The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5 (13 page)

“Damn, Doc,” said Emert.

“Go on,” prompted Thornton.

“It was just once,” I said. “A couple of weeks before we found out she was the one who’d killed Novak. She’d helped me find the place where the soldier’s body was buried back in 1945. I…Iliked her. She came over to my house one night….”

“I know,” said Thornton.

“What?” said Emert.

“What?” I echoed. “You know? You knew? How?”

“We had you under surveillance,” he said.

“Youwhat ? Why the hell did you have me under surveillance?”

“Christ, Doc,” said Emert. “Could it be because you were having an affair with a deranged killer?”

“Good grief, don’t be stupid, Emert,” said Thornton cheerfully. “You think we knew she was a deranged killer but decided to let the Doc get a little nooky before we arrested her? You think Dr. Brockton was weeks ahead of the Bureau and Oak Ridge’s finest in solving the crime?”

“Okay,” said the detective testily, “so whydid you put him under surveillance?”

“Because we thought he might be at risk. Novak was dead from radiation exposure, Dr. Garcia was badly injured, and Dr. Brockton and his assistant were also exposed. Hell, Emert,you were exposed—we thoughtyou might be at risk, too.”

“So why didn’t you put me under surveillance?” badgered the detective.

“Maybe we did,” said Thornton.

“Shit,” said Emert again. “Can I just say for the record that I’m feeling totally out of the loop here, in every way possible?”

“Sure you can,” said Thornton, still cheerful. “Nothing personal, though. The Novak case was, and is, a very high-profile case. We put a lot of resources into it, especially early on, when we thought there might be a threat of terrorism with nuclear materials. There are all sorts of avenues we’ve pursued that we haven’t felt the need to disclose to local law enforcement.”

“Excuse me, guys,” I said. “Fascinating as I find this jurisdictional discussion, and loath as I am to return to my personal shame, I’m wondering if you need to ask me more questions. Chip, since you already knew that Isabella had spent the night at my house, had you already figured out what I was calling about today?”

“I had a pretty good idea,” he said. “Soon as I saw ‘home pregnancy test, positive,’ on the inventory of stuff from the sewer, the lightbulb went on.”

“How come you never asked me about that night she spent at my house? You knew about it months ago.”

“At first it seemed like none of our business—even though we were keeping an eye on you. When we’re doing surveillance, we learn a lot of details about people’s personal lives. We had no idea Isabella was relevant to the Novak case. We thought she was just a random civilian. And, by the way, a totally hot librarian. By the time we realized she’d killed Novak, she was on the run. And she didn’t run toward you when she ran. She ran away from you. It’s not like you’ve aided and abetted.”

“So you’re not thinking I’ve done something wrong.”

“Sexually risky, yeah. Criminally wrong? No. Not unless there’s something else you haven’t told us.”

“No, that’s it. What now?”

“We keep looking,” Thornton said. “We’re already checking medical clinics for female patients who came in with burned hands. Now we’ll start checking for prenatal care, too. But there are a hell of a lot of clinics in the United States. Meanwhile, I trust you’ll let me or Emert know if she contacts you.”

“I’m not holding my breath,” said Emert. “Nobody ever tells me anything.”

“Good grief, Emert, don’t be a baby,” said Thornton. “I gotta go. Doc, give my regards to Price and Rankin.” He clicked off, leaving me to wonder how much he knew about their body-brokering investigation—and how much they knew about my personal but not-so-private life.

“Hey, Doc?” Emert was still on the line. “Who are Price and Rankin?”

“Can’t tell you,” I said, and hung up.

BURT DEVRIESS’S LAW OFFICE OCCUPIED SOME OF
the swankiest real estate in downtown Knoxville: the twentieth floor of Riverview Tower, a sleek skyscraper—tall enough to scrape Knoxville’s sky at least—perched on the bluff near the headwaters of the Tennessee River. The streamlined oval building was clad in alternating horizontal bands of green glass and stainless steel. Early in our acquaintance, as we’d walked back to his office from a court hearing, Grease had nudged me and pointed to the building. “Just look at it, Doc,” he’d said, “all green and silver. The color of money. No wonder I love it.”

Today I was the only passenger in the elevator, which whisked me up without stopping, the air in the shaft whistling slightly during the ascent. DeVriess had phoned to ask if I wanted to drop by for an interesting tidbit about the Willoughby case. His call caught me on my way back to campus from my session with Dr. Hoover. I was still feeling antsy and anxious, so I was grateful for the distraction of an errand and an inside scoop.

I was also glad to have occasion to see DeVriess’s assistant, Chloe Matthews, again. I’d first met Chloe a year earlier, the afternoon I’d walked in off the street, the taste of freshly swallowed pride rising bitter in my throat, and asked DeVriess to defend me against a murder charge. Chloe had greeted me that dark day with a welcoming smile and a warm handshake. I’d been grateful then, and I was grateful still. She was on the phone when I walked in, but she flashed that same smile at me and held up a finger to tell me she’d be with me momentarily. As the call dragged on through several of Chloe’s attempts to wrap it up, she rolled her eyes and made the universal hand-puppet motion for “yak, yak, yak” with her right hand. “Sorry,” she said as she finally hung up with a head shake. “My mother, bless her heart, calling to complain about how longher mother keeps her on the phone. So now I’m complaining to you, and you can complain to Mr. DeVriess about me.”

“And then Burt can phone your grandmother to gripe about me,” I teased. “How’ve you been? And how’s the speed dating working out?” The last time I’d seen Chloe, she was about to go on a speed date, a round-robin lunch gathering where single people spent five or ten minutes auditioning a series of other single people.

“Utter disaster,” she laughed. “It took me twenty years to get over junior high school, and one hour of speed dating undid two decades of progress and self-esteem. I clammed up and turned into a total geek again.”

I found it hard to imagine the attractive, articulate, and confident woman in front of me as a geek.

“Did you ever try it?” she asked.

“Actually, I did look into it once,” I confessed, “but I got rejected even before I got in the door. Too old.”

“You? Too old? No way,” she scoffed.

“Seriously. You have to be under fifty. I’ve missed my chance by a year or three.”

“Well, that’s just speed dating’s loss,” she said. “Anyhow, I think Match.com or Facebook would be better for you. Those sites have zillions of women in their forties and fifties, and I’m sure they’d be fighting over you tooth and nail.” She frowned. “The problem is, online dating can turn into a full-time job.”

For an insane split second, I considered saying, “I’m about to be really busy raising an out-of-wedlock baby I accidentally fathered,” but instead I opted for, “Heavens, Chloe, I can barely handle the job I’ve already got.”

“Oh, nonsense.” The phone rang, and she stuck out her tongue at the display. “Mr. DeVriess’s office,”

she answered cheerfully. “…I’m so sorry, Judge Wilcox, he’s taking a deposition right now…. I know, I told him, but he’s been tied up all day…. I’ll make sure he calls you as soon as he’s free…. Yes, sir, I’ll remind him it’s important…. Thank you. Good-bye.” She made a face as she hung up. “What a pompous ass. Thinks he was appointed by God Almighty.” Her lips pursed. “Or thinks God Almighty was appointed by him. Let me tell Mr. DeVriess you’re here.” She lifted the telephone receiver and pressed the intercom button. “Dr. Brockton’s here…. I’ll send him right back.” She hung up. “You know your way, right?”

“I do. But I thought you just said he was in a deposition.”

“I did. He is,” she laughed. “Every single time Judge Wilcox calls.” She waved me through the frosted-glass door behind her.

Burt DeVriess’s office was positioned in the eastern curve of Riverview Tower. A glass door behind his desk opened onto a private balcony overlooking the river, a marina, condos, the cozy runway of Island Home Airport, and a thirty-foot, tenton orange basketball, forever hanging in mid-swish, halfway through the forty-foot hoop atop the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Out the broad band of windows to the side, the dark green river spooled beneath the bright green trusswork of the Gay Street Bridge, Knoxville’s bridge of choice for suicidal jumpers. Across the river, atop a kudzu-covered bluff stretching from the angular struts of the Gay Street Bridge to the graceful arches of the Henley Street Bridge, sprawled the vestiges of Baptist Hospital, torn down to make way for a new medical center that had been scrapped even before construction began.

DeVriess was seated behind a sleek glass table, which served as his desk. The glass—the same green as the building’s windows—was spotless and empty, except for an art deco reading lamp, a thick file folder, and the silk-sleeved elbows of DeVriess. “Hey, Doc, have a seat.” The two chairs facing the desk had slender, angular frames of glossy black wood; their backs and seats were strung crosswise with fine cords of nylon, thin as the strings of a violin.

I eyed the nearer chair doubtfully. “Are you sure this thing will hold me up?”

“Hell, Doc,” he said, “that would hold up you and me both, with a couple hundred pounds of legal files sitting on our laps. If it breaks, sue me.” I laid a hand on the seat and gave an experimental push. The taut cords scarcely moved. I plucked one with a fingernail, and it hummed like a guitar string. “Go ahead, try it.” I sat, nervously at first, then with increasing confidence. I’d expected the cords to dig into me, but the chair was surprisingly comfortable. “Aren’t they cool? Designed by a Canadian architect in the 1950s. Manufactured by a company that made tennis rackets. Simple but elegant.”

“Don’t you worry that somebody might sit down with something sharp sticking out of a back pocket?

I’m guessing that if one cord got cut, the whole thing would implode.”

“Hadn’t occurred to me to worry about that,” he said. “Remind me to frisk you next time you come in.”

He tapped the file in front of him. “I dug up some interesting history on Ivy Mortuary. They were sued in 1999 by the widower of a woman who died and was cremated. Seems the cremains came back with a shiny set of dentures tucked inside the bag, but the deceased had died with a jack-o-lantern handful of rotting teeth. Turns out the funeral home swapped her cremains with those of a guy who wore dentures. Needless to say, the toothless guy’s family wasn’t real happy about the mix-up either. They sued, too.”

“Who won?”

“Both families settled out of court. The sum wasn’t disclosed, but I hear it was around fifty thousand apiece. I could’ve gotten ’em a lot more.”

It wasn’t an idle boast. DeVriess had won a huge class-action lawsuit against a Georgia crematorium that had dumped bodies in the woods instead of incinerating them—a move that, in the short run, saved fifty or a hundred bucks’ worth of propane per body but that eventually cost millions of dollars in legal claims, as well as incalculable emotional pain. DeVriess’s own Aunt Jean, in fact, had been one of the 339

bodies the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had found amid the pines. I vividly remembered the day I’d identified her remains in a refrigerated semi trailer, one of five that served as makeshift morgues at the site of the gruesome discovery, and I also recalled the deep distress the discovery had caused DeVriess and his Uncle Edgar.

“There was a prior case against Ivy, in 1997,” he went on. “Fancy funeral, open casket, the family’s saying their final goodbyes, and the widow faints when she sees maggots in the mouth of her dearly departed husband.”

“Jeez. How long had the corpse been lying around at the funeral home? Was he embalmed? Didn’t they have him in a cooler?”

“He’d only been at the funeral home for about twenty-four hours. But he’d died three days before that, down in Mississippi, fishing. Somebody found him floating in his fishing boat around midafternoon, and he’d launched his boat early in the morning.”

“So the flies had plenty of time to lay eggs in his nose and mouth while he was drifting around outdoors. That doesn’t sound like the fault of the funeral home.”

“Ha,” he said. “That might be true, but try telling that to a jury that’s been reduced to tears by the traumatized widow. The funeral home—actually, their insurance company—settled for half a million, and they were lucky to get off that easy.”

“I could’ve gotten ’em a lot less,” I said, and he laughed at the topspin I’d put on his earlier comment.

“So are you planning to share this with Culpepper?”

“Already have.”

“My, my, aren’t you helpful, Counselor?”

He lifted his hands in a magnanimous gesture. “Ain’t it the truth,ain’t it the truth? Plus, I figure it’s probably wise not to blindside Culpepper with my next move.”

I should have known that Grease would be working some sort of angle. “And what’s your next move?”

“I want to exhume more of the people Ivy buried. Turn over a few more rocks, see what else crawls out.”

“You planning another class-action suit, Burt? The funeral home’s out of business, remember?”

“But their insurance company’s not.”

“And the insurance company’s still on the hook for claims, years after their client’s ceased to exist?”

“Arguable,” he conceded, “but there’s probably a case here. Statutes of repose cover how long the insurance company is on the hook. Of course, if it’s a clear case of fraud, rather than a mistake, the insurance company will argue that they’re not liable—fraud would be the action of an individual, not the mortuary. But I’ll argue that there’s a pattern of negligence, since there were multiple problems.”

“Sounds like a lot of arguing,” I said.

“It’s not a slam dunk, but it’s worth a try.”

“Is it, Burt? No offense, but you’re already rich. How much richer do you need to be?”