She’d been gone for two years now, but the ache and the emptiness still cut to the bone.
I sat at my desk, staring into space and time—time long past—for what might have been a minute or an hour. I forced my thoughts back to the Cooke County case: I had an unknown victim—unnamed, at any rate—an unknown killer, and people on various sides of the law who seemed to know more than they were telling. I kept coming back to two names: Jim O’Conner and Lester Ballard. I knew who O’Conner was now, at least superficially. But Ballard, whom O’Conner had mentioned, was a mystery. “Lester Ballard,” I said aloud.
“Calling Lester Ballard. Come in, Lester Ballard.”
A knock at my door made me jump. “Excuse me, Dr. B.?” It was Sarah, my bright 101 student. In one hand she was carrying a briefcase, in the other, a well-worn copy of my osteology field guide, the bone identification handbook I made all my forensic graduate students commit to memory.
I smiled sheepishly. “You’re not Lester Ballard.”
She laughed. “Not quite. I am considered eccentric, but I’m pretty tame compared to him.”
“Wait—you’ve actually heard of Lester Ballard?”
“Sure. He’s great.”
“Great how? He’s not a murderer or something?”
“Well, yeah, he is a murderer, among other unsavory things, but he’s a great character.” I might have looked baffled. She definitely looked amused.
“Fictional character. He’s in a novel.”
“A novel? Go on.”
“Southern lit. The book’s called Child of God. By Cormac McCarthy, possibly the greatest Southern writer since Faulkner, certainly the greatest writer Knoxville has ever produced. His best-known work is All the Pretty Horses; got made into a movie with Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz a few years ago.” The name rang a bell, but I hadn’t seen it. “Wonderful book, mediocre movie. Most of McCarthy’s other stuff is really dark, sometimes bizarre. Like Lester.”
“Bizarre how?”
“Well, Lester’s a mountain man—a real primitive, backwoods type—who ends up killing some women and hiding their bodies in a cave. Somewhere along the way, he develops a taste for necrophilia. Can’t get a date with a live woman, I guess.” She giggled, for reasons I couldn’t fathom.
“Jesus. You’ve read this? You liked this?”
She nodded brightly. “It sounds really gross, and some of it is horrifying. But the weird thing is, even though Lester’s a monster, he’s kind of charming, too. Funny, and naive, and somehow an innocent at heart, despite his dastardly deeds.” I shook my head uncomprehendingly. “Okay, you remember The Andy Griffith Show, right?” I nodded. This was familiar ground; I could recite whole scenes of dialogue between Andy and Barney. “So you remember Ernest T. Bass, the hillbilly who’s always throwing rocks through the jailhouse window?
Wild, crazy, but not malicious at heart. Lester Ballard is sort of like that, only orders of magnitude beyond. I know it sounds silly to compare a necrophiliac killer to a simpleminded window-breaker, but read Child of God and you’ll see what I mean.”
I wrote down the book’s title on my desk blotter. “I see you’re doing some other light reading,” I said, pointing to the osteology book. “Afraid I’m going to throw in a trick question on the midterm exam?”
“No,” she laughed, “it’s just that whenever I get interested in something, I tend to go overboard, plunge in headfirst. Actually, I was wondering if you’d sign it for me?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why don’t you set down your briefcase while I do it.”
But it wasn’t her briefcase, it was mine, I realized—the one I’d left behind when I melted down in class that morning. I flushed with embarrassment.
“You…forgot these today, Doctor B.” She lifted the lid, revealing the two pelvises I had been using to demonstrate the differences in male and female skeletal structure.
“You’re right, and I hadn’t even missed them till now. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence before she spoke again. “Can I ask you something else about this one?” She held up the female pelvis, still tacked together with red dental wax. “You said it’s possible to tell from the bones if a woman has given birth. Can you show me how?”