Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel - Страница 4

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I wouldn’t have called it a boom box-I kept it tuned to the UT public radio station, which played classical music, and the volume was cranked down so low it was almost subliminal-but I said yes.

“Bring it.”

“What for?”

Art didn’t explain; he’d already hung up.

For the second time in two phone calls, I found myself staring stupidly at the receiver in my hand. Then I hung up, too. My boom box was sitting atop a file cabinet just inside the door of my office. The cord, shrouded in cobwebs and dust, disappeared behind the cabinet, which was snugged tight against the wall, or tight against the plug, at any rate. Curling both hands behind the back of the filing cabinet, I gave a tug. It did not budge; many years and many pounds’ worth of papers had accumulated in it since I had plugged in the radio and shoved the cabinet back in place.

I shifted my grip, crossing my wrists, which somehow seemed to equalize the force I could apply with each arm. Then I hoisted my left foot up onto the doorframe, nearly waist-high, where my hands clutched the cabinet, and strained to straighten my leg. With a rasping sound that set my teeth on edge, the cabinet scraped forward by six inches. Triumphantly I reached into the gap I had created, wiggled the plug free, and extricated the cord and my arm, both covered with cobwebs and grime. “This had better be good, Art,” I muttered.

CHAPTER 3

A CENTURY AGO, BROADWAY had been one of Knoxville’s grand avenues, lined with elegant Victorian mansions on big, shady lots. The street had long since gone to seed, though, especially in the vicinity of the address Art had given me. Heading north from downtown, I passed two of the city’s homeless missions. The missions didn’t open their doors for the night until five o’clock, so for most of the day their clientele roamed Broadway; some hung out, or passed out, in nearby cemeteries. A few neighboring streets, buffered from Broadway’s blight by a block or so of rental houses, had made a comeback over the past couple of de cades. Those pockets of gentrification, sporting pastel houses with gleaming gingerbread, were poignant reminders of how lovely Old North Knoxville had once been, before I-40 had cut a swath through its heart and Broadway itself had become a commuter artery lined with liquor stores and pawnshops.

I was having trouble pinning down the location Art had summoned me to. “Dammit,” I groused to myself, “why don’t people put numbers on their buildings anymore?” I passed the turnoff to St. Mary’s Hospital-where my son Jeff had been born during a blizzard, back in the de cades before the planet’s thermostat had ratcheted upward-and finally spotted a number on one of Broadway’s few remaining mansions. It was now a funeral home, one that had sent a fair number of the Dearly Departed to the Body Farm.

Judging by the funeral home’s address, which I should have remembered from all the thank-you notes I’d sent them, I’d overshot Art’s location by several blocks. I whipped into the parking lot, circled the gleaming black hearse, and doubled back toward downtown on Broadway. Traffic backed up behind me as I crept along, scanning for numbers. Finally, running out of options, I turned into a small, run-down shopping center whose anchor tenant was known throughout Knoxville as “the Fellini Kroger” because of the surreal cast of characters who shopped there. A fair number of graduate students lived in Old North Knoxville, since it was fairly close to campus and offered housing that tended toward interesting but cheap. One of my forensic students who’d never lost his interest in cultural anthropology liked to time his shopping at the Fellini Kroger to coincide with the delivery of Social Security disability checks. On those days, he swore, the line at the check-cashing counter could rival any circus sideshow on earth.

Just down from the Kroger, I idled past a Dollar General Store numbered 2043-at last, a number! — and parked the truck. Feeling conspicuous and more than a little silly, I hauled the boom box off the passenger seat, as well as the small cooler Jess had brought from Chattanooga, and headed along the row of shops. At the far end of the shopping center, beside a kudzu-choked drainage ditch, I found myself facing a door marked 2035. The door and windows were coated with reflective film; a hand-painted sign on the window glass announced the store as BROADWAY JEWELRY amp; LOAN. Puzzled, I tried to enter, but the door was locked. I set the boom box and cooler down, pressed my face to the door, and cupped my hands around my eyes to screen out the sunlight; inside, I discerned a hulking man behind a counter. I rapped on the glass and he looked up, then pointed emphatically to my right. A doorbell-type button was mounted to the doorframe. “Good grief,” I muttered, but I pushed it. Inside, I heard a metallic buzz-I was mildly surprised that it worked-then a loud click in the doorframe. I picked up my belongings and pushed through the door. Within the narrow storefront, one wall was lined with shelves laden with stereos, televisions, and power tools; set out from the opposite wall was a long glass counter on which the guy who’d buzzed me in was leaning. His beefy forearms rested on a sign that read DO NOT LEEN ON COUNTER.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “I think I must have been given the wrong address.”

He looked me over, then his eyes settled on the boom box. “Depends,” he said. “Who gave it to you?”

“My friend Art. Art Bohanan. He’s with the police department.”

The big man vaulted the counter like a dog going after a UPS guy. Before I knew what had happened, my nose was flattened on the glass, my right arm torqued up between my shoulder blades. “I want to know who the fuck you are, mister, and what you mean coming in here talking about the damn police.”

“Bill? Bill, is that you?” Art’s voice floated out from the back of the store. “It’s okay, Tiny. He’s on our side.”

Tiny released my arm, milliseconds before the bone was about to snap. “Dammit, Tiffany, why didn’t you tell me you had somebody coming? And why’d you bring him here, anyway? You know better than that.”

Tiffany? I was more confused than ever. Art emerged through a curtain at the back of the shop. “I’m sorry; I meant to tell you, I just forgot. Tiny, this is Dr. Bill Brockton. Bill, this is Tiny.”

“Tiny and I have met,” I said, rubbing my arm.

Tiny looked me over again, seeing something different this time. “You’re the Body Farm guy?” I nodded. “Hey, it’s an honor to meet you, Doc,” he said, seizing my hand and pumping my mangled arm. “I’m sorry I got a little excited there. You’re a better class of customer than what we’re used to dealing with here at Broadway Jewelry amp; Loan. You had me worried our cover was blown.”

Suddenly I grasped where I was, and why Art had told me to bring the boom box. “So you’re running an undercover sting operation here? Dealing in stolen property?”

“Tiny is,” said Art. “I’m camped out in the back, putting some of the inventory to good use. Come on in. Welcome to my world. And Tiffany’s.”

As I stepped through the curtain into the back of the store, my eyes irised open to compensate for the dimness. The only light, besides what leaked around the doorway curtain, came from two large computer monitors. When I realized what was on them, I felt my stomach clench. “Oh Jesus, Art.” One screen showed a paunchy middle-aged man. He was stark naked, and he was not alone. He was with a girl who couldn’t have been more than eight or ten. The other showed the same man with a boy who appeared even younger, possibly even six or seven.

“Sickening, isn’t it?” said Art. “I spend hours every day looking at filth like this. It’s getting to me, I have to tell you.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine. How on earth did you get into this? And for heaven’s sake, why?”

He sighed. “You remember that little girl who was abducted, raped, and murdered a few months back? The perp represented by your buddy Grease?” I nodded, grimacing; Art had been deeply distressed by the case, especially the fact that the abductor’s lawyer, Burt DeVriess-“Grease,” most of the cops called him-had delayed the search of the car in which the child had been kidnapped. “Well, when we finally searched the guy’s house and his computer, we found tons of child pornography. Not surprising-a lot of child predators trade kiddie porn over the Internet, and some of them troll for victims in online chat rooms.” I nodded. “After that case, the chief decided that it was time for us to go after guys like that before they struck, rather than after. Guess who won the coin toss?”

He sounded bitter about the assignment, but I knew Art better than that. What he was bitter about was the existence of child predators. Spending his days and nights in their virtual company would be bound to take a toll on him, but I knew he would pursue them with relentless zeal.

“So what’s with the ‘Tiffany’ business?”

“That’s one of my chat room IDs. I’m a thirteen-year-old girl who hates her parents, loves to chat, and can’t wait to find out what love is really like. I’ve got a dozen dirty old men across the state just dying to initiate me into the pleasures of the flesh.”

“Clearly they have a different picture of you than I do,” I said, eyeing Art’s stocky body and graying hair.

“Oh, absolutely,” he said. “I’m actually tall and slim, but all the boys say I have nice boobs and a great ass.”