“Ouch,” I said. “I’m really sorry to hear that.” That was no exaggeration, though I said it not so much from contrition as from a sense of foreboding. “Reckon it’d help if I go see him? Grovel awhile—apologize a lot—and explain how important the research project is?”
“Try the groveling on me, first,” he grumbled. “And while you’re explaining, don’t forget to explain the fence project.”
“What fence project?”
“The new fence you’re going to build around that whole patch of ground. Eight feet high. Wood, and solid—so nobody else gets traumatized.”
Christ, I thought, where do we get the money for that? Fencing in the wooded area would cost far more than building the chain-link cube had cost. I was about to make that point to the dean—before embarking on the groveling and apologizing he’d demanded—when I heard a bloodcurdling shriek just outside my office door. This did not bode well as a first-day experience.
Ten feet away, my new secretary, Peggy something-or-other—Williams? no: Wilhoit—had settled into her chair and begun scaling the months-high mountains of mail, memos, and other departmental detritus that had accumulated over the past several months. For the past hour I’d heard her clucking and sighing her way through the task, lobbing an occasional question across the divide and through my open door. “Do you want to order personalized pocket protectors for all the faculty?” she lobbed. I didn’t. “Do you want this catalog from the Edmund Scientific Company?” I did. “Do you already know about the faculty meeting next Tuesday?”
“What faculty meeting?”
That was when she shrieked: a full-throated, long-lasting scream. Hastily hanging up on the dean, I leaped up and rushed through the door to the outer office. My new secretary had pushed as far away from her desk as she could get, the back of her chair pressed against the windowsill. Her arms were extended in front of her, her fingers spread, her hands shaking. In front of her, in the small, semicircular clearing of desktop she’d managed to create, I saw an oversized manila envelope, an eight-by-ten photograph pulled halfway out of the opening. I didn’t need to see the rest of the photo to recognize it—or to know why it had prompted such distress.
The photo showed a nude woman—a nude dead woman—lying on a hillside in the woods. Her legs, which had no feet, were opened wide, splayed on either side of a small tree; her crotch was jammed tightly against the sapling’s trunk, in what appeared to be a shocking pose of sexual violation.
I snatched the envelope from the desk and quickly slid the picture back inside.
“Why?” whispered Peggy hoarsely.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. Reaching behind me, through the doorway, I tucked the envelope into the bookshelf just inside my office.
“Why?” she repeated. “Why would someone send you that? And what kind of sick person would take such a picture?”
I winced. “Actually, I took it,” I told her. “It’s an old crime-scene photo, from a murder I worked up in Morgan County a couple years ago. December twenty-fourth, 1990. Christmas Eve.” I sighed. “I don’t know why this copy just came in the mail. I guess the sheriff’s office or the TBI is cleaning out old case files. That, or they misread a request I sent out a few months ago, for copies of my forensic reports. A bunch of my files got thrown out last spring by mistake—by a temporary secretary, matter of fact.” I frowned at her reflexively, as if the missing files were somehow her fault, then inwardly scolded myself. “I’m sorry you ran across that with no warning,” I said. Pulling the envelope from the bookshelf, I looked to see whether it had been Sheriff Cotterell or Bubba Hardknot who’d scared the bejesus out of my new secretary, but there was no return address, and I tucked the envelope away again. She drew several deep breaths, each one sounding steadier than the one before. “Most of what we do here’s pretty boring,” I said, “but some of it’s strong stuff—not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.”
She exhaled slowly through pursed lips, her cheeks puffing out as she did. “Well, you did warn me—sort of—when you interviewed me. I just hadn’t expected something like . . . this . . . my first day on the job. ‘A mean surprise’—that’s what my mama would call it.”
I smiled at the phrase. “Well, I’m sorry for the mean surprise, Betty.”
“Peggy,” she corrected.
“I’m sorry for the mean surprise, Peggy.” I smiled in a way I hoped was reassuring. “Around here, you’ll get used to things like that.”
She didn’t return the smile. “No offense, Dr. Brockton,” she said, “but if I ever get used to things like that, it’s time for me to look for a different job.”
Suddenly I realized that I’d hung up on the dean in mid-scolding. “It might be time for me to look for a different job,” I said ruefully, reaching for the phone and preparing to grovel.
“HELLO,” I BARKED, SNATCHING the handset from the cradle with a dripping, slippery hand.