Read Online Body Farm 04 - Bones of Betrayal by Jefferson Bass - Free Book Online Page A

dispose of it.”
    “And you think the ‘culpable party’ is going to be eager to step forward,” said Johnson, “eager to own up to one man’s death and four people’s exposure in the morgue? Meanwhile—as we wait for this ‘culpable party’ to step forward to say ‘Arrest me, and please sue me for millions of dollars, too’—do you plan on stashing this in your attic?”
    The TEMA official fell silent again. “The Department of Energy,” he finally said. “DOE has a Radiological Assistance team based over in Oak Ridge. I’ll ask the governor to ask the feds to take it off our hands.”
    “Sounds great,” said Johnson. “But at the risk of sounding like a broken record: Until DOE gets here, would you mind if we lock it up in a hot cell? That seems a little more secure than the frickin’ hallway it’s sitting in right now.”
    Two minutes and a little fence-mending later, Johnson trundled the box to the elevator and up to a hot cell—a massive box of lead and leaded glass, equipped with robotic manipulator arms—built to handle powerful radiopharmaceuticals without risk to the hands and bone marrow of technicians and pharmacists.
    It was a shame Garcia hadn’t known to conduct Leonard Novak’s autopsy inside a hot cell. Garcia might have looked like a mad scientist, wielding robotic arms to dissect a corpse. But better a mad scientist than a maimed or dying doctor.

CHAPTER 7
    THE KNOCK ON MY OFFICE DOOR MADE ME JUMP, AND I realized that I must have nodded off. Miranda and I had spent several hours with Carmen Garcia. Around midnight we’d returned to her husband’s hospital room, where we’d stayed until it was time for our 7 A.M. blood sample. Carmen had been terrified to learn that her husband—who had left home that morning as usual, kissing her and their baby goodbye in the kitchen after breakfast—was now a hospital patient, his hands and possibly even his life jeopardized by one of the bodies he had autopsied.
    Garcia had served as the medical examiner for less than a year now; he’d been hired from Dallas to take Jess Carter’s place when Jess was killed. At first I’d disliked Garcia—he’d struck me as stuffy and condescending—but I soon realized that what I’d mistaken for stuffiness was actually just a veneer of formality, maybe even shyness. A slight, handsome man, he’d grown up in a well-to-do Mexico City family before being sent to the United Statesfor college and medical school. His wife Carmen was a Colombian beauty; their Latino genes had combined to produce a gorgeous toddler, Tomas, who had a thick shock of curly black hair and enormous brown eyes. Miranda had taken to babysitting for Tomas one evening a week. She claimed it was so the boy’s harried parents could relax over dinner and a movie, but I suspected it was because she was so smitten with the child.
    Another knock; another awakening. I had fallen back asleep after the first knock. “Sorry,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Come in.”
    “How’s Dr. Garcia?”
    “Too soon to know,” I said, fully awake now. “But it doesn’t look good. Are you Special Agent Thornton?”
    “Yes sir. Charles Thornton.”
    He stepped into my office and gave me a solid handshake. Thornton was tall and lanky—six foot two, maybe, and tipping the scales at around 190; possibly 200, since he seemed to be carrying some lean muscle on his frame. His sandy hair was cut short, but it appeared to contain some styling gel and some color highlights and some attitude. Then there was the tie: he wore one, but he wore it loosely, like it was an afterthought or an ironic commentary; like he might take it the rest of the way off any minute. The tie was printed with an abstract design that was either the work of an artistic genius or a second grader. The guy was almost a cop, but not quite. Too metrosexual, if I understood the term right. I suspected some of his more buttoned-down FBI colleagues regarded his wardrobe with