“And this guy who escaped four days ago,” I said. “What’s his story? Also a killer?”
“If he weren’t before, he for damn sure is now,” said the sheriff. “He is a sack of human excrement.” The other two nodded.
“Serial sex offender,” said the TBI agent.
“Bad luck for this poor gal, crossing paths with him,” the sheriff resumed. “She didn’t never have no chance.”
As the lawmen continued chatting and head-shaking, I unfolded a body bag and laid it beside the woman’s remains. The task of getting her into the bag was complicated by the presence of the sapling between her legs. I considered lifting one of her legs to vertical and then swinging it clear of the tree — the corpse had already passed through rigor mortis — but I feared that bending the leg so far might tear it from the hip. Instead, I squatted above the head and worked my hands under the shoulders, into the armpits, and slid the corpse several feet up the hill, so that both legs were clear of the tree. Then I repositioned the bag, unzipped it, and folded back the top. “Could one of you guys give me a hand?”
They looked at one another, no one moving. Finally Sheriff Dixon said, “Jim, get over there and help the perfessor.” Cotterell grimaced but complied.
“There’s another pair of gloves sticking out of my back pocket,” I said. “You’re gonna want those, I’m thinking.” He tugged them free and pulled them on. “Let’s lift her legs and swing those over first,” I said, “then her upper body.” He nodded and took hold of the left shin, while I grasped the right, wishing the feet were still there to help keep my grip from slipping loose. “Okay, on three, we lift and swing. One, two, three.”
With a lift, accompanied by a grunt from the stocky deputy, we got her legs and pelvis onto the rubberized fabric.
“Okay, same thing with the arms.” He nodded, and we hoisted and swung the upper body onto the bag, then I folded the flap across the body and tugged the C-shaped zipper closed. Then, with the added help of the sheriff and the TBI agent, we lugged the bag up the slope and slid it into the back of my truck.
I took my leave of the sheriff, his deputy, and Special Agent Bubba, promising to fax a preliminary report by Tuesday. Meffert raised his eyebrows. “You know that’s Christmas Day, right?”
“Crap,” I said. “No, I forgot. How about Wednesday, the twenty-sixth?”
Meffert shrugged; the sheriff nodded, allowing as how he reckoned that would be all right. I removed the gloves and tossed them in the back of the truck, and motioned for Cotterell to do likewise, then closed the tailgate and the shell.
I drove slowly down the park’s narrow road and rumbled across Jordan Branch, then sped up as the road straightened and widened near the prison. Ten minutes after I turned onto the highway toward Knoxville, I noticed another two-lane road, state route 116, T-ing in from the left. PETROS 2 said a sign pointing up 116. BRUSHY MOUNTAIN STATE PRISON 3. On a whim, I slowed and took the turn.
Petros was a cluster of modest homes — a few dozen or so — plus a handful of small churches, several dilapidated repair shops, a cinder-block grocery store, and a volunteer fire department. A mile beyond what passed for downtown — just before the highway made a hairpin turn and started angling up a mountainside — I came to the turnoff for Brushy Mountain.
The prison occupied the back end of a small, deep valley — a hollow, or “holler,” in East Tennessee dialect — and even from a quarter mile away, the façade was forbidding: a huge, brooding fortress of stone, topped by castlelike crenellations and flanked on three sides by steep forested mountains, as if the prison itself had taken up a defensive position and were making its last stand. And in a way, perhaps it was, for Agent Meffert had said that the state was planning to close the facility, as soon as the Morgan County Correctional Complex could be expanded to accommodate Brushy’s hard-core convicts.
Idling toward the grim stone fortress, I imagined James Earl Ray and six other desperate men scaling the fence, then scrambling up the steep, rocky slopes toward Frozen Head. Was that the same route this latest fugitive had taken — the sack-of-excrement “boy” Sheriff Dixon was intent on capturing? Had he gotten farther than Ray? And had his path crossed with that of an unlucky hiker — a woman who happened to be in a terribly wrong place at a fatally wrong time?
As I crept forward, I noticed a patrol car leave the prison’s gate and head in my direction. Then — imagining the scene that might ensue if I were stopped and the back of my truck searched — I made a hasty U-turn and headed back toward the highway, and the comforts of UT.
By most measures, Stadium Hall was a shithole. But compared to Brushy Mountain, it was the lap of luxury. A lavish, lustrous ivory tower.
5
“No way. I can’t bring that inside,” said Dr. Kimbrough, wrinkling his nose as he peered down at the body bag. My truck was backed up to the loading dock at UT Medical Center, and I’d slid the body bag onto the dock and unzipped it just enough to show the skull to Kimbrough, the young radiology resident unlucky enough to be spending Saturday evening on call. “No way,” he repeated. “The attending would have my head on a platter.”
“He won’t even know,” I pleaded. “It’s the weekend, the E.R.’s quiet right now — the drunk-driving accidents and bar fights don’t rev up till midnight — and I really, really need to know if there’s a bullet somewhere in her.”
“Won’t even know? Are you kidding?” He gave a barkish laugh. “We’d have patients and hospital staff running for the exits, puking as they ran.” I had to admit, he might have a point there. “Isn’t there some other way to tell if there’s a bullet in her?”
There was a way, actually — sift through all the liquid and goo I’d get when I simmered the soft tissue off the bones — but I didn’t want to wait that long or work that hard, so I hedged. “Look, this is life-and-death stuff. Somebody’s killed this woman, and I’m desperately trying to figure out who, and how. I’ve got a county sheriff and a TBI agent breathing down my neck so hard my wife’s starting to get jealous.”
He smiled, but the smile was followed by a head shake. “We cannot take that inside. Not negotiable. What I can do, though, is bring the portable X-ray machine down here and shoot some films here on the dock. We don’t even have to take her out of the bag.”
“How’s the quality?”
“Not great. Best you’re gonna get, though — from me at least — so take it or leave it.” He saw the doubt on my face. “Look, if there’s a lump of lead in there, it’ll light up that film like a full moon at midnight.”
It was a dark and moonless night, figuratively and forensically speaking: The woman’s corpse did not contain a bright round bullet, I saw when I reviewed the films with Kimbrough. That didn’t surprise me, as I’d noticed no entry or exit wound in the intact regions of the body.
What did surprise me — what stunned me, in fact, when I saw the X ray of the head — was the brilliant latticework of metal in the woman’s skulclass="underline" four flat, L-shaped brackets of metal, screwed to the upper jaw. At some point the woman’s face had been bolted back together. “Holy crap,” I said to the radiologist. “She must’ve taken one hell of a blow to the teeth.”
He nodded. “That’s a classic LeFort fracture,” he said. “Car wreck? She take a steering wheel in the face?”