He shrugged. “So, Dr. B, why’re you here?”
“Excellent question. Two reasons, actually. One, good news. I met with the dean earlier today, and he just now called me to let me know: We’ve got the land behind the hospital.”
“Hey, that’s great. When can we start setting things up?”
“Another excellent question. Today.”
“Great. Wait. Today?” I nodded. “You mean today today?” I nodded again. “Today, when it feels like mid-August, not late September? With a heat index of 103?”
“We’ve got to get started before the bureaucrats come to their senses and change their minds,” I said. “Strike while the iron’s hot.”
“Hot? The iron’s gonna be molten out there today,” he groaned.
“Quit whining. This is important. We’re embarking on our research program. Here.” Reaching a hand behind my back, I extricated the small paperback book I’d tucked into my belt. It was limper and damper than it had been before I’d made the sweltering walk from the stadium to the Annex.
Tyler took it and studied the cover, his face growing more puzzled by the moment. “Uh, thanks?” he said finally. “The Washing Away of Wrongs. Theology?” I shook my head. “And what’s with the Sumo-wrestler cartoon on the cover? And all the Japanese symbols?”
“It’s a forensic investigation manual,” I said. “The world’s first. Written in China, not Japan. In the thirteenth century.” Tyler was starting to look interested. “And that’s not a sumo wrestler, that’s a dead guy. It’s a coroner’s diagram. From seven hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Cool.”
“Check out page sixty-eight—‘The Case of the Bloody Sickle’—it’s directly relevant to your thesis project. Your new thesis project. We can talk about it after you lay some yoga moves on the trees and underbrush out at our lavish new research complex.”
THE STRENGTH IN MY forearms was gone—I could scarcely hold up the chain saw—so I released the throttle trigger and the engine wound down to idle as the saw dropped. But the oiled chain continued to spin, the teeth still coasting, as the bar of the saw swung down toward my left leg. Almost as if I were outside my own body, I watched as the chain tore through the canvas of my coveralls and ripped into the flesh of my thigh. The teeth had nearly stopped by the time they reached the skin—the chain slid only a few more inches—but the chain was new and sharp, and my hide wasn’t as tough as tree bark. For a few seconds I saw the clean edges of pink flesh—as if the tissue itself were as surprised as I was by the sudden turn of events—and then the blood welled up, filling the gash and oozing out, seeping into the fabric. “Well, damn,” I muttered. I didn’t feel any pain yet; for the moment, all I felt was stupid.
Setting down the saw, I shucked off my leather gloves and fished a sweaty bandanna from my back pocket to blot the cut so I could see how much damage I’d done. Not too bad, I thought with relief—scarcely more than a nick, in fact: an inch long and maybe an eighth-inch deep. I’d gotten off lucky. Very, very lucky. Rolling the bandanna diagonally into a long, flat band, I tied it snugly around my thigh to stanch the bleeding, then flexed and stretched my fingers prior to resuming my assault on the deadfall pines—a tangled half-dozen trees killed by pine beetles and then toppled by a storm. My thigh was now starting to ache, but we needed to finish what we’d started, and fast; I’d arranged for a concrete truck to arrive the next morning at nine, and unless we finished clearing the trees out of the way, the truck wouldn’t be able to reach the site and pour the pad.
I reached down for the chain saw. As I tugged it off the ground, I noticed movement: blowflies—a dozen or more—taking flight from the blood-smeared chain. I smiled; it was a twentieth-century reminder of the thirteenth-century case I’d just told Tyler to read about.
ONE OF THE BENEFITS of having offices in Stadium Hall, a former dormitory, was the abundance of showers. One of those showers was located in my own private bathroom in my own private hideaway: a second office, located a hundred yards—literally, the length of the football field—from the bustle and distractions of the main Anthropology Department offices. After Tyler and I had finished clearing and leveling the patch of ground that would become the new Anthropology Research Facility—a big, fancy name for a small, primitive place—I’d gone to my hideaway to shower and to glue my leg back together with Super Glue.
Just as I sat down on the toilet and picked up the tube of glue, my phone rang. “Oh, hell,” I muttered, clutching a towel around me and scurrying to my desk. “Hello?”
“Howdy, Doc, is that you?”
“Sheriff Cotterell?”