The Devil's Bones

walked up the hill into the woods.

It was the first time I’d had the nerve to visit the spot in the three months since I’d dug the recess in the rocky dirt and laid the slab at the base of the big pine. The black granite was dull with dust, so I knelt down and took a handkerchief to it. The grime proved more stubborn than I expected, so I wiped my face and neck with the cloth to moisten it-one pass got it plenty damp-then set to work on the marker again. “Sorry about the sweat, Jess,” I said. “You never were the squeamish sort, so I’m thinking you wouldn’t mind.”

The moisture loosened the dirt, and after I’d turned and folded the handkerchief several times to expose clean fabric to scrub with, the black granite gleamed again, silver flecks of mica shimmering within its depths. Closing my eyes, I ran my fingers across the surface. The chiseled edges of the inscription tugged at my fingertips and clutched at my heart. IN MEMORY OF DR. JESS CARTER, WHO WORKED FOR JUSTICE, the words read. WORK IS LOVE MADE VISIBLE. I laid my palm on the warm stone, flat and steady, the same way Constance Creed had laid hers on my shoulder not long before. I thought back to the period when Jess and I had been mere colleagues-she a rising star among the state’s medical examiners, me an odd-duck anthropologist who conferred with corpses as they turned to goo or bare bones. It seemed several lifetimes ago, though in fact we had collaborated platonically scarcely six months before. Then I flashed ahead to the night everything had changed.

“God, Jess, I miss you,” I said. We had spent just one night together, but that night seemed to encapsulate years’ worth of meaning. And it had cost Jess her life. Garland Hamilton had followed me to Jess’s house, had lurked outside, listening, as we made love, and then-just days later-had abducted Jess from a restaurant parking lot, taken her to his basement, and shot her. In a final, perverse twist, he’d staged her body in a gruesome tableau here at the Body Farm-here at this very tree-and had nearly succeeded in framing me for the murder.

It haunted me to realize that, given a chance, Jess and I might have built a remarkable life together, a rare partnership of like minds and kindred spirits. “I guess we’ll never know,” I said aloud, but even as I spoke the words, I knew they were false: I did know, all the way down to my core. Only three things in my life had ever rung true enough to redefine everything else. The first was the life I’d built with Kathleen, my late wife, and our son, Jeff. The second was the bizarre career path I had half followed, half created. The third, I was realizing only in hindsight, was the love I’d begun to feel for Jess.

Kathleen and I had shared a solid, steady love, and it carried us through three decades of partnership and parenthood, until cancer claimed her three years earlier. I’d spent two years grieving for Kathleen. Then, to my surprise, I was ready for love again; ready for Jess.

Back when I was in college, I’d taken a class in Greek mythology, and we’d read Homer’s Odyssey. Since Jess, an image from Homer kept coming back to me: the marriage bed of Ulysses and Penelope. Ulysses had carved their bed from a mammoth tree trunk, still rooted in the earth, and then built their home around it. It was a secret known only to them-the secret by which she would recognize him when he returned from his years of warfare and wandering. The love Jess and I were starting to discover could have been like that, I sometimes thought-something rooted in earth and bedrock, a mystery understood only by us-if we’d had the chance to build around it. If Garland Hamilton hadn’t uprooted it, driven by jealousy of Jess and hatred of me.

Hamilton had been enraged to learn that Jess was about to become the state’s chief M.E. But he had murdered her not just out of a misplaced sense of rivalry. He’d done it mainly to hurt me-to break my heart before killing me as well. The second part of his plan had failed, and Hamilton was now facing a possible death sentence for killing Jess. But Jess’s death was a wound I’d carry far longer than if he’d killed me. Yet I’d also be carrying the memory of Jess, and though I’d always mourn the loss, I’d never regret the love.

“I miss you, Jess,” I said. “And I’m so sorry.”

The only answer was the dull thud of helicopter rotors as a LifeStar air ambulance skimmed low above the Body Farm, inbound to UT Hospital with a patient hanging between life and death.

CHAPTER 4

AFTER MY VISIT TO JESS’S MARKER, I WASN’T READY to face my empty house. I called Jeff, my son, and asked if I could swing by for a visit.

“Sure,” he said. “We’re just about to grill some burgers. Come on out-I’ll throw one on for you.”

“Hmm, charbroiled meat,” I said, picturing my recent nighttime experiment. “I’m not sure I’m all that hungry.”

“Have you seen a doctor yet? You must be ill. I’ve never known you to turn down anything cooked on the grill.”

“Long story,” I said. I realized that my need for company outweighed my aversion to the smell of searing flesh. “I’ll tell you over dinner.”

Jeff’s house was about fifteen miles west of downtown Knoxville, in the bedroom community of Farragut. Compared to Knoxville’s other bedroom communities, Farragut tended toward bedsheets with a higher thread count. Named for a Civil War hero born nearby, Admiral David (“Damn the torpedoes”) Farragut, the town was a sprawling collection of upscale shopping centers, golf courses, and subdivisions with names like Andover Place and Berkeley Park. There was no downtown; the “town center” consisted of a municipal building that housed a library branch and a county clerk’s office. Across the parking lot was a post office, a bank branch, and a couple of restaurants. Farragut wasn’t my idea of a town, but it seemed to suit a lot of people, because it was the fastest- growing part of Knox County.

Jeff and his wife, Jenny, and their two boys, Tyler and Walker, lived at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, the sort of place where parents still let their kids roller-skate and ride bikes in the street. Maybe that was the appeal. Maybe in some ways Farragut was a town, or pieces of a town, the way towns used to be, back before the streets became places of peril.

I saw a wisp of smoke curling up from behind their house, so I let myself in the wooden gate to the backyard and circled around to the patio. Jeff was just spreading out a glowing mound of charcoal briquettes. His hands were smudged with soot, and his face glistened with sweat.

“Glad to see you haven’t gone over to the dark side and switched to gas,” I said.

“Never happen,” he said. “You taught me well, and I’ve eaten too many tasteless burgers at my neighbors’ houses.”

“You know, of course, it’s the carcinogens that give the good smoky flavor,” I said.

“Actually,” he said, “not necessarily. Apparently some researchers at Johns Hopkins did a study on this very thing. The carcinogens form when you let the fire flare up-for some reason that particular temperature causes a chemical reaction that creates the carcinogens. So you don’t want to cook the meat over open flame-just hot coals. Close the lid, hold in the smoke, keep the fire low, and everything’s okay.”

“I’ll sleep better knowing this, son.”

Jenny came out the back door with a platter of burgers. “Hey, Bill,” she said. I liked it that she called me “Bill” rather than “Dad” or some other in-law title; it allowed us to relate as equals.

“Good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too,” I said. I noticed their boys peering out the glass of the storm door. Tyler was seven, and Walker was five. Both were wearing the baseball uniforms they seemed to live in all summer long.

Jenny followed my gaze. “Guys, come on out and see Grandpa Bill,” she called, a little too cheerily.

They did as they were told, but they hesitated, and that hesitation nearly broke my heart. It had scared and confused them when I was charged with Jess Carter’s murder. Their friends had said cruel things to them, as children will do, about Grandpa the killer. A parent can do a lot of explaining, but it might still take years to restore the openness and easy trust my grandsons had once felt with me. By then, of course, they wouldn’t be five and seven anymore.

Jenny set the burgers down on the patio table and came up to give me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. The warm greeting was partly for my sake, but partly for the boys as well-a message to them that yes, I was still their grandfather, and yes, I was someone safe to love.

Jenny looked searchingly into my eyes, and this part, I knew, was just for the grown-ups. “How are you?” she said.