Body Farm 2 - Flesh And Bone by Jefferson Bass Page A

regain his advantage, but he had clearly played his one trump card, and it wasn’t quite the ace he’d hoped it would be. After a little more sparring, the physician who was leading the hearing called a halt, thanked me, and pronounced me free to go.
    As I left the hearing room, I noticed Hamilton’s attorney rubbing his neck; the sight made me smile. Then I caught the stenographer looking from me to the attorney and back again. She gave me a wink and a smile; she crossed her legs at the same time. I wasn’t sure if that was just a happy coincidence, or if it was some sort of reward for providing a bit of entertainment. Either way, I smiled bigger and returned the wink.
    Then I saw Garland Hamilton looking at me. I met his gaze, and he gave me a brief nod. It wasn’t as friendly as his greeting had been, but it was fairly cordial, considering that his professional life was on the line here and I was part of the effort to terminate it.
    The state’s lawyer led me out of the hearing room. In the marbled hallway, seated on a bench outside the double doors, was Jess Carter. If I’d given the matter any thought, I’d have realized Jess would be testifying as well, since she had reautopsied the body of Billy Ray Ledbetter before I examined the bones. But I’d been too preoccupied with the Chattanooga case, and with my heavy-handed treatment of my creationist student, to think about it.
    “Hey, stranger,” she said. “Fancy seeing you here. You free by any chance to night?”
    This was the second question today that had caught me off-balance.
    “Well, I could be,” I said, my thoughts lagging half a beat behind my words. “I mean, I am. I think. Are you?”
    She laughed at my clumsiness. “Ah. Sorry, no. Some guy in the hospital for routine foot surgery died the night he checked in, and the family’s screaming lawsuit. I gotta get back and do his autopsy this afternoon.”
    “Oh. Right. Me too, now that I think about it. I mean, not an autopsy. I have some test papers to grade, so I can give them back tomorrow morning.”
    “I thought UT was out on spring break this week?” She raised a quizzical eyebrow at me. Underneath both brows, her eyes were dancing.
    Damn. Why did her processor always seem to work so much faster than mine? I was glad it hadn’t been Jess cross-examining me in there just now. “Don’t let me keep you from your testimony,” I said, nodding at the state’s attorney, who was looking anxious.
    “Oh, what I have to say won’t take long,” she said. “I’ll just tell them how I took one look at those rotting remains and handed them straight over to the eminent Dr. Brockton.”
    She winked, turned, and disappeared through the doorway. In her wake she left a swirl of hair, perfume, and female pheromones. Also an unmistakable aura of wit, intelligence, and professional competence.
    CHAPTER 10
    I WAS HALFWAY THROUGH a stack of a hundred test papers, and already my stomach was paging me. I checked my watch; it said ten-thirty, which was too early for lunch even by my standards, though not by much. Besides, the nearest cafeteria, in the athletic building across the street, didn’t start serving lunch until eleven. If I stayed focused, I could grade the remaining fifty papers—it was a multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank test—and still be the first person through the lunch line.
    There was a knock at my door. I always kept the door ajar when I was in, and most students just barged right in. Not this time. “Come in,” I said. Miranda leaned her head around the door and scanned the room. “Since when do you knock?” I asked.
    “Since I walked in on you kissing someone,” she said, rolling her eyes.
    “Ah,” I said, regretting the question. “That was a once-in-a-lifetime lapse. I was overcome with grief at the time. She was just trying to comfort me.” Unfortunately—mortifyingly—“she” was an undergraduate student who had asked a question that had released a flood of