“How would he explain the empty coffin to the grieving family at the viewing or the service?”
He thought for a moment. “Maybe he wouldn’t have to. Wait till after the viewing, then swap the body for two or three concrete blocks, so the pallbearers don’t get suspicious.”
“Why wouldn’t this undertaker report you to the cops?”
“Because he’s unscrupulous?”
“So unscrupulous he’s going to help a notorious killer who’s just escaped? That seems mighty risky,” I said.
“Okay, I give up,” he said. “You’re fishing for an answer that I’m not coming up with. What is it you’re after?”
I told him the idea that had occurred to me, the way I might try to procure a standin if I were trying to fake my death.
“That could work,” he said finally.
“Could you check missing-persons reports, see if there’s anything on file?”
“Sure,” he said. “Oh, and Bill?”
“Yeah?”
“Remind me never to turn my back on you in a dark alley.”
I laughed as he hung up.
A half hour later, he called me back. “Only one new report in the past two weeks,” he said. “Teenage girl—a runaway. You sure those burned bits of skull are male?”
“The pelvic bones are in pretty good shape,” I said, “so it’s definitely male. And we’ve got two fully erupted third molars in what’s left of the mandible and maxilla, so he was at least eighteen. Harder to estimate the age because of the condition of the bones, but I’m thinking I see some signs of osteoarthritis on the vertebrae, which suggests he was middle-aged.”
“That could fit with your theory,” he said, “though it sure doesn’t prove it. I called Evers and ran it past him. The good news, sort of, is that he said it’s possible.”
“The bad news?”
“He said it sounds like the ultimate wild-goose chase. Even if somebody saw something, they’re not likely to tell the cops.”
“Well, damn.” I was saying that a lot lately, I noticed. I thanked Art and hung up. But I wasn’t ready to let go of the idea. I dug out the phone book and looked for a number.
“Public Defender’s Office,” said the woman who answered the phone.
“Is Roger Nooe in?” His name, despite the double o, rhymed with “Chloe,” not “kablooey,” I realized while I was on hold. The thought of Chloe and her speed dating made me smile, and I wondered if she’d met any good prospects.
Roger had taught for years in the UT College of Social Work; he’d retired several years before, but when he did, he took a job in social services at the Public Defender’s Office. The PD’s clients were the polar opposite of the well-heeled criminals represented by Burt DeVriess: Roger’s work put him in daily touch with people who were poor, unemployed, and often impaired by alcohol, drugs, or mental disorders—the kind of people who were falling through the widening gaps in America’s safety net by the millions in recent years. The challenges facing Roger and his colleagues seemed grim and insurmountable to me, but grimness is in the eye of the beholder; over the years—always to my surprise—I’d spoken with many people who regarded my own work as grim, too. I’d seen Roger a few times since he’d joined the PD’s office, and he’d seemed energized by the chance to develop programs and services to keep low-income defendants—and their families—from spiraling downward through poverty, crime, and imprisonment.
We played catch-up for a few minutes, as longtime colleagues and friends do when it’s been a year or so between conversations. We traded progress reports on our grown children and speculated about UT’s prospects in the upcoming football season—iffy, we agreed, given how many of the team’s key players had graduated the prior spring. Roger didn’t mention Jess’s murder or Garland Hamilton’s escape, and I appreciated that, even though I was about to bring up the subject myself. By letting me steer the conversation, he allowed me to frame things forensically rather than personally, and that made it easier for me. “Roger, you know more about street people and homelessness in Knoxville than anybody else in town,” I began.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, “but I can probably bore you with statistics for a few hours.” Roger was being characteristically modest, I knew—at the request of the city mayor and the county mayor, he’d led a ten-year study of homelessness, and his group had gone on to develop an ambitious plan to tackle the roots of the problem.
“If I needed a body,” I said, “would it be fairly easy to kill a homeless person and get away with it?”