Flesh and Bone Page 9

  “Glad to hear it. Listen, I won’t keep you. Just wanted to touch base, and let you know I’ll be seeing you next week.”

  “Right. Next week. Thanks.”

  As I hung up the phone, I felt my heart sink. I wasn’t sure how much of the heaviness was because Garland Hamilton would be coming back soon, and how much was because Jess Carter wouldn’t be.

  Oh, buck up, I scolded myself. You haven’t seen the last of her yet. You’re going out with her tomorrow night. Another inner voice butted in. Yeah, but it’s work. And you better wear your bulletproof underwear. The first voice squawked, I really didn’t need to know that.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE DRIVE FROM KNOXVILLE to Chattanooga passed in a hundred-mile blur of white and fuchsia blossoms. Dogwoods and redbuds both loved sunlight and limestone, so wherever I-75 cut through layers of rock, the highway was lined with enough flowering trees to make Home & Garden Television—which was based in Knoxville—and HGTV’s entire army of landscapers and gardeners hang their heads in shame.

  As I crested East Ridge and started the swooping S-curve that led down into the valley floor cradling Chattanooga, I replayed the morning’s conversation with Jess, who had called to finalize the arrangements for our research outing.

  “I booked you a room at the Marriott downtown,” she had said.

  “A hotel room? I need a hotel room?”

  “Trust me,” she said, “you won’t want to think about driving back to Knoxville by the time things wind down at this nightclub.”

  But driving back to Knoxville had not been what I’d been thinking about. What I’d been thinking about, and hoping for, was an invitation to spend the night at Jess’s. I tried not to show my disappointment. After all, so far we had exchanged only one kiss. It was a memorable kiss, and I hoped it wouldn’t be the last. Still, it was only one—a pretty meager foundation for a sleepover invitation.

  “Ten o’clock seems like a pretty late starting time,” I said.

  “Trust me, the party doesn’t really get going until midnight at this place.”

  And so it was that I now found myself checking into the Marriott, a sleek tower of black glass, hours before Jess and I were scheduled to visit the nightclub where she hoped we might pick up the trail of her drag-queen murder victim.

  I parked in the garage beneath the hotel, checked into my room, and decided to wander down toward the Tennessee Aquarium, one of Chattanooga’s main tourist attractions. I’d brought Jeff ’s boys to the aquarium during their last Christmas break, and the facility’s design had struck me as ingenious. I welcomed the chance for a return visit.

  The main building’s exhibits began five or six stories above the entrance level. There, beneath a huge glass pyramid, was a convincing re-creation of a Tennessee mountain rain forest. Technically, the Great Smoky Mountains were classed as a temperate rain forest, which explained the lush vegetation and rushing streams; in the aquarium’s topmost exhibit, mist swirled and water dripped convincingly from trees into streams and pools. Within those streams and pools, brook trout and salamanders and otters darted behind glass walls.

  Descending through the aquarium’s series of exhibits, level by level, was like journeying down a river to the sea, through a succession of realistic habitats. Within them dwelled hundreds of species, not just aquatic life but birds and reptiles as well, including one monstrous eastern diamondback rattlesnake, whose body was as thick as my forearm and whose tail sported fifteen rattles, which I counted twice in disbelief. In one tank, two scuba divers were feeding fish by hand; one of the fish—clearly well fed—was a five-foot-long catfish that probably weighed as much as I did. When the fish opened its mouth to feed, its maw looked nearly big enough to engulf the diver’s entire head.

  After completing my journey downriver, through the delta, and out into the ocean, I swam outdoors into a steamy southern afternoon—a spring day that felt like high summer. Running along one side of the aquarium’s exterior, from the entrance plaza down the hillside to the Tennessee River, was a cascade of water designed as a tribute to the Cherokee Indians, the first human inhabitants of eastern Tennessee. The cascade originated as trickles of water representing the Trail of Tears, the brutal march that evicted the Cherokees from Tennessee and forced them onto a reservation in Oklahoma. As the water coursed down the hill, it grew in volume, fed by hidden spigots, into a respectable-sized stream, dropping over ledges into shallow pools. Children in shorts and bathing suits and rolled-up jeans waded in these; alongside, parents and older siblings and babysitters lounged on the concrete terraces, a few brave souls sunbathing in bikinis amid scores of little sneakers and flipflops.

  When I reached the bottom of the cascade, I crossed the street to Ross’s Landing on the river itself and found myself wandering upriver along a wooden boardwalk, the beginning of the long ribbon of park that stretched for miles up to Chickamauga Dam. A paddle-wheeled riverboat moored at the landing gave a blast on its whistle, and a handful of tourists responded by scurrying toward it. A runner passed, sheathed in sweat, and I remembered Jess saying that somewhere along here, a man and his dog had died a gruesome death. I began walking faster, with more purpose now, until suddenly I stopped. Perhaps a quarter mile upstream from the aquarium and Ross’s Landing, the riverwalk passed beneath a pair of bridges, then zigzagged up a steep hillside toward a striking contemporary building—the new wing of the art museum—cantilevered daringly off the edge of the river bluff. Here beneath the bridges, an odd little amphitheater had been terraced into the hillside, and on one of the lower terraces, yellow and black fragments of crime scene tape clung to bridge supports, and the tan pea gravel still bore traces of blood. I studied the low space beneath the bridges as I would any other death scene, trying to decipher patterns in the bloodstains, but the gravel had been rinsed and raked and scuffed too much to tell me anything. I pictured this place at dusk, rather than in the bright light of mid afternoon, imagining what it must have felt like to be set upon by malevolent young men for no other reason than that I was a handy target for years of anger and despair.

  My gloomy reverie was interrupted by the hum of rubber tires on the riverwalk. A brightly clad cyclist pedaled past on a mountain bike. When he reached the sharp switchbacks angling up the bluff, I expected him to dismount; instead, in a display of balance and precision I would not have thought possible on two wheels, he made one hairpin turn after another—at least twenty in all—before topping out near the museum and speeding off. I laughed in amazement and delight and ascended the hill myself, huffing and sweating by the time I zigged and zagged clear to the top. Once there, I wandered the neighborhood—an assortment of galleries, cafés, and inns clustered near the art museum—and ate dinner in the courtyard of a restaurant. By the time I ambled back to the Marriott, my legs were tired, my feet were sore, and I had just enough time to shower and change before meeting Jess in the lobby for our research excursion.

  As we pulled away from the hotel, Jess steered me right on Carter Street, then right again on Martin Luther King Boulevard. After maybe a mile, she directed me left onto Central, then right onto McCallie Avenue. I was vaguely familiar with McCallie, as I’d been invited several times to guest-lecture at McCallie School, a prestigious private academy whose graduates included media mogul Ted Turner, Senator Howard Baker, and televangelist Pat Robertson. The prep school, though, was farther to the east, nestled at the base of Missionary Ridge; our destination, a nightclub called Alan Gold’s, was in a flatter, more blue-collar section of town. As we crossed a viaduct over a railroad track and a city park began spooling darkly past on our left, she said, “Okay, slow down, slow down; there it is on the right. Turn onto that side street and park anywhere you can.”

  The building was a drab old brick structure, two stories high; at first glance it looked more like an electrical supply company than a trendy nightspot. The only distinguishing feature of the façade fronting McCallie was a line of spherical white lights about fifteen or twenty feet off
the ground. As we turned onto the side street, though, things picked up dramatically. A hundred or more cars and trucks were jammed into a patchwork of tiny lots. Dozens of people—singly and in couples of every possible combination of age, gender, ethnicity, and edginess—milled about. Music throbbed intermittently from the side entrance, a door that opened and closed every few seconds to admit or disgorge more patrons. We got lucky—a PT Cruiser backed out of a parking spot just as we approached at an idle. “Somebody must have paired up early,” Jess said. I raised my eyebrows, for what I suspected would not be the only time to night.

  Jess paid the ten-dollar cover charge for us, and we entered through a long, narrow hallway, congested not only by the ceaseless ebb and flow of customers, but by the tunnel’s terminus, a small alcove just outside the club’s restrooms, where people hovered and chatted, blocking traffic. From here, a branching pair of hallways let into the club’s main areas, a small back bar and the main bar, fronting the dance floor, which a crowded mezzanine overlooked.

  Jess and I had decided to split up and work the room separately; we each had several copies of pictures of the Chattanooga murder victim, as envisioned by a police sketch artist. One version showed him as a normal male, in regular street clothes. The other version showed him in the kinky outfit in which his body had been found.

  Jess made for a cluster of young men in biker gear—black leather trimmed with an abundance of zippers, rivets, chains, and skulls. Some of the skulls sported wings, which I found particularly intriguing.

  I felt a need to acclimate before interrogating anyone in this crowd, so I eased toward the bar and found an opening. The bartender looked up from the drink he was shaking. “What’ll you have?”

  “Coke, please,” I said.

  He smiled slightly. “A Coca-Cola, or some coke?”

  It took a moment for the distinction to sink in. “Ah,” I said. “Just the legal soft drink, if you would.”

  “Certainly, sir.” He smiled again, indulgently, when he handed it to me, waving aside the five-dollar bill I had fished out of my wallet. “Soft drinks are free,” he said. “All you pay for here is the hard stuff.” He winked as he said it. Perhaps, I thought, I should have stuck close to Jess.

  I turned around and leaned back against the bar. As I scanned the room and its occupants uneasily, I heard a soft female voice to my left side. “You look like you’re looking for somebody,” she said. “And like you haven’t found him yet.”

  I turned and found myself facing a beautiful young black woman. Her skin was the color of strong coffee cut with lots of cream. Her shoulder-length hair had been straightened; it had a bit of wave to it, and where it swept across her forehead, the blue-black was streaked with golden highlights. Her brown eyes were warm and liquid, and her gold evening gown showed an impressive amount of cleavage. It took some willpower not to stare. “Well, I’m not sure who I’m looking for,” I said.

  She gave a dramatic sigh. “Oh, honey, ain’t that always the way. I been looking half my life, and I ain’t found my loverboy yet. But we gots to keep lookin’. Don’t you give up, now. You gon’ find him real soon. Maybe even to night, right here.”

  I felt my face redden. “I’m not looking for a man…like that,” I said. “I’m looking for somebody who might be able to tell us whether a specific young man was hanging out here a while back. Do you come here a lot?”

  “Why yes, I do come here every now and then,” she said, “but most times, I come when I’m in my big brass bed with some big, strong man.” She reached out and gave my left shoulder a squeeze. “Oh my, yay-es,” she said, batting her long lashes at me.

  This conversation had clearly spun out of my control. I knew she was making fun of me, but I had to laugh. Actually, she seemed to be making fun of both of us, which is why I was able to laugh. Was she flirting? Probably so. Was I flirting back? Not yet, I decided, but I was strongly considering it. “What specific young man you looking for, sweetheart? Lossa young mens hang out here.”

  “This one,” I said, fishing the two portraits from my pocket. “He might have been dressed in men’s clothing, or he might have been wearing women’s clothing and a wig. In drag.”

  She looked at me archly. “Darlin’, I know what drag means.”

  “Right,” I said. “Anyhow, we’re wondering if anybody here might have seen him.”

  She glanced at the pictures, then looked at me and across the room at Jess. “Y’all the police?”

  “No,” I said. “She’s a medical examiner; I’m a forensic anthropologist. I teach up at UT-Knoxville.”

  “A pro-fessor? Oh my, I do love a man with a great big…brain,” she said. She laughed, a musical sound that started high and cascaded down, like a series of handbells pealing in quick succession. As she did, she laid a hand on my chest momentarily; her nails were long and cobalt blue, with flecks of gold that matched her dress and the highlights in her hair. I caught a whiff of perfume, something floral and citrusy. Not too heavy or sweet; fresh, but also exotic. It suited her, I decided. “Mr. Professor, I am Miss Georgia Youngblood, and I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m Dr. Bill Brockton. Sorry; that sounds stuffy. I’m Bill.” I wanted to be sure I’d understood her enunciation correctly. “Did you say Miss Youngblood? Not Ms.? I’ve spent years learning to put that z on the end for my female students and colleagues.”

  “Oh no no no,” she said, “I am most definitely an old-fashioned ‘miss.’ In fact, most of my friends call me Miss Georgia, which I like, because I grew up just over the line, in the Peach State.” She cocked her head, studying my face. “I think I’ll call you Dr. Bill. I don’t usually enjoy receiving doctor bills, but I feel myself inclined to make an exception in your case.”

  She talked like a character out of some Tennessee Williams play, but the dramatic flourishes seemed to fit somehow. I wasn’t sure what all she meant by “receiving,” and I didn’t have the nerve to ask, so I waved the pictures to remind her that I’d asked about them. “So how about it, Miss Georgia,” I said, “do you recognize either version of this fellow?”

  She frowned. “No, I can’t say as I do,” she said. “Mind you, he’s not the sort of boy who would catch my eye. I prefer my men to have a little more maturity and experience under their belts.” She looked at me suggestively; in response, I tried raising one eyebrow at her—I’d been practicing Jess’s trick, with occasional success. The half-guilty knowledge that Jess was barely twenty feet away, also armed with the sketch artist’s renderings, made it harder to achieve the needed muscle isolation.

  “What about this version, where he’s in drag?”

  “Honey, I know I ain’t seen that li’l bitch,” she said, “if you’ll ’scuse my French. Look at that cheap-ass Dolly Parton wig. And that S&M bustier? Tha’s some kinda white-trash ho getup. Miss Georgia wouldn’t be caught dead in that.”

  “Well, he was,” I said. “Somebody murdered him a couple weeks ago, and we’d like to find out who he was and who killed him.”

  “I’d like to find out why he wearin’ that trashy getup,” she said. “He probably killed by the fashion police. A crime of fashion in the first degree.” She laughed again, the peals ringing out above the din of the bar. Just then the lights in the place flickered, briefly, and she glanced at her watch, then laid a hand on my forearm. “Baby, you gots to ’scuse me for just a little bit. Don’t you go ’way, though. I want to come back and hear all about your Ph.D. and your arthropology.”

  “Anthropology,” I corrected, but she was already headed through a doorway at the end of the bar.

  Suddenly the lights flashed again, then dimmed, and the noise level in the room dropped by a good ten decibels. “Ladies and gentlemen,” an amplified voice boomed from speakers in the ceiling, “Alan Gold’s is proud to present Chattanooga’s favorite entertainer, the one and only Miss Georgia Youngblood!” Many of the people in the bar whistled and whooped and clapped as my new friend, micro
phone in hand, strutted onto a small stage occupying one end of the room. She curtsied deeply, bending over far enough to expose plenty of cleavage—and to incite a fresh round of cheers. As she straightened up, she half hid her face behind one bare shoulder, feigning shyness. The crowd responded again. She clearly knew what they liked, and she clearly liked giving it to them. Then she shushed them, and I heard a recording of violins fade up on the sound system. A spotlight flicked on, causing Miss Georgia’s mocha skin and glossy hair to glow, and then she began to sing. Her voice started out delicate and tentative, then quickly grew powerful and poignant. “Don’t…know…why/ There’s no sun up in the sky/Stormy weather/Since my man and I ain’t together,” she sang. Her voice rang with sadness and longing—a tragic version of the bell-pealing laugh she’d let loose only minutes before.

  Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed Jess, who had edged through the crowd to me. “Isn’t he great? Most of them just lip-sync, but this one’s really belting it out, isn’t he?”

  “He?” I looked at Jess and I saw disbelief, amusement, and pity flash across her face in quick succession. Then the amusement won out over the other expressions.

  She leaned close so she could speak softly in my ear. “Oh, Bill. You really didn’t know you were talking to a she-male?”

  “A she-male?”

  “She-male. Transvestite. Female impersonator. Miss Georgia there has been a local celebrity ever since she burst onto the scene a year or so ago. People drive all the way up from Atlanta to see her.” Jess hoisted an eyebrow at me. “She seemed to be taking quite the shine to you, by the way,” she said. “You must have set your charm-phaser to ‘stun.’ I was about to come over and scratch her eyes out.”

  “Oh, stop,” I said. “I was just trying to find out if she’s seen your murder victim.”

  “And?”

  “Apparently not. She said version A wasn’t the sort of guy she’d notice, and that she had definitely never seen version B’s ‘cheap-ass wig and trashy ho getup,’ if I’m quoting her correctly, on anybody around here. Said he was probably executed by the fashion police. No, sorry: the fashion police,” I corrected myself.