Cut to the Bone

by Jefferson Bass

  He wasn’t bad looking—not bad at all—and built, too. Strong looking, clean-cut. But that worried her: muscles and a short haircut. “You aren’t a cop, are you? You look like a cop. How do I know you’re not a cop?”

  “Search me,” he said, and laughed at his joke. “Too late, anyhow—you’ve already offered me sexual services for money. If I was a cop, you’d be busted already. But I’m not; I’m a soldier. Navy SEAL, just back from Iraq. Operation Desert Storm.” He showed her his right forearm, which was tattooed with what looked like a bird of some sort—an eagle, she guessed—clutching a three-pronged spear. His other arm had a tat, too—what was that, a snake? God, she hoped not; Desirée hated snakes. “You oughta do me for free,” the guy said. “One patriotic service person to another.” He laughed again, and acted like he might take away the twenty.

  “You serve your country for free, soldier boy?” She plucked the bill from his fingers and tucked it into her bra, then settled back in the seat and closed her eyes, anticipating the hum of the cocaine. She needed it—not just to quiet the jangle in her nerves, but to dull the ache in her tooth, too: a big abscess at the base of a molar, getting bigger and hurting like a sonofabitch. Jamming a bit of blow into the hole—down the hatch, that’s what she thought now every time she tamped in the powder—would put out the fire in her jaw. Dull the jagged, broken-glass edge of the pain, at least for a while.

  It was a long five minutes. She felt the car make a couple of stops and a few turns, but mostly it was thrumming along a straightaway, the tires singing and the exhaust pipes purring like a big cat. When the car stopped, she opened her eyes. Straight ahead she saw tree trunks and leaves, the greens and browns washed-out looking in the glare of the headlights. Closer, between the car and the woods, rusting I beams reared from the ground; leaning forward, she saw a billboard looming over them. COMFORT INN, the fading letters read, but there was no hotel in sight. Off to the left, through the driver’s window, she saw four lanes of cars and semis whizzing along a freeway, their headlights and taillights dimmed by the window’s deep tint. Through a glass darkly, she thought. Bible verses still popped into her head sometimes, even after all these years. Always in her daddy’s voice, big as God’s, booming down from that pulpit. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face. She turned to see his face. “Where we at?”

  “Cahaba Lane.”

  “Where the hell’s Cahaba Lane?”

  “Right here, darlin’. Right here. Come on, let’s go.” He opened his door, and the rushing sounds and harsh lights of the freeway traffic pressed in upon her—hundreds of people streaming by, close at hand yet worlds away, oblivious within the cocoons of their cars and trucks. He got out and came around to her side of the car and opened her door, almost like he was her real boyfriend. But she felt a chill—maybe the coolness of the night, or maybe something else—and she didn’t move. “Come on,” he said again, not so cheerful sounding this time. “Let’s go.” He reached in and took hold of her elbow, pulling and lifting. He was strong. Her hand slid out from under her thigh, and her shirt rode up, exposing her lower ribs and the tuck of her waist and, below that, the jutting hipbone and shadowy hollow where her hip curved into her belly. “You want that other forty, don’t you, darlin’? And that snowflake, too. I know you want that.” He reached his left hand toward her, too—shit, the tattoo was a snake, and the head of the snake was in the hand that opened its jaws and then clamped down on her arm. He was pulling her with both hands now—dragging her—with a strength she was helpless to oppose. She came out of the car sideways, her knees and the fishnets raked by the pavement and a few shards of glass, before he raised her up, set her on her wobbly heels, and led her up a path that threaded between the I beams and up the slope.

  Up into the woods.

  Down into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 13

  Brockton

  I WAS PROBING THE carpeting in the dean’s outer office with the toe of a shoe—a clean, pig-shit-free shoe—and trying to estimate the thickness of the pile: an inch? inch and a half? I wasn’t delighted to be cooling my heels here; he’d delayed and then canceled our meeting the prior week, so I was feeling low on the dean’s priority list. Would he stand me up again today? Glancing up, I noticed Carissa, the dean’s secretary, watching me, the phone in her hand, amusement on her face. “He’s ready to see you now, Dr. Brockton.”

  I stood up and headed for the dean’s doorway. My left toe snagged in the divot I’d pressed into the plush pile, and I stumbled briefly. Carissa worked to stifle a laugh, and I shrugged sheepishly. “Smooth,” I said. “Do I know how to make an entrance, or what?” She smiled and to my surprise blushed. Hmm, I thought as I entered the dean’s inner sanctum.

  He stood behind his desk—a big walnut desk in a big walnut-paneled office—and reached across to shake my hand. “Good to see you, Bill,” he said. “I was just looking at the fall class enrollments. Looks like Anthropology’s booming.”

  “We’re holding our own,” I said, trying to sound modest, but betrayed by a proud grin. Our numbers had doubled during each of my three years at UT; my 1991 session of Anthropology 101—the intro course—had moved from a classroom to a small lecture hall. This fall’s section of Human Origins was meeting in a three-hundred-seat auditorium, and all three hundred seats were taken.

  “What can I do for you? Wait, let me guess—you want to put a dome over the stadium and move your Intro class into the grandstands?”

  “Hmm. Now that you mention it, that sounds like a great idea,” I said. “Extend my office across the hall, punch a hole through the wall, and build me a little balcony over the south end zone. I could be like the pope, talking to his flock down in Saint Peter’s Square.”

  “The Pope of Neyland Stadium. I like it. I’ll need to run it by the Athletic Department—probably Religion, too—but I can’t see why they’d object, can you?” His eyes flicked to a spot over my right shoulder—to the spot on the back wall where a clock ticked loudly—and I knew the banter was over. “So what brings you here today? Usually I only see you when I have to haul you in and slap your wrist for telling off-color jokes that make the freshman girls blush. I don’t think I’ve had a complaint so far this fall. Of course, we’re not far into the semester.”

  “I need some land,” I said. “To put dead bodies on.”

  “I already gave you some land,” he said. “Up at the Holston farm. Land, and a barn, too.”

  “You did, and I appreciate it. Really. We’ve got a good start on the skeletal collection—we’re up to a dozen already—and the medical examiner in Johnson City just sent me another body the other day. Thing is, the location’s a problem.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, it’d be fine if all I wanted to do was store bodies while they skeletonized.”

  “But?”

  “But I want us to start a research program.” I pointed a finger at him, in what I hoped he would see as a good-natured manner. “You want us to start a research program, remember?” He nodded slightly; noncommittally. “And now I’ve got a plan.”

  “What kind of plan?”

  “To study human decomposition in the extended postmortem interval. What happens to bodies after death? When does it happen? How do variables affect the process—variables like temperature, humidity, placement of the body, grave depth, insect activity, all sorts of things?”

  “How is that anthropology?”

  “It’s forensic anthropology,” I said. “Every time the police call me out to look at a decaying body, they want to know how long the person has been dead. It helps focus their search. Helps narrow the field of suspects. Helps confirm or refute alibis. Thing is, I usually can’t tell them how long somebody’s been dead. Nobody can tell them. Not with any scientific confidence.”

  His eyes narrowed a bit. “Is this about that Civil War colonel? The one you thought had been dead only a
year? Are you still smarting about that?”

  “Yes and no,” I said. “Do I hate having my nose rubbed in that when I’m on the witness stand in another case? Sure. But I’m a scientist. The takeaway message, besides the reminder that I’m not infallible, is that we need to do more research. A lot more research. And to do that, we need land close to campus.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with the pig farm?”

  “Besides the pig crap? It takes half an hour to get out there. If my graduate students have to drive all the way out there two or three times a day to get research data, it’ll take ’em ten years to do their dissertations. We need someplace close.” I pointed over his shoulder, out his window. “Look at all that empty space behind your office. We could put twenty, thirty bodies out there, easy.” He looked alarmed. “Or,” I quickly went on, “you could give me that patch of junk land near the hospital instead.”

  “What junk land near the hospital?”

  “Right across the river—behind UT Medical Center—there’s a place where the hospital used to burn their trash, back when medical waste could be dumped in an open pit and burned. There’s two or three acres there. Plenty of room for what I’ve got in mind.”

  “Are you talking about the dairy farm? That’s the Ag school’s pride and joy.”

  “No, I’m not making a grab for the dairy farm. That’s on the north side of the hospital. This is on the east side. At the far corner of the employees’ parking lot. It’s mostly woods, except for a little clearing where the burn pit used to be.”

  He tented his fingers, a gesture that I knew meant he was giving the matter serious thought. “Well,” he mused, “that would certainly give the hospital a unique position in the world of medicine. There can’t be another university medical center that’s bordered by cows on one side and corpses on the other. A dairy farm and a body farm.” He gave his head a slow shake and smiled wryly. “This is not exactly how I envisioned my contribution to higher learning, back when I was writing my dissertation on the decline and fall of the British Empire.” He pressed his index fingers to his lips, and then flexed and straightened the tented fingers rhythmically, like a spider doing push-ups on a mirror. After half a dozen push-ups, he nodded and laid his hands on the desk. “Okay, I’ll make some calls. On one condition.”

  “What’s that?” Now it was my turn to feel nervous.

  “No more tawdry jokes during class.”

  “Deal,” I said, standing and making tracks for the door before he could change his mind. “I’ll save them for afterward.”

  As I hurried through the outer office, I heard his voice behind me. “Hey, wait. . . .” Without turning, I waved good-bye to Carissa and kept moving.

  THE BONE LAB WAS empty and locked. Peering through the small glass window in the steel door, I saw two trays of bones—pubic bones—sitting on a lab table, but no signs of life. Crap, I thought, he’s probably at the Annex. I’d dialed the extension there and gotten no answer, but I knew that if Tyler wasn’t in the bone lab, the odds were good that he was at the Annex. That meant another trek across the scorching parking lot, but my mood was too ebullient for me to care. Besides, I’d be totally drenched in sweat before long anyhow.

  Tyler looked up from the sink, surprised, when I walked in. “Hey, Dr. B. Was that you that called a few minutes ago?”

  “It was.”

  “Sorry I didn’t pick up.” By way of explanation, he held up a femur and a scrub brush. The femur—like the two hundred other bones still in the steam kettle—was from the guy we’d taken out to the pig barn two weeks before. In the space of just fourteen days, bacteria and bugs had consumed virtually all the soft tissue, leaving behind nothing but bare bones, a greasy stain in the dirt of the barn floor, and another body’s worth of stench. Fortunately, my sense of smell was fairly poor—it was one of my best qualifications for my work—so the odors of death and decomposition didn’t bother me as much as they bothered most people.

  Tyler turned his attention back to the bone. “This guy must’ve had a hell of a limp,” he said, giving the bone a final rinse. “This femur’s two inches shorter than the other one. I thought he felt lopsided when we were carrying him. Here, take a look.” He patted the bone dry with a surgical pad and handed it to me. It was warped and had a thick knot at mid-shaft, like a tree branch that’s been cracked and has healed with a prominent and permanent deformity.

  “Looks like he had a comminuted, displaced fracture,” I said, “and never got it set. Must have been years ago, though. See how much the bone has remodeled to try to smooth out that discontinuity and those sharp edges?” He nodded. “Must’ve hurt for the rest of his life, though,” I added. “Even with the remodeling, that had to interfere with the muscles and tendons.” I handed the bone back to him, and he laid it on the counter, alongside the longer, straighter femur. I waited, expecting a question, but he seemed preoccupied with the bones. “Aren’t you even going to ask?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Ask what?”

  “Why I’m here.”

  He shrugged. “So, Dr. B, why’re you here?”

  “Excellent question. Two reasons, actually. One, good news. I met with the dean earlier today, and he just now called me to let me know: We’ve got the land behind the hospital.”

  “Hey, that’s great. When can we start setting things up?”

  “Another excellent question. Today.”

  “Great. Wait. Today?” I nodded. “You mean today today?” I nodded again. “Today, when it feels like mid-August, not late September? With a heat index of 103?”

  “We’ve got to get started before the bureaucrats come to their senses and change their minds,” I said. “Strike while the iron’s hot.”

  “Hot? The iron’s gonna be molten out there today,” he groaned.

  “Quit whining. This is important. We’re embarking on our research program. Here.” Reaching a hand behind my back, I extricated the small paperback book I’d tucked into my belt. It was limper and damper than it had been before I’d made the sweltering walk from the stadium to the Annex.

  Tyler took it and studied the cover, his face growing more puzzled by the moment. “Uh, thanks?” he said finally. “The Washing Away of Wrongs. Theology?” I shook my head. “And what’s with the Sumo-wrestler cartoon on the cover? And all the Japanese symbols?”

  “It’s a forensic investigation manual,” I said. “The world’s first. Written in China, not Japan. In the thirteenth century.” Tyler was starting to look interested. “And that’s not a sumo wrestler, that’s a dead guy. It’s a coroner’s diagram. From seven hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “Cool.”

  “Check out page sixty-eight—‘The Case of the Bloody Sickle’—it’s directly relevant to your thesis project. Your new thesis project. We can talk about it after you lay some yoga moves on the trees and underbrush out at our lavish new research complex.”

  THE STRENGTH IN MY forearms was gone—I could scarcely hold up the chain saw—so I released the throttle trigger and the engine wound down to idle as the saw dropped. But the oiled chain continued to spin, the teeth still coasting, as the bar of the saw swung down toward my left leg. Almost as if I were outside my own body, I watched as the chain tore through the canvas of my coveralls and ripped into the flesh of my thigh. The teeth had nearly stopped by the time they reached the skin—the chain slid only a few more inches—but the chain was new and sharp, and my hide wasn’t as tough as tree bark. For a few seconds I saw the clean edges of pink flesh—as if the tissue itself were as surprised as I was by the sudden turn of events—and then the blood welled up, filling the gash and oozing out, seeping into the fabric. “Well, damn,” I muttered. I didn’t feel any pain yet; for the moment, all I felt was stupid.

  Setting down the saw, I shucked off my leather gloves and fished a sweaty bandanna from my back pocket to blot the cut so I could see how much dama
ge I’d done. Not too bad, I thought with relief—scarcely more than a nick, in fact: an inch long and maybe an eighth-inch deep. I’d gotten off lucky. Very, very lucky. Rolling the bandanna diagonally into a long, flat band, I tied it snugly around my thigh to stanch the bleeding, then flexed and stretched my fingers prior to resuming my assault on the deadfall pines—a tangled half-dozen trees killed by pine beetles and then toppled by a storm. My thigh was now starting to ache, but we needed to finish what we’d started, and fast; I’d arranged for a concrete truck to arrive the next morning at nine, and unless we finished clearing the trees out of the way, the truck wouldn’t be able to reach the site and pour the pad.

  I reached down for the chain saw. As I tugged it off the ground, I noticed movement: blowflies—a dozen or more—taking flight from the blood-smeared chain. I smiled; it was a twentieth-century reminder of the thirteenth-century case I’d just told Tyler to read about.

  ONE OF THE BENEFITS of having offices in Stadium Hall, a former dormitory, was the abundance of showers. One of those showers was located in my own private bathroom in my own private hideaway: a second office, located a hundred yards—literally, the length of the football field—from the bustle and distractions of the main Anthropology Department offices. After Tyler and I had finished clearing and leveling the patch of ground that would become the new Anthropology Research Facility—a big, fancy name for a small, primitive place—I’d gone to my hideaway to shower and to glue my leg back together with Super Glue.

  Just as I sat down on the toilet and picked up the tube of glue, my phone rang. “Oh, hell,” I muttered, clutching a towel around me and scurrying to my desk. “Hello?”