“I already left a message for Mrs. Vetter,” said Morgan, “asking for a list of his doctors. I’ll try her again later this afternoon. Sorry for the delay.”
I sighed. “Well, it’s not like we’re sitting here twiddling our thumbs. We’ll be at this for a while yet. As you can see, we’ve got about a thousand more pieces to glue back together.”
“Aha!” Miranda exclaimed. With a pair of tweezers, she reached down and plucked a small fragment of bone from the unmatched pieces. The piece was shaped like the continent of Australia, as were three or four hundred other pieces, as best I could tell. But she tucked it into an Australia-shaped gap in the forehead of the second skull, and it seemed to fit.
“Only nine hundred ninety-nine more pieces,” I said to Morgan. “Better get moving, Steve. Time’s a- wastin’.”
THE PHONE in the bone lab rang just after Morgan left. It was Darren Cash’s boss, District Attorney Robert Roper. “We’re holding a press conference this afternoon at four, but I wanted you to hear this from me first,” he said. “Stuart Latham just pled guilty to murder.”
“First degree?”
“No, second,” he said. “He wanted involuntary manslaughter, but we wouldn’t settle for that.”
“What’s his story? His new one, I mean.”
“He claims they were arguing about selling the farm. They’d both had a lot to drink, and things got out of hand. He hit her, and she fell backward and cracked her head on the kitchen floor. He thought she’d passed out-at least that’s what he claims-and he carried her to the bed. When he woke up the next morning, she was dead. He swears he never meant to kill her, but once he realized she was dead, he panicked.”
“Sure,” I said. “And two weeks ago, he swore he’d kissed her good-bye the morning he caught that plane to Vegas, too. If it was an accident, why’d he plead to second-degree murder, then?”
“Because we had him by the short hairs. It’s possible-barely possible-he’s telling the truth. But even if he didn’t mean to kill her, we could probably convince a jury he did. Besides, even with his new story, we had him nailed on evidence tampering, obstruction of justice, and desecration of a corpse. That last one alone could get him twenty years.”
He didn’t have to remind me of the penalty for mutilating a body-the state legislature had passed that law early in my career, after I’d detailed the way a killer had hacked his victim to pieces, then fed the remains to his Doberman.
“What made Latham start to crack,” Robert continued, “was when Darren told him how he did it-how he put the ice under the car and how many hours that gave him to get to Vegas. Darren showed him pictures of those two little burned circles you found in the grass near the barn.”
Actually, I’d found only one of the two, but I didn’t want to interrupt Roper to correct him.
“Then I took over,” the D.A. went on, “pointing out how those research experiments would be the nail in his coffin on the issue of premeditation.” Roper chuckled. “Hell, I’d no sooner said the words ‘death penalty’ than he started crying and begging to plead out.”
“So how long will Latham serve?”
“If the judge approves the deal, he’ll get a ten-year sentence. Could be out in five.”
“Five years-that’s not much for killing your wife and burning her body,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “But it’s a lot more than zero. And then there’s the fine.”
“What fine?”
“His twenty-five-million dollars that just went up in smoke.”
CHAPTER 29
I REACHED ART JUST AS HE WAS FINISHING LUNCH, judging by the smacking sounds on the other end of the line. “If you needed a body,” I said, “where would you get one?”
“Gee, let me think,” he answered. “Who do I know that has a body or two lying around?”
“Okay, smart aleck. If you needed a body and you couldn’t get it from the Body Farm, where would you get it?”
“Down in Georgia. They’re stacked up like cordwood down there.”
“Too late,” I said. “The GBI had those under lock and key by the time Garland Hamilton escaped.”
“In that case,” he mused, “maybe I’d try a funeral home. Buy a fresh body off an unscrupulous undertaker.”
“How would he explain the empty coffin to the grieving family at the viewing or the service?”
He thought for a moment. “Maybe he wouldn’t have to. Wait till after the viewing, then swap the body for two or three concrete blocks, so the pallbearers don’t get suspicious.”
“Why wouldn’t this undertaker report you to the cops?”
“Because he’s unscrupulous?”
“So unscrupulous he’s going to help a notorious killer who’s just escaped? That seems mighty risky,” I said.
“Okay, I give up,” he said. “You’re fishing for an answer that I’m not coming up with. What is it you’re after?”
I told him the idea that had occurred to me, the way I might try to procure a standin if I were trying to fake my death.
“That could work,” he said finally.
“Could you check missing-persons reports, see if there’s anything on file?”
“Sure,” he said. “Oh, and Bill?”
“Yeah?”
“Remind me never to turn my back on you in a dark alley.”
I laughed as he hung up.
A half hour later, he called me back. “Only one new report in the past two weeks,” he said. “Teenage girl-a runaway. You sure those burned bits of skull are male?”
“The pelvic bones are in pretty good shape,” I said, “so it’s definitely male. And we’ve got two fully erupted third molars in what’s left of the mandible and maxilla, so he was at least eighteen. Harder to estimate the age because of the condition of the bones, but I’m thinking I see some signs of osteoarthritis on the vertebrae, which suggests he was middle-aged.”
“That could fit with your theory,” he said, “though it sure doesn’t prove it. I called Evers and ran it past him. The good news, sort of, is that he said it’s possible.”
“The bad news?”
“He said it sounds like the ultimate wild-goose chase. Even if somebody saw something, they’re not likely to tell the cops.”
“Well, damn.” I was saying that a lot lately, I noticed. I thanked Art and hung up. But I wasn’t ready to let go of the idea. I dug out the phone book and looked for a number.
“Public Defender’s Office,” said the woman who answered the phone.
“Is Roger Nooe in?” His name, despite the double
Roger had taught for years in the UT College of Social Work; he’d retired several years before, but when he did, he took a job in social services at the Public Defender’s Office. The PD’s clients were the polar opposite of the well-heeled criminals represented by Burt DeVriess: Roger’s work put him in daily touch with people who were poor, unemployed, and often impaired by alcohol, drugs, or mental disorders-the kind of people who were falling through the widening gaps in America’s safety net by the millions in recent years. The challenges facing Roger and his colleagues seemed grim and insurmountable to me, but grimness is in the eye of the beholder; over the years- always to my surprise-I’d spoken with many people who regarded my own work as grim, too. I’d seen Roger a few times since he’d joined the PD’s office, and he’d seemed energized by the chance to develop programs and services to keep low-income defendants-and their families-from spiraling downward through poverty, crime, and
