The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5 by Jefferson Bass Page B

I’m not thrilled about what you’re asking me to do.”
    Suddenly someone rapped at the door. It opened before I had a chance to say, “Yes?”
    “Dr. B.?” Miranda’s head leaned around the edge. When she saw the FBI agents, she appeared startled.
    “Oops, sorry to interrupt. I’ll come back later.”
    “You’re not interrupting,” said Price. “We were just leaving.”
    Miranda looked a question at me. “Please, come on in,” I said. “I need to talk to you about something.”
    She stepped into the office, which now felt crowded and awkward. Her keen eyes swiftly sized up my two visitors: business suits, tidy haircuts, intelligent eyes, and the sort of physical confidence exuded by ex-marines and gifted athletes and skilled marksmen and FBI agents.
    “This is my graduate assistant, Miranda Lovelady,” I said. “She’s the real brains of the outfit. Miranda, this is Special Agent Angela Price and Special Agent Ben Rankin.”
    She swapped quick handshakes with them, and then all three of them turned to me expectantly.
    “Agent Price and Agent Rankin stopped by to ask me for some help.” I sensed Price and Rankin tense up as I struggled for what to say next. “If they can get approval from headquarters, could we squeeze a few Knoxville field agents into the Evidence Recovery training?”
    “No problem,” she said.
    Something in her eyes shifted ever so slightly, like the merest flicker in a steady candle flame, and I realized that lying to Miranda might prove to be the steepest challenge and the highest cost of the deal I’d just made with the FBI.

CHAPTER 11
    THE VOICE IN MY EAR SOUNDED FRIENDLY, BUT IT HIT me like a fist.
    “Hi, Doc, it’s Jim Emert at ORPD.”
    Emert was the Oak Ridge detective who’d investigated the Novak murder. I hadn’t spoken with Emert in weeks, not since shortly after Isabella had disappeared into the rushing maze of storm sewers beneath the city. That last conversation, two days after she vanished, had been brief. The detective had brought in a cadaver dog to search the tunnels, and the dog, Emert told me, had come up empty-handed, or, more precisely, empty-nosed. I knew the dog’s track record at finding corpses, and it was impressive, so if he’d failed to detect death in the sewer, I felt pretty sure Isabella had escaped. What I felt unsure about was whether to be dismayed or relieved.
    Part of me—the part that held fairly old-fashioned notions of right and wrong, of law and order—was frustrated and disappointed that the woman who had killed Leonard Novak and maimed Eddie Garcia appeared to be getting away. But another part of me—the part that felt compassion for the way her family’s lives had been shattered by the dropping of the atomic bomb during World War II—figured she’d already suffered for years and would continue to suffer as long as she lived. She’d expressed anguish at the injury she caused to Garcia’s hands, and she herself had sustained radiation burns to her own hands as well, though hers were less severe than Eddie’s. Finally, although I was reluctant to admit it even to myself, my judgment was clouded by the fact that Isabella and I had made love once.
    “Hey, Jim, what’s up?” I hoped I sounded more casual than I felt. I had never told Emert—nor anyone else, for that matter—that I’d slept with Isabella. “Am I about to read headlines about a high-profile arrest in a bizarre Oak Ridge murder?”
    “Not unless our friends at the FBI have made a breakthrough they haven’t told me about,” he said. “But there is something I think you should know. We’ve found something really interesting.”
    “Tell me.”
    “I’d rather show you,” he said. “It’s short notice, I know, but is there any chance you could head over this direction on the spur of the moment?”
    “I’m on my way,” I answered, scrambling to my feet. “I’ll be in Oak Ridge in half an hour. Should I meet you at the police department?”
    “No.