“Haven’t yet,” I answered. “Well, except in cases where the donor had HIV or hepatitis—we can’t risk exposing students to that. Otherwise we take all comers.” I paused for half a beat. “But frankly, that could be about to change. If the university doesn’t come up with some more land for us, we might have to start turning people away soon.”
“Hey, we’d be glad to help. Any bodies you can’t accommodate, we’d be glad to take ’em off your hands.”
I shook my head. “Not that simple,” I said. “When bodies are donated to UT, they become state property. The bean counters wouldn’t want us giving away state property.”
He drummed his fingers on the dash, then looked me in the eye. “What if the bean counters didn’t know?”
Make him spell out what he wants you to do,Rankin had stressed. I returned Sinclair’s gaze. “How do you mean? What do you suggest?”
“What if a body was never logged in, or whatever you call it, in the first place?”
I rubbed my chin; the simple roughness of the stubble felt comforting against my hand.
“Or what if you wrote it off as a loss somehow? You do all sorts of experiments, right?”
I nodded.
“So come up with some creative research, some destructive testing. Put a note in the inventory database or the files or wherever—‘body destroyed’ or some such.”
“So what good does the body do you if I destroy it?”
“Jesus, Bill, you’ve got a Ph.D., don’t be a dumb-ass. You don’t actually destroy the body, you justsay you did. Creative accounting.”
“And then what?”
“You send it to Tissue Sciences. It helps train surgeons, repair tendons, rebuild spines, all sorts of good things.”
“Sounds great,” I said, “but unless I misunderstand you, you’re asking me to falsify records and steal state property. Tell me why I should take those risks. To borrow a phrase from your Las Vegas presentation, let’s talk financial incentives.”
“How about ten thousand a body? Would that be sufficient incentive?”
“I’ll need to think about it,” I said. “I feel a little like a peasant selling a kidney. If things go wrong, they can go really wrong. What’s the fair-market rate for kidneys in Pakistan?”
“Twenty grand and some change.” He said it quickly and matter-of-factly, like a man who had firsthand knowledge of the subject. “But you don’t look like you’ve got starving kids. And I’m not asking you to sell part of your own body.”
“No. You’re asking me to sell part of my soul.”
He tapped the manila envelope. “You already did.” He smiled slightly, then got out of the truck, closed the door, and walked away.
SUNDOWN FOUND ME HEADING WESTon I-40, driving into the sun for the second time that day. The ice in the coolers had begun to melt. As I entered the serpentine stretch through the mountains, I could hear the ice and water and arms—the laid-open, tinkered-on, stitched-up arms—sloshing with each sway of the truck. And every slosh seemed the hiss of a serpent.
CHAPTER 33
I WAS STILL WAY BEHIND ON MY SLEEP AND WAYahead on my stress Monday morning as I prepared to teach my ten o’clock Intro to Forensic Anthropology class. The topic of the day was forensic odontology: making positive identifications on the basis of unique features in teeth. TheCSI