“No—I mean yes. I remembered. Of course I remembered. It just slipped my mind for a minute.”
She concentrated on straightening her stack of printouts—her dissertation, I noticed, and reprints of several journal articles we’d written. No: several journal articles she’d written, but for which I got credit as a coauthor, as professors always do when their students publish.
When she looked up, her eyes were accusing and hurt. “Did that letter of recommendation slip your mind, too?” I felt myself reddening, and a bloom of sweat sprang from my brow. “Damn it, Dr. B,” she said, before I could stammer out an explanation. Not that there was an explanation. Had I really failed to write the letter? Had I recently relocated—moved from the state of Tennessee to the state of Denial? What, if anything, had I been thinking? If I ignore it, it’ll go away—and she won’t go away?
Miranda was shaking her head now. “Thanks a lot,” she said bitterly, scooping up her armload of credentials. “Wish me luck.” And with that, she swept out of the lab.
“Good luck,” I said, too lamely and too late, as the steel door slammed between us.
Standing there, abandoned by Miranda and appalled by my own thoughtlessness, I wondered if she’d ever be back.
CHAPTER 6
I HAD PLANNED TO PUT MIRANDA ON TRASH DETAIL, the dirty work of sifting through the debris we’d brought back from Cooke County. But in view of her trip to Quantico, and my failure to write the recommendation I’d promised, I reassigned the scut work to myself. For one thing, I didn’t want to let it sit until Miranda’s return. For another, the task—smelly and tedious though it was—could serve as penance, as distraction, and possibly even as a contribution to the case.
But before turning trash detective, I needed to make a phone call. I looked up the cell-phone number—I was surprised I still had it after so many years—and dialed. “Brubaker,” said a crisp voice on the other end of the line.
Pete Brubaker was an FBI profiler, or had been, until his retirement a few years before. Now he worked for a forensic consulting firm, and rumor had it that he was working on a book—either a memoir or a crime novel. Either one, I figured, could be mighty interesting. “Pete, it’s Dr. Bill Brockton, from the University of Tennessee,” I said. “You may remember that we worked together a while back—”
“Of course,” he said. “I still follow you. Anytime my colleagues visit your research facility, they always bring back gory stories. And your name pops up in my newsfeed every now and then. Glad to see you’re still catching bad guys. How can I help you, Doc?”
“Two ways, I’m hoping. First, I’ve got a case down here,” I said. “Damnedest thing I ever saw. We found . . . I can’t say a body, because all that’s left is some bones. A young man. Twenty, plus or minus. Race unknown. Chained to a tree in the woods to die.”
“Cause of death—starvation?”
“No, bizarrely. There were empty food cans all around, so he was kept alive—until he wasn’t. I think he was killed by a bear.”
I heard a low whistle at the other end of the line. “Well, that’s a new one even for me, Doc.” There was a pause. “Could it be a kidnapping gone wrong? Chained up while they were waiting for the ransom, but the ransom never came—or it came, but they left him there anyhow?”
“Could be, I reckon, but we don’t know of any kidnappings.”
“Anything found at the scene that indicates some other motive?”
“Not a thing.”
“Hmm. Well, it’s not much to go on, but just off the top of my head? Two possibilities. One, the victim could have been mentally ill.”
This hadn’t occurred to me. “Interesting. Like, the hillbilly version of locking crazy cousin Vern in the attic?”
“Maybe. But I think that’s less likely than the other possibility.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“Revenge. The victim was being punished for some wrong—real or perceived—that he’d done to the perpetrator. That’s a very personal crime. A very big power differential. Chained to a tree, totally dependent on his captor for food and water. Punishment plus degradation. It’s ‘I’ll show you’ and ‘How does it feel?’ and ‘You messed with the wrong damn guy’ all in one, right? See what I’m saying?”
“I do,” I said. “I’ll pass that along to the sheriff and the TBI agent.”
“Have they asked for the Bureau’s assistance?”
“No,” I admitted. “I’ll suggest it, if you think I should.”