Jefferson Bass - Flesh and Bone - A Body Farm Novel

I rolled the body over. I saw numerous scratches on the back, and bits of pine bark embedded in the flesh, but those all looked like superficial abrasions, exactly what you’d expect to see on the back of a body lashed tightly to a tree.

“I don’t see anything, here or in the X-rays, that would suggest the manner of death involved anything other than the blunt-force trauma,” I said.

“Think you can tell what did it?”

“Hard to know till I get the soft tissue off,” I said. “Are you finished with him?” She nodded. “What I’d like to do, if you’re willing, is remove the head, take it back to Knoxville, and deflesh it so I can get a good look at the bone.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” she said. She rolled over a tray of instruments. I chose a scalpel to begin cutting through the windpipe, esophagus, and muscles of the neck. When I had exposed the cervical vertebrae, I switched to an autopsy knife; scalpel blades were thin and relatively fragile, and all it took to break one was a little sideways pressure when the blade was wedged deep between two vertebrae.

As I began to cut between the second and third vertebrae, Jess moved to the corpse’s head and grasped it with both hands. She tilted it back, and also pulled slightly so that as the knife cut deeper, the gap between the bones widened. “Thanks,” I said. “That helps. Reduces the risk I’ll nick the bone, too.”

A few more strokes of the knife and the spine was severed. That left only the muscles and skin at the back of the neck, and those were easy to cut, especially as Jess continued to apply tension. When the head came completely free, she rotated it to study it, as if for the first time. As she gazed at it, I was reminded of a religious painting I’d seen once, of Salome holding the head of John the Baptist. But in the painting I’d seen, Salome looked exotic, youthful, and richly dressed; in the harsh fluorescent lights of the morgue, Jess-in her jeans and soiled scrub shirt-looked shabby, exhausted, and middle-aged. For the first time in the days since I’d found myself peering at the toes of her snakeskin boots, I began to despair of our chances at any sort of romance.

“I’ll bag this and put it in a cooler for you,” she said.

“Thanks. Do you still want me to go out to the death scene?”

“If you’re still willing,” she said.

“Sure,” I said. “How far away is it?”

“Only about ten miles as the crow flies,” she said, “but probably twice that by road. And some of it’s gravel. So it’ll take forty-five minutes or an hour to get there.”

I checked my watch; it was already mid afternoon. “Guess I better make tracks, then.”

“Yeah. Why don’t you wash up and change-we’ve got some denim shirts with our logo on them; I’ll tell Amy to give you one-and I’ll pull together what you need to find your way out there.” She started toward the door, then stopped and turned back. “Bill? I’m sorry I’m a mess right now. Any false advertising was unintentional. Please don’t give up on me.” She took a step toward me, stood up on tiptoe, and kissed me quickly on the cheek. Before I could react, she was out the door of the autopsy room.

I looked down at the eyeless severed head on the gurney as if it had somehow witnessed the scene. “Well, unlike you,” I said, “I’m not quite dead yet.”

After I washed up and changed into the shirt Amy had given me, I found Jess in her office, at the other end of the building. She opened her desk drawer and fished out a set of keys and a handheld electronic gadget. She switched on the gizmo, and after a few seconds an image flashed onto an LCD screen the size of an index card. The image diagrammed a dozen points; lines from each of the twelve converged on a point at the screen’s center.

“Looks like a constellation,” I said, “except the dots aren’t connected in the shape of what’s supposed to look like an animal, but never does.”

“That’s us at the center,” she said. “We’re receiving GPS signals from twelve satellites. More satellites is good for the accuracy; you shouldn’t have any trouble pinpointing the spot.”

Her fingers flicked rapidly over the buttons, and the image changed to a small color topographical map, this one bearing two dots: one at the center, and one in the lower left corner. “That dot in the lower left? That’s a waypoint marking the death scene. The center one is us. That’s the thing I like best about GPS: it always acknowledges that I’m the center of the universe.” She laughed at herself. “God, how can I have such a gigantic ego and such stunted self-esteem at the same time?”

“Well, as Thoreau said, consistency is the mark of small minds,” I said.

“Actually, that was Emerson,” she said. “And he said ‘little minds,’ actually: ‘A foolish consistency is the hob goblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.’ If memory serves.”

“Very impressive,” I said. “How come I thought that came from Thoreau?”

“Same vein, sort of,” she said. “Thoreau’s trademark line is ‘different drummer,’ which is even more famous. ‘Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises?’-almost nobody quotes that lead-in, which is a shame. ‘Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.’ Too bad he didn’t copyright that; with the royalties, he could’ve bought up Walden Pond and everything for miles around. Built himself a fancy mansion instead of that tatty shack he cobbled together out of scrap boards and recycled nails.”

Jess’s mixture of scholarly erudition and quirky irreverence always caught me by surprise, like topspin on a serve in tennis or Ping-Pong. But I liked it, the way I liked iced tea on a hot day. “They teach you all this in med school over at Vanderbilt?”

“Naw,” she said, “this is what I have to show for my four years at Smith. Scraps of poetry and philosophy. Oh, and that one unfulfilling foray into dating within my own gender.”

“Ah. I had almost managed to forget,” I said, feeling awkward and sounding prudish.

“Come on, Bill, that’s an experiment I did once, twenty years ago. Don’t turn it into something that defines me. Hell, I tried all sorts of things when I was young, didn’t you?” She was glaring at me now; I had pressed one of her hot buttons without intending to. “I mean, isn’t that part of how we grow and learn who we are, by trying things on and seeing what fits? I tried on another girl, and she didn’t fit. Big deal. I got drunk a few times in college, too, but that doesn’t make me an alcoholic. I cheated on a biology test in high school, but that doesn’t make me a cheat. I stole a candy bar when I was six, but I’m not a thief.”

I felt ashamed of my small-mindedness. “I’m sorry, Jess. I don’t judge you for it. Or maybe I do, but I don’t like the part of me that does. I came along, what, ten years ahead of you? I grew up in a small town, where even straight sex was practically immoral. I went to a conservative college, and I settled into a traditional life-marriage and family-right after graduating. My horizons got drawn a little nearer, a little narrower, than yours. Doesn’t mean I want my mind or my heart to be narrow.” She still looked mad. “Please,” I said, “this is important to me. You are important to me. I’m not sure exactly how yet, but I’d like the chance to figure it out. I think maybe you would, too. At least, I hope you still do.”