Jefferson Bass - Flesh and Bone - A Body Farm Novel

Horace considered it, then grinned nastily. “Y’all could share the same pair of grippers. If I was you, Doc, I’d try to clear things up right now. Tell us the truth. Don’t make it harder on yourself.”

I looked from one to the other and saw focused hostility and determination in both faces. I took a deep breath, then another. “Okay,” I said, “I do want to clear things up. But this isn’t an easy thing for me to say.” Evers and Horace leaned forward; both detectives were practically in my lap now. “The truth is, I thought the world of Dr. Jess Carter. The truth is, I did not kill her. And the truth is-and this is the thing I have the hardest time saying to two police officers-I will not answer any more questions without an attorney present.”

Evers slammed his hand on the table for the third time, but this time I did not flinch. Then he snatched up the recorder and said, “This interrogation was terminated when suspect exercised his right to counsel.” He spat out the time and snapped off the machine with an angry click.

Evers stood up so abruptly his chair toppled backward, then spun and walked out of the room. Horace got to his feet more slowly.

“Are you finished with me?” I asked.

Horace snorted. “We have not even started with you,” he said. “But you can go, for now. Have your attorney contact us at his earliest convenience.” He said the last two words in a sarcastic sneer. He led me out of the room and to the elevator, and used his key to authorize the car to descend from the fourth floor down to the lobby. He pointed me to the front door. “We’ll be seeing you, Doc,” he said. “Real soon.”

As I walked out the door into the parking lot, I realized I had no vehicle. It had been seized as evidence, and it would be combed for anything they could use against me.

I COULD SEE BURTDeVriess’s office gleaming on the far side of the valley from the hilltop where KPD hunkered. Lacking another way to get there, I set out on foot. DeVriess’s office was near the top of Riverview Tower, a twenty-four-story ellipse sheathed in bands of green glass and silvery steel. Bands that were the colors of money.

The building soared above the river bluff at the south end of Gay Street, Knoxville’s main drag. I crossed the valley to Gay Street on the Hill Avenue bridge, whose parabolic concrete arches spanned a messy knot of lanes and ramps where the Hill Avenue interchange tangled with James White Parkway and Neyland Drive.

Riverview Tower was one of a pair of side-by-side office towers built by the Butcher brothers, bankers Jake and C. H. Butcher, in the early 1980s, just before their financial empires collapsed in a rubble heap of criminal fraud. Longtime Knoxvillians still referred to the angular black-glass tower as “Jake’s bank” and to the curving green and silver one as “C.H.’s place,” but the buildings retained no connection to the disgraced bankers except as a fading stain on their architectural pedigrees.

I entered the lobby by way of the revolving door off Gay Street and rode the elevator up in the company of people in power suits and spring dresses. I was pretty sure I was the only one aboard who was about to be charged with murder, but then again, perhaps none of my fellow passengers imagined me as a fledgling felon, either.

The entrance to DeVriess’s suite of offices spoke of money and sophistication befitting Knoxville’s most successful defense attorney. Most high-end law offices were lined in an excess of walnut or mahogany veneer, but Burt’s inclined more to chrome, frosted glass, and other touches of Art Deco. His receptionist, a correspondingly stylish woman somewhere in her thirties, looked up and greeted me with a smile. “Hello, may I help you?”

“Is…Mr. DeVriess in?”

“Do you have an appointment?” She took a quick glance at her computer screen.

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t really take walk-ins,” she said, looking genuinely regretful. “Would you like to make an appointment for a consultation, Mr….?”

“Brockton,” I said. “Bill Brockton.”

Her face brightened. “Oh, Dr. Brockton, of course,” she said. “I knew your face looked familiar. I’m Chloe Matthews.” She held out her hand and gave mine a firm shake. “Mr. DeVriess has a meeting with a client in just a few minutes, but I’m sure he’ll want to say hello to you.” She disappeared around a corner, and a moment later she reappeared with Burt DeVriess-my nemesis, on whose mercy I had come to throw myself.

“Hello, Doc,” he said, giving me the simultaneous hearty-handshake-and-shoulder-pat combination that was supposed to underscore how very glad he was to see me. “What brings you clear up here?”

“Could I speak with you about…something?” I began awkwardly.

His eyes took on a startled expression, which he quickly masked. “Come with me,” he said, turning and heading back down the hallway. As I followed, I made one final survey of my options, considering whether there might be some other way to protect myself. I came up dry again, and again I cursed the circumstances that had brought me to this.

Asking Burt DeVriess to represent me in a murder investigation might just be the hardest request of my life. Although I had testified for him on one occasion-when Garland Hamilton’s botched autopsy had caused DeVriess’s client to be wrongly accused of murder-my feelings for Grease could best be described as variations on a theme of loathing. DeVriess tended to defend the lowest of the low: child molesters like Craig Willis; notorious drug dealers; even one admitted serial killer. Cops and judges unanimously despised Grease. Yet his powers of pretrial maneuvering, courtroom confrontation, and media manipulation were so prodigious he nearly always succeeded in getting his clients off scot-free, or with remarkably lenient sentences. The serial killer’s trial had ended in a hung jury, thanks largely to DeVriess’s success in having the man’s confession suppressed. As a result, the only thing keeping an admitted monster behind bars was a series of rape convictions.

It had run counter to every instinct I possessed to stop answering John Evers’s questions-I’d spent years talking with homicide detectives, answering every question they asked as completely and candidly as possible. I told them everything I knew about crime scenes, bodies, bones, time since death, and manner of death. Tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may: as a forensic scientist, I had always lived by that creed. It had served me well, and it had served the criminal justice system well. Now, I had forced myself to say to a homicide detective, “I refuse to answer any more questions without an attorney present.” And now I had come to ask DeVriess to be that attorney.

Grease led me to an office walled in the same gleaming metal and frosted glass as the entryway and opened the door for me. Inside was a huge desk sculpted of similar materials. On its spotless glass top rested a sleek black phone, a sleek black laptop, a sleek black notebook, and a sleek black fountain pen. He ushered me in and closed the door, then motioned me toward a sleek chair of chrome and black leather.

We eyed each other warily, each knowing perhaps a bit too much about the other’s business and sentiments. DeVriess spoke first. “What’s on your mind?”

“I need an attorney,” I said. “A criminal defense attorney.” He waited. I thought I saw his eyes glitter. “The medical examiner from Chattanooga was killed sometime over the weekend. Her body was put at the Body Farm. The police seem to think I killed her.” Still he waited. He wasn’t making this easy for me. “I’d like to hire you to represent me.”