Jefferson Bass - The Devil's Bones

Jeff’s house was about fifteen miles west of downtown Knoxville, in the bedroom community of Farragut. Compared to Knoxville’s other bedroom communities, Farragut tended toward bedsheets with a higher thread count. Named for a Civil War hero born nearby, Admiral David (“Damn the torpedoes”) Farragut, the town was a sprawling collection of upscale shopping centers, golf courses, and subdivisions with names like Andover Place and Berkeley Park. There was no downtown; the “town center” consisted of a municipal building that housed a library branch and a county clerk’s office. Across the parking lot was a post office, a bank branch, and a couple of restaurants. Farragut wasn’t my idea of a town, but it seemed to suit a lot of people, because it was the fastest-growing part of Knox County.

Jeff and his wife, Jenny, and their two boys, Tyler and Walker, lived at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, the sort of place where parents still let their kids roller-skate and ride bikes in the street. Maybe that was the appeal. Maybe in some ways Farragut was a town, or pieces of a town, the way towns used to be, back before the streets became places of peril.

I saw a wisp of smoke curling up from behind their house, so I let myself in the wooden gate to the backyard and circled around to the patio. Jeff was just spreading out a glowing mound of charcoal briquettes. His hands were smudged with soot, and his face glistened with sweat.

“Glad to see you haven’t gone over to the dark side and switched to gas,” I said.

“Never happen,” he said. “You taught me well, and I’ve eaten too many tasteless burgers at my neighbors’ houses.”

“You know, of course, it’s the carcinogens that give the good smoky flavor,” I said.

“Actually,” he said, “not necessarily. Apparently some researchers at Johns Hopkins did a study on this very thing. The carcinogens form when you let the fire flare up-for some reason that particular temperature causes a chemical reaction that creates the carcinogens. So you don’t want to cook the meat over open flame-just hot coals. Close the lid, hold in the smoke, keep the fire low, and everything’s okay.”

“I’ll sleep better knowing this, son.”

Jenny came out the back door with a platter of burgers. “Hey, Bill,” she said. I liked it that she called me “Bill” rather than “Dad” or some other in-law title; it allowed us to relate as equals.

“Good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too,” I said. I noticed their boys peering out the glass of the storm door. Tyler was seven, and Walker was five. Both were wearing the baseball uniforms they seemed to live in all summer long.

Jenny followed my gaze. “Guys, come on out and see Grandpa Bill,” she called, a little too cheerily.

They did as they were told, but they hesitated, and that hesitation nearly broke my heart. It had scared and confused them when I was charged with Jess Carter’s murder. Their friends had said cruel things to them, as children will do, about Grandpa the killer. A parent can do a lot of explaining, but it might still take years to restore the openness and easy trust my grandsons had once felt with me. By then, of course, they wouldn’t be five and seven anymore.

Jenny set the burgers down on the patio table and came up to give me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. The warm greeting was partly for my sake, but partly for the boys as well-a message to them that yes, I was still their grandfather, and yes, I was someone safe to love.

Jenny looked searchingly into my eyes, and this part, I knew, was just for the grown-ups. “How are you?” she said.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Mostly.”

“I think about you all the time,” she said. “I’d give anything if I could undo all the things that went wrong last spring.”

“Me, too,” I said. “Sometimes I feel lonelier than I did before Jess-or maybe I just notice the loneliness more now. The trial starts next week, and I figure that’ll be hard. But maybe once it’s done, I’ll feel some closure. I want to hear sentence pronounced on him. And I want it to be a harsh one.”

“Would you like us to be there when you testify?”

I didn’t trust my voice to answer the question, so I just nodded.

“Then we will,” she said. “You tell us when, and we’ll be there. And if there’s anything else you need, you call Jeff or you call me.”

I nodded again.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Dr. Brockton? This is Lynette Wilkins, at theRegional Forensic Center.”

Lynette didn’t need to tell me who she was or where she worked; I’d heard her voice a thousand times or more-every time I dialed the morgue or popped in for a visit. The Regional Forensic Center and the Knox County Medical Examiner’s Office shared space in the morgue of UT Medical Center, located across the river and downstream from the stadium. There was also a custom-designed processing room-complete with steam-jacketed kettles and industrial-grade garbage disposals-where my graduate students and I could remove the last traces of tissue from skeletons after they’d been picked relatively clean by the bugs at the Body Farm. From fresh, warm gunshot victims to sun-bleached bones, the basement complex in the hospital dealt with them all.

“Good morning, Lynette,” I said. “And how are you?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“Glad to hear it,” I said, although she didn’t actually sound fine. She sounded extremely nervous and formal-an odd combination, I thought, in a woman who had once, at a Christmas party, planted a memorable kiss on my mouth. Spiked punch could be blamed for most of that lapse in office decorum; still, our frequent conversations-in person and by phone-had been marked by the ease and casualness of comrades-in-arms, fellow soldiers in the trenches of gruesome accidents and grisly murders.

“Dr. Garcia, the medical examiner, would like to speak with you,” she said, and as I pictured an unfamiliar M.E. sitting a few feet away from her, I understood why she didn’t sound like her usual self. “Could you hold on for just a moment?”

“Sure, Lynette,” I said. “Have a nice day.”

The line clicked, and I waited. Nothing. I waited some more. Still nothing. Then I heard a man’s voice say, “Ms. Wilkins, are you sure he’s there?” A pause followed, then, “I don’t think so.”

“Hello,” I said.

Another pause.

“Mr. Brockton?”

Now it was my turn to pause. “This is Bill Brockton,” I said.

“Dr. Bill Brockton. How can I help you?”

“This is Dr. Edelberto Garcia,” said a cool voice, whose careful emphasis was meant to let me know that not all doctors are created equal. His first name sounded elegant and aristocratic the way he pronounced it-“ay-del-BARE-toe”-but then I remembered a bit about Spanish pronunciations, and I realized that the English version of his name would be “Ethelbert,” and I nearly laughed. “I’ve been appointed by the commissioner of health to serve as director of the Regional Forensic Center.”

“Sure,” I said, resisting the urge to add “Ethelbert” to my answer. “I had lunch with Jerry last week. He told me he’d hired you. Welcome to Knoxville.”

“Thank you,” he said. If he noticed my first-name reference to Gerald Freeman, the health commissioner, he didn’t let on. I considered adding that six weeks earlier Jerry had shown me the files on the three finalists for the job, and had asked for my opinion. Garcia had been my second choice-and Jerry’s, too-but the strongest of the finalists had taken a job at a far higher salary in the M.E.’s office in New York City.

“We’re currently investigating the death of a Knoxville woman whose burned body was found last week in her car,” he said. Again I nearly laughed out loud.