The Devil's Bones

CHAPTER 21

IT WAS RARE FOR ME TO STAY UP LATE ENOUGH TO watch the eleven o’clock news, but I was late getting home from Cooke County. Besides, Channel 10 had promised an update on the manhunt for Garland Hamilton. I’d heard through the Knox County prosecutor’s office that the Tennessee Association of District Attorneys General had offered a twenty-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to Hamilton’s arrest and capture, and Channel 10 was promising to lead off the newscast with more details. Jess Carter had worked closely with district attorneys, so the D.A.’s had taken a special interest in recapturing her killer.

The newscast’s theme music had just started when my phone rang. I checked the caller ID display and saw the main number for the UT switchboard. I knew there were no operators on duty this late at night. That meant the phone call could have come from any one of thousands of extensions scattered across the campus.

“Hello?”

“Is this Dr. Brockton?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Dr. Brockton, this is Officer Sutton from the UT Police calling. We have an alarm going off in the Anthropology Department. Our protocols call for us to notify you when that happens.”

I lunged for the remote and switched off the television. We’d had the alarms installed only a few months before, after a break-in and the theft of two sets of bones from the forensic skeletal collection.

“We’ve got alarms in two places,” I said, cradling the phone with my shoulder and jamming on a pair of shoes. “One’s in the collection room, the other’s in the bone lab. Which one’s going off?”

“I’m not sure it’s either one of those,” he said. “It’s labeled ‘Osteology.’”

“That’s the bone lab. Damn. I’ll be right there.” I hung up and dashed out the door.

My tires squealed as I careened around the serpentine streets leading out of Sequoyah Hills. The speed limit here was twenty-five, but tonight I was doing twice that. As soon as I turned onto Kingston Pike and had a straight stretch of road, I dialed Miranda’s cell phone. She’d been planning to stay late and work tonight, whittling away at the backlog of skeletal measurements awaiting entry into the Forensic Data Bank. She didn’t answer, which was unlike Miranda, whom I’d seen juggle four or five calls at once. The fact that I got her voice mail alarmed me.

“Miranda, it’s Bill. It’s just after eleven. Give me a call as soon as you get this.”

I skidded around the corner from Kingston Pike onto Neyland and then floored the accelerator. Flying past the sewage treatment plant, I nearly rear-ended a street sweeper that was poking along at twenty or thirty miles an hour. As I yanked the wheel to avoid the machine, I fishtailed into the oncoming lane and nearly hit another car head-on. The oncoming car veered onto the shoulder and fishtailed slightly, too, then corrected and sped away, its horn blaring. Only after the other car was out of sight did it register that I’d nearly crashed head-on into a yellow SUV. A yellow Nissan Pathfinder, I realized.

I could see the blue strobes of the police lights long before I threaded my way down the drive to the foot of the stadium. The lights throbbed up through the tracery of girders, transforming the stadium into an ominous set for a suspense movie. Another set of strobes, red ones, was pulsing too, and I nearly threw up when I realized that the red strobes belonged to an ambulance, backed up to the double doors behind a white Jetta. The truck was still skidding forward when I slammed the transmission into Park and leaped out. I left the door open and sprinted the fifty yards to the ambulance.

A figure in dark blue stepped toward me. “Police!” he shouted. “Stop right there!”

“It’s Dr. Brockton,” I yelled. “I think I’ve got a student in there. I’ve got to see.”

“Hold on. Hold on,” he said.

I kept running. He stepped directly into my path and spread his arms wide.

“Hold on, Dr. Brockton. Wait just a minute.”

I tried to sidestep him, but he was too quick. He wrapped both arms around me.

“I can’t let you in there until I know it’s safe,” he said.

I struggled to break free of his grip. “I’ve got to check on Miranda,” I said. “I have to see about her.”

“Dr. Brockton, listen up now. You have got to calm down. You have got to stop struggling, or I will handcuff you, sir. Do you understand me?” He gave me a powerful squeeze. He was no taller than I was, but he was twenty years younger and probably outweighed me by forty pounds, all of it muscle. “Dr. Brockton, please don’t make me handcuff you. Do you understand me?”

I went limp. “Yes,” I said. “I understand. Tell me what’s going on. Is Miranda in there?”

“We do have someone in there,” he said. “I don’t know the status. If I can turn loose of you, I’ll radio and ask what’s going on and if it’s all right for you to come in.”

“Please,” I said.

“Have you got ahold of yourself?” he asked. “If I let you go, you’re not gonna go charging in there to be a hero, are you?”

“No,” I said. “If you turn me loose, I’ll step back so you can make the radio call.”

It wasn’t until he released me, and I was able to breathe again, that I realized how hard he’d been holding me.

He pressed the “transmit” button on his radio. “This is Markham,” he said. “I’ve got Dr. Brockton out here, just outside the basement door. Is it all right if he comes in there now?”

The answer came into his earpiece, so I couldn’t hear it, but he nodded and motioned me in. I broke into a run, but he quickly called, “Walk! Don’t run! We’ve got officers with weapons. You go running in, they’re liable to shoot you.”

I forced myself to slow to a walk. When I reached the metal door leading into the building, I heard Markham say, “He’s coming in the door right now.” A second officer was standing in the stairwell between the exterior door and the bone lab’s door. The metal door to the lab was propped open-a disconcerting sight, as we always kept it closed. The door was steel, fitted with a small window that was kept covered by a piece of paper so no one could look inside. The paper was gone. So was the glass. A smear of blood ran down the door, reaching halfway to the floor.

I stared around the bone lab, wild-eyed. Two uniformed officers stood to my left, by the desks and the tables where graduate students worked. To the right was the storage area that held row on row of boxed Native American skeletons-several thousand of them-stacked on shelves three feet deep.

An EMT backed out of the aisle between the rows of shelves, pulling a gurney with him. A motionless figure lay on the gurney; beneath a sheet I saw the contours of feet, legs, torso. I’d seen that body nearly every day for years now in various postures-sitting, standing, crawling on all fours, bending over to pluck a bone from the ground. I’d never seen it lying motionless, but I recognized it instantly as Miranda’s.

“Dear God,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”

“It’s about time you got here.” Miranda sat up partway, propping herself on her elbows.

“Jesus,” I breathed, “Miranda! Are you okay? You’re hurt? What happened?”

“Could you repeat the questions one at a time? On second thought, never mind. I’m okay-I think it’s just a sprained ankle-but there’s a guy out there I don’t want a second date with.”

“Who? Tell me. Tell me everything.”

“I was putting measurements into the data bank, over at that table by the windows, using the digitizing probe. I’d just gotten to that really huge skull, and I was halfway through the cranial measurements when I got a creepy feeling, like maybe somebody was watching me. I looked up, but all I could see was my own reflection.”

“Remind me to get some floodlights put in outside tomorrow,” I said. “Or a video camera. Or an electric fence.”

“I went back to measuring,” she said, “but a minute later I heard the outside door open and close. I was jumpy already, so I listened closely for the sound of someone going up the steps to the second floor. Nothing. I turned around to look and listen, and I saw a shadow fall across the piece of paper covering the little window in the door. I got a really bad feeling, and it got worse when the knob started to turn, very slowly-first one way, then the other-and the door started rattling and shaking as somebody pulled on the knob.

“I yelled, ‘We’re closed!’ and the door just started shaking harder. ‘I’m calling the police!’ I said, and it shook even harder. I picked up the phone and dialed 911, but right then the glass shattered and an arm reached through the window.

“That’s when I panicked. He was coming in the only door to the lab. I thought about trying to get out one of the front windows, but I figured he’d hear me and run back outside just as I got there. I decided I’d have a better chance if I turned out the light and hid in the shelves in the back.”

“Do you know who it was? Did you see the guy’s face?”

“No.” She frowned, almost as if she were angry at herself. “All I could see was a man’s hand. Long-sleeved denim shirt. Surgical gloves.”

“Excuse me?” It was one of the EMTs. Miranda and I both looked at him, startled. I’d been so caught up in the story I’d forgotten there were other people in the room. “How do you know it was a man’s hand, if it was gloved?”

Miranda looked exasperated. “I’ve only measured a zillion male and female hands over the past four years,” she said. A zillion was an exaggeration, but only a slight one. “I can tell the difference at fifty yards.” That, I felt sure, was not an exaggeration.

I pointed to the smear of blood on the door. “That’s not yours, is it?”

“No,” she said, with obvious satisfaction. “That’s his.”

“Good. The crime lab shouldn’t have any trouble getting DNA out of that.”

“I’ll claim credit for getting the sample,” she said.

I looked at her quizzically.

“When I jumped up to turn out the light, I grabbed a femur that was lying on the table. Just as he got the dead bolt open, I gave him a good whack on the arm. Must have forced his arm down onto the broken glass.” Her coolness astonished me. “If his humerus isn’t fractured, he’s at least got one hell of a bruise.”

“Probably two,” I corrected. “One where you whacked him and one where his arm hit the door.” She grinned, and I marveled at her bravery.

“But that didn’t scare him off?”

“I wish. By then he was yanking the door open. I flipped off the light switch and ran toward the back of the lab.”

My heart was pounding. “God,” I said, “I know it turns out okay, and I’m still scared to death.”

“If you’re not peeing your pants, you’re not as scared as I was,” she said. She pointed down at the blue sheet covering her, and I saw a damp stain at the center. “Last time I peed my pants was in first grade,” she said, “on the swings after school one day. My mom was late picking me up, and I was too shy to go inside and ask Mrs. Downey if I could use the bathroom. I couldn’t think what to do, so I just sat there, swinging back and forth, dribbling arcs of pee on the bare dirt of the playground.”

The image of six-year-old Miranda peeing on the swing set broke the spell of fear, and I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “So tell me the rest.”

“I climbed on top of one of the shelves-that one right there,” she said, pointing to a rack halfway toward the back of the lab.

“I figured that in the dark he might not find me up there. I could hear him going up and down the rows, stopping to listen for my breathing. Finally he walked toward the door, and I thought he was leaving. But then the lights came on.”

“Damn,” I said.

“I knew he’d see me with the lights on, so I decided to try climbing out that little window up there.”

“You’re brilliant,” I said. I’d completely forgotten about the windows. Set high into the side and back walls of the bone lab were a few small windows, each measuring about two feet high by three feet wide. They led not to the outside of the stadium but to its deepest labyrinthine recesses-the catacombs at the very base of the stands.

“It’s true what they say about fear and adrenaline,” she said.

“It took the strength of ten graduate assistants to slide that window open through forty years of gunk.” She flexed a muscle, and both the EMTs laughed. “Anyway, when I dropped down the other side my foot caught something, and I rolled my ankle pretty hard. I figured I was in real trouble at that point, but then I heard the sirens coming, and I heard him running out of the lab and up the stairwell. And here I am, and here are all of you. And jeepers, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I did a little of both. “Thank God you’re okay,” I said. “Let’s get you to the ER and get that ankle X-rayed.”

“Good grief, I don’t need an X-ray,” she scoffed. “You think I don’t know if my ankle is broken?”

“She’s only measured a zillion ankles,” said the head EMT, earning a laugh from her.

Miranda used her right foot to kick the sheet off her left leg. The EMTs already had the ankle immobilized in a strap-on boot; cold packs surrounded her foot and lower leg. “If you can just pull a string or two,” she said, “and get me in to see one of the football team’s physical therapists tomorrow, I’ll be fine in a couple of days.”

“I think I can arrange that,” I said, and turned to the EMTs.

“Can you let her go now, or do you have to take her to the hospital since you’re already here?”

“I’d advise an X-ray,” said the lead EMT, “but no, we’re not going to force her to get treatment against her will, if she’s competent to refuse it.”

“She’s one of the most competent people I know,” I said.

He shrugged and went out to the ambulance, returning with a long form, in triplicate, requiring multiple signatures. She handed the forms back, and he glanced over them.

“This 974 phone number here,” he said. “Is that…?”

“That’s the number here in the lab,” she said. She hopped down from the gurney onto her good leg, then hobbled over to the desk and sat on the edge, tapping the phone with a finger.

“You want to put your other number-home or cell number-here beside it? Just in case?”

“Just in case what-my foot falls off when I get home?”

He turned bright red, then mumbled, “I guess maybe this one’s enough.” He gave her a few unnecessary instructions on caring for a sprain, wished her a speedy recovery, and then retreated, trailing his gurney, his colleague, and his shredded dignity behind him.

“‘Just in case’ he wanted to ask you out,” I said once he was gone. “You sure shut him down fast.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Kind of a shame-he was cute. But that was a test, and he flunked. If he doesn’t have the moxie to answer that in front of an audience, he doesn’t have enough moxie to deal with me.”

“You could be right,” I said. “Hey, you ever tried speed dating?”

She snorted. “Naw. Waste of time. I just fast-forward straight to speed rejection.”

I laughed. “If you ever get tired of anthropology, I think you should write a relationship self-help book. Smart Women, Foolish Men or some such.”

The campus police officers were standing around aimlessly, so I hoped maybe we could call it a night. “You guys gonna call a KPD forensic team to come get a swab of that?”

“They’re already on the way,” he said. “Should be here in a couple of minutes.”

“Do you need me to stay around and lock up once they’re done?”

“No, sir,” he said. “We’ve got keys, so we can lock up. We can also call the physical plant people, get them to replace the glass in the morning.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said. “Can you ask them if they’ve got wire-reinforced security glass, or bulletproof glass, to make sure this kind of thing can’t happen again?”

He nodded, and then I saw him looking at the bank of big windows across the front of the lab.

“I should probably give them a call, too,” I said. “Talk to them about some bars for those front windows.”

“I’d say that’s a good idea,” he said.

I looked at Miranda, realized what a close call she’d had.

“Wish I’d thought of that sooner,” I said.

“You can’t think of everything,” Miranda said. “If he hadn’t gotten in, he might have just been waiting for me outside. Point is, I’m fine.”

“That’s part of the point,” I said. “Another important part is to keep you fine.”

I offered Miranda my guest room for the night, partly because I was worried about her safety and partly because I feared she’d have trouble getting around with a badly sprained ankle.

“Not a chance,” she said.

“Why not?” I said. “I’ve got no designs on you.”

“I know,” she said, “and I couldn’t take the disappointment.” Then she turned serious. “Actually, I figure you’re the next item on this guy’s to-do list. He was probably looking for you when he came down here in the first place. I was just the consolation prize.”

A thought struck me suddenly. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I suspect you’re his new favorite.” When I quoted the line from the card on the flowers, the color drained from her face. Then she shook her head fiercely.

“No,” she said. “I’m not going to think that way. I don’t want to spend every moment looking over my shoulder, expecting some pervert or creep to be there.”

“Then don’t,” I said. “But at least keep some pepper spray handy.”

“I have some in the nightstand.”

I drove Miranda home and helped her up the stairs and into her house. “I’ve never seen your house before,” I said. “It’s charming.”

“You’ve never seen the inside,” she said pointedly. She saw the look of shame on my face, and she laid a hand on my arm. “It’s okay,” she said, and those two simple words of understanding and forgiveness were among the most profound and generous things anyone had ever said to me. I wrapped my arms around Miranda and gave her a bear hug, probably as tight as the one the UT police officer had given me outside the bone lab. After a moment she tapped me on the back, so I let go.

“I might need to go to the ER now,” she said. “I think you just fractured half my ribs.”

“God, you’re something,” I said. “What would I do without you?”

“You’d find somebody else,” she said. “The world’s full of brave, brilliant women. Hell, graduate school’s full of brave, brilliant women.”

“I don’t think there’s another one like you out there,” I said.

“Good night, Miranda.”

“Night, Dr. B.”

She closed her door. I waited at the bottom of the steps until I heard the dead bolt snick shut, and then I went only as far as my truck. I reclined the seat a few inches, rolled down the windows so I could hear, and passed the night in an uneasy vigil outside her house.