Jefferson Bass - Flesh and Bone - A Body Farm Novel

“Yikes,” he said. “Sounds serious. Call me back after the story airs.” With that, he clicked off.

I pulled a bathrobe over my boxers and made my way into the darkness of the living room, where I switched on the floor lamp beside the recliner. The remote was, as always, on the arm of the chair. I settled heavily into the leather, leaned halfway back, and switched on the television. I caught a loud local spot for a group of car dealerships out by the airport calling themselves the “Airport Motor Mile,” followed by an equally noisy ad for a wholesale furniture ware house, then the newscast resumed.

Characteristically, though, they didn’t start out with the story about the protest. It was one of the things that annoyed me most about television news: the way they’d repeatedly tease a story they figured lots of people would stick around to watch-something involving cute animals or slapstick comedy or a racy scandal-and not show it until the very end of the newscast. I chafed through weather, sports, and, oddly, a reprise of the weather (which I tuned out the second time as well) before the announcer-who tended to look cheery even when relating the death of a child-assumed a concerned expression and asked, “Is Tennessee headed for another monkey trial?” The picture then switched to a full-screen close-up of the guy in the gorilla suit, followed by a series of shots of other protesters, singly and in twos and threes and sixes. The way they strung the images together, without zooming out to show the group as a whole, made it appear as if scores, maybe even hundreds of people were wielding picket signs, rather than the dozen or so that had actually picketed. The reporter played up the “controversy,” splicing in angry accusations by protesters; he mentioned “an angry counterprotest” as the camera showed Miranda arriving with her DARWIN sign.

Then came something I didn’t expect. During a series of short interviews with bystanders, Jess Carter’s face flashed onto the screen, with her name and title superimposed as well. I hadn’t even known she was there today. “These people are a small minority of small-minded, self-righteous busybodies,” Jess said directly to the camera lens. “If they want to check their brains at the door, fine, but they shouldn’t be trying to force other people to do that, too. Dr. Brockton does more good in the world than this whole group of anti-intellectual protesters put together. They need to get back on the bus they rode in on and head back to what ever Kansas backwater they crawled out of.” I smiled at her feisty eloquence and her defense of me, but at the same time I winced, and hoped she didn’t get tangled up in this mess along with me. In the background, over her left shoulder, I could see Jennings Bryan, the lawyer who was orchestrating the event. For the most part, his face was an expressionless mask, but I saw his eyes lash with anger as she spoke. Bryan’s sound bite, which followed hers, decried the co-opting of public education by soulless intellectuals and secular humanists whose chief aim was persecuting people of faith. Damn, I thought again, me and my big mouth. But then I thought, No, I’ve got nothing against faith - just against willful, bullying ignorance.

The story’s final shot, played in excruciating slow motion, showed a screen-filling cream pie arcing toward my face and then smashing into it. Filling slowly radiated from the edges of the pan; streams of yellow and white dripped lazily from my nose and chin. The picture froze at the moment I wiped my eyes and blinked out through the mess. The announcer came back on-screen, his earlier look of concern now replaced by merriment. “If the protesters have their way,” he said, “Professor Brockton, whose classroom comments set off the controversy, might soon be eating his words, too.” His eyes twinkled. “That’s it for this edition of Nightwatch. Good night-and good eating!”

I clicked off the television in disgust and called Jeff. “Not exactly a shining moment for higher education, was it?” I said.

He laughed. “Well, no, but at least you’re not getting burned at the stake, like Copernicus.”

“Not yet, anyhow,” I said. “But that wasn’t Copernicus. Copernicus died quietly in his sleep, I think. It was Bruno who got toasted for spelling out the implications of the Copernican theory-for speculating that there might be other worlds, orbiting other stars, inhabited by other, more intelligent beings.” I sighed. “Sometimes we don’t look like particularly stiff competition.”

“But hey,” said Jeff, “that Dr. Carter-she seems pretty bright. Leapt to your defense mighty strongly, too. Isn’t she the one you were planning to bring with you to my house for dinner a few months ago?”

“The same,” I said. “She has a way of getting paged anytime I have a dinner date with her. Happened again last week-I was actually cooking dinner for her at my house. Just as the coals were getting hot-in more ways than one-she got beeped.”

“Maybe you should let me fix you up with Sheri,” he said.

“Who’s Sheri?”

“One of the accountants at my firm. Completely unavailable three months out of the year, but starting April 16, she’s got a lot more time on her hands. And I have never, ever paged her. Not a whole lot of emergencies come up on tax returns. Except for yours.” This was an unexpected and unwelcome turn in the conversation. “Dad, I’ve been through this box of what passes for your financial records, and I can’t find bank statements for August, October, or December.”

“Look again,” I said. “They must be in there somewhere.”

“Dad, I’ve looked twice.” I could tell he was upset; he tended to preface his sentences with “Dad” whenever he was put out with me. I heard “Dad” a lot every year at tax time. “I’ve sorted and organized everything. Dad, they are not there. ”

“Dang,” I said. “Then I have no idea where they are.”

“Clearly.”

“Maybe they got lost in the mail,” I offered. “Can’t you just call the bank and ask them to send you copies?”

“No,” he said, “they can’t do that; it’s not my account. Why don’t you just go online and download copies, then e-mail them to me?”

“Online? That stuff ’s online?”

“Only for about the past ten years,” he said. “You should have a user name and password filed away somewhere.”

“Well, I don’t know where. Check that stuff I brought you. Maybe somewhere in there.”

“Dad, you’re hopeless,” he groaned. “I’d fire you, except that I’m the only thing standing between you and the complete loss of my inheritance.”

“And what makes you think you’re in my will, smarty-pants?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Lucky guess, maybe. Or maybe it was that copy of the will that was stuffed into this pile of papers.”

“Ah,” I said, “I was wondering where I’d put that. Hang on to that for me, would you? I need to see how best to cut you out of it.”

“Right. Okay, I’m hanging up now. Good night. See if you can program yourself to dream where those bank statements might be. Oh, and Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“Good luck with Dr. Carter.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Good luck with my tax return.”

The next morning I called Jess at her office. “Hey,” I said when she picked up, “thanks for leaping to my defense on the news.”

“Do I get Brownie points for that?”

“Thousands,” I said. “What were you doing there? I didn’t even know you were in Knoxville.”

“Quick trip,” she said. “I came into the morgue early that morning. Couple unattended deaths up your way, and things were quiet down here, so I dashed up on the spur of the moment. I was just getting back into my car to head back to Chattanooga when Miranda came rushing out and asked for a ride to campus. She made the Darwin poster on the drive over.”