Jefferson Bass - Flesh and Bone - A Body Farm Novel

“Well, I appreciate the show of support,” I said. “I just hope they don’t cram a pie in your face, too.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind that part. I like banana cream pie. It’s the other stuff I’d like to avoid.”

“What other stuff?”

“I got half a dozen phone calls last night,” she said. “Same guy every time.”

“What guy? Did he say his name? Did you recognize his voice? Did you get a number on your caller ID?”

“No name, blocked number, muffled voice.”

“Tell me about the calls.”

“Well, after the nasty names he called me during our first chat, I decided to let the rest of the calls go to voice mail. Some of the messages just consigned me to a very unpleasant afterlife. Others promised me some pretty hellish experiences this side of the grave. Leading to the grave, too.”

“Death threats? My God, Jess, did you call the police?”

“Naw, it’s just some pissed-off coward blowing off steam,” she said. “Not worth wasting any more time or energy on it.”

“Don’t take any chances,” I said. “Call the cops.”

“If I called the cops every time somebody hassled me, I’d be the girl who cried wolf. If it keeps up, I’ll call the phone company and get a block or a trace. If anything else happens, I’ll tell the police. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, but it didn’t feel okay.

“Uh-oh,” she said. “I gotta go-Amy’s making her ‘Somebody important is calling’ face at me. Talk to you soon.”

“Okay. Be careful, Jess,” I said. “Bye.”

“I will. Bye.”

AS I REACHED INTOmy briefcase, I thought, This could be my best work ever. Thirty seconds later, I was certain I’d been right.

I’d just taken a huge bite of my masterpiece-possibly the finest sandwich ever made-when the phone on my desk rang. I briefly considered spitting the mouthful into the trash, but the individual ingredients were splendid on their own-smoked turkey, smoked Gouda cheese, spicy brown mustard, crisp kosher pickle, and tomato on nutty oat bread-and the whole was even tastier than the sum of its parts. In short, I couldn’t bear to waste it. Instead, I gave three quick chews as I reached for the receiver, then two more as I slowly raised it, jamming wads of food into my cheek pouches. “’Lo, ih Dah Rockuh,” I mumbled.

“Bill? Is that you?” I was relieved to hear that it was just Art.

“Eh, ih ee,” I grunted.

“Are you sick? Are you hurt? Hang on. I’m calling 911.”

“Nuh,” I said. “’Ait ussa min’t. Ea’in unh.” I gave a few more hurried chews, then swallowed the first of three installments. “’orry. ’ang on.” Chew chew swallow; chew chew swallow. “Okay, sorry. Had a mouthful there.”

“Bill, Bill, have you forgotten everything you learned from Gomer Pyle?”

“What? Gomer Pyle? You called me up to talk corny old sitcoms?”

“No. I’m just thinking you did not chew thirty-four times before swallowing, like Grandma Pyle taught Gomer to do. Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. ”

“Well, Shazam,” I said, “call Barney Fife and have me arrested.”

“Wrong jurisdiction. Barney’s over in Mayberry. Anyhow, the reason I called is, we got lucky on the prints.”

“Tell me,” I said, my sandwich suddenly forgotten. “Who was he?”

“Well, for starters, he was a teacher.”

“So his prints were on file from his background check? Damn. I hate to think a teacher got killed just because he liked to dress funny.”

“He had another set of prints on file, too. The guy was also a pedophile, Bill. He had an arrest record for aggravated sexual battery.”

I sat bolt upright in my chair. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “I thought that wasn’t supposed to be possible. I thought the whole point of the background investigations and fingerprint checks was to keep people like that from working with kids.”

“It is,” he said, “and it did. Sort of. The system worked, within its limits. The guy was a teacher first, and a pedophile second. At least, that’s the order in which he was printed. Reality is, he probably became a teacher so he’d have easy access to kids. But he’d never been caught at the time he was hired.”

“How much information did you get?”

“Enough to know the basics and start tracking down the details. Guy’s name was Craig Willis; thirty-one years old. He applied for a teaching job three years ago-in Knoxville, by the way, not Chattanooga. Got hired just down Middlebrook Pike from you, at Bearden Middle School.” I felt my insides go cold. That was the school my son had attended. Jeff was there three de cades ago-he was a student at Bearden Middle around the time this Craig Willis was born-but the coincidence brought the danger closer to home somehow. “He taught English and social studies for two years,” Art went on. “Then, last summer, he was arrested for molesting a ten-year-old boy at a day camp where he was a counselor.”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “How come I don’t remember reading about that in the newspaper?”

“Wasn’t in the newspaper,” said Art. “His lawyer-guess who? — managed to keep it all very quiet.”

“Grease?”

“None other. He got a gag order on the arrest information, claiming his client would suffer irreparable damage if the arrest were made public, and then he got the case dismissed on a technicality-apparently the arresting officer was so upset he manhandled Craig and forgot to read him his rights. But the judge refused to expunge the arrest record, and the school system dropped him like a hot potato. He moved to Chattanooga last fall.”

I was almost afraid to ask, but I did. “And what was he doing in Chattanooga?”

I heard Art draw a long, deep breath, which he exhaled in a slow, angry hiss. “He had just opened a karate school. Like teaching, only better, for his purposes-doesn’t require a background check. And it’s mostly boys in the classes.”

I thought at once of my grandsons, who were five and seven-and who were both taking karate lessons in West Knoxville. “God help us,” I said.

“Maybe he did,” Art replied. “They say he moves in mysterious ways. Maybe it was a mother’s prayer that steered some queer-hater with a violent streak to cross paths with our boy Craig when he was all dolled up like a tart.”

“See, I don’t buy that,” I said. “I think the buck stops here on earth; good and evil arise from the choices we make, the things we do. I don’t pretend to understand why some people are motivated to do wonderful things, while others are driven to commit unspeakable acts. But I think we’re the ones who do the deeds, and we’re the ones who deserve what ever credit or blame comes due.”

“Mostly I agree,” said Art. “Couldn’t be a cop if I didn’t believe in holding people accountable. Anyhow, it sure adds an interesting twist to this case.”

“Did you call Chattanooga yet-the detective, or Jess?”

“Nope. You found the skin that gave me the prints, so you earned the first call. I’ll phone Jess right now.”

“Wait. One more question before you go.”

“Shoot.”

“I’m assuming you still haven’t gotten any hits on that thumbprint you got from Craig’s severed penis?”

“Right.”

“So the killer’s prints aren’t in the AFIS database either in Tennessee or at the FBI?”

“Maybe not,” he said, “but then again, even if the print’s right, the size could be wrong.”

“Huh?”

“We can’t be certain that the size of the pecker when I printed it was the same as the size when the killer grabbed it,” he said. “So I need to shoot some enlargements and reductions of the thumbprint, send those in, too. What I send in has to be within ten percent of the size of the prints on file, or AFIS won’t see it as a match.”