them as we do.”
Fielding was a short man with large hands and wide eyes behind thick glasses. An overbite gave him the appearance of a snapping turtle, and he had to work hard to get up a smile. His set of keys marked him as important here. He unlocked the stockade fence and snatched it open wide, but then he had to unlock the chain-link fence, and this gate pushed inward. Beyond these two gates, a huge wooden structure like something out of King Kong confronted them.
“ I see you've taken a great deal of precaution.”
“ Some fears never die. Fear of a rotting corpse in the neighborhood that is not under a cement slab to keep it in place is as alive here as it is in Transylvania, I can assure you. But we've also had attempts at break-ins, some serious protestor types, but more often local high schoolers.”
“ High schoolers, really?”
“ They don't call 'em the Wildcats for nothing. Place has become a beacon for Saturday night dares, a place to visit after the prom, you get the picture. Should something happen to a kid around here, you can bet we'd be shut down in a heartbeat, despite all the good we've done.”
“ Yeah, I can imagine.”
“ Place is not for the squeamish, Dr. Coran, and it's certainly not Peabody's Tomb or any other urban legend. It's a scientific experiment that has had multiple benefits for forensic science.”
“ You don't have to sell me. I know your work is necessary to the advancement of our understanding of decay, and that's precisely why I've come to you.”
“ Sorry Dr. Bass isn't here to meet you. Your reputation is well known here, however, and he did express his regrets.”
“ Likewise, sorry I missed him, but I'm sure you can help me.”
“ As we go through, you will see residents at work; most arrive before daybreak and leave early for classes. The lucky ones get to shower before they leave.”
He led her into the facility, and on entering, she was reminded of going to a private zoological garden. A thick layer of foliage encroached on the small pathway leading deeper into the wild forest, the foliage attempting to retake the road, to make it once more part of the hillside landscape. Here and there, Jessica saw a silent old automobile, weeds claiming it, that had been run up into the bushes. She saw another one in a small pond, half submerged.
At one clearing, she saw a handful of students with shovels, rakes, wire mesh screens, cameras, prongs, and specimen bags, all working away like a group of archeologists over a find, but the find here was a body, the skeletal remains of a decayed corpse.
“ They're simulating a case.”
“ Fascinating. How close is the simulation?”
“ As real as we can make it. They'll collect all the bone fragments from a victim who was set afire and then left to rot in a shallow grave. They'll take all the parts back with them to a clean, well-lit lab at the research facility. There they'll go at it like a jigsaw puzzle, putting the victim back together again and determining time of death, working backward, and learning exactly how he died.”
“ I would have killed for such training when I was younger,” she said.
“ Careful how you phrase that,” he joked. “Of course, our John Doe really didn't die of his burns.”
“ Oh, really?” She kept pace with Fielding, whose feet moved like they had eyes over the well-worn path.
“ You see, the body came to us via an incident report in which a homeless man doused himself with gasoline and set himself aflame. However, on closer inspection, I determined the man had been decaying for two weeks before he was set aflame, so he could not have doused himself with the gasoline or lit the match. He was a bit too dead to have pulled that off.”
She laughed at this. Fielding had an entertainer's delivery when he spoke of his first love, anthropological forensics.
“ He was torched two weeks after being killed?”
“ Not someone but a gang of some ones-teens who came on the body where it lay in a drain pipe, and they decided it would be fun to watch it bum. After my determination, police set out to find the culprits. They weren't exactly up on charges of murder, but that kind of depraved act can't go unpunished.”
They now rounded a comer, and there ahead of them in a shallow backwash of a pond, lying face up and staring out at them, floated a decomposing, eyeless corpse, its lifeless sockets like Jell-0 by this point. Jessica felt a surge of emotions commingle deep within; while on the one hand, she applauded what the facility did for science and forensics in particular, she also despised what was necessary in reaching the findings-a kind of willful disrespect for the human re-mains.
Instead of dwelling on the eyeless man whose clothes still clung to its now-formless flesh beneath, thinking how like a character in Night of the Living Dead the corpse appeared, she said, “Of course, the resident students aren't told the due history of how the bodies came to their respective ends, right?”
“ Right, and that means those who piece the truth together from the remains become our brightest among the class.”
“ They'll know from the green bone effect that Bass discovered,” she said. “That's right. Green bone fractures differently in a fire than drier bone. They'll know-or should know-John Doe's fractures match those of a burned body, not someone burned alive.”
“ Dry bones are more brittle, so the fracture pattern will be different.”
“ And only a microscope will tell you that.”
“ Appears you are doing a lot here… down on the farm.”
He smiled at this and said, “You bet we are.”
They walked on. Nothing in Jessica's experience could have prepared her for the sights and odors of the body farm. Commingled with the thick scent of dogwood and honeysuckle came the sickening sweet odor of decay in the wind. Animals here must have a field day, she thought. But then, the animal patterns of disturbance on and around the body were also major concerns of the anthropological forensics specialists. Jessica heard the rummaging and scurrying of any number of rodents, squirrels, and rabbit. She knew from her reading that they had foxes, wild boars, even a family of bears living on the compound in an attempt to simulate natural phenomena as much as possible.
Jessica had once visited a Civil War battleground within driving distance of Quantico, Virginia, and the place exuded the same eerie feeling as the Body Farm. But, as with the battlefield, vegetation and animal life had reclaimed the place, and here the thistle and bramble bush and rat and squirrel ruled. The incidental work of humans here, to further knowledge of death, dying, and decay in order to both dissuade murder and to catch murderers after the fact, seemed of less importance than the next leaf to be replaced. Birds hummed and chased one another here as if it were a gay, weekend park for families and children to play in. The death and the decay being studied-the concerns of man- were kept at bay by life.
They finished the quick tour of the facility, and Jessica was pleased to see they had found the gate again; a part of her mind found the place like a macabre maze from which she might never find her way.
Fielding broke her reverie now, asking, “Would you like to get some coffee? We can go over what you've brought in my office.”
“ That sounds good, yes.”
They exited the Body Farm, and he locked up behind them. “I do hope someone else has a key?” she mused. “Oh, sure, the instructor working with the group you saw. Any problems, they can reach my beeper number.” Now outside the Body Farm, Jessica began to breathe normally again.
Inside the nearby laboratory facility at the Body Farm, Jessica found that Bass and Fielding and their students were blessed with state-of-the-art equipment, hardware, and software. They had developed a cutting-edge laboratory here in the Bible belt, and they must be congratulated for it. Over coffee, she sat across from Fielding while he delved into the DeCampe case file, noting the details with rapid eye movements. Finally, he looked up at her and said, “I see why you called us. This… this is horrible if it can be believed.”
“ Believe it.”
Among the documents, findings, and suppositions made about the DeCampe case, Jessica had placed photos
