The Bone Thief bf-5 Read online

  “Flip it over and read what’s on the back.”

  Gingerly I grasped the object by the edges and turned it. This side was printed with instructions in the same blue ink. “Hold for five seconds in urine stream,” read the first line. “Urine stream?” I asked.

  “It’s a pregnancy test, dummy.”

  A small illustration on the back depicted the two small cutout windows, complete with the colored lines I’d seen on the other side. The caption beside this illustration explained what the pair of lines meant.

  The lines meant my life had just turned upside down. Unless someone else had taken the test, Isabella was pregnant.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Jesus,” said Miranda, “She’s on the lam and she’s knocked up to boot?” It was the morning after I’d seen the pregnancy-test kit in Art’s lab, and I’d dropped by the bone lab when I first arrived on campus. I’d had a bad night of it, so I was eager to get out of bed and onto campus, and I’d been relieved to see Miranda’s car parked beside the stadium when I arrived. When I walked into the lab, she was checking her Facebook page on the computer, but now — when I told her of Isabella’s pregnancy — she closed the window on the screen and gave me full attention. Suddenly her eyes widened and she clapped a hand to her mouth. “Holy crap, Dr. B. Oh, my God. It’s your baby, isn’t it? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

  I shrugged miserably. “I don’t know. It seems so far-fetched in so many ways, but then again, she doesn’t — didn’t? — seem like the sort to sleep around.” I shook my head. “Then again, what the hell do I know about what sort she is? She killed a man to avenge the bombing of Nagasaki; clearly she’s a bit unhinged. For all I know, she might’ve slept with a dozen other men in the past few months.” But even as I was saying it, I knew it wasn’t true.

  “When you say ‘other men,’ I assume you mean besides you. I knew you were sleeping with her,” she said, with what sounded like a mix of vindication and disapproval.

  “Slept,” I corrected miserably. “Just once.”

  “And am I right in thinking that maybe, just possibly, the topic of protection did not…um, arise, before or during the doing of the deed?”

  “Alas, you are correct,” I said. “Things happened pretty quick that night. I think we both got swept away.”

  “Swept away? Swept away? What are you, sixteen years old? Jesus, Dr. B., this isn’t the Age of Aquarius, it’s the Age of HIV. And herpes, not to mention—duh—unplanned pregnancy.”

  “You’re right, of course. But you know what, Miranda? It’s easy to be right in hindsight. Haven’t you ever been wrong — wrong and headlong — in the heat of the moment?”

  “Not since undergraduate—” She stopped midsentence, and her cheeks reddened. “Okay, okay, I see your point. But fuck, Dr. B.” She snorted. “Oh, wait, you already did that, didn’t you?” I was not amused, and she could tell. “Sorry. I don’t mean to make light of your distress. But fuck, Dr. B. — you had sex with a murderer.”

  “I know that now,” I protested, “but I didn’t know it then. I mean, I knew I was having sex with her. But I didn’t know she was a murderer. Murderess. Whichever.”

  “I prefer the term ‘crazed killer,’ actually,” she said. “But don’t let me sway you one way or another.” She studied me, her face suddenly serious. “So if Isabella got pregnant after being exposed to gamma radiation, does that complicate things medically? Isn’t there a big risk of birth defects?”

  I shook my head. “I looked that up yesterday, and I don’t think so. Handling the source burned her fingers — just like it singed your fingertips and cooked Eddie’s hands — but apparently it wouldn’t endanger a baby who was conceived a week or two later.”

  “Well, thank heaven for small favors,” Miranda responded. “Still, if it’s your baby, that’s pretty heavy stuff. How are you doing with that?”

  “I don’t honestly know,” I said. “I can’t even imagine it. There might be a baby on the way that I’ve fathered, with a woman who’s wanted by the police and the FBI? I have a grown son, Miranda. I have two grandsons. I don’t know this woman. I don’t even know where she is. And if I did, I’d have to turn her in.”

  “Wow. Makes worrying about a dissertation topic seem like small potatoes.”

  “What do I do about this, Miranda?”

  She shrugged. “What can you do? She’s a fugitive. It’s not like you can get together and discuss the situation over coffee at Starbucks. I mean, if the FBI can’t find her, you probably won’t be able to. So unless she surfaces, I don’t see how you can do anything except wait.”

  “But she’s in trouble — deep trouble — and she needs medical care for her hands, and she needs prenatal care for the baby. For my baby. Jesus. What a mess.”

  “It is a mess,” she agreed. She paused, looking uncomfortable, then added, “So…um, Dr. B.? Is there somebody else you can talk to about this? Because I’m probably not the best person. A therapist, maybe? Or your son?”

  I didn’t tell her that I was already talking to a therapist. She was right, of course, to feel uncomfortable about the conversation. It had been inappropriate to unburden myself to one of my students, even one with whom I’d worked for years, almost as an equal. “I’m sorry, Miranda. That was inconsiderate of me. You’re right. I’ll talk to Jeff.”

  Leaving the bone lab, I avoided the stairs that led up one flight to the departmental office. Instead I took a right, out the door at the bottom of the stairwell, and then skirted the base of the stadium on the one-lane service road that threaded between the girders and the columns. The day was chilly, and the cold felt good on my face for the two-minute walk to the north end zone. There I closed my door and dialed a call.

  But it was not my son I called — it was the Oak Ridge Police Department, and I was pretty sure the call wasn’t going to make me feel better.

  * * *

  “And you don’t want to tell me what this is about before I call the feds?” Jim Emert sounded both intrigued and unhappy.

  “Not really,” I said. “I’d rather tell you and Thornton at the same time.” Thornton — Special Agent Charles “Chip” Thornton — was assigned to the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. When Novak had been killed by a radiation source, the Bureau feared that it was the work of terrorists. Thornton had been sent down to Tennessee to head the investigation.

  Emert sighed. “Dr. Bill Brockton, man of mystery. Hang on a second. I’m putting you on hold while I conference Thornton in. If I lose you, I’ll call you right back.” I heard a click, then silence. A minute passed, then a couple more. I’d just about decided I’d been disconnected when the phone clicked again. “Doc, are you still there?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Special Agent Thornton?”

  “Yeah, Chip here. Hello, Doc.”

  “Hi, Chip. How’s life in our nation’s capital?”

  “I miss Tennessee. I got spoiled down there.”

  “You know where to find us.” I hesitated, unsure how to begin the discussion that I’d requested. “You guys still beating the bushes for Isabella?”

  “We are. Nothing but leaves and branches so far, unfortunately. We’d thought she might turn up in Baton Rouge or Shreveport, since she grew up in Louisiana, but no trace of her there so far. Emert says they found a room in the Oak Ridge storm-sewer system where she holed up for at least a few days.”

  “Incredible,” I said. “She must have stashed the food and stuff there before she killed Novak, in case she needed to lie low.” I was stalling, I realized. “Did Jim tell you there were bloody bandages in the trash they found in the room?”

  “He did,” said Thornton. “He sent me an inventory of everything the forensic techs recovered from the scene.”

  I couldn’t stall any longer. “Then you know she’s pregnant. Or probably is. Or was.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Puts an interesting twist on things, doesn’t it?”

  The line went quiet. T
hey were both waiting for me, the one who’d requested the conference call, to continue. “So,” I began, “about that interesting twist…” I foundered, but neither one seemed inclined to help me out. “I need to tell you guys that I slept with Isabella. I’m probably the one who got her pregnant.”

  “Damn, Doc,” said Emert.

  “Go on,” prompted Thornton.

  “It was just once,” I said. “A couple of weeks before we found out she was the one who’d killed Novak. She’d helped me find the place where the soldier’s body was buried back in 1945. I…I liked her. She came over to my house one night….”

  “I know,” said Thornton.

  “What?” said Emert.

  “What?” I echoed. “You know? You knew? How?”

  “We had you under surveillance,” he said.

  “You what? Why the hell did you have me under surveillance?”

  “Christ, Doc,” said Emert. “Could it be because you were having an affair with a deranged killer?”

  “Good grief, don’t be stupid, Emert,” said Thornton cheerfully. “You think we knew she was a deranged killer but decided to let the Doc get a little nooky before we arrested her? You think Dr. Brockton was weeks ahead of the Bureau and Oak Ridge’s finest in solving the crime?”

  “Okay,” said the detective testily, “so why did you put him under surveillance?”

  “Because we thought he might be at risk. Novak was dead from radiation exposure, Dr. Garcia was badly injured, and Dr. Brockton and his assistant were also exposed. Hell, Emert, you were exposed — we thought you might be at risk, too.”

  “So why didn’t you put me under surveillance?” badgered the detective.

  “Maybe we did,” said Thornton.

  “Shit,” said Emert again. “Can I just say for the record that I’m feeling totally out of the loop here, in every way possible?”

  “Sure you can,” said Thornton, still cheerful. “Nothing personal, though. The Novak case was, and is, a very high-profile case. We put a lot of resources into it, especially early on, when we thought there might be a threat of terrorism with nuclear materials. There are all sorts of avenues we’ve pursued that we haven’t felt the need to disclose to local law enforcement.”

  “Excuse me, guys,” I said. “Fascinating as I find this jurisdictional discussion, and loath as I am to return to my personal shame, I’m wondering if you need to ask me more questions. Chip, since you already knew that Isabella had spent the night at my house, had you already figured out what I was calling about today?”

  “I had a pretty good idea,” he said. “Soon as I saw ‘home pregnancy test, positive,’ on the inventory of stuff from the sewer, the lightbulb went on.”

  “How come you never asked me about that night she spent at my house? You knew about it months ago.”

  “At first it seemed like none of our business — even though we were keeping an eye on you. When we’re doing surveillance, we learn a lot of details about people’s personal lives. We had no idea Isabella was relevant to the Novak case. We thought she was just a random civilian. And, by the way, a totally hot librarian. By the time we realized she’d killed Novak, she was on the run. And she didn’t run toward you when she ran. She ran away from you. It’s not like you’ve aided and abetted.”

  “So you’re not thinking I’ve done something wrong.”

  “Sexually risky, yeah. Criminally wrong? No. Not unless there’s something else you haven’t told us.”

  “No, that’s it. What now?”

  “We keep looking,” Thornton said. “We’re already checking medical clinics for female patients who came in with burned hands. Now we’ll start checking for prenatal care, too. But there are a hell of a lot of clinics in the United States. Meanwhile, I trust you’ll let me or Emert know if she contacts you.”

  “I’m not holding my breath,” said Emert. “Nobody ever tells me anything.”

  “Good grief, Emert, don’t be a baby,” said Thornton. “I gotta go. Doc, give my regards to Price and Rankin.” He clicked off, leaving me to wonder how much he knew about their body-brokering investigation — and how much they knew about my personal but not-so-private life.

  “Hey, Doc?” Emert was still on the line. “Who are Price and Rankin?”

  “Can’t tell you,” I said, and hung up.

  CHAPTER 14

  Burt DeVriess’s law office occupied some of the swankiest real estate in downtown Knoxville: the twentieth floor of Riverview Tower, a sleek skyscraper — tall enough to scrape Knoxville’s sky at least — perched on the bluff near the headwaters of the Tennessee River. The streamlined oval building was clad in alternating horizontal bands of green glass and stainless steel. Early in our acquaintance, as we’d walked back to his office from a court hearing, Grease had nudged me and pointed to the building. “Just look at it, Doc,” he’d said, “all green and silver. The color of money. No wonder I love it.”

  Today I was the only passenger in the elevator, which whisked me up without stopping, the air in the shaft whistling slightly during the ascent. DeVriess had phoned to ask if I wanted to drop by for an interesting tidbit about the Willoughby case. His call caught me on my way back to campus from my session with Dr. Hoover. I was still feeling antsy and anxious, so I was grateful for the distraction of an errand and an inside scoop.

  I was also glad to have occasion to see DeVriess’s assistant, Chloe Matthews, again. I’d first met Chloe a year earlier, the afternoon I’d walked in off the street, the taste of freshly swallowed pride rising bitter in my throat, and asked DeVriess to defend me against a murder charge. Chloe had greeted me that dark day with a welcoming smile and a warm handshake. I’d been grateful then, and I was grateful still.

  She was on the phone when I walked in, but she flashed that same smile at me and held up a finger to tell me she’d be with me momentarily. As the call dragged on through several of Chloe’s attempts to wrap it up, she rolled her eyes and made the universal hand-puppet motion for “yak, yak, yak” with her right hand. “Sorry,” she said as she finally hung up with a head shake. “My mother, bless her heart, calling to complain about how long her mother keeps her on the phone. So now I’m complaining to you, and you can complain to Mr. DeVriess about me.”

  “And then Burt can phone your grandmother to gripe about me,” I teased. “How’ve you been? And how’s the speed dating working out?” The last time I’d seen Chloe, she was about to go on a speed date, a round-robin lunch gathering where single people spent five or ten minutes auditioning a series of other single people.

  “Utter disaster,” she laughed. “It took me twenty years to get over junior high school, and one hour of speed dating undid two decades of progress and self-esteem. I clammed up and turned into a total geek again.”

  I found it hard to imagine the attractive, articulate, and confident woman in front of me as a geek.

  “Did you ever try it?” she asked.

  “Actually, I did look into it once,” I confessed, “but I got rejected even before I got in the door. Too old.”

  “You? Too old? No way,” she scoffed.

  “Seriously. You have to be under fifty. I’ve missed my chance by a year or three.”

  “Well, that’s just speed dating’s loss,” she said. “Anyhow, I think Match.com or Facebook would be better for you. Those sites have zillions of women in their forties and fifties, and I’m sure they’d be fighting over you tooth and nail.” She frowned. “The problem is, online dating can turn into a full-time job.”

  For an insane split second, I considered saying, “I’m about to be really busy raising an out-of-wedlock baby I accidentally fathered,” but instead I opted for, “Heavens, Chloe, I can barely handle the job I’ve already got.”

  “Oh, nonsense.” The phone rang, and she stuck out her tongue at the display. “Mr. DeVriess’s office,” she answered cheerfully. “…I’m so sorry, Judge Wilcox, he’s taking a deposition right now…. I know, I told him, but he’s been tied up all day…
. I’ll make sure he calls you as soon as he’s free…. Yes, sir, I’ll remind him it’s important…. Thank you. Good-bye.” She made a face as she hung up. “What a pompous ass. Thinks he was appointed by God Almighty.” Her lips pursed. “Or thinks God Almighty was appointed by him. Let me tell Mr. DeVriess you’re here.” She lifted the telephone receiver and pressed the intercom button. “Dr. Brockton’s here…. I’ll send him right back.” She hung up. “You know your way, right?”

  “I do. But I thought you just said he was in a deposition.”

  “I did. He is,” she laughed. “Every single time Judge Wilcox calls.” She waved me through the frosted-glass door behind her.

  Burt DeVriess’s office was positioned in the eastern curve of Riverview Tower. A glass door behind his desk opened onto a private balcony overlooking the river, a marina, condos, the cozy runway of Island Home Airport, and a thirty-foot, tenton orange basketball, forever hanging in mid-swish, halfway through the forty-foot hoop atop the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Out the broad band of windows to the side, the dark green river spooled beneath the bright green trusswork of the Gay Street Bridge, Knoxville’s bridge of choice for suicidal jumpers. Across the river, atop a kudzu-covered bluff stretching from the angular struts of the Gay Street Bridge to the graceful arches of the Henley Street Bridge, sprawled the vestiges of Baptist Hospital, torn down to make way for a new medical center that had been scrapped even before construction began.

  DeVriess was seated behind a sleek glass table, which served as his desk. The glass — the same green as the building’s windows — was spotless and empty, except for an art deco reading lamp, a thick file folder, and the silk-sleeved elbows of DeVriess. “Hey, Doc, have a seat.” The two chairs facing the desk had slender, angular frames of glossy black wood; their backs and seats were strung crosswise with fine cords of nylon, thin as the strings of a violin.