“No, ma’am,” the officer replied. “Technically—legally—UT Medical Center is private property. I’ve asked you, as nice as I know how, to shut off that camera and get down from there. I’m going to ask you one last time, and if you don’t do it by the time I count to three, I’ll arrest you for trespassing. One . . .” She laid her hand lightly on the cameraman’s shoulder; he held up a just-a-second finger. “Two . . .” She gave the shoulder a squeeze. “Three.” The officer touched the radio transmitter on his shoulder. “This is Officer Edmonds,” he said, his head angled toward the mike. “We have a trespassing incident at the Body Farm. I need backup.”
The cameraman straightened up and raised his hands. “Hey, everything’s cool,” he said. “No worries. Just takes a minute to power this thing down. We’re leaving right now, aren’t we, Athena?”
“Absolutely,” she said. She looked at Edmonds coyly. “Help me down?” Edmonds folded his arms across his chest and glared. She turned to me, raising her eyebrows. I shook my head slightly. “I guess it’s true.” She sighed. “Chivalry really is dead.”
“That’s right,” I said. “It died right after journalistic integrity gave up the ghost.”
WAITING FOR THE CHANNEL 4 STORY TO AIR WAS LIKE waiting for a firing squad to raise their rifles and pull the trigger. Time seemed to move at a fraction of its normal speed, and I oscillated wildly between wishing the event simply wasn’t happening, and wishing it would just hurry the hell up and be done. I twisted in the wind like that for two days; on the afternoon of the third day, I got a phone call. “Bill, it’s Amanda Whiting,” I heard the general counsel say.
“You’re calling to tell me you’ve gotten an injunction to block the story?”
“Sorry; not possible,” she said. “I’m calling to tell you the story airs tonight. I just got a courtesy call from Channel Four’s attorney to let me know.”
“Courtesy call,” I scoffed. “Well, that call is about the only courtesy they’ve shown. How bad’s the story?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”
“Guess we’ll hear all about it tomorrow from friends in Nashville,” I said. “I’m glad it’s airing there instead of here.” She didn’t reply—she conspicuously didn’t reply—so after the silence dragged on a while longer, I said, “Amanda? What?”
“It is airing here, Bill. Channel Four is NBC. The NBC affiliate here, WBIR, is picking it up, too.”
“Channel Ten?” My heart sank; WBIR was Knoxville’s leading news station, and I’d always enjoyed a good relationship with reporters there. “I thought they liked me.”
“I’m sure they do like you, Bill. But if their sister station in Nashville runs a big news story about you, WBIR can’t ignore it.”
Why not? I heard a voice in my head shrieking. Why the hell not?
AS THE NEWSCAST LOOMED, KATHLEEN TRIED HER best to cheer me up, but I wasn’t having any of it. She made one final attempt. “Should I pop some popcorn?”
“Sure,” I grumbled. “But instead of butter and salt, give it some strychnine and arsenic.”
“Oh, good grief,” she said. “Get down off that cross and come sit by me on the sofa. It can’t be as bad as you think.”
During the Knoxville anchor’s lead-in, Kathleen appeared to be right. “The University of Tennessee’s ‘Body Farm’ is making headlines tonight in Nashville,” he began. “The research facility, created by UT anthropologist Bill Brockton, uses donated cadavers to study postmortem human decomposition. The Body Farm’s research helps homicide detectives make accurate time-since-death estimates.”
Kathleen nudged me. “See? Nothing to worry about.”