Jefferson Bass - Flesh and Bone - A Body Farm Novel

“Not anymore,” Art said. He picked up a badge from the desk and handed it to me. It was a five-pointed gold star encircled by the words UNITED STATES MARSHAL.

I whistled. “U.S. Marshal? How’d a lowly KPD cop swing that?”

“We’re working with the feds,” he said. “FBI and postal inspectors. I’ve got arrest powers anywhere in the state. Believe it or not, this”-he swept his arm in an arc that encompassed the dingy space-“is the headquarters of the Tennessee Task Force on Internet Crimes Against Children. Mainly me and a couple of stolen computers so far, but we’re about to get some serious money and manpower.”

“Good for you,” I said. “Reminds me of my own job-the work stinks, but somebody’s got to do it. Can’t think of anybody who’d do this with more commitment and integrity.”

“Not sure how long I can take it, though,” he said. “I’m only two months in, and already my blood pressure’s through the roof, I’m having trouble sleeping, and once I do get to sleep, I have awful nightmares.”

Knowing what a decent guy Art was, that didn’t surprise me. “You’re on a rough diet right now,” I said. “Nothing but rotten fruit from the tree of knowledge.”

“Isn’t there supposed to be some good fruit on that tree, too? Last time I read the Bible, it was called the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”

“Yeah, but the good stuff ’s on branches neither one of us gets to pick,” I said. “Speaking of bad fruit, let me show you what I need you to print. You might want to glove up for this.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves for him, plus a pair for me. Then I opened the small cooler Jess had given me. Inside, propped on a bed of ice and sealed in a plastic bag, was the Chattanooga victim’s penis. A bloody thumbprint-bigger than the one Jess had planted on our research subject-showed clearly through the bag.

If I’d known Jess was bringing this grisly piece of evidence with her, I’d have asked Art to meet us at the Body Farm. I didn’t mind playing courier, though, as I hadn’t seen Art in weeks and I welcomed the chance to catch up with him, even briefly.

When he recognized the object in the baggie, Art’s eyes widened and he gave a low whistle. “Ouch, man. Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place,” he said, nodding toward the computer monitors. “Feels like we’re in the theme park from hell here. What’s the story? There is a story, right? I mean, it’s not every day somebody brings me a severed pecker on ice.”

“Sure, there’s a story. We just don’t know what it is yet. The guy this belonged to was found tied to a tree in a state forest outside Chattanooga. He was wearing a woman’s wig, makeup, and leather corset. Head and face were bashed in pretty bad. And this was stuffed in his mouth.”

“I can think of a few more guys that deserve the same treatment,” he said. Then: “Sorry-I don’t mean that this guy did. I shouldn’t let what I’m working on here poison my thinking about other cases.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Be tough not to.”

“You thinking homophobic hate crime?”

“Well, that’s sure what it looks like. First glance, anyhow.”

Art switched on a small desk lamp beside one of the monitors; mercifully, he also switched off both monitors. Holding the severed organ gingerly in the palm of one gloved hand, he leaned close and studied the bloody print. “Not a bad print, considering,” he said. “If your killer is considerate enough to have prints on file, we might just get a match. I’ll need to take it back to the lab, though. You wanna come along?”

“Don’t you need to stay here… Tiffany ?”

He glared at me, then cupped a hand behind one ear. “I think I hear my mean old mom calling me,” he said. “She says I have to log off and do my stupid algebra homework. Like, what a total bitch?”

He switched the monitors back on, prompting me to flee to the front of the pawnshop, where I inspected Tiny’s merchandise. The glass display case contained several iPods, a handful of heavy gold neck chains, and at least a dozen handguns, ranging in price from one hundred dollars to three hundred. I couldn’t tell any difference between the least expensive and the most expensive, so I asked Tiny to explain. “This here’s a Hi-Point,” he said, pulling out the hundred-dollar gun. “Lots of ’em out there, ’cause they’s so damn cheap. Some folks say they’re bad to jam, but that’s mostly because of cheap ammo, is what I think. ’Course, if you can’t afford but a hunnerd-dollar gun, you probably got to buy cheap ammo, too. So either way, you could be screwed.” He pulled out the expensive gun. “This is a SIG Sauer,” he said. “Everything about this weapon is top-notch. If I’m needin’ to shoot some sumbitch, I want to be able to trust my piece. Don’t you?”

“Um, sure,” I said. “Damn right I do.”

“Okay, Deadeye, let’s go,” said Art. “I have to do homework for a whole hour, and then I’ve got a chat room date I have to get back for.”

THE KNOXVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENTwas housed in a gray and tan concrete and brick fortress of indeterminate vintage-late 1960s or early ’70s, maybe, the heyday of “urban renewal,” when whole blocks of old buildings were razed to make way for parking lots and stark, boxy structures. Situated a stone’s throw from two of Knoxville’s low-income housing projects, it probably saved the city thousands a year in fuel costs just by virtue of its location.

As Art and I passed the front desk I looked for Gunderson, the sergeant I’d joked with earlier in the day, but evidently his shift was over, for the desk was staffed by a young Latina woman. She waved at Art, studied me and my cooler briefly, then pressed some button that opened the elevator for us.

For years the fingerprint lab was down in the basement, but these days, it inhabited quarters on the second floor. Art nodded at a countertop, which I took as a sign to set the cooler down. It was a good guess; he opened the top and lifted out the bag containing the penis.

“Are you going to fume it?” I asked. I didn’t know a lot about fingerprinting, but I knew Art had patented a gizmo for creating fumes of superglue which would stick to latent prints on what ever object was placed in the chamber that filled with the fumes, tracing the loops and whorls in crisp white.

“No,” he said, “for this I’ll use leuco-crystal violet. Shows up better than superglue. It reacts chemically in the presence of blood-the hemoglobin actually catalyzes a reaction between the LCV and hydrogen peroxide-to produce a bright purple. Even if the blood were a lot dimmer than what’s on this guy’s pecker, it would be very dramatic.”

From a cabinet of bottles and boxes and bags of supplies, he took down a brown plastic bottle of ordinary hydrogen peroxide and a bottle of a clear solution; in a small beaker he mixed 50 cc’s of the leuco-crystal violet-a couple of ounces, maybe-with another 200 cc’s of the peroxide. Finally, he slid an oblong pellet the size of the end of his pinkie down the side of the beaker into the mixture.

“What’s that? The magic ingredient?”

“Close,” he said. “The magnetic stirrer.” He set the beaker on top of a small instrument with a round, flat platform on top and rotated a switch on the instrument’s face. The pellet began to spin, slowly at first, then faster and faster as he cranked the dial. “Good for mixing drinks, too, as long as you’re not hoping to chop ice.” He poured the liquid from the beaker into a plastic spray bottle, aimed the bottle into a sink, and pumped the trigger a few times to prime it. “Okay, let’s take a closer look at our boy here.”