Jefferson Bass - Flesh and Bone - A Body Farm Novel

He scrolled forward, and as a few cars flitted past the edge of the picture, I saw that the deplexer had indeed plucked this one strand of footage from the multitude of others. “That’s amazing,” I said. “How does it do that?”

Owen looked over his shoulder at me. “There’s a nerdy technical term for it,” he said with a twitchy smile. “We call it ‘magic.’”

Suddenly a pickup entered the frame and nosed toward the Body Farm gate. He paused, and as I took in the truck’s profile-a bronze General Motors pickup with a matching camper shell-I felt the floor drop from beneath me. “Oh Jesus,” I breathed. “How in bloody hell…” Evers had told me the tape showed my truck, but until this moment, I had dared to hope he was wrong.

The driver’s door opened, and all three of us leaned toward the screen. The atmosphere in the room was as charged as the storm crackling outside the office tower, and my heart had crawled so far up my throat I could almost feel it on the back of my tongue. Was I about to see my own face on the camera? By this point, I halfway expected that.

Instead, I saw no one’s face. The man-at least, it appeared to be a man-was wearing a cap, pulled low over his eyes. Dark pants, a light-colored shirt. His head was bent down and turned at an odd angle. “Pause it,” I said, and I devoured the image. “He knows, ” I said. “He knows there’s a camera. He even knows where it is. Look how he’s careful to keep from turning his face toward us.”

This realization thrilled me. For the first time since Jess’s death, I felt something shift subtly; I felt I had something to work with; a tiny piece of the puzzle. I wasn’t completely powerless any longer. “You son of a bitch,” I said to this man who had killed Jess Carter and set me up. “You sorry son of a bitch. I am coming after you.”

I spun my index finger at Thomas and he started the footage again. The man walked up to the chain-link gate and fumbled with the lock. Then he swung the gate open a foot or two and stepped toward the inner, wooden gate. “He’s got keys,” I said. “That bastard has a set of keys. Who the hell is that?” In my mind, I began reviewing every male who had been issued keys to the facility over the past few years, since the last lock change. There were only a handful-a couple of faculty members and four or five grad students-and it seemed inconceivable that any of them could have killed Jess and laid the blame at my feet.

Suddenly an idea hit me with the force of an electric shock. “Go back, go back,” I said. “Let me see that again.” This time, I wasn’t looking for the face; this time, I was looking for breasts, for female hips, a female gait. Could we be seeing Miranda? She had keys to the facility and even to my truck, and she had once, on a case several months ago, seemed jealous of Jess. Had that jealousy festered into something more sinister? I couldn’t believe it, but neither could I ignore the possibility. As I studied the figure’s silhouette and gait, I was relieved and deeply ashamed to see that both were unambiguously male.

“What is it?” Burt asked. “Did you see something?”

“No,” I said. “I was afraid I might. I was wrong.”

The man climbed back into the truck and backed out of the frame. “Where’s he going?” Burt asked.

“He parked too close to the gate,” I said. “He had to back up so he could open it. I would never make that mistake.” Neither would Miranda, who drove into the gate more often than I did these days.

“Good,” said Burt. “I’ll be sure to ask you about that on the witness stand.”

“But won’t the DA say that I was just trying to look like I wasn’t me?”

“Maybe,” Burt said, “but if you were smart enough to act dumb about this, wouldn’t you be smart enough not to drive your own damn vehicle?”

“Wait a minute,” I laughed, “you’ve already got me confused.”

He smiled and took a bow. “Confusion, my friend, is only a hop, skip, and a vote away from reasonable doubt.”

The man walked back into the frame, again keeping his head down and turned slightly to the right, away from the camera. He swung the chain-link gate outward and the wooden gate inward, then walked back to the truck and idled through the gate. Then the wooden gate closed behind him. Burt pointed to the time code in the upper right corner of the screen; it read 5:03 A.M. “Pretty shrewd,” he said. “Early enough that nobody else is out and about yet.”

“The hospital shift change isn’t till seven,” I agreed.

“But it’s close enough to daybreak so the guy watching the camera feeds will figure that crazy Dr. Brockton is up really early today. Those guys all know what your truck looks like, right?”

“Sure,” I said. “They’ve seen me drive in there hundreds of times. Hell, I’ve given every campus cop and hospital security guard a tour of the place.”

“And this guy knows that somehow,” Burt said. “Knows they know your truck.”

Owen scrolled forward in the clip until the man opened the wooden gate and pulled out. This time, he pulled far enough forward to clear the chain-link gate. As he closed both gates behind him, I studied the truck more closely. This time it was angled slightly down the parking lot, slightly downhill, so more of its roof was exposed. “I’ll be damned,” I said. “Stop.”

“What?” Burt asked.

“Look at the roof of the cab.”

“What about it?”

“What’s that dark patch?”

Owen worked his mouse, cranking up the brightness and doubling the size of the image. “It’s a moonroof,” he said.

I laughed. Wildly. Hysterically.

“What’s so funny?” asked Burt.

“My truck…doesn’t have …a roonmoof,” I gasped. “A moonroof.”

“You’re sure?” said Burt.

“Sure I’m sure. It was an option, but it cost an extra five hundred bucks, and I was too damn cheap.”

Burt, Thomas, and I exchanged high fives.

“Oh God, I feel better,” I said.

“Me too,” said Burt. “I actually believe you now.”

“You didn’t before? You acted like you did.”

“It’s a courtesy thing,” he said. “My clients always claim they’re innocent. I aways pretend to believe them. It’s more convenient all the way around. Not many of them are telling the truth.” He looked me in the eye. “Doc, I’m really glad you’re one of the exceptions.”

Owen cleared his throat. “Are we through bonding? Shall we look at the rest of this?”

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s see what else we can see.” I could feel excitement stirring, the same excitement I often felt at death scenes whenever I began finding clues in decaying flesh and damaged bones.

What we saw was another handful of details that would clearly refute the prosecution’s claim that this was my truck. The wheels had five spokes; mine, I knew-I had recently had to replace one-had six spokes. One headlight angled crazily down and toward the right. “That’s good,” said Thomas. “Headlight spray patterns are as distinctive as fingerprints. Unless yours are misaligned in that same way, that’s very persuasive. And if we can find a truck like this, with a headlight spray like this, we’ve nailed it.”

“Even if we can’t,” said Burt, “we can get footage of the Doc’s truck in that same spot at night and show how his headlights differ, right? And show he’s got no moonroof?”

“Right,” said Thomas. “This will blow the jurors away. Jurors love this shit. This is nearly as good as CSI. ”

I no longer begrudged Thomas his $3,000 a day. He had earned it just now, I figured, and then some. In fact, he’d earned every damn cent I had forked over to Burt DeVriess so far. “Will you tell all this to Evers and the DA, or wait and spring it at the trial?” I asked Burt.