At the podium Sinclair reddened. “I’m just saying we need to find realistic financial strategies for encouraging whole-body donations.”
“No, you’re saying people are greedy or stingy, that they have to be bought. I don’t agree, and I see one other person in the room who I suspect might back me up on this point.” He looked in my direction and pointed at me. “Dr. Brockton, forgive me for putting you on the spot, but have you had difficulty recruiting whole-body donors for your program?”
His question caught me utterly off guard. Price and Rankin had stressed the need to keep a low profile at the conference—the plan we’d agreed on was that I’d introduce myself to Sinclair after his talk and look for ways to bond with him—but it suddenly felt as if a spotlight as bright as the Luxor pyramid’s beacon was shining directly on me.
I stood up slowly, buying a few seconds of time, and cleared my throat. “Well, I reckon I’d have to say no, we haven’t had a lot of difficulty.”
Sinclair eyed me dubiously. “And your name and affiliation?”
“Bill Brockton. I’m the chairman of the Anthropology Department at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The program Dr. Faust mentioned is our decomposition-research facility. Most people call it by its nickname, the Body Farm. We study postmortem human decay and the way the rate of decay is affected by factors like temperature, humidity, presence or absence of clothing, and so on. We also do a lot of trainings for crime-scene investigators, teaching them how to find buried bodies, how to search for scattered bones, that sort of thing.”
Sinclair considered this. “And you use donated bodies for this work?”
“We do. Mostly. Some of our specimens are unclaimed bodies from the medical examiner’s system, but the majority are donated bodies. About a thousand people have donated their bodies so far, and we’ve got another sixteen hundred donors on our version of a waiting list.” I heard a few chuckles at my spin on the term “waiting list.”
Soon I found myself answering a string of rapid-fire questions. People asked about our research, asked how we cleaned the skeletal material, asked for details on the donation program. Finally someone asked where we’d put the sixteen hundred donors on our waiting list. “I honestly don’t know,” I said. I decided there’d never be a better opportunity to dangle the line that Price and Rankin had liked, though this wasn’t exactly the way I’d envisioned casting it. “It’s not exactly that we have too many donated bodies,” I said. “We just don’t have enough space or enough funding.”
More questions followed. I felt bad for Sinclair. I hadn’t even planned to say anything, let alone steal the limelight, but once it shifted in my direction, I didn’t know how to get out of it. To his credit, he didn’t seem to mind. When the session ended at ten forty-five, he made a point of coming over to speak to me. Faust, on the other hand, gave me a brief wave from the back of the room, then darted out the door like a scalded cat. There appeared to be no love lost between him and Sinclair, and I wondered what had originally caused the tension.
Sinclair hung back till a few people had finished chatting with me, then offered me a smile and a handshake. “Dr. Brockton, you certainly livened up the discussion,” he said. “It was fascinating, and I appreciate it. I have to say, you make me wonder if I’ve been too quick to resort to the ‘throw money at it’ solution to the problem of motivating donors.”
“Well, we’ve been really fortunate,” I said. “The university is very supportive, the local media seem to like us, and we’ve benefited from theCSI craze. A rising tide lifts all boats, and we’re happy to be bobbing along at the high-water mark.”
Suddenly he frowned, aiming a finger. “I have a suspicion about you,” he said, and I felt my stomach clench. Had I been so clumsy, so obvious, that I’d already botched things? “I suspect,” he went on,
“you’re far too modest.”
So perhaps I hadn’t failed after all—not yet at least.
My relief turned to delight, followed swiftly by panic, when he added, “If you’ve got time, I’d love to hear more about your program over coffee.”
CHAPTER 23
“SHERWOOD FOREST CAFé OR SIR GALAHAD’S PUB?” Sinclair offered the hotel map for my perusal.
“Tough choice,” I mused. “If I were going just by the names, I’d go for Sherwood Forest, but it looks like it’s right off the casino floor, so I’m guessing it’s pretty noisy. Sir Galahad’s is on the second level, so maybe it’s quieter.”