The cremains from Georgia usually contained a mixture of human bone and animal bone, as well as a bewildering array of extraneous contaminants: bits of charred wood, zippers, nails and screws, and heaping helpings of Quikrete concrete mix, which accounted for the powder, the sand, and the pebbles. Most puzzling of all, the Georgia cremains contained small, fluffy spheres of fabric—I took to calling them “fuzzballs”—whose only purpose, as best I could tell, was to puff up the cremains and keep them from looking so skimpy.
Early in Burt’s suit, I’d gone to Chattanooga to give a deposition. I was cross-examined by a legion of lawyers, representing not just Trinity but a consortium of funeral homes that were being sued by DeVriess for defrauding their customers. The lawyers made several scornful attempts to show that it was impossible to tell the difference between burned human bone and burned animal bone. I’d brought numerous slides, though, and the questioning gave me a chance to present a lecture on the distinctive differences between human bone and animal bone.
One thing working in my favor was the fact that the fragments of actual bone that came back from Georgia hadn’t been as finely ground as the cremated bones that came out of Helen Taylor’s processor. Either Trinity didn’t have a processor or, like the cremation furnace, it sat untouched and gathering dust. Trinity did, however, have a wood chipper parked behind one of the sheds—and right beside a commercial-size barbecue smoker. The two pieces of equipment, operating separately or in tandem, conjured up images that boggled the mind—and turned the stomach.
Burt had waged an aggressive campaign to keep the case before the media, and it had worked. More and more clients signed on, and the magnitude of his damages claim kept multiplying. Within three weeks, thirty plaintiffs had joined the class, and Burt was seeking a million dollars for each plaintiff. If every remaining wronged family signed on, it was possible the claim could grow to $900 million.
One scorching afternoon during the dog days of August, the UPS man brought me a flat cardboard envelope instead of the cremation containers I’d come to expect from him. Tucked into the cardboard was an envelope embossed with the name of Burt’s firm, and tucked inside the envelope was a check for fifty thousand dollars—drawn not on the firm’s account but on Burt’s personal one. I dialed his office and got Chloe.
“Hi, Chloe. Is the champion of the underdog in at the moment?”
“I’m not sure about the champion of the underdog,” she said,
“but Mr. DeVriess is in. Would you like to speak with him?”
“Sure, he’ll do in a pinch,” I said. I heard the click of the transfer.
“Hello, Doc,” said Burt.
“Hello, Burt,” I said, “I got your check. What’s the occasion? That’s about ten times what I invoiced you.”
“I’m returning the retainer you paid me last spring,” he said.
“Why? You earned it,” I said. “You helped clear my name and keep me out of prison. It was worth every penny, and I owe you a debt of gratitude for that. Always will.”
“I owe you one, too,” he said. “You found my Aunt Jean for me. You also landed me the case of my career.”
“So you’re feeling confident about it?”
“You might say that, Doc. I’ve just accepted a settlement offer for thirty million dollars.”
I whistled. “That’s great, Burt,” I said. “That’s over a million dollars a family. Even after you skim off your rapacious commission, that’s still seven hundred thousand a family.”
“Well, it won’t end up quite that good,” he said. “That thirty million has to cover every claim that comes forward during the next twelve months. It’ll dilute everybody’s share considerably if another fifty or a hundred people come forward. Still,” he said, “it should give every family at least several hundred thousand dollars.”
And it would give Burt a cool $9 million. I glanced again at the check in my hand, and suddenly $50,000 didn’t seem like quite so much anymore. Still, it was the most anybody had ever handed me.
CHAPTER 32
THE HEAT HAD BEEN BUILDING FOR DAYS: NINETY-FIVE degrees, ninety-seven, ninety-nine. Every morning the sun swam up through the haze like a blood orange, and it set the same way, ragged and shimmering. The cicadas buzzed angrily from midmorning till night, and the hotter it got, the louder they buzzed. Or maybe it was the opposite: The louder they buzzed, the hotter it got, all that rubbing of legs or vibrating of membranes generating massive doses of heat. Looking up into one particularly noisy tree in my yard, I half expected to see hundreds of cicadas burst into flame.
The towers of downtown Knoxville were invisible from more than a mile or two away; driving upriver along Neyland toward the UT campus and downtown was like an act of creation, with buildings gradually materializing out of the murk, though they never seemed to make it all the way to crisp, sharp-edged solidity. Walking was like swimming through Jell-O.