Jefferson Bass - The Devil's Bones

She shrugged and held out her hands, palms up, unable or unwilling to guess.

“Let me ask you something else,” I said. “You’ve been here, what, five or six years now?”

“Seven,” she said.

“The Body Farm was already a fixture here when you came. If it hadn’t been-if I came to you today and said, ‘Listen, I think we need to set aside a piece of land where we put dead bodies and study what happens to them as they decay,’ what would you say?”

“Frankly, I’d say you were nuts,” she snapped. And then something shifted in her expression, and she laughed. “And I’m pretty sure I’d be right.”

I laughed, too. “Maybe so,” I said. “But the police and the FBI and the TBI don’t think so. Or maybe they do, but they also appreciate the research we do. It helps them solve crimes. Isn’t that worth a broken windshield or an FAA reprimand every now and then?”

She gave me a stern look, but it seemed at least partly for show. “Are you asking me for permission to break the rules? I can’t give you that.”

“No,” I said. “Not permission. A little understanding. And maybe occasional forgiveness.”

She took a deep breath and puffed it out between pursed lips. “I’m going to the beach next week for vacation,” she said. “Would you promise to try-really, really hard-not to stir up any more trouble the rest of this week?”

I held up the first three fingers of my right hand, my pinkie folded down and tucked beneath the tip of my thumb. “Scout’s honor,” I said.

“Fair enough,” she said, then hesitated. “There’s one other thing,” she said awkwardly.

“I’ve done something else wrong?”

“No,” she said, “you haven’t. Actually, I have. When Dr. Carter was killed…” I froze, and she faltered, possibly because of what she saw in my face when she mentioned Jess’s murder. “I was too quick…. I didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt,” she said.

“You mean when you exiled me? Told me I wasn’t allowed on campus?” I hadn’t meant to sound bitter, but I did. Jess was a smart and capable medical examiner; she was also a lovely and spirited woman, and I was just beginning to fall in love with her when she was killed. Her death had devastated me, being suspected of her murder had stunned me, and being treated as a pariah by the university had just about knocked the last prop out from under me.

She reddened. “Yes,” she said. “That’s what I mean. We should have stood by you. I should have stood by you. I was wrong, and I apologize. It might be too little, too late, but it’s all I can do at this point. Even attorneys sometimes need-what was it you said? — understanding and occasional forgiveness. But I was harsh when you were on the ropes, I know, and forgiveness might be too much to ask.” She glanced down at her sleek black pumps, then turned to go.

“Amanda?” She stopped in the doorway and looked back at me. “I understand why you suspended me. I didn’t like it-still don’t-but I do understand it. Now I’ll try to work on the forgiveness part.” I stepped toward her and held out my hand.

She shook it and said, “Thank you.” And then she was gone, leaving only the brisk echo of her heels in the hallway. That and the ghost of Jess Carter in my office.

THREE HOURS AFTER MY EXCHANGE WITH UT’S TOPlegal eagle, a hawkish young prosecutor-Constance Creed was her name-looked up from a yellow notepad, adjusted her glasses, and took a step toward the witness box where I sat. “Isn’t it true, Dr. Brockton, that there had been conflict between yourself and Dr. Hamilton for quite some time?”

“I’m not sure I would characterize it as conflict,” I said.

“How would you characterize it, then?”

“I disagreed with the conclusions of one of his autopsy reports,” I said. She waited, seeming to expect me to say something more, so I did. “And I expressed those disagreements.”

She closed the distance between us and leaned forward, her face no more than two feet from mine. I shifted in the straight-backed chair and wished I could not smell the onions she’d eaten at lunch. She wore Coke-bottle glasses, the lenses round and a quarter inch thick at the edges; instead of magnifying her eyes, the concave lenses made them appear small and beady. “You ‘expressed’ those disagreements?” She removed the glasses and glared at me. As nearsighted as she must be, I knew that the gesture was purely for effect, and I wondered how blurry my features appeared to her. I briefly considered making a face at her, to see if she’d even notice, but decided that the outcome of the experiment could get unpleasant if she did notice. Creed’s eyes were an icy blue, and even without the distortion of the lenses her pupils were barely the size of buckshot. “Wouldn’t it be more accurate, sir, to say you destroyed Dr. Hamilton’s reputation as a medical examiner?”

“No, I don’t think-”

“Did you or did you not testify against Dr. Hamilton in the case of Billy Ray Ledbetter?”

“No, I didn’t testify against Dr. Hamilton.”

“No? I have a copy of the hearing transcript, and it quotes you at length. Was that another forensic anthropologist named Dr. William Brockton?”

“No, that was me testifying,” I said, resisting the urge to mirror her sarcasm. “But I wasn’t testifying against Dr. Hamilton; I was describing an experiment. I tried to reproduce what Dr. Hamilton had described as a stab wound that killed Billy Ray Ledbetter. It wasn’t possible to reproduce it-a rigid knife blade couldn’t make the wound he described.” As I spoke, I used one hand to demonstrate the zigs and zags that Hamilton’s theory would have required. “My testimony disproved Dr. Hamilton’s theory, but I wasn’t attacking him. I was just reporting my research results.”

“Just ‘reporting your research results,’” she said sarcastically.

“And were you also just ‘reporting your research results’ when you told the state board of medical examiners that Dr. Hamilton’s conclusions ‘violated the laws of physics and metallurgy’? Would you call that objective, scientific reporting?”

“I probably wouldn’t use that phrase in a peer-reviewed journal article, but the fact remains-”

“The fact I’m interested in,” she interrupted, “is who initiated the contact between you and the board of medical examiners-the board or you?”

I felt myself redden. “I think maybe I did.”

“You think? Maybe? Do you consider it a trivial matter to call a physician’s competence into question? A matter not even worth remembering?”

“No, I-”

“I’ll ask you once more, then. Who initiated the contact, the board or you?”

“I did.”

“So you could ‘report your research results’ to them, too? Are all anthropologists so eager to report their research results?”

Something in me snapped then. “Damn it,” I said, “Dr. Hamilton nearly sent a man to prison for a murder the guy didn’t commit. A murder no one committed, because it wasn’t a murder. That- that -is not a trivial matter, Ms. Creed. And I am not the one on trial for killing Jess Carter.”

She leveled a finger at me, almost as if she were aiming a gun. “But you nearly were, weren’t you, Doctor?”

“Okay, stop right there,” I said.

“You were the prime suspect, weren’t you, Doctor? In fact, initially you were charged with killing her, weren’t you?”

“I said stop!”

“How did it feel, Doctor, to get off the hook for the murder and be able to point the finger at Dr. Hamilton?”

“Enough!” I shouted, leaping to my feet. “I loved Jess Carter, and I will not…How dare you…” My voice failed me, and I put a hand over my eyes.