“Come on, there has to be something earlier than that.”
“Yes, sir. There’s a 1:45 flight from LAX to Atlanta. But obviously you can’t take that. Then there’s nothing eastbound until eleven o’clock tonight.”
“Christ,” I muttered. “And what time would I get to Knoxville? If nothing went wrong in Detroit?”
“At 10:31 tomorrow morning.”
I no longer wanted to scream. Now I wanted to weep. Feeling more defeated than I had in ages, I fished out my wallet and sighed, “I’ll take it.”
EXITING THE TERMINAL AT MCGHEE TYSON AIRPORT the next morning—after spending what felt like an eternity shoehorned in the last row of seats to Detroit and then again to Knoxville, directly in front of lavatories that seemed not to have been cleaned in weeks—I was stunned when I stepped into the swelter of Tennessee’s summer. On the sauna-dry slopes of Otay Mountain, my sweat had evaporated almost instantly; here, it was as if I had swum into a steam bath. Or a sweat bath. How soon we forget, I thought, hunching a shoulder to mop my brow. But how fast we’re reminded.
Heading toward the parking deck, I suddenly stopped, muttering, “Well, crap.” My truck wasn’t in the parking deck, I’d just remembered; it was parked a half mile away, at Cherokee Aviation, the charter air terminal where the FBI’s Gulfstream had swooped down to fetch me. Looking to my left, across a long ribbon of hot asphalt, I could just make out the truck, shimmering in the distance like a mirage. Slinging the strap of my boxy bag over my sleep-deprived shoulder, I began the trudge.
Ten sweaty minutes later, my sodden shirt plastered to my skin, I unlocked and opened my truck—the rubber weather stripping made a ripping sound as it pulled away from the hot metal of the door frame—and tucked the bag behind the front seat, then cranked the engine and put the air-conditioning on high. Leaving the truck idling, I stepped inside Cherokee to mop off and use the courtesy phone to call Kathleen, as my cell phone’s battery had died somewhere between California and Tennessee. But the courtesy phone appeared to be surgically grafted to the ear of a commercial pilot, a glossy-haired, pretty-boy Casanova type in a pseudomilitary uniform. I tried hovering, hoping he’d take the hint and finish his conversation; instead, he turned his back and cupped a hand around the mouthpiece. Judging by his quiet murmuring and occasional chuckles, the pilot wasn’t filing a flight plan; he appeared to be cooing to a woman he had just bedded or, more likely, hoped to bed, as soon as his next flight was over. Too weary to wait, I returned to my truck and headed toward campus. I would check in at my office, then go surprise Kathleen at hers.
I passed the medical center and crossed the Tennessee River, flowing green and welcoming beneath the high span of the Buck Karnes Bridge. Looking to my right—upstream, between the hospital and a condominium complex—I saw the three-acre patch of woods housing the Body Farm. Across the river, a bit farther upstream, loomed the towering oval of Neyland Stadium, which housed the dingy offices and classrooms and labs of the Anthropology Department.
The river separating these two odd offices of mine was, for reasons I didn’t entirely fathom, a powerful touchstone for me. As I crossed the channel on the high span of concrete, I filled my lungs and exhaled loudly—the sound somewhere between a sigh and a hum—feeling myself only now to have truly landed. Home, I thought. Smiling, I turned onto Neyland Drive and headed upriver, as reflexively and instinctively as some four-wheeled salmon. Making my way to the stadium, I threaded along the one-lane service road at the base of the grandstands and stopped beside the service tunnel that led to the field’s north end zone.
Reaching behind the seat, I unzipped my bag and removed the bin of teeth and bones, then entered the dim, echoing concrete stairwell and headed up one flight of steps: up to my private office, my sanctuary, my hideaway; the place where I holed up when I needed to focus on science and forensics, not bureaucracy. I set the bin on the hallway floor and turned the key in the lock of my door, tugging gently as I twisted, to loosen the deadbolt from the grip of the warped door frame. When the bolt rasped and thunked free, I turned the knob and hipped the door open, then bent down, picked up the bin, and set it on my desk. Then I dialed Peggy, my secretary, who kept watch over the Anthropology Department’s main office, a hundred yards away—all the way at the opposite end of the stadium, beneath the south end zone’s grandstands. Peggy answered halfway through the first ring. “Anthropology,” she said, her voice sounding strange and strained.
“Hi, honey, I’m home,” I joked, hoping to ease the tension I heard in her voice.