“Isn’t there some law against desecrating corpses?” asked Jenny.
“There is,” I said, “but I don’t know if dumping them in the woods counts as desecrating them. I’ll call Grease—I mean, Mr. DeVriess—first thing Monday morning. He’s the one who got me into this, and he’s a lawyer. Maybe he can help me figure out what to do.”
A short time and some chitchat later, I headed home to bed, feeling more connected with the world of the living than I’d felt twelve hours before, surrounded by corpses in the Georgia woods.
But I hadn’t reckoned on what awaited me in my house: emptiness and the looming menace of Garland Hamilton. Nature really does abhor a vacuum, and it wasn’t long before the voids in my house and my heart began to fill with sadness, loneliness, fear, and regrets.
I wasn’t sure that I could have lived my life any differently or altered its main events. But I was pretty sure I could have stayed with Jeff and Jenny another hour or two. And I was pretty sure that would’ve been better than this.
CHAPTER 16
“GOOD MORNING,” CHIRPED THE VOICE AT THE OTHER end of the phone. “Mr. DeVriess’s office.”
“Good morning, Chloe. It’s Dr. Brockton.”
“Hi there. How was your weekend?”
“Let’s call it interesting,” I said. “Very interesting. How was yours?”
“Also interesting,” she said. “I tried speed dating.”
“Speed dating? What’s that?”
“You sign up and go meet a bunch of other people who are looking to meet Mr. or Ms. Right, and you spend five minutes apiece interviewing a bunch of them.”
“Five minutes? And the point of that is what, exactly?”
“It gives you a chance to see whether you like somebody, without the pressure of a fix-up or an actual date,” she said. “Actually being out with them, you know? If you like them, you give them your phone number. If you don’t, you say, ‘Nice to meet you,’ you shake their hand, and you move on.”
“What if they give you their phone number and you don’t really want it?”
“Then you toss it in the trash when you get home,” she said.
“What if they ask for your number and you don’t want to give it to them?”
“Then you smile sweetly and say, ‘I don’t think so.’ Look, I didn’t say it was the perfect system,” she said. “I only said it was interesting.”
“Just curious.” I laughed. “And did you meet the future Mr. Right?”
“As if,” she said, which I took to mean she hadn’t. “But I did meet a guy who could be Mr. Right Now. A guy who might be a good movie buddy till the real deal comes along.”
“Speed dating,” I marveled. “It’s a whole new world out there. Any old coots like me shuffling amidst the speed daters?”
“Ha—you will never be an old coot,” she said. “But it did tend to be a youngish crowd. Which is not to say you shouldn’t try it.”
“Me? I don’t think so, Chloe. I’m just curious about the anthropology of it,” I said.
“Well, then you should sign up sometime and go study the phenomenon firsthand.”
“Maybe I will,” I said. “Could I talk to Burt?”
“Sorry, he’s not here—he’ll be in court all day. His first trial in a month. If it’s urgent, I can try to get him a message, though.”
“No, I reckon it’s not urgent,” I said. “They’re not going to get any deader.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, Chloe, just talking to myself there. I was going to ask his advice on something, but I’ll figure it out myself.”
After I hung up and thought awhile, I opened my address book to the section headed “F” and dialed another call.
“Hello, you’ve reached the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Knoxville Division,” announced the woman’s voice in my ear. “If you know your party’s extension, you can dial it at any time.” I did not know my party’s extension, so I pressed 2, then punched in P, R, I, and C.
“This is Special Agent Price.” I tried to recall her first name from our meetings about official corruption in Cooke County—not that I would ever be on a first-name basis with Price, who was a study in cool, brisk efficiency. Andrea? No, not Andrea, but something along those lines.
“Hello there, Special Agent Price. This is Dr. Bill Brockton, from UT.”
“Ah, Dr. Brockton. Are you calling to plead guilty to gambling on cockfights, Dr. Brockton?”
I laughed. “Not exactly.” Price had sent an undercover FBI agent to gather evidence against a massive cockfighting operation in Cooke County the prior year. Quite by accident, I had found myself an inadvertent spectator as the roosters battled to their bloody deaths. During my brief glimpse at the seamy subculture of cockfighting, I had nearly thrown up on Price’s undercover agent. “I admit to second-degree spectating and first-degree nausea, but I did not gamble.”
“You sound like Bill Clinton talking about marijuana,” she said. “Or sex. What can I do for you, Dr. Brockton?”