Jefferson Bass - Flesh and Bone - A Body Farm Novel

I walked up the one-lane ramp from the Annex, which was down near Neyland Drive, to the ser vice road that ringed the base of the stadium, and threaded my way beneath massive girders, cradling the box as if it were some precious gift. In a way, it was: the key, perhaps, to what had killed Craig Willis, and perhaps even to who had killed him.

I unlocked my office door and set the box on my desk, then switched on the lamp. Removing the lid, I reached in with both hands and hoisted out the skull. I set it on a doughnut-shaped cushion, one of dozens we had scattered around the classrooms and labs in the Anthropology Department, and swiveled the light and magnifying glass around to give me a good look. I had a theory, based on a cursory look in the Annex, but sitting on the window ledge beside me was the object I hoped would confirm it.

Just as I reached into the box for the top of the cranial vault, Jess Carter knocked on the doorframe and strode in. “Perfect timing,” I said. “I just now got him finished. You want to take a look?”

By way of answering, she stepped to the desk and leaned down. Picking up the skull, she turned it this way and that, playing the ring-shaped fluorescent light over the contours from every possible angle. I stood back in silence, letting her take her time, make her own observations, formulate her own ideas and questions. Her eyes swept rapidly across the skull, then zeroed in on every fracture and indentation I had spotted. I had seen her work before; every time I did, it reminded me why she was one of the best medical examiners I’d ever worked with. Jess set the skull back on its cushion and subjected the top of the cranium to the same scrutiny, turning it over and over beneath the light. Finally she laid it down, finished with her examination, and turned to me. “Amazing,” she said. “With all that macerated, contused tissue in place, the bone just looked like a big, mushy mess. Now it’s easy to see discrete, individual marks left by a series of blows.” She reached back down and picked up the skull again. “It looks almost like the killer used three different weapons,” she said. She pointed to an indentation on the left parietal, the side of the skull. “Here,” she said, “this indentation was made by an implement about an inch and a half wide, maybe a little more, with a flat face and parallel edges.” I simply nodded; she wasn’t asking anything yet, so I let her think out loud. “Here, in the frontal bone, there’s a deep triangular gouge right in the center of the forehead.” Again I nodded. “And the eye orbit looks like it was smashed by something broad and flat, three or four inches wide.” There were other indentations in the bone as well, but she had pointed out the three most distinctive ones, and none of the others deviated from the patterns she had noted. “That doesn’t make sense, though,” she said. “Why would somebody strike a blow with one weapon, put it down, then strike a blow with another, and then trade that one for a third?”

I smiled. “Those were my questions exactly,” I said. “Then I realized that it didn’t have to be three different weapons; it could be one weapon with three different impact surfaces.” She looked puzzled, so I reached over to the windowsill and produced my visual aid with a flourish. It was a piece of lumber, an ordinary two-by-four. First I laid the two-inch edge in the narrower indentation she had noticed first. It nestled down in the groove perfectly, its 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.