Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel

edges conforming to the parallel lines of the wound exactly. Then I laid the broad four-inch side against the shatterered edge of the eye orbit. Although numerous small shards of bone had splintered off, the basic fit was correct there, too. That left only the deep triangular notch in the frontal bone. I saw Jess staring at it, thinking hard; when I angled one corner of the board’s end into the notch, she laughed with delight. “I’ll be damned,” she said, taking the two-by-four in her right hand and lifting the skull with her left. “Way back when I took the SAT? Only thing standing between me and an 800 on the math portion was those dad-blasted spatial geometry figures. Some things never change.”

Just then my phone rang. “Hello, this is Dr. Brockton,” I said.

“Dr. B., it’s Peggy, I just wanted to let you know that Dr. Carter just showed up. She should be there momentarily.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but she’s too quick for you. She’s been here for five minutes already.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “I don’t understand,” Peggy said. “She just left my office a couple of minutes ago.”

I turned to Jess. “Did you just leave my secretary’s office two minutes ago?”

Now Jess looked confused. “I didn’t go to your secretary’s office; I came straight here. I parked right beside your truck, down by the end-zone tunnel, and came up this staircase right beside your office.”

“Peggy,” I said, “what was Dr. Carter wearing when you saw her two and a half minutes ago?”

“I didn’t pay much attention. Um, maybe a navy blue suit? A dark skirt and jacket, anyhow, I think.” I glanced at Jess; she had on olive green suede pants and a short-sleeved beige sweater.

“And she introduced herself as Dr. Carter?”

“Yes. Wait-no! She just said, ‘I’m looking for Dr. Brockton,’ and so naturally…” She trailed off in confusion or embarrassment. “If that wasn’t Dr. Carter, then who was it?”

“I don’t know,” I said as a red-faced, dark-suited woman burst through the door, “but I think I’m about to find out.”

The woman stared at me with wild eyes, then she stared at Jess, and at the skull, and at the two-by-four Jess still held in her hand. She opened her mouth but no sound came out, so she closed it and tried again. On the third attempt, she managed to say, “Is that him?”

I exchanged an uneasy glance with Jess, then said, “Excuse me?”

“Is that him?” She pointed a shaking finger at the skull.

“Is that who?”

“Is that my son?” she shouted.

Jess spoke in a soothing, neutral voice. “Ma’am, who is your son?”

“My son is Craig Willis. Is. That. My. Son, damn you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Jess, still in the same soothing tone. “We’re pretty sure it is. I’m very sorry.”

The woman looked at Jess as if truly seeing her for the first time. Her face radiated confusion, pain, and rage. “Who the hell are you,” she spat at Jess, “and what have you done to him?”

“Ma’am, I’m Dr. Carter. I’m the medical examiner in Chattanooga,” said Jess. “I performed the autopsy on the…on your son’s body. Dr. Brockton helped us identify him, and is helping us determine how he was killed.”

“You’re Dr. Carter? The Dr. Carter who was quoted in the newspaper article that informed me my son was dead?”

Jess nodded but looked startled. “Yes, ma’am, that was me.”

“You told the newspapers my son was found in women’s clothing? You told the newspapers my son was a homosexual?”

“I said his body was found in women’s clothing,” said Jess. “That information had already been reported, back when the body was first discovered. I didn’t actually say that he was a homosexual. I said one theory we were considering was that his murder might have been a homophobic hate crime.”

“It amounts to the same goddamn thing as saying he was a queer,” said the woman. “What gives you the right? Who do you think you are, to say things that destroy a young man’s reputation? It’s not enough that he’s been murdered? You have to go and smear his name, too?”

I cleared my throat. “Ma’am-Mrs. Willis? — why don’t you sit down in my chair here? I know this must be very upsetting to you.” I took her arm gently; she shook me off furiously.

“Don’t you dare patronize me,” she said. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t. If I sounded patronizing, I apologize. I’m a little confused here,” I added. “Normally the police notify the next of kin privately before a murder victim’s identity is released. Did I understand you to say that you learned of his death from the newspaper?”

“Yes,” she said. “I read it in the newspaper. And while I sat there reading it, a television crew came and knocked on my door, asking how it felt, knowing my son had been brutally murdered.”

Jess’s face was crimson. “Mrs. Willis, I am terribly sorry you were not notified personally. Our investigator did try to locate relatives, but on several leases and medical forms your son signed recently, he wrote ‘None’ in the blank where it asked the name of his closest living relative.”

“That is a lie,” the woman snapped.

“It may be,” said Jess in an even, icy tone that set off warning bells in my head, “but if it is, it’s his lie, not ours.”

With startling quickness the woman darted forward. She slapped Jess across the face with such force that Jess fell across the desk. The two-by-four dropped from her right hand and clattered to the floor; the skull shot free of her left hand, arcing toward the filing cabinet beside the door. I made a lunge and managed to snag it just before it hit. The woman continued to rain blows on Jess, who seemed too stunned to even shield herself. I hastily set the skull down on the filing cabinet and took hold of the flailing arms, pulling the woman backward. She had begun to sob, great, heaving sobs that made her whole body shudder in my grasp.

“You will be sorry,” she said to Jess. “You ruined my son’s reputation. You will pay dearly for that.” Jess just stared, dumbfounded, her face a mottled mass of splotches and scratches. The woman twisted in my grip to face me; her own face was contorted and quivering and frightening. “Did you do that to him? Did you turn him into one of your skeletons?”

“Mrs. Willis, we needed to know what sort of murder weapon to look for,” I said.

“Damn you to hell,” she said. “Give him to me.”

“I’m sorry, but we can’t,” I said. “This is evidence in a murder investigation. We want to catch whoever killed him.”

“Give him to me!” she shouted, and sprang toward the filing cabinet. I managed to wedge myself between her and the cabinet, blocking her path. Behind us, I saw Jess pick up the telephone and punch 911. “I’m calling from Dr. Brockton’s office under the football stadium,” Jess said. “We have a disturbed and violent woman here. Could you send an officer right away, please?…Yes, I’ll stay on the line until help arrives.”

Mrs. Willis backed away from me, her venomous eyes darting from Jess to me and back again to Jess. She pointed at Jess again. “You will be sorry,” she said. And then she spun and hurried out the door.

Jess and I stared at the empty doorway in amazement, then at one another. “That…went…rather well, I think,” said Jess. A moment later she began to shake. Another few moments, and she began to cry. She was still crying when the four UT police officers arrived.

CHAPTER 22

JESS STILL SEEMED SKITTISH hours after being attacked by Craig Willis’s mother. If anything could soothe her, I figured, it would be a quiet dinner at By the Tracks Bistro.

By the Tracks was named for the railroad tracks that passed dish-rattlingly close to its original location. The restaurant had started small, but quickly won a devoted customer base through a combination of great food, attentive ser vice, quiet ambience, stylish decor, and only slightly painful prices. It had long since outgrown its small beginnings and trackside location, but the name had stuck. Year in, year out, By the Tracks remained arguably Knoxville’s best restaurant. Not its most expensive-that superlative belonged to the Orangery, a classic, chichi