Carved in Bone:Body Farm-1 (21 page)

The bag of organs wasn’t on the gurney.

I jockeyed the two other corpses out of the way and looked closer. Up close, it still wasn’t on the gurney. Or under the gurney. Or anywhere in the same room with the gurney.

Damn. I raced out of the cooler and down the hall, sticking my head in every door along the way. In one of the autopsy suites, a young pathology resident of indeterminate gender was bending low over a body, the gooseneck light pulled down close. When I barged in, the resident straightened abruptly, whacking the light. “Son of a bitch,” moaned a strangled voice, still of indeterminate gender.

“Sorry,” I called, beating a hasty retreat.

I made my way up the long hallway toward the front desk, a part of the morgue where I seldom ventured. The receptionist sat behind a bulletproof glass window. On the other side was a small waiting room, which was entered—

generally by grieving family members, arriving for the grim task of identifying a son or daughter, sibling or spouse—from a corridor in the hospital’s basement. The morgue was, by design, as far off the beaten track as possible. People had to work pretty hard to find it, and once they found it, things generally got a lot harder for them. Then there were the other people who might come in the front way—the ones the bulletproof glass had been put up to defend against: the pissed-off brother of a guy who’d been shot by a cop. The boyfriend in a love triangle, trying to make sure that the ME’s autopsy wouldn’t find a bullet from the wife’s purse gun inside her dead hubby. Far as I knew, the glass had never been put to the test, but then again, its mere presence might have deterred some borderline crazies.

As I approached the desk from the morgue’s inner recesses, I struggled to dredge up the name of the young woman perched there. She was the latest in a long line of short-lived receptionists. Short-tenured, anyway. Tiffany?

Kimberly? Tamara? As I got closer, I decided I hadn’t even met this one yet. That meant the last one had come and gone in less than a month.

“Good morning, young lady, I don’t believe we’ve met,” I said, extending my right hand to introduce myself. We both noticed my purple rubber glove at the same instant. “You really don’t want to shake my hand right now. I’m Dr. Brockton.”

She shook her head and sighed. “Hi, Dr. B., I’m Katie. We have met. Twice. You’re looking better, by the way.”

Okay, perhaps we had met after all. What was wrong with my memory, and what had been wrong with me last time she saw me? I didn’t have the time or the heart to pursue either question. I asked if she’d seen the morgue tech I needed, hoping I wasn’t too late. “Joey? I think he’s doing a burn.”
Not good
, I thought. I spun on my heel and sprinted down the corridor that led out one side of the morgue, where the medical waste incinerator was tucked into an out-ofthe-way angle of the hospital complex. Joey Weeks, the lowest-ranking morgue assistant, stood beside the incinerator’s open hatch, a gurney parked beside him. I saw him toss a bag into the burner, then grab another off the cart. “Wait!” I yelled.

“Hey, Doc,” he said as I skidded to a stop. “What’s up?”

“Joey, I’m looking for some tissue that came from an exhumation a couple of days ago.”

“Exhumation? Oh, you mean that one autopsied by Dr. Carter from Chattanooga? The guy that ain’t got nothin’ between the head and the waist?

That’s creepy, man.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. You know anything about that? There was a biohazard bag with some tissue in it with the body in the cooler.”

“Sure. Dr. Hamilton told me it was waste. Said to incinerate it. Probably going up in smoke right now.”

Hamilton? “Damn.”

“Problem?”

“I was hoping to take one last look at something.”

He motioned toward the cart. “Well, I got a few bags left here. Maybe it’s not too late. Let’s take a look. Do you know the number?”

I racked my brain. “It had two autopsy numbers on it—the original was from last year, but I don’t remember what came after the ‘A-2004.’ But Dr. Carter added a number when she looked at it the other day, A-2005-125, maybe.”

“Can’t be too many with double numbers. If it’s here, we’ll find it.”

We checked the cart. It wasn’t there, and my heart sank. Then I noticed the bag still dangling from Joey’s right hand. If I’d arrived a second later, it would have gone up in flames.

I bore the putrid organs before me with both hands, like the crown jewels on a velvet pillow. It wasn’t so much a gesture of reverence as a stance of caution: the bag had been punctured and was dripping steadily. Entering the decomp lab, I laid my prize on a countertop and sliced open the top. The contents slithered and plopped out onto the absorbent surgical pad.

I fished out the remnants of the heart, stomach, and intestines first, then what I believed to be the liver, then various other organs that were more or less recognizable as themselves, or at least as something other than lung. That left a mound of lung tissue, which looked like a chocolate pudding gone terribly wrong in the making.

The most efficient way to do this was also the messiest. Picking up the nearest blob of tissue, I began to squeeze, squishing it through loosely clenched fingers. Nothing. I repeated the process with half a dozen other lungish-looking blobs. Still nothing. I scooped up the last of the blobs and gave it a hard, frustrated squeeze…and when I did, something sharp jabbed the heel of my hand. It was a shard of bone, an inch long, a quarter-inch wide, and tapering to a wicked point. It had nicked my glove; I hoped it hadn’t also broken the skin. I rinsed it off, set it in a small pot to simmer, and then cleaned and disinfected my hands. The skin appeared unbroken, but I still gave it a pretty thorough marinade in Betadine. Just as I was drying off, the door opened and in walked Miranda, sporting a bright orange fiberglass cast. She pirouetted, angling the cast in all directions.

“UT orange,” I said. “Very sporty.”

“Thought it might get me a close-up on ESPN at the football game next weekend,” she said. “Any luck with our friend here?”

“Yeah, barely. Pure, blind, last-second luck.” I fished the bone fragment out of the pot with some tongs. She whistled appreciatively. “It wasn’t a knife that punctured his lung and made him bleed to death—it was a piece of his own rib.”

“And that happened eighteen days before he collapsed and died?”

“Assuming it splintered off during the stomping he took in that bar fight.”

“So the guy you’re helping…”

“…was helping his pal fight off the gang who did this. Unfortunately, he just happened to be on hand when Billy Ray finally collapsed. I’m sure DeVriess won’t have any trouble getting Dr. Carter to testify to that effect.”

I thought I saw a frown when I mentioned Jess Carter, but I didn’t pursue it.

“You, Dr. Carter, and Grease,” Miranda said. “Strange bedfellows.”

“Very strange,” I agreed. I couldn’t help wondering if she meant more by

“bedfellows” than just courtroom allies, but I let that slide, too. I wasn’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole. A pole of any length, for that matter.

CHAPTER 24

“YOU SURE THIS IS where we turn?”

Art swiveled and gave me his most withering dead-eyed cop stare. “Didn’t Waylon tell you to follow the signs for the church?”

“I don’t see a sign,” I said.

Art pointed toward the trunk of a big tulip poplar, then swung his finger down toward the ground. There, nestled amid some weeds, lay a rusted, bullet-riddled sign: “CAVE SPRINGS PRIMITIVE BAPTIST CHURCH.”

“Oh, how could I have missed it? I guess if you need the sign to find it, they don’t want you there.”

Art grunted. “I’m guessing if you get there by following a sign, they invite you to reach into the box and hand out the rattlesnakes.”

“I don’t think Primitive Baptists are snake-handlers,” I said. “I think that’s Church of Holiness with Signs Following, or something like that.”

“What does
that
mean, ‘Signs Following’? Besides, aren’t we doing some signfollowing here?”

“It’s a reference to a Bible verse—signs of the true Christian, supposedly: healing the sick, sipping cyanide, handling vipers. Y’all don’t do that in the Episcopal church?”

Art shook his head. “Not so much. We keep in touch with the Lord by sipping wine and handling golf clubs.”

“So tell me again what this octogenarian caver told you about this place?”

“You listening this time?”

“I was listening last time. I just wasn’t remembering.”

“Lord, grant me patience,” he sighed. “Okay, he said it’s been a long time since he was up here—like, forty years’ worth of long time—but caves don’t change all that fast, you know? I told him one of the locals had called it Russell’s Cave, and I relayed the description just the way you gave it to me. He said he’s sure it’s the same one he mapped a long time ago. And he said your pal Waylon’s right: there is another entrance, right by the church, which is a lot easier to get to than the one the sheriff took you in. He said you went in the back door.”

“And where, exactly, is the front door?”

“I believe his last words were, ‘You can’t miss it.’”

“I’ve heard that phrase a lot of times before, and I’ve finally figured out what it means. It means, ‘You’re about to get hopelessly lost, sucker.’”

As we rounded a curve at a dip in the road, we came upon a small church nestled at the base of a bluff. Off to one side sat a small, weathered farmhouse, which I guessed might be where the pastor lived. We whipped into the gravel parking lot and skidded to a stop—the church had snuck up on us—and got out to have a look.

We had nearly clipped another sign. This one stood at the road’s edge, so close as to seem almost challenging, daring the heathen to vandalize it—or even just ignore it—at their eternal peril. It was laid up of smooth river rock, mortared into an approximation of a Greek pediment; cradled within the rock was a weathered wooden slab inscribed “CAVE SPRINGS PRIMITIVE BAPTIST

CHURCH.”

The church matched the sign: river rock in shades of tan and brown, nestled deep in a matrix of mottled gray mortar. The building appeared to have been created by geologic action rather than human hands. The double doors set into the front were stout wood, silver with age; their black hardware was forged iron, the hammer blows still visible on its surface. A pair of metal license plates was nailed to the doors: “JESUS IS COMING R-U READY?” asked one; the other read “HEAVEN OR HELL—WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY?”

“Friendly crowd,” I observed. I tried the iron latch, but the door seemed to be bolted from the inside somehow.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” deadpanned Art, striking a Jesus pose. He rapped on the wood. “Ow! Looks like oak, feels like ironwood. Let’s see what we can see through a window.”

The windows were miserly—few, small, and high—minimizing the temptation, I supposed, to admire the trees instead of heeding the sermons. Luckily the stonework made it easy to climb the wall. Art and I hauled ourselves up a few feet and peered through a grimy pane. There wasn’t much to see: a dozen backless benches, a scattering of ragged hymnals, a battered upright piano, and a lopsided wooden lectern. “Now I see why they call it ‘primitive,’” I said. We clambered down and began circumnavigating the little building. A wide, well-worn path ran alongside the church, then led to the base of the bluff out back. The pathway ended at a natural rock basin, waist-deep or so, filled with clear water. The surface rippled slightly in the center, where water from a fissure welled up continuously. At the back of the pool, the water gurgled over a lip in the basin and disappeared into an opening in the cliff.

“Now I see why they call it ‘Cave Springs,’” Art said. “Handy for baptisms, huh?”

“Very. Okay, your spelunking friend was right—hard to miss.” The opening in the rock wall was an oval about eight feet high by four feet wide. A grate of rusting bars blocked the entrance, supported by iron hinges pounded into the rock; a stout padlock hung from the hasp. “Dang,” I said. “Now what?”

“Pray,” said Art as he moved to study the lock. I heard a jangling of keys, then the click of a lock popping open.

“Hey, how’d you do that?”

“God provides,” he intoned, looking heavenward as he slipped a master key back among its fellows and dropped the key ring into his pocket. We made a quick trip back to the truck for flashlights, jackets, Art’s headlamp and evidence kit, and my camera, then returned to the opening. Despite the rust on the grate, the hinges turned easily and silently. I noticed a liberal coating of grease on the pins. “Be nice to know who greases the hinges and carries the keys,” I said.

As we entered the mouth of the tunnel, a cool wind fanned our faces. I sniffed the air, wondering if I might pick up a faint whiff of decomp or adipocere, but I knew that if I did, it would be emanating from my imagination, not the cave itself. Just inside, once the harsh daylight began to fade behind us, Art knelt down, his flashlight angling low along the dirt floor. “Look familiar?”

I crouched, and felt a chill that had little to do with the cave’s temperature. “See all those? Those are the same work boot prints as in the slides.” He played the beam slowly back and forth, and I clutched his arm. “There—that’s the sheriff’s track, or one just like it.” Just as in the photos I’d taken in the grotto, the crisped lugged prints were superimposed over the worn tracks. At least, in the closest set of prints. But as Art played his beam farther along the cave floor, he let out a low whistle.

“This place gets more traffic than a bathroom in a sports bar,” he said. “Looks like whoever owns that beat-up old pair of boots has been back one more time since your friendly neighborhood sheriff was in here.” Sure enough, here the worn prints were clearly uppermost, smashing the lug marks nearly flat.

“So whoever it is, he knows that somebody else knows.”

“Maybe. Probably. But that’s not all.” Art wiggled his flashlight beam slightly to the right of the layered prints. “Somebody else has been here, too.”

I studied the area he was illuminating, but I couldn’t see any more prints. I leaned closer, but all I saw were what appeared to be vague smears in the mud. I looked at Art in puzzlement.