“Mr. Miller, this Dr. Brockton. Dr. Brockton, Ernest Miller.”
The man in the bed frowned at me. “Doesn’t take the vultures long to gather, does it?”
Aghast, I opened my mouth to apologize, when he gave me a weak smile.
“He told me to say that,” he said, glancing at Yates. “He was right—he said it would make you jump.”
I looked at Yates, prepared to squawk, but he was exchanging smiles with his patient, and I realized I didn’t mind being the butt of the prank.
“Good one,” I said. “Y’all got me.” I thought about adding,My truck is parked downstairs by the morgue, if you want me to haul you on over there tonight, but I decided that might be pushing the joke too far. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Miller. Do you have any questions I could answer?”
Dr. Yates excused himself and left us alone.
“I’m pretty clear on the concept,” he said. “That cute news gal—Maurie—she did some stories on the Body Farm a while back. I meant to sign up then, but I got sidetracked and forgot. If I’m gonna do it, I reckon it’s now or never.” He held out his hand for the donor form. It didn’t take him long to read it.
“Seems pretty straightforward. Can I borrow your pen?” He scrawled his signature, then glanced at the form again. “Could you witness it for me?”
“I’d be honored,” I said, “if you’re sure this is what you want to do. I wouldn’t want you to feel any pressure, though.” A thought occurred to me. Miller appeared to be in his early fifties—somewhere around my age.Young fellow, I joked to myself. I guessed his height to be somewhere around five-nine, give or take an inch: roughly the same stature and build as Eddie Garcia. I cast a quick glance at his hands. “If you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Miller, do you plan to donate your organs?”
“Does that affect whether I can go to the Body Farm?”
“Not at all,” I said. “If your organs have been harvested, we can’t use you for a research project, but we can still add you to our skeletal collection. Measurements of your bones will help keep our forensic data bank up to date. And we want as many teaching specimens as we can get. Donating your organs wouldn’t interfere with either of those things, and it might help some people who need corneas or kidneys. Or hands.” I hesitated, choosing my words more carefully than I wished, but probably not as carefully as I should have. “Oddly enough, I know a man who needs hands. Dr. Edelberto Garcia. Maybe you’ve heard about him; he’s the medical examiner here, and he lost his hands in a terrible accident a few months ago.”
Miller was listening, so I plunged ahead.
“Dr. Garcia’s a few years younger than you,” I went on. “He grew up in Mexico City, but he came to this country for his medical residency. He’s soft-spoken, a bit quiet. When I first met him, I thought he was standoffish, but once I got to know him, I realized he was just shy. That surprised me, that a man as smart and handsome and successful as Dr. Garcia—a man with a fine education and a prestigious job and a beautiful wife and a lovely child—felt any need to be shy.” I stopped, knowing that if I kept talking, my next sentence would be a direct request that Miller donate his hands. The request would be only natural and thoroughly unethical.
As if seeing the unspoken request in my eyes, Miller shook his head. “I don’t mind being eaten by the bugs,” he said, “but I don’t want to be chopped up for spare parts.”
I fought the urge to speak—to plead on Eddie’s behalf—and managed to stop myself. Miller was watching me closely. He shook his head again, more slowly this time, and I wondered if he was shaking it about organ donation or about me. “You can have me if you want me,” he said, “but if you take me, I want you to take all of me.” He handed me back the form.
We talked a bit more—mostly about his daughter in Kentucky, who was coming to see him soon—and then I thanked him and took my leave. As I stepped into the hallway, I glanced down at the Body Farm form he’d signed. I found myself thinking how easy it would be to forge a similar signature on an organ-donor form. After all, I was falsifying documents for the FBI and for Ray Sinclair. Wasn’t Eddie Garcia equally worthy of my duplicity?
CHAPTER 38
PEGGY GAVE ME A SIDELONG, INQUISITIVE LOOK AS SHEhanded me the manila envelope. “This just arrived by courier for you,” she said. “Must be important.”
The envelope bore a label printed with the words DR. BILL BROCKTON, PH.D., DABFA, in inch-high letters on the first line. Underneath, in equally large type, were the words PERSONAL AND
CONFIDENTIAL. The third line, in slightly smaller type, read, TO BE OPENED BY ADDRESSEE