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

“If it’s so damned good, how come you’re so hot to sell it?”

Satterfield shook his head, his eyes downcast. Don’t you even think about backing out on me, he thought. “It’s my wife,” he said sadly. “She’s sick. Real sick—breast cancer. Doctor says she’s got three months. Six, at the most.” He heaved a deep sigh, loud enough to be heard over the traffic and the clatter of the truck’s idling pistons. “We’ve got a lot of hospital bills. Got a four-year-old, too, that I got to raise on my own pretty soon.” He turned to look at the guy now, his eyes full of ginned-up sorrow and anger, daring the asshole to do anything but sympathize and cough up the cash. “ That’s how come.”

The asshole nodded slightly, working the tip of his tongue into the crevice between two top teeth, digging for the bit of food that Satterfield had noticed was caught there. “Hmm,” the guy grunted, “too bad.” Satterfield felt a flash of fury at the lukewarm response. So what, if his tale of familial woe was totally fabricated, his tragic characters spun out of thin air? This guy had no way of knowing that. I got a dying wife and a motherless kid on my hands, and all you got to say is “too bad”? You coldhearted, little-dicked son of a bitch. “And you brought the title?”

“Got it right here,” Satterfield said, opening the glove compartment and removing a fat folder. “Maintenance records, too.” He handed the folder across, and the guy riffled through it, glancing at the receipts. “I haven’t put many miles on it this past year. Not since she got sick.”

The guy pulled out the title and studied the name on it. It was Satterfield’s stepfather’s name; it was the name Satterfield would sign, assuming the guy ever shut up and paid up. “And the title’s clean? No liens?”

“Abso-fuckin’- lutely clean,” Satterfield snapped. “I gave you the damn VIN number. Didn’t you check it? I told you to.”

“Yeah, I checked it. Came back clean. Just askin’. Just makin’ sure.” His tongue began rooting around in his teeth again, fishing for more scraps— Why’s he stalling? wondered Satterfield, and then he realized, Ah, here it comes. “Thirty thousand, that’s a lot of cash,” the guy said. He chewed his lip and shook his head, looking pained—like he really wanted the truck after all but just couldn’t quite scrape up the asking price.

“Thirty’s a damn sight less than forty,” snapped Satterfield. “This truck’s worth forty, easy, and you know it. If you want it, you put thirty thousand dollars cash money in my hand right now. If you don’t want it, get your ass out of my truck and quit wasting my time.” Don’t you dare fuck with me, fat-ass , the voice in his head hissed. I will gut you like a big-bellied hog .

“Easy, hoss,” said the guy. “I want it. But I’m a working man, and that kind of cash don’t grow on trees.” He waited, apparently still hoping Satterfield might cut him a break on the price. Finally, when Satterfield didn’t budge, he reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and brought out a fat manila envelope, as thick as a brick, the top of the envelope wrapped around the money and rubber-banded. Satterfield had already spotted the rectangle hanging heavy inside the coat; he’d considered killing the guy while they were out on the test drive—snagging the cash and dumping his body somewhere on the way back to Knoxville, maybe in Little River Canyon, up toward Chattanooga—but that seemed risky, given that the guy’s wife was waiting for him at a McDonald’s around the corner. No, better to take the money, let the guy drive away, and stay as far under the radar as possible. The truck could tie him to his dead stepfather, if that body was ever found, and it could tie him to the stripper he’d dumped in the ravine. The truck needed selling. Besides, the money would be useful; he could live for a year—two, if he had to—on the thirty grand plus the monthly infusions of cash his mother’s Social Security checks provided.

Satterfield took the envelope in his left hand, reaching into the glove compartment again with his right, this time feeling for his straight razor. Flipping open the blade, he slid the tip lightly across the rubber band to slice it, then laid the razor on his right leg, still open. He pulled the stack of currency—also rubber-banded—from the envelope and riffled through one corner of the stack, as if the bills were a deck of cards. The number 50 fluttered past many times, jerking and shimmying in small movements, like an animated drawing in a child’s flip-book. He tugged one of the fifties free and tucked it into his shirt pocket—he’d be paying cash for his bus ticket, so there’d be no paper trail leading from Birmingham—then tucked the rest between his thighs. He took a pen from his shirt pocket. “Okay, then. Hand me that title and I’ll sign it over.”

“Don’t you want to count it?”

Satterfield looked at him coolly, holding the stare long enough to make the guy squirm. “Some reason I need to count it?”

Even by the last light of the sunset and the first flickers of the streetlamps, he could see the guy flush. Is he insulted, because he wouldn’t dream of shorting me? Or is he worried, because he actually did? “No reason, hoss. It’s all there.”

“Good.” Satterfield picked up the straight razor and angled it toward the light spilling through the driver’s window, sighting along the edge of the blade, inspecting it for nicks. He glanced up from the blade and smiled. “Be a real shame if I had to come back to settle up.”

CHAPTER 9

Brockton

TYLER AND I WEREthirty miles northwest of Knoxville on I-75, the sun beginning to sink as we began to climb Jellico Mountain. An hour before, I’d gotten a call from the sheriff of Campbell County—“Sheriff Grainger,” he’d said on the phone, without giving his first name—asking if I could come recover a body from a creek bed. “It’s in pretty rough shape,” he’d said. “The TBI agent up here says this is just your kind of thing.”

“The TBI agent up there wouldn’t happen to be named Meffert, would he? Bubba Hardknot?”

“Sure is,” Sheriff Grainger had answered. “He covers Campbell, Morgan, and Scott Counties.”

“Lucky him,” I’d said, then realized the remark might sound offensive. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.” All three counties were mountainous and sparsely populated; coal rich but dollar poor. “Bubba be at the scene?”

“On his way over from Oneida right now. Reckon he’ll be along directly.”

“We’ll get there as quick as we can, Sheriff.”

“LOOK AT THAT,” Isaid, pointing out the right side of the windshield. “Nature’s flying buttresses.”

“Huh?” Tyler followed the direction of my point. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. Gotcha.”

“That’s it ?” I shook my head. “A miracle of nature, and the best you can manage is ‘Gotcha’?” We were halfway up Jellico Mountain on a crisp, clear afternoon in late September; a hundred yards to the east of the interstate, a series of massive stone pillars—as plumb and parallel as stonemasons could have set them—jutted from the mountainside, each pillar rearing a hundred feet high against the reds and golds of the turning leaves. “Tyler, you have no poetry in your soul.”

“I’ve got no lunch in my belly, either,” he grumbled, “and it’s three o’clock. Hard to hear poetry over the growling of my stomach.”

“Not my fault you didn’t eat at noon,” I pointed out.

“It’s not? Wasn’t it you who told me to finish grading those exams by two?” He did have a point there. “Besides, we’ve passed a dozen fast-food places since we left UT.”