With a casual wave of his hand and a loud pop of his gum, Culpepper left me to ponder the prospect of my own cremation.
CHAPTER 19
“Seems like we’ve been here before!” shouted Miranda over the roar of the backhoe as it tugged at another coffin — this one the blue-green of oxidized copper — deep in a grave in Highland Cemetery. A rolling, parklike cemetery in the Bearden area, Highland was the nearest burial ground to the moneyed manses of my richer Sequoyah Hills neighbors.
“Déjà vu all over again!” yelled Grease. “Did you see that movie? Deja Vu? With Will Smith? Think of me as Knoxville’s Will Smith.”
“Good God, man,” Miranda scolded, “that was Denzel Washington.”
“So think of me as Knoxville’s Denzel Washington.”
“Hard to do,” she shot back. “You’re not tall, dark, and handsome. You’re not even tall, dark, or handsome.”
He threw her a look of mock indignation. “But I gave an Oscar-worthy performance when I argued Judge Wilcox into signing the order for this exhumation.”
“Tell me about that,” I said, pulling on my gloves. “I was surprised when you called.”
“I used the old lawsuits I dug up — the complaints I exhumed, you might say — to convince him that Ivy Mortuary was engaged in a systematic pattern of fraud. He was willing to grant me one additional exhumation. I figured it made sense to go for another body that was buried around the same time as Willoughby’s.”
“Conspiracy theory meets fishing expedition,” observed Miranda.
“Like the Tom Waits song says,” DeVriess added, “‘Fishin’ for a good time starts with throwin’ in your line.’”
“Looks like you’ve snagged a big one,” I said as the backhoe hoisted the coffin out of the grave. The operator swung the arm to one side of the grave and set the coffin on a rectangle of artificial turf. Then he throttled the machine to idle and clambered down to unhook the cable sling.
This time the backhoe had reeled in Gill Pendergrast, a thirty-nine-year-old white male who’d been killed in a motorcycle wreck a week before Trey Willoughby’s death. Both the accident report and the newspaper story DeVriess had found indicated that Pendergrast had died of massive head injuries sustained in the crash — he hadn’t been wearing a helmet — so I was braced to see a crushed skull when I cranked open the lid of the coffin. I was also prepared to see another limbless corpse.
I was not, however, prepared to see what the coffin actually contained: four pillow-shaped paper bags, each labeled PLAY-GROUND SAND 50 POUNDS.
* * *
“Knoxville police are investigating two bizarre cases of grave robbing,” began WBIR anchorman Randall Gibbons in that evening’s television newscast. “We should warn you, this story is disturbing and some of the images that follow are graphic.” I wasn’t sure whether the warning was meant to deter viewers from watching it or deter them from switching to another channel.
Gibbons had coanchored the broadcast with Maureen Gershwin until her on-camera death a few weeks before; his transition to solo anchor had been smooth, though I noticed that I still missed Maurie. “One of the bizarre body thefts came to light today,” Gibbons continued, “when a coffin exhumed at Highland Cemetery was found to contain four bags of sand instead of a body. The other theft — discovered last week at Old Gray Cemetery — was more gruesome: The corpse of a man exhumed for a DNA paternity test was found to be missing both arms and both legs. Police say both thefts occurred before burial, not afterward; they also say both bodies were buried in 2003, after funeral services at Ivy Mortuary.” The footage included wide shots and close-ups of Pendergrast’s copper coffin and its sandy contents, as well as deliberately blurred KPD crime-scene photos of Willoughby’s limbless body.
The story included brief bios of the two men, as well as a few sentences about the life and death of Ivy Mortuary. Then it segued to a brief interview with me, in which I said that whoever amputated Willoughby’s limbs seemed to know what they were doing, and a longer interview with Burt DeVriess, who denounced exploitation and dark misdeeds in “the death-care industry” without ever quite accusing Ivy or any other funeral home of specific crimes.
The footage also included a gum-smacking Culpepper, who asked anyone with information about the thefts or Ivy Mortuary to contact KPD.
The anchorman ended the story with a dramatic flair Grease himself might have envied — or might, I realized, have suggested: “Police investigators and the colorful attorney say they won’t rest in peace until those responsible for the skullduggery have been brought to justice.”
CHAPTER 20
Among the viewing audience for WBIR’s grave-robbing robbing story was my new therapist, Dr. Hoover. I learned this the morning after the newscast, when I arrived for my nine o’clock appointment.
“Fascinating,” said Dr. Hoover. “Life and death, crime and punishment, justice and injustice — your work really does wrestle with the Big Questions, doesn’t it?”
I allowed as how perhaps it did, but that my own personal wrestling match had taken the limelight, especially since my talk with Jeff had ended so abruptly and painfully.
“Any thoughts on why he walked out on you?”
Dr. Hoover’s hands were clasped in his lap, his elbows resting on the arms of the wingback chair. He seemed relaxed but intent, focused on taking in whatever meaning I could put into words. His openness and attention seemed to wick word and thought out of me; it made me think of osmosis and the way a difference in pressure allows nutrients to flow through a cell’s membrane.
“I think he was surprised,” I began. “No — shocked.”
“What would have been shocking to him?”
“Maybe the idea that he might be about to acquire a half brother or half sister thirty years younger than he is. Or maybe the idea that his dad could be so incredibly irresponsible as to impregnate a virtual stranger.”
“Is that what you were? Incredibly irresponsible?”
“That seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?”
He shrugged. “‘Irresponsible’ is one word you could use. What are some others?”
“I don’t know. ‘Foolish’? ‘Immature’? ‘Naïve’?”
He bowed his head slightly, a gesture that was becoming familiar to me; it meant that he’d heard what I’d said but didn’t necessarily agree with it. “I’m remembering the recording you brought me a couple of sessions ago, the one where you described the night that Isabella came to your house.” He opened a manila file that had been tucked into the chair beside him. Flipping through it, he pulled out a page. “This is a transcript of the recording. May I read you a few of the things you said?”
I nodded, and his eyes scanned down the page.
“You said, ‘She was beautiful.’ You said, ‘Our lives intersected, powerfully but briefly.’ You said, ‘She opened her arms and her body and her desire to me.’ Do you remember saying those things?”
“I do.”
“Were you telling the truth when you said them?”
“I was.”
“So what kind of man, Bill, might make love to a beautiful woman whose life has just intersected with his in a powerful way? What kind of man might make love to a beautiful, intelligent woman who offers him her body and her desire? Can you think of any other words? Words that might be less harsh, less judgmental?”
I tried to summon other adjectives, but without success.
“How about ‘passionate,’ Bill? How about ‘appreciative’?”
I looked up into his eyes and felt them drawing me into a space of kindness.
“How about ‘lonely,’ Bill?”
I felt myself take a quick, ragged breath, and I realized that I was crying.
“How about ‘imperfect’? How about ‘human,’ Bill?”
We sat without speaking for a while, tears pouring from my eyes, compassion or acceptance or understanding emanating from his. My nose began to drip, and I pulled a sheaf of tissues from the box on the tab
le beside me. I mopped my face, then blew my nose, messily and loudly. “God, what should I do about this mess?”
“Which mess?”
I laughed through the tears. The word “mess” could apply with equal aptness to the accidental baby in Isabella’s womb, the unresolved tension with Jeff, or the wad of snotty tissues in my hand. “Well, this one here’s pretty easy to deal with,” I said, plopping the tissues into the wastebasket beside my chair, “but what should I do about the others?”
Hoover smiled. “Instead of talking about what you should do, Bill, can you think about what you want to do, what you choose to do, as the intelligent and kind person that you are?”
“What’s the difference? Isn’t doing the right thing all that really counts?”
“Doing the thing right also matters,” he said. “When you do something because you ‘should,’ there’s a way in which you’re not doing it wholeheartedly, a way in which you’re not completely owning it. There’s a little bit of martyrdom in it, a smidgen of resentment or grudge — sort of ‘Look what you made me do; look how you’re making me suffer.’ I had a client once who went to his wife’s family’s Thanksgiving dinner every year, not because he wanted to but because he ‘should’—because that’s what a good husband has to do, right? And every Thanksgiving he felt trapped and resentful, and so his relatives felt a lot of discomfort around him, because who likes to spend Thanksgiving with somebody who’s pissed off? Finally one year his wife sat him down and said, ‘You’re not invited this year. You radiate resentment the whole time, and that spoils it for everyone else. Do us all a favor by spending the day at home or hunting or hiking, doing something you’d rather be doing.’ Complicated story — they had other issues to work on, not surprisingly — but eventually, once she’d let him off the hook, he decided that he actually wanted to go. And for the first time ever, he had a good time. He discovered interesting things about his in-laws; they discovered that he was a nicer guy than the grouchy husband who’d suffered through all those turkey dinners. What made the difference was that he wanted to go, he chose to go. He went out of ‘get to,’ not out of ‘have to.’ Does that make sense?”
I nodded.
“So as you think about yourself, and your life, and the people you care about, and these things that are swirling around all of you — these messes, if you wish to call them that — what do you want to do, Bill? What do you choose to do, and why?”
I drew one deep breath and then another. “Isabella, that one’s complicated,” I said. “I’m concerned about her.”
“Do you still care about her?”
“Yes.” I was surprised how deeply true the word rang. “I do, but most of that situation is out of my control. As Miranda said, there’s not much I can do, besides wait for the other shoe to drop.” I grimaced. “The baby shoe. My baby shoe.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t another man who got her pregnant?”
“No, not a hundred percent sure. But I am a hundred percent sure that I might have gotten her pregnant. That information is relevant to the FBI investigation. That’s why I had to disclose it. No, wait — that’s why I chose to disclose it.”
He smiled. “That does seem the sort of disclosure a responsible man would make.” He cocked his head slightly to one side. “Why do you think your son is so angry with you?”
“Maybe his feelings are hurt,” I suggested.
“Hurt? Why? Because you didn’t consult him before going to bed with a beautiful woman?”
I imagined myself dialing Jeff’s phone number that night with one hand while ripping off my clothes with the other hand. The image made me laugh again, and the relief of laughter felt like balm to my soul.
He leaned toward me and repeated the question. “Why do you think your son is so angry with you?”
I sighed. I’d hoped I had laid this issue to rest, hoped I’d cleaned up this mess. “Because I was angry with Jeff, I think, after his mother died. Kathleen died three years ago of cancer. Uterine cancer. She’d had a very difficult pregnancy with Jeff, and she had three miscarriages after he was born. When she got cancer — even though it wasn’t until Jeff was grown — I think I associated uterine cancer with childbearing, and with our child. Stupid, and maybe I’m imagining the reason for it, but I did pull away from Jeff after Kathleen died. Truth is, I pulled away from everybody — I pretty much shut down emotionally for a couple of years — but the only person I feel serious regret about pulling away from is Jeff. I wasn’t as warm a father to him as I might have been during that time, and I wasn’t as loving a grandfather to his boys as I wish I’d been.”
“You said ‘for a couple of years.’ So you’d gotten closer to him again?”
“Yes. When I was accused of murder, Jeff stood by me.”
“And the woman you were accused of murdering — you were romantically involved with her, is that right?”
“Yes. Briefly. Her name was Jess Carter. She was the medical examiner in Chattanooga. We were working together on a case, and I had just started to fall for her when she was killed.”
“Was that a sexual relationship?”
I hesitated. “Yes. Barely, but wonderfully. I was falling in love with Jess — I knew Jess — and if she hadn’t been killed, we might have made a life together.”
Dr. Hoover looked startled, and I guessed that he was pondering the bizarre, mirror-image symmetry of my last two lovers: a woman who was murdered, then a murderous woman.
“Anyhow,” I went on, “when I was framed for Jess’s murder, Jeff ended up helping me, and I appreciated it. Over the past year or so, it felt like we’d regained most of the ground we’d lost. Until the night before last.”
“When he walked out on you.”
I nodded.
“Any more thoughts on why he got so angry?”
“Maybe because he had to work pretty hard to get my attention for a while. Maybe because I’ve always not been the most attentive or openhearted dad to him.”
“And yet here you go…?”
“Diverting my limited fatherly resources to some total stranger’s baby. To a murderer’s baby at that.”
“And that might make him feel…?”
“Slighted. Unimportant. Resentful. Afraid that this new baby could be a higher priority, could displace him somehow.”
“You think Jeff fears that another child could cut into his inheritance? That it might diminish his prospects, or his children’s prospects?”
That implication hadn’t even occurred to me. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so.”
“What sort of work does Jeff do?”
“He’s an accountant.”
“And you don’t think he’s imagined how the ledger sheet could change somewhere down the road?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. That might occur to him at some point, but I don’t think it would’ve popped into his head first thing, in the thirty seconds between the moment I told him and the moment he walked out of Panera.”
He nodded, conceding the point. “So how did you feel when he walked out on you? And how do you feel now?”
“Surprised. Confused. Embarrassed. Sad. Mad.”
“Mad then or mad now?”
I felt a flush of shame. “Both.”
“So what sorts of words might describe a son who reacted the way Jeff reacted?”
I looked into the cluster of oil lamps burning in the fireplace. “Same as me. Surprised. Confused. Embarrassed. Sad. Mad.” I looked into Hoover’s face. “Imperfect. Human.”
“And what do you want to do now, Bill?”
I smiled a slightly rueful smile. “I want to call my son and tell him I love him.”
He nodded.
“I want to tell him I didn’t mean to pull the rug out from under him. Ask for his understanding and forgiveness.”
He nodded again.
At the end of the session, I called Jeff to say those things. He didn’t answer, but I said them anyway, telling them to his voice mail.
He didn’t.
CHAPTER 21
The steam-jacketed kettle had done its work well: Thirty-six hours in scalding water, Biz, and Downy had turned the soft tissue surrounding Clarissa Lowe’s cervical vertebrae into shreds of tissue and a slick of grease. If not for the orthopedic hardware and the rank odor, the pot might have contained beef soup bones, simmering their way toward broth.
I fished the spine out of the pot with a large pair of tongs and laid it in the deep, stainless-steel sink of the forensic center’s decomp room. Gripping the hot bones with the tongs, I slipped a scalpel between the vertebrae. Five of the seven parted easily; the other two remained joined by the titanium bracket and the tightly fitted wedge of bone.
I turned on the sink’s faucet — warm, not cold, so as not to risk fracturing the hot bones — and scrubbed the vertebrae with stiff brushes, including a bottle brush to swab out the circular spinal canal. The last shreds of tissue let go easily, swirling down the drain into the hospital’s sewer system. I saved the fused section for last, because I knew it would take more scrubbing, with a smaller brush, to clean the crevices and corners around the metal bracket and the bone graft. When I was satisfied that I’d removed all the soft tissue, I turned off the faucet, shook the water from the bones, and laid them on absorbent surgical pads on the counter. Then, switching on a lighted magnifier, I held the fused segment under the lens. What I saw was a juxtaposition of the familiar and the foreign: the natural curves and planes of the vertebrae, with a trapezoidal wedge of lighter bone — a shape that looked more like a machined part than a human bone — jammed between them, locked into place by lustrous metal and screws.
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