Soon Tomás grew sleepy, so Miranda and I said our goodbyes. Carmen walked us out to the driveway. “Drive boldly,” she advised as we clambered into the truck. “Get a good, strong start down here, because it gets steeper as you go up.”
The tires shrieked as I gunned the throttle and fishtailed out of the parking area. “Boldly done,” said Miranda.
“Damn skippy,” I answered, rocketing up the narrow band of concrete and whipping onto the road, grateful that no one was coming from either direction. “That Tomás is a cutie,” I added. “And he clearly thinks you hung the moon.”
“Mutual, I’m sure. He’s a sweet boy.” She sighed. “He misses his daddy.”
“Yeah.” We made the rest of the drive back to UT in silence. Threading my way down to the one-lane service road ringing the base of the stadium, I pulled in behind Miranda’s white Jetta and put the truck in park, the engine idling. “Thanks for going with me, Miranda.”
“You’re welcome.” She opened the door and got out, then leaned her head back in. “By the way,” she said, “you’re right. Eddie is a very fine man. I’m proud to be his friend, too.”
CHAPTER 30
The gleaming white tractor-trailer inched along the edge of the parking lot, parallel to the fence of the Body Farm. The truck’s gears clashed when the driver wrestled the transmission into reverse, and then the clutch caught and the rig eased backward, scraping a few low branches that overhung the chain-link and the inner wooden fence. The driver stopped when the trailer’s rear end was just below the facility’s main gate. He got out, checked his parking job, and unhooked the connections between tractor and trailer. That done, he fired up the large diesel generator attached to the front of the trailer and began raising the front end of the trailer slightly, with a pair of powered jacks built into the trailer’s frame, to compensate for the slight grade of the parking lot.
Calling up the contacts stored in my cell phone, I punched in “F” and dialed the first number there. The call went to voice mail; there was no personal greeting, simply a computer voice telling me the number was not available and offering me the chance to leave a message. “This is Bill Brockton,” I said, “calling from Knoxville to say thank you. It feels like Christmas came early to the Body Farm this year.”
I hadn’t fully allowed myself to believe it would happen, but Glen Faust had followed through on his pledge: The trailer contained a mobile CT scanner, housed in a sleek, modern imaging suite — not that the Body Farm’s “patients” were in any shape to notice or care about the ambience or décor, of course. My only hope was that the smell of decomp wouldn’t follow the scanner from Knoxville to its next assignment, wherever and whenever that might be. Faust had committed OrthoMedica to a collaborative research project for the next three months, with the strong possibility of renewing it for a year beyond that if the data proved useful.
We’d barely begun to plan how we’d use the data from the scanner. One thing I knew, though, was that we’d scan every incoming body donated to the research facility, capturing three-dimensional images, inside and out, while they were still fresh corpses. Then, months later, we’d rescan their bare skeletons. Comparing the before and after scans would offer valuable insights into the intricate architecture of flesh and bone, their intimate entwining. We’d agreed to share the data with both OrthoMedica and UT’s Biomedical Engineering Department. Biomedical Engineering had asked its faculty and graduate students to submit draft proposals for using the scanner to help design high-tech artificial joints and advanced surgical tools and techniques — what one of the faculty called “the operating room of the future.” We’d also received an inquiry from the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia. One of my former students was working there on a team developing facial-reconstruction software: a way of restoring faces to the skulls of long-dead murder victims, using computer calculations rather than the sculptor’s clay used by traditional forensic artists. Our scans could allow them to see the skull beneath the skin of dozens or even hundreds of donor faces — and thus help improve the computer’s ability to model the skin atop the skulls of unknown murder victims.
Besides providing the scanner, OrthoMedica was funding two half-time assistantships. One of the half-time slots was for a graduate student in biomedical engineering, Eric Anderson, who already had training and prior experience as a scanning technician; the other slot was for Miranda, who would coordinate the arrival of the bodies with the arrival of the scanning tech. “Drop the kids off in the morning, pick ’em up after school,” she’d joked. I worried that assigning her the scanning project would spread her too thin — she was already running the bone lab and helping me on cases in the field — but after the dean’s latest call for budget cuts, it was the only way to keep her position fully funded.
The truck driver seemed to have countless adjustments to make. In addition to leveling the trailer itself, he needed to attach and level a set of metal steps, as well as a hydraulic lift that hoisted patients on gurneys — or cadavers in body bags — into the imaging suite. The fellow seemed capable, so I decided to let him get by without my supervision long enough to pay a visit to Eddie Garcia. Parking my truck at the loading dock, I punched in the combination code to let myself in the back door of the Regional Forensic Center.
I took the elevator to the seventh floor. Passing the nurses’ station, I nodded and continued a few doors farther down the corridor to Eddie Garcia’s room. Knocking gently, I pushed open the door to his room and walked in, hoping I wasn’t waking him up.
I wasn’t waking him up. The room was empty. Garcia was gone.
“What do you mean, he signed himself out?”
“Just that,” said Arlene, the duty nurse. “He signed himself out an hour ago.”
“The man’s got no hands,” I said. “His right arm’s grafted to his belly. How the hell did he sign himself out?” The nurse flushed, her eyes narrowing in anger or shock at what I’d said. “Oh, hell, I’m sorry, Arlene. I didn’t mean that as harshly as it sounded. What I mean is, where did he go? And why? Did Carmen check him out?”
“No.” Suddenly she began to cry. “I’m so worried about him, Dr. Brockton. I begged him not to leave. I begged him to let me call his wife. But he refused. He insisted on being discharged, and he left with that man.”
“What man? Did you know who it was?”
She shook her head, and I racked my brain, trying to remember anything Garcia might have said about friends he’d made during the year he’d lived in Knoxville. I drew a blank. As far as I knew, the M.E. and his family kept mostly to themselves, and Miranda and I were as close to them as anyone. “Was it a relative? Did the man look or sound Mexican?”
“No, he had red hair. And he sounded like he grew up around here. Said, ‘Y’all have a good un,’ as they were leaving.”
“What else do you remember about him?”
She thought for a moment, then once more shook her head in frustration. “Not much, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t be any good as a crime-scene witness.” She furrowed her brow and scrunched her mouth with the effort of concentration. “He was wearing a white shirt and a skinny black tie.”
“You mean, like a Mormon missionary? One of those bike-riding kids with a plastic name tag?”
“No, he was older than that. Thirty-five, maybe forty. And not as clean-cut as those Mormon boys.”
An alarming thought occurred to me. “Do you think Dr. Garcia might be in danger? Was he coerced into leaving with this guy?”
“No. No, it didn’t seem that way at all. Dr. Garcia acted eager to go, almost happy. The closest I’ve seen him to looking happy the whole time he’s been here.” She looked puzzled. “But it didn’t seem like the guy knew Dr. Garcia. I mean, he came to get him, and he told me that the doctor was expecting him—‘The doctor’s expecting me,’ that’s exactly how he put it — but he seemed surprised when I told him we’d need a wheelchair and really startled when he saw Dr. Garcia with his hands all bandaged and grafted.”