Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel - Страница 2

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I reached into the back of the truck and busied myself with a pair of purple nitrile gloves, forcing my thoughts back to the experiment we were here to set up. “Jess-Dr. Carter-should be here soon,” I said. “Let’s find a good tree and start tying this fellow up.”

“Ah, Dr. Carter.” Miranda grinned at me. “I thought you seemed a little nervous. Are you intimidated, or infatuated?”

I laughed. “Probably a little of both,” I said. “She’s smart and she’s tough. Funny, too, and easy on the eyes.”

“All true,” said Miranda. “She’d sure keep you on your toes. About time you found somebody to do that, you know.”

I knew all too well. My wife of nearly 30 years, Kathleen, had died of cancer more than two years ago, and I was only now recovering from the blow. The prior autumn, I had felt the first stirrings of interest and desire. Those stirrings had been kindled, I was embarrassed to recall, when a student impulsively kissed me; fortunately and mortifyingly, the kiss had been cut short by Miranda’s appearance in the doorway of my office. Shortly after that inappropriate but memorable kiss, I’d invited a woman closer to my own age-none other than Dr. Jess Carter-to have dinner with me. Jess had accepted the invitation, though she had to cancel at the last moment, when she got summoned to a murder scene in Chattanooga. I hadn’t worked up my nerve to ask her out again, but the notion occurred to me every time our overlapping cases-her fresh homicides, my not-so-fresh ones-brought us into contact.

Miranda’s question brought me back to the task at hand. “Does it matter what kind of tree we strap this guy to?”

“Probably not, but she said the victim was tied to a pine, and we’ve got several of those, so we might as well make it realistic. Doesn’t cost any extra.” I pointed at the tree where the squirrels had been scampering. “How about that one?”

Miranda shook her head. “No, not that one,” she frowned. “That one seems too…exposed. Might be hard on the campus cops or on visiting researchers if this experiment was the first thing they saw when they walked in the gate.” She had a point there. “Besides, didn’t you say the victim was found way back in the woods?” She had a point there, too.

“That’s my understanding. Prentice Cooper State Forest. Covers some pretty rugged terrain along the Tennessee River Gorge, just downstream from Chattanooga.” I pointed farther up the hillside, to another tall pine near the upper boundary. “There you go. That look secluded enough?”

Miranda nodded. “Yeah, that seems better. Bit of a haul to get him up there. But good exercise, I guess.”

“If it doesn’t kill us, it makes us stronger?”

“Right,” she said. Then she stuck out her tongue at me.

In unison, we leaned into the back of the truck and each grabbed one of the straps sewn onto the sides of the black body bag. We slid it out over the tailgate until it hung about a foot off the end. “Ready?” I asked.

“Ready,” she said, and with that, we each grabbed another strap, about two-thirds of the way down. Sliding the bag farther off the tailgate, we gradually bore more and more of the corpse’s weight. It was heavy-180 pounds, which was roughly the weight of the victim whose death scene we were about to re-create. The more faithfully the re-creation mirrored the crime-not just the victim’s weight, but his injuries, clothing, and positioning-the more accurate our eventual time-since-death estimate would be, allowing the police to focus their investigation more precisely.

We hadn’t gotten more than fifty feet up the hillside before I broke a sweat in the chilly morning. I could tell Miranda was straining, too, but I knew she’d collapse before she complained. That was okay by me; I was willing to whine for both of us. “You wanna rethink that first tree? Sure would be convenient.”

“Hun-uh,” she grunted through gritted teeth, shaking her head for emphasis.

“Okay,” I gasped, “you’re the boss. If I stroke out before we get up the hill, use me for some especially spectacular research.”

“Gladly,” she huffed.

We stopped twice to catch our breath and mop our brows, but even with the rest breaks, we were half dragging the bag by the time we reached the pine near the upper fence. Still, as I opened the long, C-shaped zipper running around three sides of the bag, I had to agree that a secluded location was much more appropriate for this particular experiment.

We had prepared the body in the morgue, so I knew what to expect, but even so, I took a sharp breath when I folded back the flap to expose our subject. The blond wig had shifted a bit, sliding down over the face and concealing much of the trauma I’d inflicted, but what remained visible was strong stuff. According to Jess, most of the bones of the victim’s face had been shattered by blunt-force trauma-she was guessing something fairly big, maybe a baseball bat or a metal pipe, rather than something smaller, like a tire iron, which would have left sharper, more distinctive marks in the bone. I couldn’t bring myself to wale away on a donated body with such violence, so I’d settled for cutting through the zygomatic arches-the cheekbones-and the lower jaw in several places with an autopsy saw, then smearing a liberal amount of blood on the skin in those areas to simulate the bleeding that perimortem trauma would have induced. Miranda, being more skilled in the art of makeup, had applied base and rouge to the cheeks, plus violet eye shadow and a pair of long false eyelashes. I doubted that the makeup would affect the decomp rate, but I didn’t want to throw any unnecessary variables into the equation.

Procuring the leather corset that we’d cinched around our subject’s torso had proved far easier than I expected. Less than twenty-four hours before, Miranda had spent five minutes Googling and web surfing, then demanded my UT credit card. A few more keystrokes and she announced, “Done. One extra large bustier arriving at six A.M., First Overnight, thanks to the efficient teamwork of FedEx and Naughty amp;Nice.com.” I foresaw some red-faced explaining to the UT auditors once the American Express bill arrived, but such was the occasional price of original research.

“Have you got the rope,” I asked, “or do I need to go back to the truck and get it?” Miranda was wearing a black jumpsuit that bristled with pockets.

“No, I’ve got it,” she said. She reached down and unzipped a big pocket just above her left knee and fished out a package of nylon cord and a big, military-looking pocketknife. With one twist of her thumb, she flipped open a wicked serrated blade.

“Whoa, that’s some serious cutting power,” I said. “What is that, a six-inch blade?”

She snorted. “Do men really believe that’s what six inches looks like? Try three and a half.” With the tip of the blade she deftly flicked off the package’s plastic wrapper, then unspooled about six feet of cord-or was it three and a half? — and cut it with a swift stroke. “You wanna tie his hands while I do his feet?” I took the piece of rope and began to bind the corpse’s wrists in front of him. Miranda sliced off another length of cord and lashed the ankles together. The rope snagged on the fishnet stockings as she cinched it taut above the stiletto heels. “I’ve never understood the appeal of cross-dressing,” she said, “either for the guys who do it or for the people who go to drag shows. But I also can’t understand how anybody could get so enraged about it that they’d beat a guy to death for putting on a wig and some slutty clothes.”

“Me neither,” I said. “The one thing I understand, after all these years and all these murders, is that there’s a lot I don’t understand about human nature.”

Once our standin was trussed up like the Chattanooga victim, the next task was to tie him to the tree. “Jess said his hands were up over his head,” I remarked, half to Miranda and half to myself. “Hard to get ’em up there without a ladder, though.” I spied a low branch. “Maybe if I throw a rope over that limb, we can use that like a pulley to hoist him up.” Miranda whacked off another length, which I tossed across the branch where it joined the trunk. Then I tied one end to the wrist bindings, and together we hauled on the line. The nylon cord was thin, so it bit into our hands as we pulled, but once we had him upright, the friction of the rope on the branch helped support his weight.

“You think you can hold him,” I asked, “while I fasten his legs to the tree?”

“Yup,” said Miranda, taking a turn of rope around one hand.

Kneeling at the base of the tree, I pulled the feet close to the trunk and began tying them there. A yellowjacket circled my still-sweaty face, and with one hand I waved it away. Suddenly I heard a sharp exclamation-“Dammit!”-followed by a slapping sound. Then: “Oh, shit, look out!”

With a thud, the corpse toppled forward, draping himself over my head and shoulders and knocking me flat. Wriggling like some giant bug, I lay trapped at the base of the tree, pinned by the garishly dressed corpse. “I am so sorry,” Miranda said, and then she began to snicker. But the snicker died suddenly, and I soon saw why.

A pair of rattlesnake boots, topped by black leather jeans, entered my peripheral vision and planted themselves a foot from my face. I knew, even before she spoke, that the snakeskin boots were coiled around the feet of Dr. Jess Carter. After a moment, her right toe began to tap, slowly and, as best I could tell, sarcastically.