The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel (22 page)

PEGGY GLOWERED WHEN I ENTERED THE ANTHROPOLOGY
Department office at nine on Tuesday—not because I was an hour later than usual, but because I’d been AWOL for all of Monday, hunkered down in the abandoned annex. I knew she was about to light into me, but I held up a preemptive hand and shook my head. “Not now, Peggy. Messages on my desk?”

“A few
dozen
.” Her tone was as biting as a pair of fingernail clippers.

“Thank you.” I headed through the doorway into my administrative office—the one where I met with struggling students, frustrated faculty, and bean-counting bureaucrats—and gathered up the mound of pink messages. If anything, Peggy had understated the number. Curling them into a haphazard scroll, I cinched them with a fat rubber band and headed back out through Peggy’s office.

“You’re already
leaving
?”

“No. Just heading down to my other office to sort through all this. Buzz me if Kathleen calls. Or the dean. Or the FBI.”
I sighed as a bleak thought occurred to me. “Or the general counsel, I guess. But reporters? I’m in an all-day meeting.”

“What meeting? You don’t have a meeting on your schedule.” It wasn’t like Peggy to be dense, so I suspected that she was subtly gigging me, slightly punishing me.

“The meeting between my butt and the chair at the far end of the stadium. The quiet end of the stadium.”

She opened her mouth, but—perhaps seeing the warning in my eyes—shut it and simply nodded.

I made it to the north end of the stadium without encountering another soul in the long corridor that curved beneath the grandstands. Breathing a sigh of relief, I unlocked the door of my private sanctuary, hung out the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign, and locked myself inside.

Ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door. I knew it wasn’t Peggy; in twelve years as my secretary, she had made the long, dark trek to this end of the stadium only twice—both times in her first week on the job. I considered who it might be. The last thing I wanted to do right now was talk to a graduate student. Or a colleague. Or anyone else, I realized, with the exception—the
possible
exception—of Kathleen. I ignored it. After a pause, the knocking resumed, louder this time. Again I ignored it. “Hello? Dr. Brockton? You in there?” I recognized the voice of Brian Decker, and I considered him friend, not foe.

“Oh, just a second, Deck,” I called, hurrying to open the door. “Hey. Sorry to keep you waiting. I was preoccupied”—I pointed an accusatory finger at the heap of phone messages—“trying to figure out which of these alligators is gonna take the biggest bite out of my ass. What’s up?”

“The plot thickens,” he said. “You were right.”

“Well,
that’s
not something I’ve heard much lately,” I said. “About what?”

“About running the print from that finger. That kid’s pinkie. I got a hit.”

“No kidding? The kid’s already got a record? He
is
a prodigy.”

“Not a criminal record,” he said. “An I.D. record.”

“I’m not following you,” I said.

“There’s been a big push, the last few years, to put kids’ prints on file,” he said. “So if a kid goes missing, we’ve got something besides photos to work with.”

“You mean if a body turns up?”

He frowned; nodded. “Yeah, but not just that,” he said. “Also, if the missing kid—or someone who
might
be the kid—turns up years later.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “Like putting a computer chip in your dog’s neck, right?”

He nodded. “Like that. The new version of that is DNA—parents can buy DNA kits now—collect a cheek swab and send it off to a company that’ll run the profile and store it.”

“For a fee,” I said.

“For a fee. But fingerprints are free.”

“But we’re talking about Satterfield’s kid here,” I said. “So putting the kid’s fingerprints in a database seems like the last thing Mom and Dad would want to do.”

Decker raised his eyebrows. “Like I said, the plot thickens,” he repeated. “This isn’t Satterfield’s kid.”

“How do you know? And if it’s not his, whose is it?”

“It’s Tim and Tammy Martin’s kid,” he said. “And I know because I talked to them.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “And their kid’s missing a finger?”

“Unfortunately, their kid’s missing a lot more than that,” he said. “Their kid’s dead.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Murdered?”

He shook his head. “Accidental death. Two weeks ago. Riding his bike. A seventeen-year-old girl ran over him. She was dialing her cell phone.” I frowned, partly because I was appalled by the senseless death, partly because I couldn’t imagine how these puzzle pieces fit together. Decker reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out an index card, which he handed to me.

Except it wasn’t an index card, it was a photo: a headshot of a woman looking—scowling—directly at the camera. The woman was five feet seven inches tall; I could tell this from the inch-by-inch measurements stenciled on the wall behind her. I looked from the photo to Decker, puzzled. “This looks like a mug shot,” I said. “But if she’s seventeen, I’m not a day over twenty.”

“She’s not. Take another look.” I studied it again. She looked familiar, but I was having trouble placing her. Decker raised his eyebrows, watching me closely. “Recognize her? From Satterfield’s trial?”

I felt a mixture of excitement and dread rising in me. “My God, it’s her! The weird groupie woman?”

“Give that man a cigar,” he said. “Or a finger.”

I stared at him, baffled. “I still don’t get it, Deck. Connect the dots for me.”

“Think about it,” he said. “I’ll give you a hint. The kid still had the finger when he was hit by the car.”

I was about to snap at him—about to tell him I didn’t have the time or energy for guessing games—when I realized that playing twenty questions with Decker was probably the most fun I would have all day.
All day? Hell, maybe even all week,
I thought, glancing again at the pile of angry, insistent messages.

“So the parents,” I mused. “I’m guessing they’re not connected to Satterfield, or the package—that they had nothing to do with cutting off their son’s finger.”

He shook his head. “They were horrified when I told them about it. And furious.”

My mind sorted through various possibilities. “So the girl runs over the boy. Somebody calls 911. The EMTs and the police—city, or county?”

“County. Sheriff’s deputies.”

“The EMTs and the deputies arrive. Is the kid alive or dead when he goes into the ambulance?”

“Alive. Dies on the way to the hospital. Head trauma—no helmet—and internal injuries.”

“Poor kid. But his finger’s still attached, you say.”

“Right.”

“And then he’s taken to the morgue. Is that where the parents first see him?”

“Yes. Took a while to track them down.”

I could feel the picture coming into focus. “So they I.D.’d the body at the morgue. And the finger must’ve still been on his hand then. Because if it wasn’t, they’d have noticed and started asking questions. And anyhow, Garland”—Dr. Garland Hamilton, the Knox County medical examiner—“would’ve pounced on that. An amputation that clean? He’d have been on that like a duck on a June bug.” Decker nodded, smiling slightly, and I continued, on a roll now. “So the boy still had the finger when he was in the morgue. But unless somebody dug up his body”—I felt almost as energized now as when I was working a death scene—“the finger must’ve been amputated between the time he left the morgue and the time he was buried.” Decker was beaming now. “My God,” I said, “so Satterfield’s groupie-woman works at the funeral
home? She cut off the finger while she was embalming the boy’s body?”

“See,” he said, “I knew you could figure it out.”

“He must’ve told her to be on the lookout for a finger to send me. A woman’s or a kid’s. They’re pen pals, right?”

“Pen pals, and more,” he said. “The mailroom says they swap letters two, three times a month. And she visits once or twice a year.”

I looked again at
the mug shot. In addition to her name, the placard in the image bore a calendar date.

I looked up. “She was arrested
yesterday
?” He nodded, looking pleased, and I pressed on. “For this?”

“Yup. Desecrating a corpse.”

“Any evidence? Besides circumstantial?”

“We got
so lucky
on this one,” he said. “There was a big scandal, couple months back, about a Memphis mortician who was having sex with female corpses.”

“I remember that. Really disgusting.”

“No kidding, Doc. Anyhow, the guy that owns the funeral home handling this boy’s burial? He got spooked by that Memphis stuff. Had hidden cameras installed in all the embalming rooms. So when I showed up yesterday, asking who had access to the kid’s body, he puffs up, all proud, and says, ‘Here, let’s take a look.’ He calls up the footage on his computer with me sitting right there. Doc, you should’ve seen that man’s face when it showed this gal—his employee, mind you—slicing off the kid’s finger. That man was shitting bricks. Probably still is. I’m guessing the kid’s parents are gonna sue the pants off him.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about his pants,” I said. “Most funeral homes have huge insurance policies. That’s one reason funerals cost so damn much.” I looked again at the mug shot. “So she’s in custody. She talking? About Satterfield?”

He made a face. “Nah, she’s all lawyered up. My guess is, she’ll end up trying to cut a deal. And maybe the D.A. will require cooperation as part of that.” I frowned, and he went on. “Meanwhile, I’m thinking I might take a little road trip over to Clifton. South Central Correctional Facility.”

“To see Satterfield?”

“See him. Talk to him. Rattle his cage a little. Have a frank, man-to-man chat in a private interview room.” He began to nod slowly, a dark glint in his eyes, his fingers clenching and unclenching rhythmically. “Suggest that it’s not a good idea to bother you and your family.”

For a moment, I allowed myself to imagine what I suspected Decker himself was imagining: Decker, built like a linebacker, beating the crap out of Satterfield. I imagined it, and I liked it. I liked it a lot. I felt myself yielding to the idea, being taken over by it. It was as if I were spellbound, enchanted by the siren song of violent vengeance. It almost seemed as if I myself were the one slamming Satterfield’s face against a cinder-block wall, kicking Satterfield’s splintering ribs. Suddenly my fantasy took an unexpected and horrifying turn. During a split-second pause in the carnage, Satterfield managed to turn his face toward me, and through the bloody lips and the broken teeth, he grinned at me: a mocking, malicious, complicit grin. “Gotcha,” the grin seemed to say. “How do you like it, becoming me?”

“
No!
” My voice—my shout—startled me from my waking dream. Was I shouting at Satterfield, at myself, or at Decker? I had no idea.

Decker stared at me. “Doc? What’s wrong?”

I felt a shudder run through me. “Nothing. Sorry. Just . . .
probably not a good idea to go see Satterfield. But, Christ, that guy is still under my skin. Like some dormant virus, or a cancer cell—lurking, biding its time, you know?” He nodded. A thought struck me. “Know much about shingles?”

“Roofing shingles?”

“Medical shingles. The disease.”

“Not much,” he said. “Old people get it, right? Very painful, I’ve heard.”

“Ever have chicken pox, as a kid?”

“Sure. Itched like crazy.”

“The virus that caused it? You’ve still got it,” I said. “When your immune system kicked in, it killed most of the virus, but not all. Some of it survived; it’s hiding at the base of one of your spinal nerves, coiled up like a snake. One day when you’re fifty or sixty or seventy, something reactivates it—nobody really knows how or why—and it comes slithering out.”

Suddenly Decker grabbed the edge of my desk with both hands. He went pale and began to breathe in quick, sharp pants; sweat beaded on his forehead and began to run down his face. His eyes were wide and wild, staring with an expression of utter horror at something that was either miles away from my office, or deep within himself.

“Deck? What’s the matter?”

“Kev,” he whispered, then—louder: “Kevin! No!”

I leaned across the desk and squeezed one of Decker’s forearms. The muscles were clenched so tightly, his arm felt like a bar of cast iron. Then I realized what must have happened. Decker’s younger brother, Kevin—a bomb-squad technician—had died while searching Satterfield’s house for explosives: killed not by a booby trap, but by a deadly snake, a fer-de-lance, that had been set loose in the house. Comparing
Satterfield to a lurking virus—and then comparing the virus to a snake—must have taken Decker back to the scene of his brother’s death. It was as if I had poured gasoline on Decker’s memory, then held a lighted match to it, and I cursed myself for my stupidity. “Hey, Deck,” I said, squeezing his arm tighter. “Deck, can you hear me? It’s Bill Brockton, Deck. We’re here in my office at Neyland Stadium.” I waved my other hand in front of his staring eyes, but it had no effect. Trying to get his attention, I began snapping my fingers near his face, moving the hand slightly from side to side, all the while calling his name. His body was now trembling, as if shivering hard, and I had visions of his heart giving out or an aneurysm in his brain bursting.
I’ve got to get him out of this,
I thought, and in desperation, I began tapping his cheekbone with my fingertips. He seemed not to notice, so I tapped harder, still to no effect, and then I began to slap him gently—
the sound of one hand clapping,
I thought absurdly—still calling his name and telling him mine. I was beginning to despair—wondering whether to call 911 or someone in the Psychiatric Department at UT Medical Center—when he reached up and seized my wrist, with a grip that felt like a vise, and brought my hand down to the desk. “Deck,” I said, struggling not to cry out. “Deck, it’s Bill Brockton. Can you hear me, Deck? I need you to hear me. I need you to stay with me, Deck. Come back from wherever you’ve gone. Come back to Neyland Stadium, to my office by the north end zone.”