recount the gist of my conversation with Special Agent Price. “They don’t want to run the case,” I said, “but I gather they’d be willing to roll up their sleeves and help with the fieldwork. If you ask.”
“I’ll certainly recommend that we ask,” he said. “This is going to be huge, and we’ll need all the help we can get.” He paused, then said, “Hmm.” I waited, figuring he was working up to another question, and I was right. “So when my bosses ask me how I know about this mess, what do I tell them?”
“Tell them the truth,” I said. “I don’t see how it can hurt. Might give them a little more confidence that it’s not a wild-goose chase if they know the tip came from a guy who has a reasonably good idea what bodies in the woods look like.”
He chuckled at that. “True. Be hard for them to doubt the accuracy of the report if they know it comes from you.”
“I don’t particularly want my name in the news, though, if you can keep me out of it,” I said. “Any chance y’all could say the GBI received a call from a ‘concerned citizen’ or some such?”
“I’ll suggest it,” he said. “Politically, that might have some appeal-if we say, ‘It took an anthropologist from Tennessee to sniff this out,’ the GBI doesn’t look real bright. But if we say, ‘We acted swiftly in response to a tip,’ we look semicompetent.”
“Semicompetent nothing,” I said. “Y’all’ll be heroes. But only if you quit yakking and get busy.”
“Right,” he said. “Thanks, Dr. Brockton.”
“Excuse me-who?”
“Oh. Sorry. Thanks…Bill.”
His teeth were nearly clenched as he said it. But at least he said it.
CHAPTER 17
DOWN IN GEORGIA I’D STUMBLED UPON A BUNCH OF bodies that should have been burned but weren’t. Here in Knoxville, I reflected, I was obsessed with a body that shouldn’t have been burned but was.
Darren Cash answered his cell phone on the third ring.
“I think I know how he did it,” I said.
“How who did
I laughed. “Sorry. It’s Dr. Brockton from UT. I think I know how Stuart Latham set the car on fire while he was in Vegas.”
“Do tell,” said Cash.
“I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you,” I said. “I’d rather show you. Any chance you’ve got some free time late this afternoon or tomorrow?”
“Since you ask so nice,” he said, “and since you’re about to help me blast a killer’s alibi out of the water, I’ll make time. I’ve got some folks to interview this morning and after lunch, but I should be through by four o’clock or so.”
I checked my watch. It read 8:37.
“Can you meet me at the Anthropology Department around four-thirty? We’ll take a little field trip from there.”
“You’re being mighty cryptic,” he said, “but you’ve got me hooked.”
I told him how to find my office, and then I called Jason Story, one of my master’s-level graduate students. Jason sounded sleepy when he answered the phone, which wasn’t surprising considering he’d sent me an e-mail in the middle of the night describing the experiment he’d just finished.
“Sorry if I woke you up, Jason,” I said. “We need to do another run today.”
He yawned. “So soon? I’ve already done six in the past two days.”
“’Fraid so,” I said. “The stakes are higher on this one, though. This one’s the dog and pony show for the D.A.’s investigator.”
Suddenly he sounded much more alert. “Okay, no problem,” he said.
“Can you get it started by ten?”
“A.M. or P.M.?”
“A.M.”
“Wow,” he said. “That’s cutting it close. But okay, yeah. You might want to stay upwind of me, though-it’s been pretty hot out there, and I won’t have time to take a shower.”
“No matter how bad you smell, Jason? I’ve smelled worse things.”
“I guess so.” He laughed. “What time are you bringing the guy from the D.A.’s office out?”
“Around five, five-thirty. That should be about right, shouldn’t it?”
“Should be. Gotta go. See you then.”
Jason was getting ready to enter his second year in the graduate program. Like countless other high-school and college kids who’d gotten hooked on
At 4:20, Cash knocked on my door. “You’re early,” I said. “Good man.”
“I finished up a little sooner than I expected,” he said, “and I didn’t see much point in just killing time. If you’ve got things to do, though, tell me, and I’ll make some phone calls till you’re ready.”
‘No, this is fine,” I said. “Let’s go. Do you want to ride with me or follow me?”
“Let me follow you, so I can just head home when we’re done. You ready to tell me where we’re going?”
“One of the Ag farms,” I said. “By way of Burger King, if you don’t mind?”
“I never got lunch,” he said. “Burger King sounds great. At this point Purina Dog Chow would probably sound pretty good.”
“Let’s say Burger King.”
I didn’t know what I’d just been offered, but I did know that I didn’t want a combo. “I’d like a Whopper and a sweet tea, please,” I said. I spoke up, because the sound system didn’t seem to be working well.
“Sweet tea,” I said loudly. “Do you have sweet tea?”
“Sweet tea!” I shouted. “Sweet tea! If you don’t have sweet tea, regular tea’s okay!”
“That’s it!” I yelled. “Just the Whopper and the tea!”
A young man walking into the restaurant, a backpack slung over one shoulder, looked at me oddly and gave me a wide berth.
Just as I was pulling away from the speaker, I noticed a display mounted underneath. It read WHOPPER, SWEET TEA, $3.87. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who’d had trouble with the audio system. Funny, I thought. Instead of fixing the microphone and the speaker, they’d installed a whole ’nother gadget. I fished my wallet out of my hip pocket and extracted a five-dollar bill as I eased around the building to the drive-up window.
