Jefferson Bass - Cut to the Bone - A Body Farm Novel

“Hey,” she said, turning in her seat. “What the hell you doing?”

“Just finding us a little privacy,” he said. “You know Exit 144? Three miles up the road? There’s a nice little pull-off there where nobody’ll bother us.”

She thought about opening the door and jumping out onto the ramp, but the truck had already picked up a fair amount of speed, and she didn’t think she could do it without hurting herself pretty bad. She sat back in the seat, her nerves jangling, magnifying every jolt as the truck shuddered over seams and patches in the pavement. Her anxiety lessened a bit when he put on his turn signal and downshifted to take the exit.

“Stinking Creek Road,” he said. “Reckon how come they give it such an ugly name?”

“I reckon it don’t smell too good,” she said. He probably wanted her to say something more clever or funny, but she was feeling hungry and nervous, not entertaining.

“Down near Chattanooga, there’s a stream called Suck Creek. Suck Creek Mountain, too. I’d hate to have to tell people I lived on Suck Creek Mountain.” She didn’t say anything. After a moment he added, “Up in Virginia, I-66 crosses Dismal Hollow Road. That’d be a bad address, too.”

Halfway down the ramp, on the left, they passed a long shed with a Quonset-hut roof. He braked and turned onto the gravel, crossing the far end of the structure. The shed was completely open on the end, and inside she saw an immense mound of salt—the highway department’s stockpile for the coming winter, she supposed. The four-mile grade on Jellico Mountain was a nightmare when it snowed; the lanes were in the shadow of the mountain for most of the day, so stuff was slow to melt. Take a hell of a lot more’n you to thaw that damn mountain, she thought, as if the salt could hear what she was thinking.

Just past the end of the shed, he spun the wheel again, tucking in behind the building so the truck was screened from view. “See?” he said. “Close, but quiet. If it don’t come a blizzard in the next hour, won’t nobody bother us here.” He smiled at his joke. “Aw, relax, darlin’. You changing your mind? Hell, I’ll take you back to the Pilot right now and still buy you breakfast, if you want to call off the deal. I’d be disappointed—who wouldn’t be, a good-looking woman like you?—but I’m a big boy. I reckon I’d get over it. In a year or two.” He grinned and winked.

She shook her head. “Not changing my mind. I just need to . . . switch gears, I guess,” she said. “My boss was giving me a hard time back there.”

“You want something to take the edge off? Sip of Jack Daniel’s? A little reefer?”

She felt a glimmer of what passed for hope these days. “You gonna smoke?” By way of answering, he took a fat joint and a lighter from the pocket of his denim shirt. He lit it and then handed it over so she could take a hit. She took a long drag and held it; when she exhaled, she seemed to be letting go of not just the smoke but also the stress of the night, the meanness of Bobby T, and the flash of panic she’d felt when the truck had taken the on-ramp instead of ducking under the freeway to the Pilot.

“That looks like just what the doctor ordered,” he said, and she was thinking he was right. Long as she didn’t forget to collect the money, being stoned would make it easier to zone out while he did his business. A good buzz might even help her think of something kinky enough to score the extra forty.

She was feeling pretty good by the time he helped her down from the cab and up into the sleeper. He gave her a hand as she stepped onto the bottom rung of the ladder, then boosted her up the rest of the way by cupping her ass in both palms and pushing, with a little squeeze for good measure.

The inside of the sleeper was like a cave; the compartment had two windows, but both were covered with blackout shades. “Here, let me turn on a light so you can see,” he said, switching on a dim dome light.

The sleeper contained a double-sized mattress along one wall, a galley kitchen in one corner, and a shower in the other corner. “Hell’s bells,” she said, toppling backward onto the mattress, “this is nicer’n where I live .” She spread her arms wide and swung them up and down, like wings. “I ain’t never been in a sleeper this big.”

He smiled. “I don’t expect you ever will be again, angel,” he said.

CHAPTER 7

Tyler

TYLER LOCKED THE BONElab behind him and hustled out the stadium’s lower door. He’d parked his truck right by the door—a prime spot, except for the fact that it was illegal. Just for two minutes, he’d told himself; just long enough to drop off the strip-mine girl’s bones, which he’d carefully boxed after photographing and measuring them. But the two minutes had turned to ten, then thirty. He scanned the windshield, didn’t see a ticket. Whew, he thought. That’s lucky. Then he saw the figure on the far side of the truck. It was a man, standing on the running board, cupping his hands against the driver’s window so he could peer inside. “ Hey! ” Tyler yelled reflexively, wondering whether he was about to plead with a traffic cop or punch out a thief. The man straightened; the man was . . . his boss . “Hey,” he repeated, still feeling trespassed against; puzzled, too. “Uh, what’s up, Dr. B?”

“I was just looking to see how many miles you’ve got on this thing.”

“Last time I looked, the odometer was showing ninety-nine thousand eight hundred and change,” Tyler said. Dr. B lifted one eyebrow—his trademark expression of skepticism. The man was no fool. “I thought you had a meeting with the dean today,” Tyler went on, uneasy about Brockton’s interest in the truck—interest that seemed not just intense, but somehow invested. “You said you were gonna ask him for some land closer to campus.”

“I do, but he was running late. I’m headed there now.”

Tyler pointed at the glossy dress shoes trespassing on his running board. “You should be wearing yesterday’s boots to the meeting,” he said, “not that fancy footwear. Grind a little pig shit into the dean’s carpet, so he knows what it’s like for us out here.”

“Good idea, Tyler. Antagonize the boss—always a great strategy when you’re asking for a raise or a favor. You’re wasting your gifts in anthropology. You’d make a hell of an ambassador.” Dr. B stepped down from the running board but lingered by the truck, looking thoughtful. “Automatic or stick?”

“Stick, course. Three on the tree.” The term was archaic—slang for a three-speed gearshift on the steering column, the prehistoric predecessor to four-on-the-floor and five-speed manual transmissions—but Brockton was plenty old enough to know what it meant. “You couldn’t pay me to drive an automatic.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about,” said Dr. B.

“Huh?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m just having an argument with Kathleen and Jeff.”

“Your son?”

“He just got his driver’s license, and he’s badgered us into helping him buy a car. Me, I didn’t have a car till I was out of college, but that’s a different argument, and I’ve already lost. Anyhow, Jeff and Kathleen are dead set on an automatic. But I say he needs to know how to drive a stick shift. What if he needs to drive somebody else’s car in an emergency, and the car’s a stick shift?”

“Uh, right,” said Tyler. “Or what if a meteorite shower wipes out every automatic-transmission factory on the entire planet ?” Brockton frowned, unhappy to have his point undercut, and Tyler figured he’d better throw his boss a conciliatory bone. “But it is a useful skill. Especially if he’s gonna travel overseas—hard to rent anything but a stick, most places. Just the opposite of how it is here.” Dr. B nodded. “Main thing, though—and maybe he’d listen to this—is that you’ve got so much more control with a manual. I want to be the one that decides when to shift. Automatics drive me crazy, especially on hills.”