Jefferson Bass - The Devil's Bones

I felt a hand on my shoulder, warm and steady. “I’m sorry, Dr. Brockton,” I heard her say, suddenly sounding human and pained. “I hate to put you through the wringer. But believe me, this is gentle compared to what Hamilton’s attorney will do next week during the trial. When he gets up to cross-examine you, he will go for your throat like an attack dog. You’re our key witness, so the defense will do everything they can to undermine you, throw you off balance, make you mad.”

I looked up, and she met my gaze steadily, compassionately. Her eyes didn’t look beady now; they just looked tired, from years spent straining to see the world through a wall of glass and the darkness of crime. “God, this is hard,” I said. I fished out my handkerchief, wiped my face, and blew my nose.

“I know,” she said, “and I wish I could tell you it’ll get easier. But it won’t.”

Great , I thought, nothing like an encouraging word.

“Think of this as a scrimmage, or maybe war games, so you’re mentally prepared for the real thing. You were doing great till right there at the end. It’s okay to get sad on the stand. Just don’t get mad. If you get mad, you’re playing their game. They’ll make you look vindictive, and they’ll make him look like a victim.”

“But there’s a recording of him admitting he killed Jess. A recording of him bragging about killing Jess.”

“They’ll try to suppress that. Or undermine it any way they can. Besides, it’s a recording, and a pretty scratchy one to boot. Your testimony will carry a lot more weight with the jurors than that. So roll with the punches and hang on to your temper, for God’s sake. For Dr. Carter’s sake.”

We sparred a few more rounds, the prosecutor and I. Finally, after two hours of rolling with the punches of her mock cross-examination, I was allowed to step down from the witness stand she’d set up in the practice courtroom. I left the City-County Building and headed along Neyland Drive feeling jangled and unsettled. It wasn’t until I found myself taking the Cherokee Trail exit off Alcoa Highway that I realized I wasn’t heading back to my office but to the Body Farm. Even after I realized that, it took a moment longer to grasp why I was headed there.

There were no other cars in the distant corner of the hospital employees’ parking lot that bordered the research facility. The chain-link gate was locked, as was the high wooden gate within. Even so, after letting myself in, I called out to make sure I had the place to myself. When I was certain of that, I locked the gate behind me and walked up the hill into the woods.

It was the first time I’d had the nerve to visit the spot in the three months since I’d dug the recess in the rocky dirt and laid the slab at the base of the big pine. The black granite was dull with dust, so I knelt down and took a handkerchief to it. The grime proved more stubborn than I expected, so I wiped my face and neck with the cloth to moisten it-one pass got it plenty damp-then set to work on the marker again. “Sorry about the sweat, Jess,” I said. “You never were the squeamish sort, so I’m thinking you wouldn’t mind.”

The moisture loosened the dirt, and after I’d turned and folded the handkerchief several times to expose clean fabric to scrub with, the black granite gleamed again, silver flecks of mica shimmering within its depths. Closing my eyes, I ran my fingers across the surface. The chiseled edges of the inscription tugged at my fingertips and clutched at my heart. IN MEMORY OF DR. JESS CARTER, WHO WORKED FOR JUSTICE, the words read. WORK IS LOVE MADE VISIBLE. I laid my palm on the warm stone, flat and steady, the same way Constance Creed had laid hers on my shoulder not long before. I thought back to the period when Jess and I had been mere colleagues-she a rising star among the state’s medical examiners, me an odd-duck anthropologist who conferred with corpses as they turned to goo or bare bones. It seemed several lifetimes ago, though in fact we had collaborated platonically scarcely six months before. Then I flashed ahead to the night everything had changed.

“God, Jess, I miss you,” I said. We had spent just one night together, but that night seemed to encapsulate years’ worth of meaning. And it had cost Jess her life. Garland Hamilton had followed me to Jess’s house, had lurked outside, listening, as we made love, and then-just days later-had abducted Jess from a restaurant parking lot, taken her to his basement, and shot her. In a final, perverse twist, he’d staged her body in a gruesome tableau here at the Body Farm-here at this very tree-and had nearly succeeded in framing me for the murder.

It haunted me to realize that, given a chance, Jess and I might have built a remarkable life together, a rare partnership of like minds and kindred spirits. “I guess we’ll never know,” I said aloud, but even as I spoke the words, I knew they were false: I did know, all the way down to my core. Only three things in my life had ever rung true enough to redefine everything else. The first was the life I’d built with Kathleen, my late wife, and our son, Jeff. The second was the bizarre career path I had half followed, half created. The third, I was realizing only in hindsight, was the love I’d begun to feel for Jess.

Kathleen and I had shared a solid, steady love, and it carried us through three decades of partnership and parenthood, until cancer claimed her three years earlier. I’d spent two years grieving for Kathleen. Then, to my surprise, I was ready for love again; ready for Jess.

Back when I was in college, I’d taken a class in Greek mythology, and we’d read Homer’s Odyssey. Since Jess, an image from Homer kept coming back to me: the marriage bed of Ulysses and Penelope. Ulysses had carved their bed from a mammoth tree trunk, still rooted in the earth, and then built their home around it. It was a secret known only to them-the secret by which she would recognize him when he returned from his years of warfare and wandering. The love Jess and I were starting to discover could have been like that, I sometimes thought-something rooted in earth and bedrock, a mystery understood only by us-if we’d had the chance to build around it. If Garland Hamilton hadn’t uprooted it, driven by jealousy of Jess and hatred of me.

Hamilton had been enraged to learn that Jess was about to become the state’s chief M.E. But he had murdered her not just out of a misplaced sense of rivalry. He’d done it mainly to hurt me-to break my heart before killing me as well. The second part of his plan had failed, and Hamilton was now facing a possible death sentence for killing Jess. But Jess’s death was a wound I’d carry far longer than if he’d killed me. Yet I’d also be carrying the memory of Jess, and though I’d always mourn the loss, I’d never regret the love.

“I miss you, Jess,” I said. “And I’m so sorry.”

The only answer was the dull thud of helicopter rotors as a LifeStar air ambulance skimmed low above the Body Farm, inbound to UT Hospital with a patient hanging between life and death.

AFTER MY VISIT TO JESS’S MARKER, I WASN’T READYto face my empty house. I called Jeff, my son, and asked if I could swing by for a visit.

“Sure,” he said. “We’re just about to grill some burgers. Come on out-I’ll throw one on for you.”

“Hmm, charbroiled meat,” I said, picturing my recent nighttime experiment. “I’m not sure I’m all that hungry.”

“Have you seen a doctor yet? You must be ill. I’ve never known you to turn down anything cooked on the grill.”

“Long story,” I said. I realized that my need for company outweighed my aversion to the smell of searing flesh. “I’ll tell you over dinner.”