The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5 (36 page)

“It’s too late for that,” Sinclair said to Faust, and then—to me—he added, “He wasn’t stealing the bones, Billy boy, he was putting themback. ”

I was struggling to keep up. “Putting them back? Why would he be putting them back?”

“Because he’d gotten everything he needed from them, right, Glen? Because he likes to think of himself as one of the good guys, right, Glen?” Sinclair waved the gun at Faust. “Get off him.”

Faust released my arms and got to his feet. “Ray, listen,” he said. “If you walk away now, you can get out of here and get a fresh start someplace else.”

“It’s so touching,” said Sinclair, “all this brotherly love and brotherly wisdom. Do you have a big brother, Bill? A half brother? Doesn’t that term, ‘half brother,’ sum up the genetics and the dynamics of it perfectly? It’d be wrong to con a full brother into robbing graves and committing crimes, but it’s okay if he’s only a half brother, right, Glen?”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” said Faust. “I thought that together we could do great things.”

“No, you thoughtyou could do great things, and you were willing to use me along the way. You were the beloved son, the golden boy, the stuff of medical school and engineering school. I was the bastard child, the dirty little secret your father never acknowledged. When I finally tried to join the family, you used me to do your dirty work. I got to get blood on my hands so you wouldn’t have to.”

“You didn’t have to kill that embalmer, Ray. You panicked.”

“Easy for you to say, Glen. You weren’t the one who’d helped him dismember one body and steal another. You weren’t the one about to take a fall.”

“We could have worked something out with him.”

“Bullshit, brother. That’s twenty-twenty hindsight and hundred-percent bullshit. I had a split second to make a decision, and you weren’t there to help me make it.”

“But I’m here now,” Faust said. “Let me help you make this decision. Dr. Brockton’s a good man. He does good work.”

“Helping the cops catch killers? Helping them catch scum like me?”

“Walk away, Ray. Give me the gun and get out of here. We’ll wait an hour, and then I’ll turn myself in. I’ll confess to the Roswell murder.”

Sinclair laughed bitterly. “Nice try, but you know it wouldn’t work. You’ve got an airtight alibi, remember? You were off delivering some keynote speech at Johns Hopkins or the Mayo Clinic when I tried to call you that night.”

“But you’d have a good head start.”

“A good running start?” Sinclair gestured at me with the gun. “Not with him alive. You really think he’d keep quiet to give me a break? He already set me up. I have several powerful reasons to shoot him.” He gave a bitter laugh. “If you really want to help me out, brother, you can confess to two deaths—the embalmer’s and Brockton’s.” He aimed the gun at my chest, and I saw his finger tighten on the trigger. I heard someone—maybe Faust, maybe myself—shouting “No!” as I closed my eyes to die. Something slammed into my chest as the crack of the pistol tore the air. The force of the impact knocked me backward, and my head hit the floor hard enough to daze me. Then I felt weight and warmth and wetness on my chest—groping with a hand, I touched the sticky wetness of blood—but I felt something else on my chest, too, and as my head cleared, I realized that the blood was not my own blood: It was the blood of Faust, who’d flung himself between me and Sinclair as a shield. Blood spurted from a bullet wound in his left temple. I managed to squirm out from under him, and I placed my hands over the hole and pressed. Blood oozed between my fingers.

I looked up at Sinclair. His eyes had a wild, crazed look, and his chest was heaving. He pointed the gun at me again, and again I closed my eyes to die, but again I heard a shot that I did not feel. Sinclair crumpled to the floor, and Special Agent Rooster Rankin—his weapon still smoking—sprang into the room, snatching the gun from Sinclair’s slackening fingers.

Rankin’s shot seemed to rouse Faust; he groaned, and his eyes fluttered open. He stared at me, his gaze gradually coming into focus, and then it flickered sidelong, to the place where Sinclair had fallen. His lids closed tightly, and tears seeped from beneath them.

He opened them again and looked up at me. “Oh, dear God,” he said, “what have I done?”

“Don’t talk,” I said. “We’re calling an ambulance.” I checked the floor for my missing cell phone, but Rankin was already dialing 911 on his. “Just hang on,” I urged Faust.

“Please,” he said. “Let me die.” I felt his hands clutching mine.

“No,” I said. “I won’t let you die.”

Faust worked his fingers underneath my own, struggling to pry my hand off his head wound. I pressed harder, resisting his resistance, and I felt the strength ebbing from his hands and arms.

“Do something for me,” he gasped. “Promise me.” His voice was a whisper and fading fast. I leaned closer, my ear almost against his lips, to hear what he said.

I pulled my face away from Faust’s and stared into his eyes, astonished.

“I promise,” I said, redoubling the pressure on the wound as his eyes closed. “I promise.”

I DID LET FAUST DIE, THOUGH NOT ON PURPOSE. BY THE
time the ambulance transported him the quarter mile from the Body Farm to UT Hospital, his heart had stopped. The ER

trauma team managed to restart it—but by then Faust was brain-dead.

Ironically, that half-living, half-dead state now made it possible, in theory, to grant Faust’s second request, the one he’d whispered just before his heart had stopped. “Give my hands to your friend,” Faust had breathed. “Give my hands to Garcia.”

It was theoretically possible, but it was highly unlikely. For starters, Faust’s tissue type would have to match Eddie’s—UT was doing the needed tests now—and we’d already learned that having a potential donor wasn’t the same as having a good match. Even if the match proved good, though, the hands might not be usable. Emory’s hand-transplant protocol required a beating-heart donor, Dr. Alvarez had explained when I’d phoned her. If Faust’s heart wasn’t beating when he reached Emory, she couldn’t accept the hands, couldn’t transplant them to Eddie. And UT’s trauma team gave Faust’s weakened heart only fifty-fifty odds of surviving the trip to Atlanta.

In any case, Dr. Alvarez had explained, she shouldn’t be talking with me about this. “UT Hospital needs to tell the Knoxville organ-procurement agency that there’s a possible donor for a hand-transplant candidate in Atlanta. Then the Knoxville agency needs to call the agency here—LifeLink—and let them know. If it looks like a good match, LifeLink will call us. If, and only if, I decide to accept the hands, then I’ll make the phone call to Dr. Garcia.”

By the end of my brief phone call with the surgeon, my mood had swung from hope to despair once more, and I’d acquired at least a glimmer of insight into the emotional roller-coaster rides endured by countless organ-transplant candidates and their loved ones.

I didn’t have long to dwell on my discouragement, though. Rooster Rankin phoned. “Can you be downtown in an hour,” he asked, “looking professional but also dashing?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “In fact, I don’t think ‘dashing’ is an option no matter how much time you give me. Why?”

“We’re holding a press conference on the steps of the Duncan Federal Building at two o’clock.”

“What? Why? And why such short notice?”

“As Bogart said inCasablanca, ‘Destiny has taken a hand.’”

“Huh?”

“The media’s gotten wind of a fatal shooting at the Body Farm,” he explained, “and somebody at KPD

or UT Hospital indicated that the FBI was involved. So we’re getting barraged by calls about that—but not just about that. We’re also getting grilled about allegations of fraud and misconduct at the Body Farm. So the SAC—the special agent in charge—talked to headquarters, and they agreed that it’s time to lay our cards on the table.”

I felt my breath catch as the implications sank in. “So this means we can finally tell Miranda what’s been going on? And the TBI?”

“We’re working on that now. Let us handle it. Just get yourself spiffed up and downtown.” He hung up without taking time to say good-bye.

THE FBI’S SKILL AT KEEPING
things under wraps was matched—possibly even exceeded—by its knack for dramatically unveiling them, I decided shortly after the press conference began. The illegal trade in bodies and body parts was a nationwide criminal enterprise of titanic proportions, impenetrable secrets, and dire peril, according to the special agent in charge. Against all odds, he went on, the Bureau had managed to infiltrate this sinister plot and bring down its murderous mastermind, thanks to the brilliant strategy devised by one dedicated public servant. I glanced at Rankin, who’d masterminded the sting, glad that he was about to receive a pat on the back. But it wasn’t Rankin the SAC credited as the brains behind the sting—it was me. This new spin on events—the suggestion that I’d approached the FBI and offered to help, rather than having been dragged kicking and screaming into a role I hated—astonished me. I stared at Rankin, who grinned at me and winked, then gave me a big thumbs-up. After two or three urgings by the SAC and a couple of gentle pushes by Angela Price, I stepped forward to accept a handshake and a medal expressing the FBI’s gratitude for my service. I stammered a few words of appreciation in return, but I demurred when asked to tell the story of the sting. Without missing a beat, Rankin stepped forward and gave a brief account, one that greatly magnified my foresight and courage in the face of deadly peril and that also—blessedly—omitted any mention of strippers, compromising photos, and amputated arms. Rankin’s summary was followed, to my surprise, by glowing comments from TBI agent Steve Morgan and UT general counsel Amanda Whiting. During their comments I scanned and rescanned the faces of the small crowd gathered below the steps, hoping that Miranda might be there to hear such kind words about me. But, alas, she was not, and when the SAC stepped forward to say a few closing words, Rankin took the opportunity to tell me he’d been unable to reach Miranda. “I left her a voice mail and sent her an e-mail, but she seems to be off the grid,”

he said.

I nodded and thanked him for trying, but the disappointment still stung. As the event ended and the officials steered me toward the lobby of the Duncan Building, I heard a voice. “Dad.Dad! ” The television and newspaper reporters parted, and Jeff dashed up the steps, followed closely by Jenny and their boys, Tyler and Walker. Jeff threw his arms around me, and Jenny threw her arms around me, and the boys hurled themselves against me, shouting, “Grandpa Bill! Grandpa Bill! You’re a hero!”

We walked three blocks from the Duncan Building up to Gay Street, to the S&W Grand, an ornate art deco cafeteria from the 1930s. Shuttered and decaying for decades, the S&W had recently been lovingly and spectacularly restored to its former glory. We had a very late lunch—or a very early dinner, or a re ally big afternoon snack. The food was fine, but the ambience was better, and the company was the best part. Afterward, walking back to the parking garage beside Market Square, we ambled through Krutch Park, where dogwoods and redbuds and tulips were on the brink of blooming. As Jenny and the boys took turns jumping across the park’s small stream, Jeff led me to a bench and beckoned me to sit. He took my hand—the same hand he’d let go of that night at Panera. “That was childish of me to walk out on you,” he said, “and spiteful not to return your phone calls. I’m sorry. You raised me better than that. Please forgive me.”

“I already have,” I said. “I’m sorry for my shortcomings as a father. Please forgive me for those.” I felt a sudden pang of very specific guilt. “Oh, and for not getting my tax records to you.”

“I already have,” he said with a laugh. “And I went ahead and filed for an extension. You’ve got until September fifteenth to bring me the rubble heap that passes for your financial records.” He looked me square in the eye. “Dad, you did a good job of raising me, and if you end up raising another kid, you’ll do a good job again. Tell me if there’s anything we can do to help you. And please come out to the house for dinner next Sunday.”

“Deal,” I said. “On both counts.”

THE WIND GUSTED AND SHIFTED, FLINGING RAINDROPS
against the curved windshield of the helicopter. As the drops hit, they shattered into smaller droplets that rolled separately down the sleek glass like iridescent ball bearings. With each buffet I felt the helicopter shudder on the helipad. Through the headphones cupping my ears, I heard a faint click, then the voice of the pilot, a former army helicopter instructor named Mike Hawkins. “Y’all hold on back there,” he said. “It’s getting mighty lively outside.” Beyond the headset’s noise seals and above the rising whine of the turbine, the wind whistled and moaned.

Eddie had gotten The Phone Call from Dr. Alvarez an hour earlier. The good news was, Glen Faust’s hands—and his tissue type—made him an excellent match for Eddie. The bad news was, Faust’s heart was failing fast, and unless Eddie and Faust could be airlifted to Emory immediately, it was likely that Faust would finish dying and the hands would go to waste.

Faust’s motionless form—the brain definitively dead but the heart tentatively, barely alive—lay on the narrow gurney beside me in the helicopter’s patient bay. Taut nylon straps crossed his chest, hips, and legs, and another strap immobilized his head. An endotracheal tube snaked out of his mouth, and the bellows of a portable ventilator made his chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm. An IV tube led from one arm, and a bundle of wires ran from the gurney to a small monitor mounted behind the pilot’s headrest. The monitor’s pulse readout fluctuated between 77 and 83 as the beats traced a series of sharp little peaks across the screen. Perhaps it was only because I’d been told he was dying, but the peaks seemed provisional, as if even the monitor were already giving him up for dead. I heard Hawkins press his transmit button. “LifeStar One to LifeStar Two.” I looked out the window; a hundred feet to our right was a second air ambulance, where Eddie Garcia lay strapped to a second gurney. The neighboring helicopter twitched on its skids in time with our own. “I don’t think we’re going anywhere,” said Hawkins glumly.