Jefferson Bass - Flesh and Bone - A Body Farm Novel

“Sure,” he said. “But first, I need to start things off officially. We record every interview, both on that video camera up there”-he pointed behind him at the camera near the ceiling-“and on an audiocassette recorder.” He pulled a small silver recorder out of his shirt pocket, pressed the RECORD button, and laid it on the table between us. “I’m also going to advise you of your rights.”

“You’re reading me my rights? Do you suspect me?”

“No, sir. And yes, sir. We do this with every single person we interview. I mean, at this stage, everybody’s a suspect to some degree; our minds are completely open, and we’re going to consider every possibility. And we’ll read everybody their rights, just in case somebody unexpectedly blurts out a confession. If we haven’t already advised them of their rights, we might not be able to use that confession in court. Does that make sense?”

“I suppose so. Still feels strange, though.”

First he leaned down toward the tape recorder and said, “This is an interview with Dr. Bill Brockton regarding the death of Dr. Jessamine Carter.” He added the date and the time the interview began, and then he read my rights off a laminated card he pulled from his wallet.

Evers asked me to recount yesterday morning’s events again, in more detail, so I did. After he seemed satisfied with the amount of detail he had, he let me tell him about the threats Jess had received on her voice mail. “And when was this?”

I had to think about that. “Last Thursday,” I said. “No, Wednesday. Same day as that protest at UT. She was on the news that night, and she called me Thursday morning to tell me she’d gotten the calls the night before.”

“Did you actually hear these messages? Or did she just tell you about them?”

“She just told me about them. She called me from Chattanooga that night.”

“How specifically did she describe them?”

“Not very. She said some were graphic sexual threats, and some were pretty sick death threats. But she didn’t give the particulars, and I didn’t want to ask her to repeat them. Would you all still be able to get hold of those messages?”

“Maybe. If she didn’t erase them. We can certainly check with the phone company to see if her voice mail was part of her telephone service. If not, we’ll look for an answering machine at her house. Do you know whether she reported these threats to the phone company or the police?”

“I don’t think so. I encouraged her to, but she didn’t seem as worried by them as I was. She said she got crank calls and threats all the time.” He nodded and made a note.

Next I related how Mrs. Willis had assaulted Jess in my office on Friday, after Jess had released her son’s identity to the news media and had described his murder in a way that angered Mrs. Willis. “How brutal was this attack?” asked Evers.

“Not violent enough to cause any injuries,” I said. “A few slaps is all, really, I guess. I pulled her off Jess pretty quickly. But if I hadn’t, and if Jess hadn’t called the campus police, I’m not sure what would have happened.”

“And Mrs. Willis left voluntarily? Before or after the campus police arrived?”

“Before.”

“So the campus police had no contact with this woman?”

“No,” I said. “But they should have a recording of the phone call. Oh, and Peggy, my secretary, would probably remember her, because she gave her directions to my office. But Peggy didn’t see the assault.”

“In your opinion, did Mrs. Willis appear capable of murder?”

“That thought didn’t occur to me at the time,” I said. “But in hindsight, now that Jess has been murdered, I can’t help thinking she did.”

“Did she make specific threats?”

I replayed the woman’s furious parting words. “I wouldn’t call them specific, but I would call them threats. She said ‘You’ll be sorry’ a couple of times, and ‘I’m going to make you pay,’ I think. Something like that.”

“Did you think she was referring to violence, or to financial damages?”

“I didn’t think about it at the time; I just wrote it off as angry words. Now, of course, I wonder if she meant physical violence.”

Finally I told Evers about a third person who concerned me: Jess’s ex-husband. I described the encounter at the restaurant, and how he seemed to be pleading with Jess; I told him how agitated she seemed afterward, and how she left moments later.

As he took notes about the restaurant encounter, Evers held up his left hand, a gesture he often used to signal me to slow down or stop. It seemed unnecessary, since two recording devices were capturing the interview verbatim, but perhaps he found it easier to refer to notes. He wrote a few more words, then he looked up at me. “This dinner you and Dr. Carter were having,” he asked, “was that a business dinner?”

I felt myself flush. “Part business,” I said, “part friendship. She was pretty shaken up when Mrs. Willis assaulted her in my office. I thought a good dinner at a quiet restaurant might help settle her down. Jess was a colleague, but she was also a friend.”

“I notice you’ve referred to her several times as ‘Jess’ rather than as ‘Dr. Carter.’ How close a friend was she, Dr. Brockton?”

“Pretty close,” I said. I hesitated, but decided he needed the whole picture. “And getting closer. At least, that’s what I hoped. We had just started what I guess I’d call a romantic relationship.”

“And how do you define a romantic relationship?” he asked. “Cards? Flowers? Daily phone calls?”

“We worked together,” I said. “We liked each other. Lately, we’d gotten…much closer.”

He kept his eyes on his notebook. “By ‘closer,’ do you mean sexually intimate?”

The question angered me. “What does that have to do with Jess’s murder?”

Now he looked at me. “I don’t know,” he answered calmly. “What do you think it has to do with it? I’m just trying to piece together what was going on in her life just before she was killed. Sounds like you were one of the people closest to her. Sounds like you were a big part of what was going on in her life. Just before her death.”

“Maybe; I don’t know,” I said. “She was a big part of what was going on in mine. I’m not sure I occupied as prominent a place in hers yet.”

“Why do you say that?”

I told him what she’d said after she came back from talking to her ex; how maybe she wasn’t finished with it-with him-after all.

“And did that bother you?”

“No. Yes. Some. She hadn’t been divorced all that long-eight months, I think she said-so I guess it’s not surprising that she might not’ve been completely over it. But until her ex-husband showed up at the restaurant that last night, she had seemed to be really opening up to me.”

“That last night? Is that what you said-that last night?” I stared at him, confused that he was latching on to that. “Her body wasn’t found-or wasn’t reported-for three more days, Dr. Brockton,” he said. “What made you refer to that as her last night?”

“I just mean it was the last night I saw her. Not the last night she was alive.”

“Oh, I see,” Evers said.

The interview ended shortly after that exchange, with a few questions about how soon I left the restaurant after Jess (about ten minutes, because the waitress was slow to bring the check); where I went afterward (straight home); and whether I tried to contact Jess that night or over the weekend (no, because she’d asked for some breathing room).

Evers thanked me for my cooperation and escorted me down to the lobby. We parted with mutual assurances to keep in touch and share any information that seemed meaningful. But as I crossed the asphalt to my truck, I felt shaken to my core, and not just because Jess had been murdered. I had spent a quarter of a century dealing with homicide detectives, and my experiences had been unequivocally positive: I liked giving them help; they liked getting it. Suddenly, for the first time, I had a glimmer of insight into what it might be like to be the subject of a detective’s investigation, rather than a helpful advisor. I was relieved when I checked my rearview mirror and could no longer see the brick and concrete fortress that was KPD.