An EMT backed out of the aisle between the rows of shelves, pulling a gurney with him. A motionless figure lay on the gurney; beneath a sheet I saw the contours of feet, legs, torso. I’d seen that body nearly every day for years now in various postures—sitting, standing, crawling on all fours, bending over to pluck a bone from the ground. I’d never seen it lying motionless, but I recognized it instantly as Miranda’s.
“Dear God,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”
“It’s about time you got here.” Miranda sat up partway, propping herself on her elbows.
“Jesus,” I breathed, “Miranda! Are you okay? You’re hurt? What happened?”
“Could you repeat the questions one at a time? On second thought, never mind. I’m okay—I think it’s just a sprained ankle—but there’s a guy out there I don’t want a second date with.”
“Who? Tell me. Tell me everything.”
“I was putting measurements into the data bank, over at that table by the windows, using the digitizing probe. I’d just gotten to that really huge skull, and I was halfway through the cranial measurements when I got a creepy feeling, like maybe somebody was watching me. I looked up, but all I could see was my own reflection.”
“Remind me to get some floodlights put in outside tomorrow,” I said. “Or a video camera. Or an electric fence.”
“I went back to measuring,” she said, “but a minute later I heard the outside door open and close. I was jumpy already, so I listened closely for the sound of someone going up the steps to the second floor. Nothing. I turned around to look and listen, and I saw a shadow fall across the piece of paper covering the little window in the door. I got a really bad feeling, and it got worse when the knob started to turn, very slowly—first one way, then the other—and the door started rattling and shaking as somebody pulled on the knob.
“I yelled, ‘We’re closed!’ and the door just started shaking harder. ‘I’m calling the police!’ I said, and it shook even harder. I picked up the phone and dialed 911, but right then the glass shattered and an arm reached through the window.
“That’s when I panicked. He was coming in the only door to the lab. I thought about trying to get out one of the front windows, but I figured he’d hear me and run back outside just as I got there. I decided I’d have a better chance if I turned out the light and hid in the shelves in the back.”
“Do you know who it was? Did you see the guy’s face?”
“No.” She frowned, almost as if she were angry at herself. “All I could see was a man’s hand. Long-sleeved denim shirt. Surgical gloves.”
“Excuse me?” It was one of the EMTs. Miranda and I both looked at him, startled. I’d been so caught up in the story I’d forgotten there were other people in the room. “How do you know it was a man’s hand, if it was gloved?”
Miranda looked exasperated. “I’ve only measured a zillion male and female hands over the past four years,” she said. A zillion was an exaggeration, but only a slight one. “I can tell the difference at fifty yards.” That, I felt sure, was not an exaggeration.
I pointed to the smear of blood on the door. “That’s not yours, is it?”
“No,” she said, with obvious satisfaction. “That’s his.”
“Good. The crime lab shouldn’t have any trouble getting DNA out of that.”
“I’ll claim credit for getting the sample,” she said.
I looked at her quizzically.
“When I jumped up to turn out the light, I grabbed a femur that was lying on the table. Just as he got the dead bolt open, I gave him a good whack on the arm. Must have forced his arm down onto the broken glass.” Her coolness astonished me. “If his humerus isn’t fractured, he’s at least got one hell of a bruise.”
“Probably two,” I corrected. “One where you whacked him and one where his arm hit the door.” She grinned, and I marveled at her bravery.
“But that didn’t scare him off?”
“I wish. By then he was yanking the door open. I flipped off the light switch and ran toward the back of the lab.”
My heart was pounding. “God,” I said, “I know it turns out okay, and I’m still scared to death.”
“If you’re not peeing your pants, you’re not as scared as I was,” she said. She pointed down at the blue sheet covering her, and I saw a damp stain at the center. “Last time I peed my pants was in first grade,” she said, “on the swings after school one day. My mom was late picking me up, and I was too shy to go inside and ask Mrs. Downey if I could use the bathroom. I couldn’t think what to do, so I just sat there, swinging back and forth, dribbling arcs of pee on the bare dirt of the playground.”
The image of six-year-old Miranda peeing on the swing set broke the spell of fear, and I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “So tell me the rest.”
“I climbed on top of one of the shelves—that one right there,” she said, pointing to a rack halfway toward the back of the lab.
“I figured that in the dark he might not find me up there. I could hear him going up and down the rows, stopping to listen for my breathing. Finally he walked toward the door, and I thought he was leaving. But then the lights came on.”
“Damn,” I said.
“I knew he’d see me with the lights on, so I decided to try climbing out that little window up there.”
“You’re brilliant,” I said. I’d completely forgotten about the windows. Set high into the side and back walls of the bone lab were a few small windows, each measuring about two feet high by three feet wide. They led not to the outside of the stadium but to its deepest labyrinthine recesses—the catacombs at the very base of the stands.
“It’s true what they say about fear and adrenaline,” she said.
“It took the strength of ten graduate assistants to slide that window open through forty years of gunk.” She flexed a muscle, and both the EMTs laughed. “Anyway, when I dropped down the other side my foot caught something, and I rolled my ankle pretty hard. I figured I was in real trouble at that point, but then I heard the sirens coming, and I heard him running out of the lab and up the stairwell. And here I am, and here are all of you. And jeepers, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I did a little of both. “Thank God you’re okay,” I said. “Let’s get you to the ER and get that ankle X-rayed.”
“Good grief, I don’t need an X-ray,” she scoffed. “You think I don’t know if my ankle is broken?”
“She’s only measured a zillion ankles,” said the head EMT, earning a laugh from her.
Miranda used her right foot to kick the sheet off her left leg. The EMTs already had the ankle immobilized in a strap-on boot; cold packs surrounded her foot and lower leg. “If you can just pull a string or two,” she said, “and get me in to see one of the football team’s physical therapists tomorrow, I’ll be fine in a couple of days.”
“I think I can arrange that,” I said, and turned to the EMTs.
“Can you let her go now, or do you have to take her to the hospital since you’re already here?”
“I’d advise an X-ray,” said the lead EMT, “but no, we’re not going to force her to get treatment against her will, if she’s competent to refuse it.”
“She’s one of the most competent people I know,” I said.
He shrugged and went out to the ambulance, returning with a long form, in triplicate, requiring multiple signatures. She handed the forms back, and he glanced over them.
“This 974 phone number here,” he said. “Is that…?”
“That’s the number here in the lab,” she said. She hopped down from the gurney onto her good leg, then hobbled over to the desk and sat on the edge, tapping the phone with a finger.
“You want to put your other number—home or cell number—here beside it? Just in case?”
“Just in case what—my foot falls off when I get home?”
He turned bright red, then mumbled, “I guess maybe this one’s enough.” H
e gave her a few unnecessary instructions on caring for a sprain, wished her a speedy recovery, and then retreated, trailing his gurney, his colleague, and his shredded dignity behind him.
“‘Just in case’ he wanted to ask you out,” I said once he was gone. “You sure shut him down fast.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Kind of a shame—he was cute. But that was a test, and he flunked. If he doesn’t have the moxie to answer that in front of an audience, he doesn’t have enough moxie to deal with me.”
“You could be right,” I said. “Hey, you ever tried speed dating?”
She snorted. “Naw. Waste of time. I just fast-forward straight to speed rejection.”
I laughed. “If you ever get tired of anthropology, I think you should write a relationship self-help book. Smart Women, Foolish Men or some such.”
The campus police officers were standing around aimlessly, so I hoped maybe we could call it a night. “You guys gonna call a KPD forensic team to come get a swab of that?”
“They’re already on the way,” he said. “Should be here in a couple of minutes.”
“Do you need me to stay around and lock up once they’re done?”
“No, sir,” he said. “We’ve got keys, so we can lock up. We can also call the physical plant people, get them to replace the glass in the morning.”
“I’d appreciate that,” I said. “Can you ask them if they’ve got wire-reinforced security glass, or bulletproof glass, to make sure this kind of thing can’t happen again?”
He nodded, and then I saw him looking at the bank of big windows across the front of the lab.
“I should probably give them a call, too,” I said. “Talk to them about some bars for those front windows.”
“I’d say that’s a good idea,” he said.
I looked at Miranda, realized what a close call she’d had.
“Wish I’d thought of that sooner,” I said.
“You can’t think of everything,” Miranda said. “If he hadn’t gotten in, he might have just been waiting for me outside. Point is, I’m fine.”
“That’s part of the point,” I said. “Another important part is to keep you fine.”
I offered Miranda my guest room for the night, partly because I was worried about her safety and partly because I feared she’d have trouble getting around with a badly sprained ankle.
“Not a chance,” she said.
“Why not?” I said. “I’ve got no designs on you.”
“I know,” she said, “and I couldn’t take the disappointment.” Then she turned serious. “Actually, I figure you’re the next item on this guy’s to-do list. He was probably looking for you when he came down here in the first place. I was just the consolation prize.”
A thought struck me suddenly. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I suspect you’re his new favorite.” When I quoted the line from the card on the flowers, the color drained from her face. Then she shook her head fiercely.
“No,” she said. “I’m not going to think that way. I don’t want to spend every moment looking over my shoulder, expecting some pervert or creep to be there.”
“Then don’t,” I said. “But at least keep some pepper spray handy.”
“I have some in the nightstand.”
I drove Miranda home and helped her up the stairs and into her house. “I’ve never seen your house before,” I said. “It’s charming.”
“You’ve never seen the inside,” she said pointedly. She saw the look of shame on my face, and she laid a hand on my arm. “It’s okay,” she said, and those two simple words of understanding and forgiveness were among the most profound and generous things anyone had ever said to me. I wrapped my arms around Miranda and gave her a bear hug, probably as tight as the one the UT police officer had given me outside the bone lab. After a moment she tapped me on the back, so I let go.
“I might need to go to the ER now,” she said. “I think you just fractured half my ribs.”
“God, you’re something,” I said. “What would I do without you?”
“You’d find somebody else,” she said. “The world’s full of brave, brilliant women. Hell, graduate school’s full of brave, brilliant women.”
“I don’t think there’s another one like you out there,” I said.
“Good night, Miranda.”
“Night, Dr. B.”
She closed her door. I waited at the bottom of the steps until I heard the dead bolt snick shut, and then I went only as far as my truck. I reclined the seat a few inches, rolled down the windows so I could hear, and passed the night in an uneasy vigil outside her house.
CHAPTER 22
AIM FOR THE HEAD, I REMINDED MYSELF AS I LINED up the sights. The center of the head—the surest kill. The gun felt solid in my hand, more solid than I felt within myself. As I took aim at the shadowy figure, I hoped I could borrow a bit of steadiness from the heavy weapon in my right hand. Sweat trickled down my forehead, pooling in my eyes and clouding my view, and I squinted to squeeze it out. Focus. Center of the head. Don’t rush your shot. My finger tightened against the trigger. Could I really shoot Garland Hamilton? Don’t forget what he tried to do to you, I told myself, yet still I hesitated. Don’t forget what he did to Jess, and what he might have done to Miranda. It was Hamilton, I felt sure, who’d attacked Miranda—the police had interviewed both Latham and Garcia, and had found their arms uninjured—so that left Hamilton the likely source of the assault and of the flowers that had preceded it. That did it. I pictured Jess’s body tied obscenely to another corpse, and Miranda laid out on the gurney, and the gun jumped in my hand as I yanked the trigger. “Die, you son of a bitch,” I hissed, “die.” I fired again and again, until the gun had nothing left to fire. My arm dropped to my side. I was trembling, I realized, and tears were streaming down my face.
“Press,” said a voice behind me. “Press. If you jerk the trigger, you jerk the gun. And if you jerk the gun, you miss the target. And if you miss the target, you end up getting shot.”
I turned. Steve Morgan and a TBI firearms instructor—John Wilson—stood together just behind my lane of the KPD firing range. True to his word, Morgan had gotten a permit for me to carry a weapon, and he’d even loaned me one of his own spares, a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson. The permit apparently hadn’t been too difficult to arrange, since I already carried a TBI badge as the bureau’s forensic-anthropology consultant. The bigger hurdle, it appeared, would be qualifying with the gun. To qualify, I’d have to shoot with an accuracy of 70 percent—that is, 70 percent of my shots had to strike the kill zone, the smaller shaded areas within the upper chest and head of the target, a thuglike male outline whose right hand pointed a pistol directly at me.
Morgan, Wilson, and I walked the thirty feet to the target to see what damage I’d done. It wasn’t much. I’d yanked off eight shots. The paper had just three holes in it, and two of those lay outside the lines of the body: Only one of my eight shots would actually have hit Garland Hamilton if this had really been him. That one shot, though, pierced the shaded area of the head, just left of the target’s midline, in what would have been the region of the right nostril.
Morgan pointed to it. “Doc,” he said encouragingly, “if that was your first shot, he’d be a dead man.”
“Actually, that was his first shot,” said Wilson. “His barrel crept up a little higher after every shot, which is why these two other hits are above the head. Those last five shots probably landed somewhere up in Kentucky.”
“Well, here’s hoping Garland Hamilton was walking around in southern Kentucky just now,” I said.
“If you can just remember to press the trigger instead of yanking it and remember to keep the sights lined up, you’ll nail this by the end of the day.”
I had my doubts, but Wilson was right. After unloading that first, emotional magazine, I managed to separate myself from the issues of life and death and vengeance and instead to immerse myself in the physics of shooting a gun and acquiring a feel—a muscle memo
ry, Wilson called it—for the precise amount of force needed to trip the trigger, and the slight lowering of the barrel required to realign the sights after each jump of the barrel. Over the course of three sweat-soaked hours, I fired nearly three hundred rounds. My forearm and shoulder ached from holding the two-pound weapon aloft at arm’s length, but I qualified.
If I were taking aim at Garland Hamilton, would I be able to hang on to my newly acquired muscle memory—remain calm and focused as I pressed precisely and grouped my shots into his head? I didn’t know that. I also didn’t know whether to hope I’d get the chance to find out—or to pray I didn’t.
CHAPTER 23
BURT DEVRIESS HAD BEEN RIGHT. HIS PHONE HAD started ringing the day the crematorium scandal first aired on CNN, and it had scarcely stopped. Some of the calls came from people who wondered what was really in that fancy urn or that plain box they’d gotten back from the crematorium. Others came from reporters who sought (and got) punchy quotes—some of them from Nephew Burt, grieving over the indignity done to Aunt Jean, some from Counselor DeVriess, crusading for justice, or at least for millions in restitution.
It didn’t seem to matter—to Burt, to prospective clients, or to legions of reporters—that he’d never before practiced anything but criminal defense. Nor did it actually matter to the Tennessee Bar Association. “Tennessee does not certify attorneys in specific areas of the law,” read the disclaimers on countless television commercials and phone-book ads. “The law is the law,” Burt had thundered when one reporter asked about the sudden, sharp switchback in his career path. Somehow that slick bit of fancy footwork got transformed into the story’s headline and then into the slogan of Burt’s campaign to bring the funeral industry to its knees. The truth was, if Burt had chosen to hang out his shingle in a small town somewhere in the hills—Jonesport, for instance—he’d have been forced to piece together a living out of whatever cases walked through his door, be they criminal defense, civil suits, wills and estates, prenups, or divorces. It was only because he’d been so spectacularly successful that Grease had gotten pigeonholed as a defense attorney. Burt was wearing, I supposed, a version of golden handcuffs. No reason he shouldn’t trade them for a platinum pair, if he wanted to; Burt’s greatest talent, in fact, was generating large amounts of news coverage and revenue. A big class-action contingency suit, particularly one as juicy as this, would generate copious quantities of coverage. And the revenue stream might well rival the Tennessee River at flood stage—and keep flowing strong for years to come.
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