Flesh and Bone

by Jefferson Bass

  “Thanks,” I said, “I hope you’re right. Now tell me what you’ve found out.”

  “I don’t think I should over the phone,” he said. “Is it too late to come see you? Are you already in bed?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not sleeping much these days. Too many ghosts under the bed.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t be talking to you at all, but I have a bombshell that could clear your name overnight.”

  “Jesus, Garland, what is it?”

  “I need to show it to you. You want me to come over now? Or would you rather wait till morning?”

  “God, no. If you’ve got something new on Jess’s murder, please come now.”

  “Okay. I’m calling from the car—I just left the morgue. I know you live somewhere in Sequoyah Hills, but that neighborhood is like a maze to me, especially at night. Can you stay on the line with me and talk me in?”

  “Sure. Where are you now?”

  “I’ve just gotten off Alcoa Highway, and I’m heading west on Kingston Pike. I’m almost to the light at Cherokee Boulevard.”

  “Okay, turn left on Cherokee.” From there, I guided him through a series of turns past ivy-wrapped stone mansions and glassy contemporary boxes. I had to close my eyes to visualize the route; I’d driven it so many thousand times over the years, I’d long since ceased to pay attention to the street names or the landmarks. Finally I steered him onto my street. I looked out the front window and said, “Okay, I see your headlights. I’m hanging up now; I’ll flash the porch light for you.” I did, and a moment later I heard the thunk of his Tahoe’s door closing.

  I met him at the door and pumped his hand. “Thank you for coming,” I said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. Come in, sit down, and for God’s sake tell me what you’ve got.”

  “Hang on a second,” he said. “You know it would get me in a lot of trouble with the district attorney if he knew I was here?” I nodded. “You didn’t tell anybody I was coming, did you?”

  “No, how could I? I was on the phone with you until thirty seconds ago.”

  “What about that telephone message? You better erase that, just to be on the safe side. The police could come back with another search warrant.”

  “Really? I would never have thought of that.” I walked to the answering machine and deleted the last message. “I’d make a lousy criminal.”

  He laughed at that. “Yes, you would, Bill. Indeed you would.”

  “So tell me. What is it? What have you got?”

  “I think you’d better sit down,” he said. “This is going to blow you away.” I sat. “What would you say if I told you I had the gun that killed Jess?”

  I was sitting perfectly still, but my mind was racing. “I would say…that’s amazing,” I said. “Where was it? Who found it? Have the police already done the ballistic tests? Were there fingerprints on it?”

  “There are fingerprints,” he said.

  “Have the police run them yet? Is there a match?”

  “They haven’t had a chance. But I can promise you they’ll find a match in the system.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because the prints will be yours.”

  I stared at him, trying to follow, but failing. “I don’t understand.”

  “No. But you will.” He reached behind his back and produced a small handgun, which he pointed at my chest. “This is the murder weapon,” he said. “I shot Jess with it. Now I’m going to shoot you with it. Not quite the end I had in mind for you—I was so enjoying the thought of you spending time in prison with killers and rapists you helped send there. But your lawyer and his video expert have seriously lowered the odds of getting you convicted. So I think it’s safer to go with Plan B.”

  Suddenly the puzzle pieces fell into place, and I felt stupid for not having suspected Garland Hamilton—tall, strong Garland Hamilton. The one person whose work and whose woes involved both Jess and me. He knew where the hospital surveillance cameras were placed, knew how to plant evidence on a corpse, knew my truck, knew my habits, knew my strengths well enough to turn them against me. Hell, he even knew where a spare key to the Body Farm was stashed at the Forensic Center. “You killed Jess and framed me for her murder? Why? Out of spite?”

  “Oh, ‘spite’ doesn’t begin to do it justice,” he said. “Something like ‘implacable hatred’ or ‘blackhearted vengeance’ would be much closer to the mark. Was it Hamlet who said, ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’? I’ve been letting this chill for months. You have no idea how humiliating I found it to be made a fool by you over the Ledbetter autopsy. Not once, but twice: first in court, and then before a board of medical examiners—my professional peers.”

  “But they didn’t take your license,” I said. “What harm did that do you? You got your job back.”

  “Only temporarily,” he said. “The board made that clear when they called to impose my punishment. The governor himself told the commissioner of health to ease me out. And I’ll never get my reputation back. It’s ruined. You ruined it.”

  “I can see why you might hold a grudge against me,” I said slowly, “but why Jess?”

  When he smiled, I felt icy fingers clutching my soul. “Why Jess? So many reasons why Jess.” He cocked his head. “Did you know she was about to be made state medical examiner?” I shook my head. “All the MEs in Tennessee are about to be rolled into a statewide organization, and the beautiful, brainy Dr. Carter had been tapped to head that organization. So six months from now, I would have been out, and Jess would be in. Farther in than I had ever been. I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

  “It wasn’t my business,” I said. “She’d have had no reason to tell me.”

  “Then she probably also didn’t tell you that she and I had a fleeting romance once.”

  “You? When?” The thought of it turned my stomach.

  “A year or so ago. Right after she and her husband separated. She made it clear afterward that I was just a revenge fuck. I never forgave her for that. But she did have a gorgeous body, didn’t she, our Jess?”

  I made a lunge at him; he struck me with the pistol, then kneed me in the groin. I sank back into the chair.

  “But you want to know the third reason, the main reason, why I killed Jess?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “You. You were falling in love with Jess; she was falling in love with you. That made her your Achilles’ heel, your most vulnerable spot. I followed you to her house that night in Chattanooga. Being out of a job at the moment, I had plenty of time to keep tabs on you. I saw you spring up the stairs to her house like a teenager going on a date; I saw her come to the door and welcome you in; Christ, I even heard the two of you moaning up there in her bedroom. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to walk in and shoot you both in her bed. But I kept my eyes on the prize.”

  “And what prize was that, Garland?”

  “Making you suffer.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly done that,” I said. “But if you kill me, too, the police will match the bullet to the one that killed Jess. They’ll know that whoever murdered me also murdered Jess.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “As you said, you’d make a lousy criminal, Bill. You’re not going to be murdered; you’re going to die by your own hand. Tragic, really: Bill Brockton, driven to suicide by his guilt over murdering Dr. Carter, his despair over losing his reputation, his fear of going to prison and getting manhandled by some of his old friends.”

  “Go to hell,” I said. “I will never commit suicide.”

  “Call it assisted suicide, then,” he said. “The criminalists will find your prints, and only your prints, on the gun. The autopsy—my autopsy—will find powder burns and even a nice, round contact impression from the muzzle, which you held tight against your skull as you pulled the trigger.” As he said it, he jammed the gun into my temple. “It’s a terrible thing
, losing one’s hard-earned reputation, isn’t it, Bill? We have that experience in common now.” He smiled and added, “Just like we have Jess in common now.”

  The sight of him disgusted me, and I looked away. And when I did, I saw a glimmer of hope. It was the tiny green diode on my cellphone, the one that blinked every few seconds during a call. Georgia, I realized. I had been talking to her on the cell when Hamilton called, and I never hung up. Was there a chance she was still on the line? Please, God, let her be listening; please let someone hear me die; please let someone know the truth.

  It was a long shot, but it was the only shot I had. “So tell me more about how you killed Jess,” I said.

  “With plea sure,” he said. “Pun intended. Where shall I begin?”

  It was the same question I’d put to Burt DeVriess the night I’d hired him. “At the beginning of the end,” I said. “When you abducted her, or broke into her house, or what ever you did when you made your move.”

  “Hmmmm,” he said, as if savoring a fond memory. “It was that night the two of you had dinner at By the Tracks. That row of shops facing the restaurant? I was on the sidewalk, behind one of the columns, right in front of her car. Jess came out of the restaurant alone. She hit the remote to unlock her car and got in. I stepped out from behind the column and got in with her. It was so easy.”

  “Then what? Where did you take her? Your house?”

  “I have a large wine cellar in my basement—a concrete room within a concrete basement. Very secure, and very quiet. No sound gets in; no sound gets out.”

  I thought I should ask for more details about Jess’s death, but my courage failed me; I couldn’t bear to hear the details of her suffering. “The hair and fibers—my hair, my carpet, my bedspread—how did you get those onto her body before the autopsy?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I wrote them into the autopsy report, but I didn’t collect them until the next day. That rock through the window of your front door?” I nodded; the note had an antievolution message on it, so I’d assumed it was thrown by one of the creationist protesters. “My little Trojan horse. The broken window let me reach in and unlock the door, put blood and some of Jess’s hair on your sheets, then collect some of your hair and tell the police I found it on Jess’s body. The police had no reason to doubt me.”

  I was just about to ask where he’d found a truck so nearly like mine for transporting Jess to the Body Farm when a series of low beeps sounded from the bookshelf beside him. It was the low-battery warning on my cellphone, and I kicked myself for not having charged it in the car earlier in the day. Hamilton whirled in the direction of the sound, and his eyes spotted the blinking light on the cell. Keeping the gun pointed at me, he sidled over, picked up the phone, and held it to his ear. Then he flipped it closed. “You son of a bitch,” he said. “Time’s up.” He stepped toward me and raised the gun to my right temple.

  Just then the front doorbell rang. Hamilton and I both jumped, and I was surprised his trigger finger had not reflexively tightened enough to fire the gun. “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now nothing,” he said. “Stand still and don’t make a sound or I’ll shoot you.”

  “You’re going to shoot me anyway,” I said. “Why shouldn’t I make you do it when there’s a witness within earshot?”

  “You stupid son of a bitch,” he said. “No matter what, I walk away clean. You called me on the phone, distraught and suicidal. I raced over and tried to talk sense into you. Just as I was about to persuade you to hand over the gun, someone rang the doorbell, and you panicked and pulled the trigger. There is no scenario I cannot explain.”

  There was a loud knock on the door. “Bill? You awake?” The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. “Bill?” The volume was getting louder. “Hey, Bill—come on, let’s go!”

  At the word “go,” the living room window closest to us shattered, and then the world seemed to explode. I seemed to be falling, but curiously—even as I felt myself hit the floor—the image that remained frozen in my gaze was of my front door, and of Garland Hamilton standing beside me, his hand and the stock of a pistol just visible in my peripheral vision. So this is what it’s like to die of a gunshot to the head, I thought.

  And suddenly my vision unfroze, just in time for me to see a squad of police officers, wearing body armor and carry ing automatic weapons, pouring through my front door. One of them flung himself over my body, and two of them grabbed Garland Hamilton, who appeared as dazed as I felt. Two more pointed weapons at Hamilton’s chest.

  One of the policemen spoke into a shoulder-mounted radio mic. “All clear in the house,” he said. “Suspect is restrained. No casualties.”

  A moment later, Detective John Evers—whose voice it was I’d heard at the door—strode in. He surveyed the bizarre scene, studying Hamilton for a long moment, then reached down to help me up. “You okay?” he said.

  “I guess maybe I am,” I said. “I thought I’d been shot in the head. Evidently not.”

  He laughed. “Stun grenade. It’s nice when they work like they’re supposed to.”

  “Where the hell did all you guys come from?”

  “You have some character calls herself ‘Miss Georgia Youngblood’ to thank for the cavalry,” he said. “She heard you and Hamilton on her cellphone, called 911 on a landline from somewhere at UT Medical Center. Gave the dispatcher your name and my name, then held the cellphone up to the mouthpiece. The dispatcher patched me in, and I pulled the SWAT guys in pretty quick.”

  “Amazing,” I said. “You got here just in the nick.”

  “Looks like I owe you an apology, Doc,” he said.

  I smiled. “Nice to hear you say that,” I said, “but actually, you don’t. Any good homicide detective would’ve come to the same conclusions you did. Hell, even I was beginning to suspect myself. And you just saved my neck. I just hope you can build as strong a case against this piece of shit as you were building against me.”

  “I think we can manage that,” said Evers. “All 911 calls are recorded. So we’ve got Hamilton’s confession on tape.”

  “Does this mean the murder trial is off?”

  “Yours is off,” he said. “His is on.” Evers grinned, and for the third time in a week, I heard him reciting the Miranda rights. Only this time, he was reciting them to Hamilton, not to me.

  EPILOGUE

  MY ARMS AND LEGS ached from wrestling the wheelbarrow up the trail that led from the Body Farm’s main clearing to the spot where I’d found Jess’s body that unforgettable morning. This was my third load of topsoil, and I’d lugged up a load apiece of sand, lime, and peat moss. The ground at the base of the pine tree had been stained nearly black by the volatile fatty acids leaching from the research body; that meant the soil was so acidic no vegetation would grow there for at least a year, maybe two, without some help. And I wanted vegetation to grow there.

  I’d come close to cutting down the tree, knowing I would never be able to look at it without remembering the sight of Jess’s body, without feeling the loss of her. “You should remember her,” Miranda had said when I told her of my plan to fell the tree and chainsaw the memory into two-foot lengths. “I know it hurts right now, and maybe it always will. But she deserves to be remembered, and not just the easy parts. Her life intersected with the Body Farm. So did her death. Don’t try to erase that. Find a way to honor it.”

  It had taken me a while to process that. Eventually, though, I realized that what Miranda said was right, and important. Surprisingly wise, too: How could someone half my age possess twice my wisdom? She had shrugged off that complimentary question when I put it to her. “I wasn’t as close to her as you were,” she said. “That makes it easier for me to see this clearly—to see her, and see you, and see you in relation to her. That’s all. You know this stuff, too; you just don’t realize you know it yet, because there’s still too much pain heaped on top of it.” Again I’d marveled at her insight.

  “Woof,” I groaned as I
staggered the last few steps toward the base of the pine tree. I let the wheelbarrow topple sideways, and half the dirt spilled out into a small pile, alongside the other piles of soil, sand, and peat moss. A pair of shovels reached into the barrow to scrape out the rest.

  “I offered,” said Art, who was wielding one of the shovels, “but would you let me? Oh no. You had to do it all yourself.”

  “He needs the exercise,” said Miranda, wielding the other shovel. “And his demons need exorcising.”

  Art looked me up and down. “I can see how you might benefit from the workout. You got demons need exorcising, too?”

  “That might be a bit dramatic,” I said. “It does help to do something physical. Maybe to overdo it, too—maybe sore muscles will take the place of the ache inside. Distract me from it, anyhow.”

  Art and Miranda began turning the dirt, mixing the piles of topsoil with the other ingredients. Then they began raking it around the bases of the creeping juniper and mountain laurel we’d positioned around the pine tree. “You’re gonna have to water this every day, you know,” Art said. “Be a lot safer to transplant this stuff in the winter, when it’s dormant.”

  “I know,” I said, “but it seemed important to do it now. You wait too long to create a memorial, the memory starts to slip away. Be easy to get sidetracked, forget the point, maybe never get around to it.” I looked at Miranda. She was studying me as I said it, and she smiled. I smiled back and gave her a small nod of gratitude.

  Art paused and leaned on his shovel, then reached into his back pocket and took out a handkerchief, which he used to mop his face and neck. “What do you think’s taking them so long? You think they got lost?”

  “Naw,” I said. “She’s probably flirting with the stone carver.” Just then I heard the solid thunk of expensive car doors closing down in the parking lot. “Speak of the devil,” I said. “I do believe they’re here.”

  My belief was confirmed moments later by a voice wafting up the hill from the gate. “Dr. Bill? Yoo-hoo! Where y’all at, Dr. Bill?”