Six days after we’d followed the dog’s track across Moccasin Creek and into the fern-carpeted burial ground that was the Bone Yard, a caravan of vehicles, my truck among them, trundled away from the site, and FDLE released the scene. I smiled wearily as I noticed the sun slanting low through the trees to the west. Sheriff Judson had told us to be gone by sundown, and now we were, although a few extra suns had come and gone before Judson had gotten his wish.
As I bumped along the dirt road that led from the Bone Yard, I paused at the pipe-cross cemetery for a final look. My eyes drifted upward from the crosses to the vault of live-oak limbs fringed with resurrection ferns. Were the ferns a cynical commentary on the futility of our efforts to raise these boys from death, or might they be a hopeful portent of progress and justice? Or did it depend on what happened from here out?
I opened my cell phone and called one of the Knoxville numbers in my speed-dial list. “Osteology; this is Miranda.”
“Miss me yet?”
“Do I know you?”
I was teetering between confusion and indignation when she laughed, a clear peal of laughter that brought an instant smile to my face. “Hey, Dr. B. Are you ever coming back, or have you jumped the fence for greener pastures?”
“I’m headed for the barn,” I said. “FDLE just released the scene.”
“So you’re done? It’s over?”
“Actually, it’s really just beginning.” The governor had appointed a blue-ribbon panel to investigate the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory, I explained, and the state attorney had empaneled a special grand jury. Leaders of the state senate and house of representatives had announced that they intended to hold hearings when the legislature reconvened in January. Stu Vickery would head an ongoing task force dedicated to identifying the remains of the seven murdered boys and determining whether charges could be brought in any of their deaths. FDLE had established a toll-free citizen tip line, staffed around the clock, to take calls from the school’s former students, their relatives, former employees, or anyone else who could shed light on this dark chapter in Florida’s history of juvenile “justice.” Genetic samples from the skeletal remains were being run through the agency’s DNA lab, and genetic testing would be offered free of charge to possible relatives. The skeletal material from the seven graves had all been sent to Gainesville for cleaning and study. In short, the complex case could take months or, more likely, years to sort out. By then, most of the school’s former employees and many of the boys who’d spent time there would be dead. Former superintendent Hatfield, surely a logical target of prosecution, was dead—the medical examiner had concluded that he’d been strangled, though so far FDLE had no leads in his death—and most of the people who’d worked for him were probably dead or dying, too. “If anybody’s ever charged, I’ll have to come back to testify at the trial,” I said. “Maybe it’s too late to bring anyone to account. But at least the wheels of justice are finally starting to turn.”
“Sounds like you put a few dollops of grease on the axles, at least. Good for you.”
“Did you get a chance to water my plants and check my mail?”
“Of course. Three times. Your plants looked like they hadn’t been watered in a month. Now they’re looking pretty good—and they’re asking if you can please just stay in Florida. You got lots of bills and a few checks, or lots of checks and a few bills, but nothing that looked really pressing. Certainly nothing that looked interesting enough to steam open.”
“So nothing hand-addressed from San Francisco? Or Japan?”
“Nothing from Isabella? Not unless she disguised it as a fund-raising letter from the Sierra Club.” She hesitated. “If she’s trying to stay off the FBI’s radar, she probably isn’t going to be your pen pal, Dr. B. Look, I know it’s not my business, and I know you hate being in limbo about her—especially the pregnancy thing—but I think you need to assume she’s gone, with a capital G.”
“How can I do that, Miranda? She’s probably pregnant, and the baby’s probably mine.”
“I’m just saying,” she said.
During the awkward pause that followed, I put the truck back in gear, left the pipe-cross cemetery behind, and continued down the dirt road toward the ruins of the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory. “So what’s going on in Anthropology? Have the culturalists taken over the department while I’ve been gone? Have you taken over the department while I’ve been gone?”
“Both.” She laughed. “Actually, things are pretty dead around here. In the boring, figurative sense of the word. We’ve had two ID cases. One was a homeless guy who made the mistake of passing out on the railroad tracks just before the two A.M. freight train rolled through. The other was a floater in Tellico Lake—you remember that empty fishing boat that ran aground last month with the motor running wide open? That guy finally washed up. Oh, and some woman called in a tizzy yesterday because she’d found human leg bones in her backyard—she watches all the crime shows on TV, so she knows a lot about bones—but they were from a deer.”