“Which beginning?”
“The beginning of the end. When things began to go wrong.”
So I did. I started with the body Miranda and I had tied to a tree at the Body Farm for Jess, and I went on to tell about the creationist brouhaha, and Miss Georgia, and Craig Willis’s raging mother, and Susan Scott’s raging grief, and Jess’s sweetness when she finally invited me all the way in, and her suspicious ex-husband, and her obscenely posed corpse. By the time I reached the end of the end-or at least the present moment-two hours had passed, the sky was dark, and I felt exhaustion and grief seeping into my bones.
CHAPTER 30
I TOOK A CAB from DeVriess’s office to McGhee Tyson Airport and had the driver drop me at the doors to the baggage claim area. The Hertz counter was near, and there was no line, so I opted for that one. “I need to rent a car,” I told the young woman behind the counter.
“Do you have a reservation?”
“No. Is that a problem?”
I thought I saw the corners of her mouth twitch. “Do we look swamped with business?”
I smiled. “This could be the first piece of good luck I’ve had all day,” I said.
She entered my driver’s license number and credit card into her computer, and five minutes later I was headed north on Alcoa Highway in a white Ford Taurus, which struck me as surely the most boring car to emerge from Detroit in de cades. But my feet were still sore from my trek to DeVriess’s office, so, boring or not, I appreciated the vehicle.
I passed the turnoff to UT Medical Center and the Body Farm-a place that would forever be haunted by Jess’s ghost for me now-and crossed the river, then took the Kingston Pike exit. The winding roads of Sequoyah Hills felt unfamiliar, probably because the Taurus handled differently from my truck. But maybe they felt unfamiliar also because the world had changed so completely in the past two days.
When the police impounded my truck, they impounded my garage door opener along with it, I realized, so I would have to leave the rental car in the driveway overnight unless I wanted to park, go inside, open the garage door, then drive it. The sequence of actions, which would have taken sixty seconds or less, loomed as overwhelming. The Taurus didn’t strike me as a particularly tempting vehicle for car thieves, who could take their pick of Audis, Mercedes, Jaguars, and other high-end vehicles in other driveways in this part of town. As a security compromise, though, I paused on the front porch and clicked the keyless remote, and the vehicle locked with a diminutive beep.
As I stepped inside my front door, I heard and felt the distinctive crunch of broken glass underfoot. Switching on the light in the entryway, I saw glass littering the slate floor-dozens of shards and chips of it-and a rock sitting atop some of the pieces, a note attached to it with duct tape. I removed the note and unfolded it. “Now it’s your turn to burn,” it read. Below the words was a crayon drawing of a monkey engulfed in red and orange flames. I ripped the note in half, and was about to tear it into shreds when I realized that might be a terrible mistake. I remembered the newscast the night of the creationist protest, and my surprise at seeing Jess interviewed at the scene. I also remembered the look of rage on the face of Jennings Bryan as he listened to Jess’s sarcastic comments about his movement, his philosophy. And I recalled what she had said about the obscene and threatening phone calls she had gotten that evening. Had whoever made those threats actually followed through on them? And was I the next target?
I pulled out my wallet and fished out the card John Evers had given me, and dialed his number. He answered on the second ring. “Detective Evers? This is Dr. Brockton. Listen, I just got home, and I found something I thought you might ought to know about.” I described the note, and how it had been delivered, and reminded him about the threats Jess had gotten.
“Okay,” he said, “if you’ve got a ziplock bag, seal the rock and the note in the bag. Try not to handle them any more. Bring it in when you and your attorney come see us tomorrow.”
I took a long, hot shower in hopes of unwinding. I leaned against the front wall of the bathtub enclosure, my head hung forward so the water beat down on my scalp and neck and shoulders. Fiber by fiber, the muscles let go, and I found myself slumping rather than leaning, then sliding down the tiles rather than slumping against them. The air had turned almost opaque with steam, almost solid, despite the exhaust fan I had switched on. When the effort to stand became too much, I switched off the water, wrapped my bright pink self in an oversize towel, and staggered into the bedroom. I fished a fresh pair of boxers from the top drawer of my dresser, sat heavily onto the bed, and laboriously threaded my feet through the waistband and leg openings. It took everything I had to stand back up and pull the shorts to my waist. As I bent to fold back the bedspread and top sheet, I could feel my eyelids drooping lower and lower.
And then I came wide awake, as heart-poundingly awake as I had ever been in my life. My white pillowcase was covered with blood. I stared at it, then yanked back the covers all the way to the foot of the bed. Both sheets were drenched in blood as well-mostly dried, but not entirely. And in the center of the bed was a pair of women’s pan ties.
Even before the thought coalesced into words, I knew they were Jess Carter’s pan ties. I also knew that I was about to be arrested for her murder.
I stumbled out to my living room and hit the REDIAL button on the phone there, which I had used to call Evers before my shower. “Evers,” he answered.
“This is Dr. Brockton again,” I said. My voice sounded distant and thready to me. “I think you need to send a forensic team out here to my house right now.”
“I hate to burst your bubble, Doc, but I’m not sure there’s any point,” he said. “If we’re really lucky, we might be able to lift a latent print from that rock or the note. But that’s a long shot. Beyond that, I doubt there’s anything for us to find.”
“This isn’t about the rock,” I said. “Or the note. There’s blood in my bed. A lot of blood. And a pair of women’s pan ties.”
There was a long silence on the other end. Then Evers said, “Where are you now? Are you still in the bedroom?” I told him I had come into the living room to call him. “You stay right where you are,” he said. “Sit down and don’t move.”
“Okay, I won’t,” I said, and he hung up.
I needed to think, but I didn’t feel capable of it on my own. Call Art, was all I could come up with. When he answered, I told him about the bloody sheets and the pan ties, and about the homicide detective and forensic team racing toward my house right now. He was silent.
Finally he said, “Somebody is setting you up big-time.” He paused again. “Did you talk to DeVriess?”
“Yes. I just left his office an hour or two ago.”
“Did he give you his cell number?”
“I think it’s on the card he gave me.”
“Call him. You should’ve called him first.”
“My instincts just took over. The police were my first instinct. You were my second. Art, will they arrest me to night?”
“Doubt it. Not to night. You’re going to be kinda hot for them to handle, being a forensic legend and all. They’ll take this to the DA, and the DA will take it to the grand jury. But the Knox County grand jury meets three times a week, so they could take it to the grand jury tomorrow, and there could be a warrant for your arrest within a couple days. You were in a relationship with her; you were the one who found her body-at your locked research facility, no less; and now, there’s blood and clothing at your house that suggest she was killed there.”
“That’s not all,” I said miserably. “Evers claims to have a surveillance videotape that shows my truck entering the facility three hours before I found the body and called the police.”
He was silent for an agonizingly long time. “This looks bad, Bill. The dumbest cop on the force could persuade a grand jury there’s probable cause at this point. And Evers ain’t the dumbest cop on the force. Hang up and call Grease right now.”
&nbs
p; I did. He cursed when I told him the police were on their way. “Dammit, Doc, I wish you’d called me first. We could have figured out a better way to handle this. Okay, they’re going to ask for your consent to search your house. Do not consent. You probably need to allow them to enter and retrieve the sheets from your bedroom, but tell them that’s all they’re allowed to do without a warrant. They won’t have any trouble getting a warrant, but at least it holds them off for a few hours. They’re also gonna want to question you pretty hard. Tell them I’ll meet you downtown at KPD. Do not-do not, not, not-answer any questions without me by your side. Promise me you will not.”
“Okay. I promise.”
“See you there.” And then he hung up.
Moments later I heard the siren. It gave voice to something inside me-a rising wail of grief and rage and fear. The siren crescendoed as beacons of blue light began strobing through my windows, and then it died away. But the wail inside me did not.
CHAPTER 31
IT WAS 4 A.M., and I was so exhausted my entire body seemed to be humming like a high-voltage power line. DeVriess and I had been cooling our heels for two hours in the same KPD interview room where I’d already spent several hours earlier today. Only “today” had blurred into “yesterday.” Or “tomorrow” had smeared into “today.” It was as if I were trapped in a nightmare from which there was no waking. I imagined Rod Serling’s metallic voice narrating how even the most respectable life could unravel in a heartbeat…here…in the Twilight Zone.
Finally the door banged open and Evers walked in carry ing a file folder. He was still wearing the same outfit he’d worn eighteen hours ago-so was I, for that matter-but the starch had gone out of his shirt, and the man himself looked as rumpled and tired as his clothes did.
He went through the usual routine with the tape recorder, then said, “Tell me about the sheets. Whose blood is that on the sheets? Whose pan ties are those?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but my guess is, Jess Carter’s.”
“The blood, or the pan ties?”
“Both, I suspect. Again, I’m just guessing, but I’d say they’re probably from the same person. And my guess is they’re from Jess.”
“You say you guess they’re hers. Do you know they’re hers?”
“No, I don’t. But I do know that somebody killed Jess and put her body at my research facility, and I know that somebody put bloody sheets on my bed. Adding those two things together, I figure somebody’s trying mighty hard to make me look guilty.”
“Any idea why somebody might want to do that?”
“I’ve helped put a lot of people behind bars,” I said. “Could be somebody just got out of prison and wants to get even with me. Jess has helped-Jess had helped-put a lot of people behind bars, too. Could be somebody wanted to kill Jess, and I just happen to be a convenient scapegoat. Maybe Mrs. Willis, who attacked Jess in my office. Maybe Jess’s ex-husband. Maybe somebody from that creationist group-whoever threatened Jess last week and threw a rock through my window today.”
“So what you’re saying is, people are lining up to frame you for murder, is that right, Dr. Brockton? The whole world’s out to get you?”
DeVriess spoke up. “Detective, you asked my client why somebody might want to make him look guilty. He has given you a reasonable answer to that question. If you’re going to start browbeating him, we’re out of here.”
Evers sighed like a long-suffering saint. “All right, tell me the exact sequence of events when you arrived home this evening. Last night, rather.” I did. “Where did you sleep the night before-the night after Dr. Carter’s body was discovered?”
“At home. In my bed.”
“On those sheets?”
“I don’t know. The sheets I slept on two nights ago weren’t bloody. I don’t know if somebody replaced those with a bloody set sometime after that, or if somebody smeared blood on those same sheets after I slept on them.” I thought of something. “That blood didn’t look completely dry to me, Detective. Some of it was still bright red. If Dr. Carter was killed in my bed sometime Saturday or Sunday, the blood would have been dry and brown by Monday night.”
“That’s a good point, Detective,” DeVriess chimed in.
“Not necessarily,” said Evers. “That’s a heavy bedspread. Thick enough to keep in the moisture for days. I’ve seen that happen before.” Evers opened the file folder and pulled out a form I recognized as an autopsy report. I also recognized Garland Hamilton’s handwriting on it. “Dr. Brockton, do you own a handgun?”
“No. I’ve never felt the need to have one. The director of the TBI tried to issue me one once, but I turned it down. When I’m working at a crime scene, I’m usually down on my hands and knees, my butt in the air and my nose to the ground. I wouldn’t see somebody sneaking up on me in time to shoot them. Besides, I’m usually surrounded by armed police officers.”
“What about for protection at home?”
“A lot of people end up getting shot with their own guns. Don’t have one, never have, don’t expect I ever will.”
“So when we search your house-and we’ll have that search warrant within the hour-you’re saying there’s no chance we’ll find the gun that killed Dr. Carter.”
A horrible thought occurred to me, and it must have occurred to DeVriess at the same moment. “Don’t answer that,” he said. “You don’t know what else might have been planted in your home besides that blood.”
“Are you saying we might find other incriminating evidence in your home?”
“Detective, my client can’t speculate about what may or may not have been planted in the house in his absence. If we’re down to hypothetical and rhetorical questions, I think maybe it’s time for us all to go home and get some sleep.”
“Fine, counselor,” he said, “you can go on home. But Dr. Brockton? You can’t. Your house is still secured as a probable crime scene. And we now have a signature on a search warrant.”
“So where am I supposed to go?”
“Not my problem, Doc,” he said. “Just don’t go far.”
I didn’t. As DeVriess and I walked out the front door of KPD for the third time in less than twenty-four hours, I realized that not only did I have no place to go, I had no way to get there. “Damn,” I said. “They’ve stranded me again.”
DeVriess shook his head. “Those bastards. You know they realize they’re doing that. Just one more way to wear you down. You want me to take you to a hotel?” He pointed toward the bluff above the river, where the stepped-pyramid wedge of the Marriott reared against the skyline like some TVA hydroelectric dam that had missed its mark by a quarter mile. “Hell, let’s get you a room there.”
I shook my head. “I’m tired of being in other people’s space,” I said. “You’re going to think I’m nuts, but would you be willing to drop me at my office over at the stadium? I’ve got an old sofa in there that I’ve spent the last twenty years breaking in. I can’t think of anyplace I’d rather try to sleep right now than on that sofa, surrounded by my skeletal collection.”
He laughed. “You’re right, Doc,” he said. “I do think you’re nuts. But come on, I’ll drop you off.”
There was no mistaking which of the handful of cars in the KPD parking lot was Burt’s. Parked beneath one of the sodium vapor lights was a gleaming black Bentley. It looked like what you’d get if you mated a Jaguar with a Rolls-Royce, and I suspected it was worth nearly as much as my house. The seats were upholstered in a butter-soft leather of silvery gray, and the dash was covered in what looked like burl oak, which I could tell, even in the dimness of the night, was not plastic. The door swung shut on what felt like jeweled bearings, and when the engine started, I could barely hear it, but what I heard sounded big and softly powerful. Burt pulled out of the lot and turned onto Hill Avenue, taking the same arched bridge I had crossed on foot a few hours before, on my way to hire him. Crossing the bridge in the Bentley, though, was like cruising in a luxury yacht.
I guide
d DeVriess through the labyrinthine route along the base of the stadium to the end-zone gate where a stairwell led to my office. Besides my pickup and UT maintenance trucks, few vehicles ever threaded this single lane of asphalt snaking among the girders and pilings; I was quite sure this was the first Bentley to do so, and probably the last. By the time the car stopped, I was half asleep in the leather.
“You want me to make sure you get in all right?” DeVriess asked.
I thanked him but refused. “I’ll be fine,” I said. It wasn’t true-I was far from fine-but getting safely inside wasn’t going to be the problem. It was being inside, and alone, that had me worried, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to fix that.
As I unlocked my office and walked inside, I caught a fleeting glimpse out the window of expensive taillights disappearing into the labyrinth. And then it was dark, and I was alone. Pausing only long enough to step into my small bathroom and pee, then take off my shoes, I crawled onto the battered sofa beneath the bank of dirty windows. Even as I laid my head on the soiled armrest, I felt myself spiraling down into blackness.
CHAPTER 32
JESS WAS STRETCHED OUT in my bed, lying on her back as we made love, her hands gripping the spindles of the cherry headboard. And then I looked in her eyes and saw that she was dead, and I got up and began refashioning the bed into a coffin for her. I fitted the wooden lid in place and began hammering the nails home. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
“Dr. Brockton? Are you in there?” Tap, tap, tap. “Dr. Brockton? Bill?”
I shook my head and rubbed the sleep from my eyes and the numbness from my face. Sunlight was casting short shadows from the girders of the stadium, which meant I must have slept until midday. Not surprising, maybe, considering the day and the night I’d just had, and the fact that I hadn’t curled up on the sofa until nearly daybreak.
“Dr. Brockton?” As I hauled myself awake, I realized that I was hearing two different voices outside my door. One belonged to Peggy, my secretary; the other was less familiar, but finally I recognized it, and I knew this wasn’t going to be good news.
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