Jefferson Bass - Flesh and Bone - A Body Farm Novel

The other technician belonged to the guild of fingerprinters. It was a guild that had gone high-tech. The sheriff ’s intake facility had two computerized fingerprint scanners, labeled CROSS MATCH. The fingerprint technician had me lay the four fingers of my left hand on the scanner’s glass-a print he called a “four-finger slap,” then the four fingers of my right hand, then each thumb. Then he rolled each of my ten digits across the glass, some more than once, when the Cross Match computer informed him the print was unacceptable because of a “vertical gap.” After he’d printed all my fingers, he removed a black cover from a clear plastic cone located to the left of the flat glass plate. Through the plastic, under the wide base of the cone, I saw wires leading to a small black rectangle that was emitting green light. “What’s that?” I asked.

“Palm scanner.” He had me wrap my palms around the cone, one hand at a time, the tip of the cone rising up between my thumb and forefinger. Beneath the cone, the scanning head-the rectangular box-rotated around a central axis as the green light brightened, illuminating the ridges of my palms. I thought I was finished then, but next he had me lay the edge of each hand on the cone-my “writer blades,” he called them.

“That’s very thorough,” I said. “Now you send these off to the TBI and the FBI to see if I’m already in their criminal database?” He nodded. “My friend Art Bohanan says he can get an answer in an hour or less. Is that right?”

“Oh, often in ten minutes or less,” he said, “at least from the TBI.”

“The wonders of modern technology,” I said. “We done now?”

He looked a little sheepish. “No, sir, not quite. We also have to do what’s called a ‘major crimes package’ on you, Doc.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means we have to break out Old Betsy here,” he said, pointing at a large and dusty wooden box that was shoved underneath the counter where the mug-shot computer sat.

“What’s Old Betsy? You fixing to shoot me?”

“Naw. Old Betsy is an old-fashioned ink-on-deck fingerprint kit. Besides the scans, we have to take ink impressions-slaps, rolls, tips, palms, writer blades, and wrists.”

“How come? You’ve already scanned most of those. Anyhow, I thought the fingerprints were what really mattered.”

“Funny thing,” he said. “A lot of criminals are really careful about not leaving prints from their fingertips. But they don’t think anything about the edge of their hand, or their wrist. These ink impressions will be sealed in an envelope and hand-delivered to the lead investigator. They’ll give the investigators and forensic techs more to look for at a major crime scene.”

“Good thinking,” I said. “I just wish they knew where the crime scene was. Where Dr. Carter was murdered.” Suddenly he, too, looked uncomfortable. I seemed to be having that effect on people a lot these days. He didn’t say much as he took the prints in ink, and when he’d finished and handed me some moistened towelettes to clean my hands and wrists, he seemed relieved to turn me over to my next handler, a pleasant female clerk who asked a series of routine questions-my name, address, age, date of birth, Social Security number, some basic medical information, and the like-and typed in my answers in a clatter of keystrokes. She also transferred some information from the arrest warrant Detective Evers had handed over upon our arrival.

As she typed, I noticed a fairly steady stream of uniformed personnel passing through the intake area, in ones and twos, with no apparent purpose. Finally it dawned on me that they were sightseeing, and that I was the sight they had come to see. The thought made me flush with a mix of humiliation and anger, but I did my best to act nonchalant. Eventually I started nodding and saying hello, and that seemed to even the scales: the sightseers, caught gawking, now looked as ashamed as I felt.

After the intake clerk had finished her flurry of typing-producing more keystrokes, in less time, with fewer visible results, than anyone except maybe an airline ticketing agent-she looked up and smiled at me. “Okay, I think we’ve got it. I believe Sergeant Anderson will be here for you shortly. Would you mind having a seat in this room over here?” She indicated a small side room separate from the larger intake room. I pointed at the main room, where three prisoners in stripes lay sprawled on stainless steel benches.

“You don’t want me where those other guys are?”

“No, sir,” she said. “They told us you’re a ‘high-profile.’ That means you’re segregated from the other prisoners.” She gave me another smile, and it seemed genuine. Even here, in the seamy underbelly of society, there was a class system, and DeVriess had negotiated me into the upper crust.

“Well, thank you for your kindness,” I said. “It’s good to know I’m a VIP among murder suspects. Just so you know, I really didn’t kill Dr. Carter.”

Now she, too, turned crimson and ducked her head. Damn, I thought, me and my big mouth again .

I slunk to the bench and sat down. Within five minutes Sergeant Anderson appeared. “Dr. Brockton, your bond has been posted and we’re going to be releasing you from custody now. If you’ll follow me, we’ll step across the hall and get you going.”

An automated glass door at one side of the intake area slid open, leading to an elevator and a staircase. Beyond those, another door slid open before us, admitting us into an area labeled RELEASE. Release was virtually a mirror image of Intake except for the lack of the mug-shot and fingerprint stations. Another clerk at a computer desk-also a pleasant blond woman-handed over my possessions, along with a Sharpie marker. I used the Sharpie to sign the line at the bottom of the bag, indicating that all my property had been returned to me. It took some strength to pull open the top of the bag, and when I did, I noticed that a series of thin red stripes along the top got ripped to hell. Even our jails had adopted tamper-evident packaging. That was a good thing, I supposed; it could be the reason my TBI badge wasn’t going to show up on eBay during my murder trial.

I put on my shirt, watch, and badge, and Andrews led me out a glass door and into the sally port. The door, likewise labeled RELEASE, mirrored the Intake door some fifteen feet away. Anderson raised his radio to his mouth. “We need one-sixty-two,” he said, and I heard an electronic lock click open in a steel door set into the wall beside the garage door. He ushered me out, blinking, into the brilliant Tennessee sunshine, where DeVriess sat idling in his car. On the embankment above, at the edge of the facility’s parking lot, I saw a thicket of television cameras, and I guessed that one of the sightseeing deputies inside had tipped off a cousin or girlfriend who worked at one of the stations. I got in with as much speed and dignity as I could combine, and Burt backed down to a spot where he could turn around. Then we retraced our route along Maloneyville Road, Washington Pike, and the expressways until we pulled into the garage beneath Riverview Tower once more. Burt dropped me at my rental car. As I opened the door of the Bentley, he reached over and took my arm to keep me there a moment longer. “Those reporters will probably show up at your house in a few minutes,” he said. “You might want to go back to the cabin for another night or two.”

“Damn. You’re probably right.”

On the drive back to Norris, I mentally replayed the experience of being booked for murder. Aside from the extra set of prints for the “major crimes package,” nothing about the process seemed to have any relation to the terrible outrage inflicted on Jess. I might just as well have been getting booked for shoplifting. For that matter, it wasn’t that different from the paperwork for a minor surgical procedure at an outpatient clinic; a proctoscopy sprang immediately to mind. The criminal justice system-like my own forensic work-contained relatively few moments of high drama, I realized, widely spaced by long intervals of boredom and drudgery.