Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel - By Jefferson Bass Page 0,98

I said. “I just wish they knew where the crime scene was. Where Dr. Carter was murdered.” Suddenly he, too, looked uncomfortable. I seemed to be having that effect on people a lot these days. He didn’t say much as he took the prints in ink, and when he’d finished and handed me some moistened towelettes to clean my hands and wrists, he seemed relieved to turn me over to my next handler, a pleasant female clerk who asked a series of routine questions—my name, address, age, date of birth, Social Security number, some basic medical information, and the like—and typed in my answers in a clatter of keystrokes. She also transferred some information from the arrest warrant Detective Evers had handed over upon our arrival.

As she typed, I noticed a fairly steady stream of uniformed personnel passing through the intake area, in ones and twos, with no apparent purpose. Finally it dawned on me that they were sightseeing, and that I was the sight they had come to see. The thought made me flush with a mix of humiliation and anger, but I did my best to act nonchalant. Eventually I started nodding and saying hello, and that seemed to even the scales: the sightseers, caught gawking, now looked as ashamed as I felt.

After the intake clerk had finished her flurry of typing—producing more keystrokes, in less time, with fewer visible results, than anyone except maybe an airline ticketing agent—she looked up and smiled at me. “Okay, I think we’ve got it. I believe Sergeant Anderson will be here for you shortly. Would you mind having a seat in this room over here?” She indicated a small side room separate from the larger intake room. I pointed at the main room, where three prisoners in stripes lay sprawled on stainless steel benches.

“You don’t want me where those other guys are?”

“No, sir,” she said. “They told us you’re a ‘high-profile.’ That means you’re segregated from the other prisoners.” She gave me another smile, and it seemed genuine. Even here, in the seamy underbelly of society, there was a class system, and DeVriess had negotiated me into the upper crust.

“Well, thank you for your kindness,” I said. “It’s good to know I’m a VIP among murder suspects. Just so you know, I really didn’t kill Dr. Carter.”

Now she, too, turned crimson and ducked her head. Damn, I thought, me and my big mouth again.

I slunk to the bench and sat down. Within five minutes Sergeant Anderson appeared. “Dr. Brockton, your bond has been posted and we’re going to be releasing you from custody now. If you’ll follow me, we’ll step across the hall and get you going.”

An automated glass door at one side of the intake area slid open, leading to an elevator and a staircase. Beyond those, another door slid open before us, admitting us into an area labeled RELEASE. Release was virtually a mirror image of Intake except for the lack of the mug-shot and fingerprint stations. Another clerk at a computer desk—also a pleasant blond woman—handed over my possessions, along with a Sharpie marker. I used the Sharpie to sign the line at the bottom of the bag, indicating that all my property had been returned to me. It took some strength to pull open the top of the bag, and when I did, I noticed that a series of thin red stripes along the top got ripped to hell. Even our jails had adopted tamper-evident packaging. That was a good thing, I supposed; it could be the reason my TBI badge wasn’t going to show up on eBay during my murder trial.

I put on my shirt, watch, and badge, and Andrews led me out a glass door and into the sally port. The door, likewise labeled RELEASE, mirrored the Intake door some fifteen feet away. Anderson raised his radio to his mouth. “We need one-sixty-two,” he said, and I heard an electronic lock click open in a steel door set into the wall beside the garage door. He ushered me out, blinking, into the brilliant Tennessee sunshine, where DeVriess sat idling in his car. On the embankment above, at the edge of the facility’s parking lot, I saw a thicket of television cameras, and I guessed that one of the sightseeing deputies inside had tipped off a cousin or girlfriend who worked at one of the stations. I got in with as much speed and dignity as I could combine, and Burt backed down to a spot