the bookshelf just inside my office.

  “Why?” she repeated. “Why would someone send you that? And what kind of sick person would take such a picture?”

  I winced. “Actually, I took it,” I told her. “It’s an old crime-scene photo, from a murder I worked up in Morgan County a couple years ago. December twenty-fourth, 1990. Christmas Eve.” I sighed. “I don’t know why this copy just came in the mail. I guess the sheriff’s office or the TBI is cleaning out old case files. That, or they misread a request I sent out a few months ago, for copies of my forensic reports. A bunch of my files got thrown out last spring by mistake—by a temporary secretary, matter of fact.” I frowned at her reflexively, as if the missing files were somehow her fault, then inwardly scolded myself. “I’m sorry you ran across that with no warning,” I said. Pulling the envelope from the bookshelf, I looked to see whether it had been Sheriff Cotterell or Bubba Hardknot who’d scared the bejesus out of my new secretary, but there was no return address, and I tucked the envelope away again. She drew several deep breaths, each one sounding steadier than the one before. “Most of what we do here’s pretty boring,” I said, “but some of it’s strong stuff—not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.”

  She exhaled slowly through pursed lips, her cheeks puffing out as she did. “Well, you did warn me—sort of—when you interviewed me. I just hadn’t expected something like . . . this . . . my first day on the job. ‘A mean surprise’—that’s what my mama would call it.”

  I smiled at the phrase. “Well, I’m sorry for the mean surprise, Betty.”

  “Peggy,” she corrected.

  “I’m sorry for the mean surprise, Peggy.” I smiled in a way I hoped was reassuring. “Around here, you’ll get used to things like that.”

  She didn’t return the smile. “No offense, Dr. Brockton,” she said, “but if I ever get used to things like that, it’s time for me to look for a different job.”

  Suddenly I realized that I’d hung up on the dean in mid-scolding. “It might be time for me to look for a different job,” I said ruefully, reaching for the phone and preparing to grovel.

  “HELLO,” I BARKED, SNATCHING the handset from the cradle with a dripping, slippery hand.

  “Uh . . . hello? Is this Dr. Brockton?” The caller sounded tentative and timid, as if she hoped I were someone else.

  “Yes, this is Dr. Brockton,” I snapped. I’d just returned from helping Tyler haul a fresh body from the morgue to the research facility. He now had two research subjects in the cage—“Double your data, double your smell,” I’d joked—and I’d brought some of the aroma back with me. I’d ducked into the shower to wash it off, and the phone had begun to ring just as I’d lathered up. I’d ignored the first dozen rings, but finally the insistent jangling had gotten to me. For the second time in as many weeks, water pooled beneath my bare feet on the grimy concrete floor, the grime turning to slime.

  There was silence on the other end of the line, and my annoyance ramped another notch higher. “I said, this is Dr. Brockton. How can I help you?”

  “It’s . . . it’s Peggy.”

  “Peggy? Peggy who?”

  “Peggy Wilhoit.” The hesitancy and fear in her voice faded, displaced by what sounded like indignation. “Your new secretary Peggy.” Oops, I thought. “Peggy, who opens your gruesome, disgusting mail.”

  “Oh, Peggy,” I gushed. “Sorry, I couldn’t quite hear you,” I fibbed. “There’s a leaf blower right outside my hideout.” I waited for a response—a No problem or That’s okay or other phrase of forgiveness—but instead, I heard only silence. Deafening, damning silence, on her end of the call and also on mine: no droning leaf blower backing up my story. I cleared my throat. “How are you settling in by now, Peggy?”

  “Well, the backlog’s a bit overwhelming, but I can see most of the desktop now. And I haven’t come across anything else that’s made me scream. Yet.” She paused. “Where did you say you are?”

  “In my hideout. My sanctuary. My secret office, up at the north end of the stadium. I only use the one next to yours when I’m being a bureaucrat,” I explained. “Pushing papers, counseling students, chewing out junior faculty. I use this one when I need to get real work done.”

  “Ah. Well, perhaps you’ll be so good as to show me where it is sometime. Meanwhile, you have a visitor here at Bureaucracy Central.”

  Oh, hell—not a visitor, I thought, but then I checked my watch: eleven thirty. “Ah,” I said. “Tell him to meet me here.”

  “Him who?”

  “Him Jeff,” I said, sighing at the woman’s denseness. “My son. My visitor.”

  “Could this be a different visitor? A young woman?”

  “You’re asking me if it’s a woman? Can’t you tell the difference?”

  “Yes, of course I can . . .” She paused, and when she resumed speaking, I felt frostbite nibbling my ear. “Let me start over. You have a visitor, Dr. Brockton. She is a young woman. Her name is Jenny Earhart.”

  “Oh—the artist?”

  “I don’t know, Dr. Brockton; I didn’t ask her about her talents. But I’ll do so now.” I heard a murmured exchange, then, “Yes, Jenny Earhart, the artist.”

  “Does she have a sketch for me?”

  Another murmured exchange. “Yes, she says she has a sketch for you.”

  “Excellent! Send her my way.”

  “Which way would that be, Dr. Brockton?” Clearly I had gotten off on the wrong foot with my new secretary.

  “Oh. Right. Tell her I’ll be right there. Thank you, Peggy.” Without waiting for a reply, I hung up the phone, toweled off, and yanked on clean clothes, which snagged and dragged on my damp skin. Then I jogged through the curving concrete corridor beneath the stadium, skidding to a stop outside Peggy’s door just in time to avoid colliding with my son.

  “Jeff. What are you doing here?”

  “Gee, try to contain your excitement, Dad. It’s a teacher-training day at school. You invited me to lunch, remember? Ribs at Calhoun’s?”

  “Sure. I knew that. I meant, what are you doing here now? Is it lunchtime already?” I brushed past him, squeezing through the doorway into the outer office. Behind the desk sat the new secretary, Peggy the Frosty, eyeing me coolly. In front of her, sitting sideways, wedged into the narrow gap between the desk and the doorway to my inner office, was Jenny, a leather portfolio and a skull-sized hatbox on her lap.

  “Good morning,” I said, taking the box off her lap and setting it on the corner of Peggy’s desk. “Don’t open that,” I warned Peggy. “You won’t like what’s inside.” I gave Jenny a conspiratorial smile. “That was quick,” I said to her. “I figured it’d take you at least a week.”

  She shrugged. “I got really caught up in it—stayed up all night working on it. It was like she was . . . I don’t know, trying to reach out to me.” She blushed. “Sounds silly, I know.”

  “Actually, not at all,” I assured her. “I sometimes imagine I hear the dead when I’m looking at their bones. Hear them whispering—telling me what happened.”

  “Yes, yes. Like that. Like . . . communing with the dead, almost. Amazing.”

  “Sounds amazing.” Jeff’s voice came from just behind me. He’d followed me into Peggy’s office, and he leaned around me now, into Jenny’s field of view, waving. “Hi. I’m Jeff. His son.”

  “Jeff, this is Jenny Earhart,” I said. “An artist. She’s doing a facial sketch for me—that girl whose bones we found on Labor Day up at
the strip mine.” I turned back to her. “Why don’t you come into my office, where there’s a little more room, and show me what you’ve got?” I nodded toward the doorway, and she stood. “Give us a few minutes, son.”

  “Why don’t we take her to lunch instead?” Jenny stopped in the doorway and turned to look at him. “You’re an artist,” he said. “That means you’re starving, right? Metaphorically speaking,” he added, flashing her a smile. I stared at him; was my son flirting with my forensic artist? And since when did he say things like metaphorically speaking? It must have worked, because she smiled back at him. “We’re walking over to Calhoun’s on the River,” he hurried on. “You got time to go with us?” She looked at me; all I could do was shrug, leaving it up to her. “I’m super-interested in art,” Jeff added. He caught my dubious glance. “Forensics, too, of course.”

  “That’s good to know, son,” I said. “We’re putting a big wooden fence around the Body Farm. You can come help me paint it.”

  CALHOUN’S ON THE RIVER was a five-minute walk from the Anthropology Department. Jeff, Jenny, and I took the stairwell down to the bone lab, exited at the base of the stadium—down at field level, near the south goal line—and angled across parking lots and four lanes of Neyland Drive to the big, barnlike restaurant perched on the north bank of the Tennessee River.

  Calhoun’s was a Knoxville landmark, noted for its barbecued ribs, its unsurpassed view of the river, and its proximity to Neyland Stadium; the place was nearly always hopping, but on days when the Vols—the Tennessee Volunteers—were playing at home, it was mobbed. People arrived by car, on foot, even by boat. A small wharf adjoined the restaurant, and on home-game weekends, boats would begin arriving days ahead of time, some chugging upriver all the way from Chattanooga or even Alabama. The tradition had begun with a single small boat back in 1962, but in the thirty years since, it had taken off, turning into an immense, floating block party: tailgating, Knoxville style. The first few boats would tie up to the wharf; subsequent arrivals would tie to them, and so on. By kickoff time, a vast flotilla—yachts, houseboats, pontoon boats, even runabouts—extended halfway across the river. To get to and from the shore, people clambered from vessel to vessel, bobbing and weaving from the combined effects of the river and the revelry. “The Vol Navy,” this ad-hoc armada had been christened, and as an anthropologist, I found it a fascinating case study in social structure and cooperation.