Sara got down off the step stool. She was at least a foot taller than the man, and there was something about him that instantly rubbed her the wrong way. Still, she apologized, T'm sorry. I was asked by the sheriff to-'
He barked a loud laugh. 'Just pulling your leg, sweetheart. Don't worry about it.'
Growing up in the South, Sara had often been called sweetheart or darlin' or even baby. Her grandfather called her princess and the mailman called her peanut, but somehow they managed to do it in an endearing rather than derogatory way; she even signed Christmas and birthday cards to them using the familiar names. That being said, there was a fine line between the kind of men who could get away with this sort of thing and the kind who could not. Fred Bart, with his cheap, too-tight suit and mirror-finish loafers, fell squarely into the latter category.
'Nice to meet you,' Sara told him, making an effort to be polite. 'I was in the process of…' She let her voice trail off as Bart picked up her notes. 'I'm not finished with those.'
'That's okay, darlin'. I think I can figure them out.' He started reading, and Sara fought the urge to rip the pages from his hands. Instead, she put her hands on her hips and waited, focusing a laser beam of hate at the top of his balding head. The remaining tufts of hair over his ears had an unnatural appearance, and after a long period of study, she decided he was an advocate of Grecian formula.
Bart was at least a decade older than Sara if not more, the kind of guy who never forgave the world for the fact that he'd started losing his hair in his twenties. She got the feeling he was the type who blamed other people for a lot of things he found wrong with himself. She glanced down at his hands, checking for a wedding ring, glad to find at least there wasn't a woman out there who was having to put up with the busybody know-it-all.
When he was finally finished checking her notes, he gave her a quick smile and dropped the pages back where he'd found them. She expected at least a snarky comment about her penmanship, but all he said was, 'Need help with any of this?'
'I think I can handle it.'
Bart took a pair of gloves out of the box. He slipped them on as he said, 'I can at least help you with getting that knife out. Don't know if you've ever run into anything like this, but they tend to stick the longer you wait.'
'I can manage, thank you,' Sara told him, unable to find a way to tell the dentist she knew what she was doing without tearing his head from his neck and tossing it out the window like a soccer ball.
'No problem at all,' he answered, standing on the stool Sara had just vacated. He put both hands on the knife, then gave her a questioning look. When she did not move, he told her, 'Can't do this without you holding him down, sweetheart.'
She was suddenly aware of the fact that she was standing with her hands on her hips and her mouth pursed, looking exactly like the stereotype of a man-hating feminist bitch that Fred Bart probably kept in his mind to explain why his excessive charms didn't work on a woman.
Sara pressed her hands against the corpse's back and Bart pulled the knife. She noticed how easily the flesh relinquished the blade.
Apparently, Bart noticed, too. 'Not so bad,' he said, dropping the knife onto the tray beside the body. 'Find any fingerprints?'
'You'd have to ask the sheriff. I'm just doing the procedure.'
'Might want to take your own,' he suggested, snapping off the latex gloves. 'In my experience, little buddy Jake ain't exactly up on his forensic techniques.' He tossed the gloves into the wastecan and took out a pack of cigarettes.
'I'd prefer you didn't smoke in here.'
He put the cigarette in his mouth, let it dangle as he talked. 'You one of those smoking Nazis?'
Sara wondered at his word choice considering the red swastika on the victim's arm. 'I would just prefer you didn't smoke,' she replied evenly.
He flashed another smile, made a show of taking the cigarette out of his mouth and putting it back in the pack – just for her. 'So, what'd you find? Anything interesting?'
Sara picked up the camera to document the wound. 'Not yet.'
'You're a pediatrician, right?'
'That's right.' She felt the need to add, 'I'm also a medical examiner.'
'Didn't think people could afford to be doctors anymore.' Bart gave a dry laugh, and Sara didn't know if she was just being sensitive or if the man knew about the malpractice suit. He would've had to do some digging to find that out; she was probably just being paranoid. After what she'd been through over the last few days, Sara figured she had an excuse.
Bart walked around the body, stopped at the tattoo. 'Figures,' he said. 'I got one of these bastards here last month. Took out a telephone pole out on Highway 16. Sideswiped a family in a minivan while he was at it.' He glanced up quickly. 'Family made it. Just bumps and bruises.'
Sara realized she might be able to get some information from him if she tread carefully. 'Are skinheads a problem around here?'
Bart shrugged. 'Meth's the big problem, and skinheads come with it. Good luck for me, though.' Sara must have looked confused, because he clarified, 'I'm a dentist. I thought for sure Jake would've told you that.' He crossed his arms, the shoulders of his cheap suit riding up to his ears. 'Ten years ago, I'd be lucky if I got one root canal a month. Now, I do two, maybe three, a week. Get them from all over the county, sometimes into the next. Crowns, bridges, veneers. It's boom-time.'
Sara had seen what meth could do to a person's mouth. Most heavy users lost their teeth within the first year.
'Big business,' Bart said. 'But I'd trade it all in if I never had to see another kid hooked on that shit.' His face reddened. 'Sorry for my language, ma'am.'
Sara didn't know if it was his apology or his obvious concern, but she felt herself not hating him so much.
Bart said, 'Let me help you turn the body.'
Sara was still reluctant to accept his offer, but she had to admit she wasn't relishing maneuvering Gibson over on the table. She took a few more photographs, then waited for Bart to glove up again. He took the head and shoulders and Sara took the feet. It gave her some amount of pleasure to watch the dentist struggle under the weight as they rolled Gibson onto his back. It also gave her pause, because if the two of them were having trouble just flipping the body on the table, it must have taken some pretty strong men to toss him through a window.
She said, 'Big guy, huh?'
Bart shrugged his shoulders, but she could see a bead of sweat roll down his cheek. 'I've seen worse.'
'I can imagine.'
She saw his eyes flash as he registered the comment, probably wondering if she was being condescending. Sara kept him wondering, all but batting her eyelashes when she said, 'Thanks so much for lending me some of your muscle.'
Instinctively, he reached for his cigarettes, then stopped himself. 'I see you figured out Bertha.' He pointed to the X-rays. 'I keep asking the county to replace that thing and they keep telling me no.'
'It serves its purpose,' Sara allowed. If you watched enough television, you would assume that all police departments were at the cutting edge of forensic technology. In reality, no lab in the country could afford the billions of dollars of equipment you saw being used on an average Thursday night drama. What little equipment the state had was in high demand, and sometimes it took up to a year to get an analysis back.
Bart was still studying Boyd Gibson's X-rays. He gave a low whistle. 'Not much of a childhood.' He traced a faint line along the clavicle. 'Nasty break.'
'Did you know him?'
Bart turned around, and for the first time since he'd come into the room, he seemed to be really looking at her. 'Yeah,' he said, his tone filled with sadness. 'His mama used to bring him in. She was always torn up.' He indicated his face, and Sara realized he was indicating abuse. 'Never saw it in Boyd or his brother – he's got an older brother -but I called the sheriff plenty of times about Ella. That was her name.' He turned his back to Sara as he looked at the films again, or maybe he just didn't want her to see him upset. 'She was a great lady. Quiet, respectful, good cook. Everything you'd want in a wife. I guess some men can't be happy with that. Grover sure as hell wasn't.'