DeVriess’s eyes flashed and his jaw muscles clenched and unclenched as if he were attacking a piece of gristle. For a moment I thought he might actually come across the desk at me. Finally he said, “Shit, Doc. Goddamnit.” He looked away, and when he looked back at me, I could see pain in his eyes. “There’s half a dozen cases keep me awake at night. That’s number two on the list.”
“Let me take a guess at number one,” I said. “The case where the little girl was abducted, and then killed, while you delayed the search of the suspect’s car?”
“Yes, damn you, that’s number one. Are you satisfied?” He sighed wearily. “I like to believe that the good cases make up for the bad ones. Like clearing Meacham of a murder he didn’t commit.”
“Can’t hurt,” I said. “You just need some more like that.”
“And is this a case like that?”
“Yes. I didn’t kill Jess Carter.”
“You know I’d defend you just as vigorously if you did.”
“I know. I want to hire you in spite of that, not because of it.”
“Defense lawyers have a saying, Doc: ‘There is no client so dangerous as an innocent man.’ Know why?”
“No; why?”
He thought a moment, then shrugged. “You know, it beats the hell out of me.” He smiled ruefully. So did I. He picked up the phone and hit a button on the console. “Chloe, cancel the rest of my appointments for the afternoon,” he said. “Yes, even him. And draw me up a letter of engagement with Dr. Brockton. Yes, the standard retainer, twenty thousand.” I felt my sphincter muscles clench at the mention of the sum. “Thank you, Chloe.” He set the handset back in its cradle. “Okay, tell me about it,” he said, opening the leather notebook and uncapping the fountain pen. “Start at the beginning.”
“Which beginning?”
“The beginning of the end. When things began to go wrong.”
So I did. I started with the body Miranda and I had tied to a tree at the Body Farm for Jess, and I went on to tell about the creationist brouhaha, and Miss Georgia, and Craig Willis’s raging mother, and Susan Scott’s raging grief, and Jess’s sweetness when she finally invited me all the way in, and her suspicious ex-husband, and her obscenely posed corpse. By the time I reached the end of the end-or at least the present moment-two hours had passed, the sky was dark, and I felt exhaustion and grief seeping into my bones.
CHAPTER 30
I TOOK A CAB from DeVriess’s office to McGhee Tyson Airport and had the driver drop me at the doors to the baggage claim area. The Hertz counter was near, and there was no line, so I opted for that one. “I need to rent a car,” I told the young woman behind the counter.
“Do you have a reservation?”
“No. Is that a problem?”
I thought I saw the corners of her mouth twitch. “Do we look swamped with business?”
I smiled. “This could be the first piece of good luck I’ve had all day,” I said.
She entered my driver’s license number and credit card into her computer, and five minutes later I was headed north on Alcoa Highway in a white Ford Taurus, which struck me as surely the most boring car to emerge from Detroit in de cades. But my feet were still sore from my trek to DeVriess’s office, so, boring or not, I appreciated the vehicle.
I passed the turnoff to UT Medical Center and the Body Farm-a place that would forever be haunted by Jess’s ghost for me now-and crossed the river, then took the Kingston Pike exit. The winding roads of Sequoyah Hills felt unfamiliar, probably because the Taurus handled differently from my truck. But maybe they felt unfamiliar also because the world had changed so completely in the past two days.
When the police impounded my truck, they impounded my garage door opener along with it, I realized, so I would have to leave the rental car in the driveway overnight unless I wanted to park, go inside, open the garage door, then drive it. The sequence of actions, which would have taken sixty seconds or less, loomed as overwhelming. The Taurus didn’t strike me as a particularly tempting vehicle for car thieves, who could take their pick of Audis, Mercedes, Jaguars, and other high-end vehicles in other driveways in this part of town. As a security compromise, though, I paused on the front porch and clicked the keyless remote, and the vehicle locked with a diminutive beep.
As I stepped inside my front door, I heard and felt the distinctive crunch of broken glass underfoot. Switching on the light in the entryway, I saw glass littering the slate floor-dozens of shards and chips of it-and a rock sitting atop some of the pieces, a note attached to it with duct tape. I removed the note and unfolded it. “Now it’s your turn to burn,” it read. Below the words was a crayon drawing of a monkey engulfed in red and orange flames. I ripped the note in half, and was about to tear it into shreds when I realized that might be a terrible mistake. I remembered the newscast the night of the creationist protest, and my surprise at seeing Jess interviewed at the scene. I also remembered the look of rage on the face of Jennings Bryan as he listened to Jess’s sarcastic comments about his movement, his philosophy. And I recalled what she had said about the obscene and threatening phone calls she had gotten that evening. Had whoever made those threats actually followed through on them? And was I the next target?
I pulled out my wallet and fished out the card John Evers had given me, and dialed his number. He answered on the second ring. “Detective Evers? This is Dr. Brockton. Listen, I just got home, and I found something I thought you might ought to know about.” I described the note, and how it had been delivered, and reminded him about the threats Jess had gotten.
“Okay,” he said, “if you’ve got a ziplock bag, seal the rock and the note in the bag. Try not to handle them any more. Bring it in when you and your attorney come see us tomorrow.”
I took a long, hot shower in hopes of unwinding. I leaned against the front wall of the bathtub enclosure, my head hung forward so the water beat down on my scalp and neck and shoulders. Fiber by fiber, the muscles let go, and I found myself slumping rather than leaning, then sliding down the tiles rather than slumping against them. The air had turned almost opaque with steam, almost solid, despite the exhaust fan I had switched on. When the effort to stand became too much, I switched off the water, wrapped my bright pink self in an oversize towel, and staggered into the bedroom. I fished a fresh pair of boxers from the top drawer of my dresser, sat heavily onto the bed, and laboriously threaded my feet through the waistband and leg openings. It took everything I had to stand back up and pull the shorts to my waist. As I bent to fold back the bedspread and top sheet, I could feel my eyelids drooping lower and lower.
And then I came wide awake, as heart-poundingly awake as I had ever been in my life. My white pillowcase was covered with blood. I stared at it, then yanked back the covers all the way to the foot of the bed. Both sheets were drenched in blood as well-mostly dried, but not entirely. And in the center of the bed was a pair of women’s pan ties.
Even before the thought coalesced into words, I knew they were Jess Carter’s pan ties. I also knew that I was about to be arrested for her murder.