THE JOHN J. DUNCAN FEDERAL Building is a cube of pink granite and black glass in downtown Knoxville, occupying a unique nexus in the city’s geometry of history, power, and knowledge. On one side it faces the old Tennessee Supreme Court building; on another side it flanks the new Tennessee Supreme Court building (which, for its part, now occupies the old post office…). One corner of the cube backs up to the main public library; the opposite corner has been rounded off to form an entrance, at the corner where the two Supreme Court buildings approach one another. Inside its gleaming granite and glass, the Duncan Building houses three federal agencies that strike fear into the heart of East Tennessee’s assassins, mobsters, and deadbeats: the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Internal Revenue Service. Steve Morgan, an agent with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, met me at the building’s entrance and gave me a crushing handshake. Steve was one of my former students. He had majored in criminal justice, but he took enough anthropology to acquire a solid grasp of the human skeleton and the basic techniques of forensic anthropology. He landed a job with the TBI straight out of undergraduate school. “Thanks for helping,” I said as he held the door for me. “Sorry to call you at home on a Sunday night.”
“No problem,” he said. “Glad you did.” As he led me toward the security checkpoint just inside the main lobby, I noticed a pair of handcuffs on the back of his waist, and I couldn’t help smiling at a memory from Steve’s student days. One of my favorite teaching techniques in Osteology 480—my upper-level bone course—was to place a few bones inside a “black box.” The box was designed to allow students to reach in and touch the bones, but not to see them. The idea was that it’s important to know the bones not just by sight, but quite literally by feel. I still remember the class one April morning—April 1, 1994—when Steve somehow managed to rig a pair of handcuffs inside my black box. The first student to reach inside—an attractive coed to whom Steve had handed the box with mock gallantry—was instantly manacled. To get her out, we had to unscrew the corners of the wooden box. As he was unlocking the cuffs, Steve asked her out on a date; two years later, they got married. I catch up on them—
they have three stair-step kids by now—every year or so, whenever I run into Steve in a courtroom or at a crime scene. I have a sneaking suspicion that my Osteology class wasn’t the only time handcuffs have figured in their relationship, but I’m afraid to ask. I’m afraid he might actually tell me. I had brought along my TBI consultant’s badge—I’d had one for years, ever since the agency’s director issued it to me in exchange for free scientific work—
and I asked Steve if I should show it to the guard at the checkpoint. “Only if it makes you feel good,” he said. I noticed that Steve wasn’t wearing his shield clipped to his belt, as he normally did; instead, clipped to his shirt, he wore a laminated plastic tag with his photo and name. “The feds aren’t impressed by TBI credentials—in fact, I think the security guard actually laughed the one time I showed him mine.” After unloading my pockets and making it through the metal detector, I handed the guard my driver’s license, which he scrutinized for a long time, checking me closely against my photo. Then, once he was satisfied that I was indeed the person that both the TBI agent and I claimed I was, he waved me on. Steve led me to an elevator.
“So why are we meeting in the federal building?” I asked once the doors had closed on the two of us. “Last time I checked, the TBI office was over on the north side of town.”