Put that way-reduced to a bottom-line dollar amount-the shocking scene in the woods sounded insignificant. “But I bet there are more,” I said. “Maybe a lot more.”
“There would have to be,” she said. “I hate to break it to you, Dr. Brockton, but we’d need ten times that many bodies in the woods to justify a federal wire-fraud investigation.”
“You’re saying you’d need a thousand bodies? You’ve got to be joking.”
“I don’t joke, Dr. Brockton.” She had a point there, I realized.
“My white-collar-crime agents are swamped with cases right now-multimillion-dollar cases. You remember that chop shop we raided last spring over in Grainger County? They were selling stolen-car parts throughout the South, to the tune of seven million dollars a year. Your cockfighting friends in Cooke County? Illegal gambling-hundreds of thousands of dollars every day those birds were pecking each other to death.” Technically, I wanted to point out, the roosters spurred or slashed each other to death, but I didn’t see much future in interrupting Price just to correct her description of cockfighting. “I don’t mean to sound callous,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s big enough for us. Did you call local law enforcement?”
“No,” I said. “This a rural county in Podunk, Georgia. They don’t begin to have the forensic resources to deal with this.”
“If the locals request assistance, we could send in an Evidence Recovery Team.”
“There’s a whole lot of evidence to recover,” I said. “Why not just send in the cavalry now? Eliminate the middleman?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” she said. “We help if we’re asked-it’s called ‘domestic police cooperation’-but we have to be asked. And despite what you see on television, we consider the ‘cooperation’ part important. Call the locals.”
“That’s all you’ve got for me-‘call the locals’?”
“’Fraid so,” she said. “Sorry that’s not what you wanted to hear. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“I guess not,” I said. “Thanks.”
She clicked off without saying good-bye.
Angela: that was her name. “Thanks for nothing, Angela,” I said to the dead receiver.
Call the locals? I didn’t even know who the locals were. I had an atlas in my truck, so I went out and got it and traced my route from Chattanooga down into the northwest corner of Georgia. It didn’t take long to pinpoint what county the crematorium was in, and I knew that it wouldn’t take a genius to track down the number for the county sheriff. But I found myself hesitating, resisting the idea of calling 411. As I took a mental step back and analyzed the reasons for my hesitation, it came clear. Over the years of my work, I had come to know and respect many sheriffs in rural Tennessee. But within the past year, I had survived a couple of near-death experiences with deputies in Cooke County, where Chief Deputy Orbin Kitchings was a regular at the cockfights-and where Deputy Leon Williams had used dynamite to entomb Art Bohanan and me in a cave. On the one hand, I had no reason to suspect that the sheriff in northwest Georgia was looking the other way as bodies piled up in the woods. But then again, I had no particular basis for confidence either. And if the sheriff did happen to be in cahoots with the crematorium, my call might actually trigger a quick cleanup and a massive cover-up. The more I thought, the less I wanted to call the locals.
But if not the locals, then who could I call?
I glanced idly at the atlas again, and my gaze strayed southward, to Atlanta. “Sean Richter,” I said out loud. “I can call Sean.”
Sean Richter was one of my former graduate students. After completing his master’s degree, he had spent a year in the remnants of Yugoslavia, helping excavate mass graves and identify victims of ethnic-cleansing massacres in Kosovo. Now he was working in Atlanta as the staff forensic anthropologist for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. As an interstate wire-fraud case, the crematorium might be too small for the FBI to bother with. But as a Georgia fraud case, it might be big enough to interest the GBI. And I was certain it would interest Sean, with its similarities to the mass-fatality identifications he’d done in Kosovo. I fished out my pocket calendar, which had a small address book tucked in the back, and looked up his number.
“Anthropology lab, this is Richter.”
“Sean, this is Bill Brockton.”
“Dr. Brockton, how are you?”
“I’m fine, but I’d be better if you quit calling me Dr. Brockton, Sean. You’re my colleague now, not my student. It’s time you graduated to calling me Bill.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “That’s gonna be a tough habit to break, though. Once a forensic god, always a forensic god.”
“Well, once you break this case wide open,” I said, “you’ll be a legend yourself.”
“What case?”
“How would you like to lead the recovery and identification of a hundred decomposing bodies, maybe more? Maybe lots more?”
He laughed. “You’re one of the few people who actually find that an irresistible temptation,” he said. “But I’m one of the others. Unfortunately, I doubt that I could get a leave of absence right now to do that. I fear my traveling days are over, for a while at least.”
“You wouldn’t have to travel. At least not outside your jurisdiction.”
Sean didn’t say anything for a long time. When he did speak, his voice sounded unnatural and forced, as if he were pushing the words out by sheer willpower. “Are you telling me you think there’s a mass grave here in Georgia with a hundred or more bodies in it?”
“No, and not exactly,” I said. “I don’t think-I know. But it’s not a grave, it’s surface. You wouldn’t even have to dig.” As I described what I’d seen in the woods, he interrupted me often, asking me to repeat or confirm or elaborate on some detail. The shakiness in his voice gave way to a mixture of excitement and anger. Sean was smart enough to realize that this case would be forensically fascinating, as well as a watershed in his career. But his anger at the indignity inflicted on the dead-dumped in the woods like refuse-was genuine, and I knew that Sean would do whatever it took to make the case a priority for the GBI.
His eagerness was tempered by one very legitimate concern. The GBI’s anthropology lab was small, and Sean’s resources-equipment and personnel-were nowhere near adequate to recover and identify so many bodies all at once. “You might want to ask for help from DMORT,” I said. DMORT-the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team-was a federally deployed unit designed to assist with mass fatalities. The team members, who included forensic anthropologists, dentists, funeral directors, and other professionals skilled at identifying or handling corpses, were volunteers, but they were highly trained and extremely capable. DMORT teams had performed heroically at Ground Zero after the World Trade Center attacks, and they had worked for months to identify the hundreds of victims of Hurricane Katrina. Sean agreed that DMORT could be a valuable resource.
“You might also want to ask the FBI for an Evidence Recovery Team,” I said. Then, and only then, did I recount the gist of my conversation with Special Agent Price. “They don’t want to run the case,” I said, “but I gather they’d be willing to roll up their sleeves and help with the fieldwork. If you ask.”
“I’ll certainly recommend that we ask,” he said. “This is going to be huge, and we’ll need all the help we can get.” He paused, then said, “Hmm.” I waited, figuring he was working up to another question, and I was right. “So when my bosses ask me how I know about this mess, what do I tell them?”
“Tell them the truth,” I said. “I don’t see how it can hurt. Might give them a little more confidence that it’s not a wild-goose chase if they know the tip came from a guy who has a reasonably good idea what bodies in the woods look like.”
He chuckled at that. “True. Be hard for them to doubt the accuracy of the report if they know it comes from you.”
“I don’t particularly want my name in the news, though, if you can keep me out of it,” I said. “An
y chance y’all could say the GBI received a call from a ‘concerned citizen’ or some such?”
“I’ll suggest it,” he said. “Politically, that might have some appeal-if we say, ‘It took an anthropologist from Tennessee to sniff this out,’ the GBI doesn’t look real bright. But if we say, ‘We acted swiftly in response to a tip,’ we look semicompetent.”
“Semicompetent nothing,” I said. “Y’all’ll be heroes. But only if you quit yakking and get busy.”
“Right,” he said. “Thanks, Dr. Brockton.”
“Excuse me-who?”
“Oh. Sorry. Thanks…Bill.”
His teeth were nearly clenched as he said it. But at least he said it.
CHAPTER 17
DOWN IN GEORGIA I’D STUMBLED UPON A BUNCH OF bodies that should have been burned but weren’t. Here in Knoxville, I reflected, I was obsessed with a body that shouldn’t have been burned but was. I guess the universe is in balance, I thought. Except that Garland Hamilton’s still out there somewhere.
Darren Cash answered his cell phone on the third ring.
“I think I know how he did it,” I said.
“How who did what?”
I laughed. “Sorry. It’s Dr. Brockton from UT. I think I know how Stuart Latham set the car on fire while he was in Vegas.”
“Do tell,” said Cash.
“I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you,” I said. “I’d rather show you. Any chance you’ve got some free time late this afternoon or tomorrow?”
“Since you ask so nice,” he said, “and since you’re about to help me blast a killer’s alibi out of the water, I’ll make time. I’ve got some folks to interview this morning and after lunch, but I should be through by four o’clock or so.”
I checked my watch. It read 8:37.
“Can you meet me at the Anthropology Department around four-thirty? We’ll take a little field trip from there.”
“You’re being mighty cryptic,” he said, “but you’ve got me hooked.”
I told him how to find my office, and then I called Jason Story, one of my master’s-level graduate students. Jason sounded sleepy when he answered the phone, which wasn’t surprising considering he’d sent me an e-mail in the middle of the night describing the experiment he’d just finished.
“Sorry if I woke you up, Jason,” I said. “We need to do another run today.”
He yawned. “So soon? I’ve already done six in the past two days.”
“’Fraid so,” I said. “The stakes are higher on this one, though. This one’s the dog and pony show for the D.A.’s investigator.”
Suddenly he sounded much more alert. “Okay, no problem,” he said.
“Can you get it started by ten?”
“A.M. or P.M.?”
“A.M.”
“Wow,” he said. “That’s cutting it close. But okay, yeah. You might want to stay upwind of me, though-it’s been pretty hot out there, and I won’t have time to take a shower.”
“No matter how bad you smell, Jason? I’ve smelled worse things.”
“I guess so.” He laughed. “What time are you bringing the guy from the D.A.’s office out?”
“Around five, five-thirty. That should be about right, shouldn’t it?”
“Should be. Gotta go. See you then.”
Jason was getting ready to enter his second year in the graduate program. Like countless other high-school and college kids who’d gotten hooked on CSI, Jason aspired to be a forensic scientist. Unlike most, though, Jason had gone out and gotten real-world experience. He’d spent three years as a volunteer with a Knox County Rescue Squad. The rescue squad didn’t handle criminal cases, but Jason had worked enough death scenes-car crashes and drownings, even a plane crash-to get past the jitters, and as soon as he took osteology, I was sure he’d be a valuable addition to my Forensic Response Team. He was good with gadgetry, too-Jason felt as comfortable with a GPS or with a topographic map and a compass as I felt with a mandible or a femur. And if I ever needed to tie somebody up and be sure they couldn’t get loose, Jason would be the one whose knotcraft I would call on. He was steady and reliable, and, maybe more to the point, he was in the market for a thesis topic, so he’d jumped at the chance to help with some research.
At 4:20, Cash knocked on my door. “You’re early,” I said. “Good man.”
“I finished up a little sooner than I expected,” he said, “and I didn’t see much point in just killing time. If you’ve got things to do, though, tell me, and I’ll make some phone calls till you’re ready.”
‘No, this is fine,” I said. “Let’s go. Do you want to ride with me or follow me?”
“Let me follow you, so I can just head home when we’re done. You ready to tell me where we’re going?”
“One of the Ag farms,” I said. “By way of Burger King, if you don’t mind?”
“I never got lunch,” he said. “Burger King sounds great. At this point Purina Dog Chow would probably sound pretty good.”
“Let’s say Burger King.”
“WELC…BRRGRR…KI…” crackled the voice through the loudspeaker. I couldn’t even tell if the person was male or female. I hoped they’d be able to hear me better than I could hear them. “W…LIKE…TRY OUR zzttzztt COMBO…DAY?”
I didn’t know what I’d just been offered, but I did know that I didn’t want a combo. “I’d like a Whopper and a sweet tea, please,” I said. I spoke up, because the sound system didn’t seem to be working well.
“zzttzztt TEA?”
“Sweet tea,” I said loudly. “Do you have sweet tea?”
“zzttzztt TEA?”
“Sweet tea!” I shouted. “Sweet tea! If you don’t have sweet tea, regular tea’s okay!”
“zzttzztt TEA…ELSE?”
“That’s it!” I yelled. “Just the Whopper and the tea!”
A young man walking into the restaurant, a backpack slung over one shoulder, looked at me oddly and gave me a wide berth.
“YOU SAID A…zzttzztt AND…zzttzztt…TOTAL COMES…zzttzztt…WINDOW.”
Just as I was pulling away from the speaker, I noticed a display mounted underneath. It read WHOPPER, SWEET TEA, $3.87. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who’d had trouble with the audio system. Funny, I thought. Instead of fixing the microphone and the speaker, they’d installed a whole ’nother gadget. I fished my wallet out of my hip pocket and extracted a five-dollar bill as I eased around the building to the drive-up window.
I waited several minutes, but the window remained tightly closed. I gave a quick tap on the horn. Still no response. Behind me another horn blared, louder and longer than my polite little toot. I checked the mirror and saw two more vehicles idling behind Cash’s car. Now both of them blasted their horns at me. Frustrated, I decided to forego the Whopper, and gunned the gas. Suddenly an arm emerged from a window-a second drive-up window, which I hadn’t noticed-and waved frantically. I nearly clipped the hand with my outside mirror.
A pleasant young woman, probably a UT student, opened the window and smiled. “I was about to send out a search party for you,” she said brightly. “Your order comes to three eighty-seven.” I held out the five. She made change, then handed me a white paper bag and a heavy cup. “Enjoy your meal,” she said.
“THANK…zztt…MUH,” I said, delivering my best imitation of the faulty loudspeaker.
She looked startled, maybe even alarmed. The window snapped shut.
I’d meant to save the Whopper until Cash and I got to the Ag farm, but the smell of charbroiled beef came floating up out of the bag, almost like one of those beckoning fingers of aroma in an old cartoon. I held out as long as I could, which wasn’t long-just long enough to get from the Strip back to Neyland Drive. Steering with my left knee along Neyland’s slight curves, I fished out the burger and unfolded the wrapper to expose half the sandwich. My mouth was watering, despite what Jeff had told me about the carcinogenic chemistry of flame broiling-or maybe because of what Jeff had told me. Did knowing that the Whopper
had a dark side beneath those grill marks make it more appealing? I’d never been particularly attracted by the idea of illicit sex, but I knew that some people were, and I wondered if this was anything like their experience. Maybe this, I thought, taking a greedy breath, is the sweet smell of forbidden fruit. Brockton, you are one reckless daredevil. The truck swerved as my knee slipped, and I made a quick grab for the wheel with my right hand. See? Once I was tracking straight again, I hoisted the burger with my left hand and bit down. “Mmm-mmm,” I moaned, as a symphonic chord of hot grease, smoky beef, mayonnaise, ketchup, pickle, onion, and carcinogens crescendoed in my mouth.
Chewing contentedly, I led Cash up the ramp onto James White Parkway, down the ramp to Riverside Drive, and then along Riverside to the Ag farm above the river confluence. As we passed the barn and the equipment shed, I noticed that the water truck’s windshield had been replaced but the deep dent in the hood remained. Then again, the fenders were rusting and the silver paint was peeling off the water tank, so I didn’t feel too bad. Besides, I’d done some serious groveling to the farm’s employees-and underscored the apology with a couple of cases of beer.
Cash and I bumped along a pair of ruts to an unburned part of the pasture and pulled to a stop beside Jason Story. Jason was reclining in a folding camp chair, the geometric, NASA-looking kind, with a footrest and drink holders and probably a mini-fridge and a television set tucked away somewhere. He was slouched, a floppy hat pulled low over his eyes, his chin practically on his chest, and when I saw him, I thought, Oh, Lord, he’s fallen asleep. But then I saw his right index finger twitch, and he raised a handheld electronic display from his lap to his face. His left hand came off the armrest and gripped the top of a large fire extinguisher standing in the grass beside him.
Jason barely glanced in our direction when we got out of our vehicles and slammed the doors. His attention alternated between the electronic display in his hand and the 2006 Lexus SUV that idled in the grass ten feet in front of him.
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