I shook my head. “Doubt it. If he’d been in there with us, seems like he’d’ve come after us. Anybody that’s packing explosives is surely carrying a gun, too. He’d have shot us before we climbed up out of the grotto. The thing I can’t figure out is, why not just shoot us in the first place?”
“Too suspicious. Cave-in could be passed off as an accident. Bullet holes are harder to explain—might bring an angry mob of vigilante UT professors up here hankering for vengeance. If the cave-in plan had worked, though, our bodies might be buried under a hundred tons of rock. We might go down as ‘missing, presumed dead’ or some such.” I was beginning to grasp Cooke County’s colorful reputation among my law enforcement colleagues. “Hey, you want your laces back? Or do you like the freedom of movement you get with your feet sliding around inside those boots?”
I’d clean forgotten. Taking the laces from Art, I used the rear bumper of my truck as a prop as I relaced my boots. As I retied the laces, I glanced once more at the church’s rock sign, and I saw something I hadn’t noticed earlier. Beneath the church’s name, in paint so faded I could barely read it, was a line of script. I called to Art and pointed. Over my shoulder, I heard his low whistle of amazement.
“I’ll be damned,” I said.
“Possibly,” he agreed. “But I don’t think you’ll be the only one. There might be a Kitchings or two down there to keep you company by the fire.”
The faded line read, “THOMAS KITCHINGS, SR., PASTOR.”
CHAPTER 26
THE SKULL ROCKED GENTLY back and forth with each step I took. I had cradled the occipital on a doughnut-shaped cushion and lined the sides of the box with bubble wrap, so I wasn’t worrying about damage, merely noticing the movement. I found myself counting the slight, rhythmic bumps, like the clicks of some macabre pedometer. Now there’s a moneymaking idea, I thought, the Brockton SkullDometer— the perfect gift for the forensic anthropologist who has everything. Other ludicrous marketing slogans began popping into my head:
“Two heads are better than one.” “Give the gift that keeps on giving—
throughout the extended postmortem interval.” “Don’t stop—I’m gaining on you!”
Normally I don’t take skeletal material from open forensic cases to class, but today—fresh from the cave that had entombed Leena, and had nearly swallowed me—I was completely preoccupied with the Cooke County woman. As I counted the bumps within the box, I hoped that going over the case in class might spark some new insight.
The lecture hall was nearly filled by the time I entered, even though it was still several minutes before class time. One student who was not in her customary seat this morning, though, was Sarah Carmichael. My heart sank. I had hoped that we’d be able to pretend nothing had happened in my office that recent night. Actually, what I really hoped was that I had dreamt it all, but I knew that wasn’t so. Still, I had told myself, if we could just ignore the whole thing, maybe it would fade into a dreamlike memory. No such luck, the empty frontrow seat told me. I set the box on the desk at the front of the auditorium and carefully removed the bones, balancing the skull on the cushion and laying the hyoid and sternum in front of the mandible. “I have good news and bad news today,” I announced.
“The good news is, you get to play forensic detective. This skull belongs to a recently discovered homicide victim, case number 05-23, and we’re looking for the killer right now.” There was a general stirring and murmuring throughout the room. I had their attention.
A wary voice drifted down from the back. “What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is, our murder victim here is the subject of a pop quiz. Go ahead and put your name on a piece of paper.” The murmurs gave way to scattered groans and a few whispered curses. “Don’t get excited,” I added, “it’s only three questions, and they’re purely for extra credit. You get one point added to your midterm average if you can tell me both the race and the sex of this individual; you get another point if you can tell me the manner of death—in other words, how was this person killed? If you’ve read the chapter on the cranium and didn’t miss class last week, these should be easy for you.” Judging by the expressions on the sea of faces in front of me, some of them had done the reading and stayed awake during the lecture, while others suddenly wished they had. Several students leaned forward and began scrutinizing the skull from afar. Others flipped open their texts and began scanning pages. At the back of the room, I thought I saw the door open just a crack.