The Bone Thief bf-5 Read online

  She hesitated, but only for a second, and when I heard what she had to say, I wished she’d hesitated longer. I wished she’d hesitated forever, in fact. “By selling some of your bodies,” she said. “On the black market.”

  I stared from Price’s face to Rankin’s. They stared back impassively. Finally I said, “That’s unethical. Probably illegal.”

  “That’s the point,” she replied. “That’s why we want you to do it.”

  “I’m sorry to be slow on the uptake,” I said. “I don’t, as a general principle, set out to break federal laws. What, exactly, are you asking me to do? And why?”

  “We’d like you to help us run a sting,” she said. “We’ve been building a case against a tissue bank — a company that receives bodies and then distributes the organs and tissues for transplants and medical research. The company’s based in Newark, New Jersey; it’s called Tissue Sciences and Services.”

  “Did you say it’s a company? I thought all tissue banks were nonprofit organizations.”

  Price shook her head. “No, it’s definitely a for-profit company. Emphasis on ‘profit.’ We have strong evidence that Tissue Sciences engages in fraud and conspiracy to obtain bodies and body parts, then profits illegally when it resells the cadavers or various tissues from them.”

  “So if you already have strong evidence, why not go ahead and bust them?”

  “We were just about to,” she said. “The lead agent in our Newark field office was writing up a criminal complaint against the company’s president — a guy named Raymond Sinclair — when our key informant died.”

  “Did the informant die from being an informant, by any chance?”

  Rankin shook his head. “He died from being overweight and underexercised. Massive heart attack.” He shrugged slightly, then conceded, “It’s possible he was experiencing some additional stress about this investigation.”

  I pressed. “Because…?”

  “Because we had enough evidence to charge him on several counts,” he answered. “He was a target before he became an informant.”

  “So he was cooperating because you promised him a break?”

  He shook his head again. “We never promise breaks. All we promised was that we’d tell the U.S. Attorney’s Office how incredibly helpful he was.”

  I raised my eyebrows quizzically, but he didn’t seem inclined to take the hint, so I put the question into words. “Who was this helpful fellow, and how’d he help before his untimely demise? Was he a disgruntled Tissue Sciences employee who squealed?”

  He looked at Price and got another nod from her before answering. “No. The guy was the diener in the Anatomy Department of MacArthur School of Medicine, in Maryland. He prepped all the cadavers for the med students and faculty, and he ran the body-donation program. That meant he handled the intake and the disposition of every cadaver that came through the doors of the medical school.”

  “And how many cadavers came through the door?”

  “Twenty-seven last year.” He cocked his head. “How many’d you get last year, Doc?”

  “A hundred thirty-five,” I said.

  He whistled. “That’s a lot of bodies.”

  “Lots of people want to donate their body to science,” I pointed out. “Partly that’s because funerals have gotten so damn expensive, but mostly it’s because people like the idea of doing some good after they die — helping train doctors or advancing medical research or forensic science. We’re getting four or five times as many bodies now as we were just a few years ago. We’re about to run out of places to put them.”

  His gaze sharpened. “So are you getting more bodies than you can handle these days?”

  “We can always make room for an FBI agent or two,” I joked. “In fact, I just happen to have donor forms here in this filing cabinet.”

  Rankin smiled and shook his head.

  “It’s true that we don’t need a hundred thirty bodies a year for research,” I said. “We don’t have enough graduate students and faculty to do that many experiments. And our three-acre site is getting kinda crowded. And we’re understaffed. It’s not that we have too many bodies. We just don’t have enough money or land.”

  He and Price exchanged a look. “I like it,” he mused. “‘We don’t have too many bodies, we just don’t have enough money.’ What do you think?”

  “Could be a good hook,” said Price.

  Suddenly I had a bad feeling: the feeling that I myself was about to become a tasty bit of shark bait.

  “Before I say yes,” I told Price, “I need to talk to a lawyer.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “You want to talk to your lawyer?”

  “Not my lawyer, UT’s lawyer. Amanda Whiting, the general counsel — UT’s top legal eagle. Before I can do something like this, I’d need to make sure the university knows and supports it.”

  Price shook her head. “Bureau policy is to keep a tight lid on our investigations,” she said. “The fewer people in the loop, the less risk that something leaks out. I’d have real concerns about bringing people from the legal department into this.”

  “Not ‘ people,’” I countered, “one person. I’d have real concerns about not bringing her into this. Do you realize how bad it could look for UT if things go wrong?” She didn’t answer, so I painted the picture for her. “If word got out that the Anthropology Department was selling donated bodies on the black market, that would do terrible damage. We could kiss most of our donations good-bye — not just body donations to Anthropology but financial donations to the entire university. A scandal like that could cost us millions of dollars, maybe tens of millions.”

  Price and Rankin made no move to respond.

  “And then there’s me,” I added. “If I understand you right, the guy from the medical school who was selling off bodies and body parts was about to be indicted.”

  Price nodded reluctantly; she opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off.

  “Hang on, let me finish. The med-school guy was committing fraud, is that it? Altering donor charts or falsifying financial records to hide the fact that he was making a fortune off a postmortem chop shop?”

  “That’s exactly what he was doing,” she said. “He would indicate that a body was unsuitable for use by the school, report it as cremated, and then sell it to Tissue Sciences. He took cash under the table — seven thousand per body, and he admitted to selling thirty-one bodies over the past three years. He paid cash for a big boat and a Mercedes convertible. For a guy with no college degree and no formal medical training, he was living large.”

  “And you’re hoping Tissue Sciences will offer me that same sort of deal? Big bucks for bodies? Payola for parts?”

  She nodded. “Technically, this is still Newark’s case, but if we can bring you in, a lot of the focus would shift to Knoxville, and Special Agent Rankin would serve as our lead agent. We’d begin gathering evidence here, starting with recordings of every conversation you have with Sinclair or anybody else at Tissue Sciences.”

  “You’d tap his phone lines?”

  “Actually, what we do is ask you to record all your conversations with him,” Rankin said. “We’d need a court order to do a wiretap, but in Tennessee, if one party to a conversation consents to recording the call — that would be you, we hope — it’s legal to record it. So if you’re willing, we’ll attach a recorder to your office and home phone lines. All you have to do is hit a button when you get a call from the guy.”

  “What if he calls my cell phone?”

  Rankin looked at Price, and she nodded, so he went on. “Actually, with your permission we can record your cell-phone conversations with him, too, by routing them through our engineering lab up in Quantico.”

  “So it gets you the same evidence as a wiretap, but you don’t have to jump through the legal hoops to get it?”

  “Pretty much,” he conceded.

  “And was your med-school diener recording his calls with this guy Sinclair?”

  Rankin
nodded.

  “Any chance he made a deathbed warning call to Sinclair from some other phone?”

  “Unlikely,” he said. “We recorded a conversation they had only a few minutes before our source had the heart attack. Only other call he made before he died was to 911. He didn’t have an opportunity to spill the beans. He was too busy dying.”

  “Any chance his heart attack was triggered by something other than fat and laziness? Maybe something somebody slipped into his coffee?” I thought of Leonard Novak, unsuspectingly swallowing the capsule that killed him. “Or into his vitamin pills?”

  Rankin looked pained. “Also unlikely, but remotely possible.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “No poisons showed up in the toxicology screen at his autopsy,” he explained, “but his potassium level was abnormally high. And a massive dose of potassium can trigger a heart attack. But as I say, he was on the phone with Sinclair at Tissue Sciences shortly before he keeled over, and Sinclair talked like they’d be doing business for a long time.”

  “Maybe so,” I pointed out, “but your snitch talked like that, too. Maybe they were both acting.”

  Rankin shrugged; there was no way to disprove that possibility. “Either way, Sinclair’s a bad guy. Besides his med-school source, we think he’s buying bodies from funeral homes and crematories. And we’ve got some indications he’s buying kidneys from poor people overseas — living donors — then selling the organs to rich Americans and Europeans, patients who’ll pay top dollar to jump to the front of the line for a transplant.”

  I felt my resistance weakening. “I can’t help you bust him for that,” I said, “since none of my donors have transplantable kidneys. But just for the sake of argument, let’s say I’m willing to do this. What’s going to set the wheels of the sting in motion? Do I just call up this guy Sinclair and say, ‘Hey, the FBI tells me you need a new supply of black-market bodies’?”

  “We’ll figure something out,” he said, “if you’re game to help us. We have some experience in setting up undercover sting operations.”

  “Which brings me back to my big concern,” I responded. “If things go the way you hope they’ll go, I’ll have the opportunity to betray the university’s trust in me, betray donors’ trust in the Body Farm, and break sundry laws of the state of Tennessee and the United States of America.” I looked from him to Price. “You’re sending me into battle unarmed and defenseless?”

  “We prefer to think that we’re protecting the integrity of the investigation,” she countered. “I know, it’s asking a lot.”

  “It’s asking too much,” I said. “I was accused of a murder a couple of years ago, and it damn near killed me to have my friends and colleagues think I was guilty. I want some reassurance that my reputation won’t be ruined, and the university’s image won’t be destroyed, if I help you with this.”

  “And the Bureau’s word isn’t good enough?”

  I looked out the grimy windows for guidance. The view reminded me where I stood, and where Anthropology stood, in the pecking order of the university. When I’d come to Knoxville to head the department, I’d been promised that the makeshift space in the stadium was only temporary and that we’d get bigger, better quarters soon. I’d also been promised, time and time again, that our shoestring budget would be increased. And yet, twenty years later, here I was, still stuck beneath the lavishly funded football program, still nickel-and-diming the bush-league budgets of my research facility and my faculty and graduate students. The university hadn’t protected me when I’d been falsely accused of murder. Did I really need to worry so much about protecting the university?

  I did, I decided. UT hadn’t given me everything I’d hoped for, but along with the shoestring support and the makeshift space, it had given me the freedom and encouragement to build a program in forensic anthropology that was considered one of the best in the world. Without ever once questioning my sanity, UT had allowed me to haul in bodies by the hundreds and watch them rot, just for the sake of science. In a very profound way, the university was my home, and my colleagues and graduate students were my family. I had a responsibility to protect that home and family as best I could.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I won’t do it. Not without bringing the general counsel into the loop.”

  Price’s face was grim. “Dr. Brockton, I wish you’d reconsider. We will stand behind you if you help us,” she assured me.

  “No offense,” I countered, “but if this backfires on me, and on UT, I want at least some paper trail here within the university that says I didn’t crawl out on this limb without asking permission. Package deal: me and the general counsel.”

  “You’re putting us in a very difficult position here,” she said.

  “Gee, welcome to the damn club, Angie. If the general counsel gives her blessing, I’m in. If not, I’m out. Simple as that. Sorry.” Price and Rankin exchanged unhappy looks. “By the way, just so you know,” I added, “if the general counsel says she’ll keep it to herself, she will. Her word’s as good as the Bureau’s.”

  I expected them to leave. I figured they’d need to discuss my demand in private or run it up the chain of command. But Price didn’t even look at Rankin before she spoke.

  “Deal,” she said, extending her hand.

  I studied her eyes for a moment. I saw toughness, integrity, and maybe some weariness as we shook.

  “The Bureau appreciates your help, Dr. Brockton.”

  “It’s an honor to be asked, Special Agent Price. Even if I’m not thrilled about what you’re asking me to do.”

  Suddenly someone rapped at the door. It opened before I had a chance to say, “Yes?”

  “Dr. B.?” Miranda’s head leaned around the edge. When she saw the FBI agents, she appeared startled. “Oops, sorry to interrupt. I’ll come back later.”

  “You’re not interrupting,” said Price. “We were just leaving.”

  Miranda looked a question at me. “Please, come on in,” I said. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  She stepped into the office, which now felt crowded and awkward. Her keen eyes swiftly sized up my two visitors: business suits, tidy haircuts, intelligent eyes, and the sort of physical confidence exuded by ex-marines and gifted athletes and skilled marksmen and FBI agents.

  “This is my graduate assistant, Miranda Lovelady,” I said. “She’s the real brains of the outfit. Miranda, this is Special Agent Angela Price and Special Agent Ben Rankin.”

  She swapped quick handshakes with them, and then all three of them turned to me expectantly.

  “Agent Price and Agent Rankin stopped by to ask me for some help.” I sensed Price and Rankin tense up as I struggled for what to say next. “If they can get approval from headquarters, could we squeeze a few Knoxville field agents into the Evidence Recovery training?”

  “No problem,” she said.

  Something in her eyes shifted ever so slightly, like the merest flicker in a steady candle flame, and I realized that lying to Miranda might prove to be the steepest challenge and the highest cost of the deal I’d just made with the FBI.

  CHAPTER 11

  The voice in my ear sounded friendly, but it hit me like a fist.

  “Hi, Doc, it’s Jim Emert at ORPD.”

  Emert was the Oak Ridge detective who’d investigated the Novak murder. I hadn’t spoken with Emert in weeks, not since shortly after Isabella had disappeared into the rushing maze of storm sewers beneath the city. That last conversation, two days after she vanished, had been brief. The detective had brought in a cadaver dog to search the tunnels, and the dog, Emert told me, had come up empty-handed, or, more precisely, empty-nosed. I knew the dog’s track record at finding corpses, and it was impressive, so if he’d failed to detect death in the sewer, I felt pretty sure Isabella had escaped. What I felt unsure about was whether to be dismayed or relieved.

  Part of me — the part that held fairly old-fashioned notions of right and wrong, of law and order — was frustr
ated and disappointed that the woman who had killed Leonard Novak and maimed Eddie Garcia appeared to be getting away. But another part of me — the part that felt compassion for the way her family’s lives had been shattered by the dropping of the atomic bomb during World War II — figured she’d already suffered for years and would continue to suffer as long as she lived. She’d expressed anguish at the injury she caused to Garcia’s hands, and she herself had sustained radiation burns to her own hands as well, though hers were less severe than Eddie’s. Finally, although I was reluctant to admit it even to myself, my judgment was clouded by the fact that Isabella and I had made love once.

  “Hey, Jim, what’s up?” I hoped I sounded more casual than I felt. I had never told Emert — nor anyone else, for that matter — that I’d slept with Isabella. “Am I about to read headlines about a high-profile arrest in a bizarre Oak Ridge murder?”

  “Not unless our friends at the FBI have made a breakthrough they haven’t told me about,” he said. “But there is something I think you should know. We’ve found something really interesting.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’d rather show you,” he said. “It’s short notice, I know, but is there any chance you could head over this direction on the spur of the moment?”

  “I’m on my way,” I answered, scrambling to my feet. “I’ll be in Oak Ridge in half an hour. Should I meet you at the police department?”

  “No. Meet me at the Alexander Inn.” The words sent a chill through me.

  Thirty minutes later I turned in to the driveway of the boarded-up, run-down Alexander Inn, feeling as if I’d come eerily full circle. The inn was where the Novak case had begun, when I’d cut the elderly physicist’s body from the scummy ice of a long-neglected swimming pool. Now, two months later, the pool was drained, its cracking walls and floor coated with slime in shades of black and green and brown. The building itself seemed to have aged by decades during the past two months. Sixty-five years earlier, the stately hotel, with its broad veranda and homey rocking chairs, had played host to the leading scientists of the Manhattan Project. Physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the Bomb, had stayed at the Alexander during his wartime visits to Oak Ridge; so had Enrico Fermi, whose primitive atomic reactor under the stadium at the University of Chicago had produced the world’s first controlled chain reaction. Ernest Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron — harnessed to separate uranium fuel for the Hiroshima bomb — had likewise stayed at the Alexander.