Without Mercy (27 page)

I felt a hand encircling and clutching my arm—a painful, powerful grip, coming as it did from a man sliding through death's door. I saw, or sensed, Waylon's lips moving, so I leaned closer. “You trying to tell me something, Waylon?”

“Gracie.” It was scarcely a whisper, more like a feather of air fluttering against my eardrum. Almost the way he might have whispered her name in her ear, as her boys slept in the next room.

Out in the street, I heard sirens. Screeching tires. Slamming doors. Thundering feet. “They're here. Hang on, Waylon.” I turned my head toward the house, toward help.
“Here!” I shouted. “In the backyard. Hurry!” Then, to Waylon, “They're coming. Hang on, buddy.”

The big man shook his head slightly, then grunted, as if he'd just taken a punch to the gut, a knife to the ribs. “Can't. Tell . . . Gracie.”

“Tell Gracie what, Waylon?”

“I wanted . . . marry her. . . . Adopt . . . boys.”

“You tell her, Waylon. Hang on, so you can tell her yourself. Please.”

Waylon made a sound that started as a growl, then became a primal, guttural groan. “
Uhhhnnn
.”

“Help! Hurry!” I called.

I heard voices shouting, and gradually I realized they were shouting my name. “Dr. Brockton? Are you here? Are you hurt? Dr. Brockton?”

Do no harm
, a voice was shrieking in my head, louder than any siren.
No harm! No harm! No harm!

Another voice, soft and sinister, responded with a hiss:
Too late. Too late. Too late
.

THE TSA SUPERVISOR AT THE KNOXVILLE AIRPORT
nodded, then motioned me through the checkpoint, allowing me to walk to the gate with Jeff and his family. The plane was almost finished boarding; the phalanx of FBI agents had held us back until the last minute.

“Please change your mind,” Jenny pleaded. “Get on the plane; we'll pay for the ticket when we land. Come to Toronto with us. We'll buy you some more clothes there.” She tried a smile, but her tears gave her away.

“I'll see you soon,” I said. “This'll be over soon.”

She hugged me tight. “I'm so afraid,” she whispered fiercely. “What if we never see you again?”

“You'll see me again,” I said. “I promise.”

Jeff hugged me next. He tried to speak, but could not, so I spoke for both of us. “I know,” I said. “I love you, too. You're a good man—a good son, a good husband, a good father—and I'm so proud to be your dad.”

Tyler and Walker came up, one on each side of us, and
wrapped their arms around us. “I love you, Grandpa Bill,” said Walker.

“I love you, too,” I told him.

“Be careful,” said Tyler. “Remember, you promised you'd speak at my high school graduation.”

“I'll be there,” I said. “Now go.”

And they went, through the gate and down the Jetway and up into an empty, ice-blue November sky.

“GET YOUR FAMILY TO SAFETY,” BRUBAKER HAD
said, when the task force had conferred the day after Waylon's death. “Send them away. Someplace that requires a passport; someplace he can't get to. Make him come after you.”

It was a brilliantly simple idea. And a terrifying one.

“You're saying I should turn myself into bait on a hook?”

“You already
are
bait on a hook,” Brubaker clarified. “Trouble is, there's other bait, on other hooks. What you need to do is get the other bait out of the water. Make yourself the only bait.
Irresistible
bait.”

“How do I do that? Mock him?” I seemed to remember that sometimes investigators would make disparaging comments at news conferences, insulting the intelligence of serial killers, hoping to goad them into acting rashly. “Go on television and talk about what a tiny penis he's compensating for?”

“That only works for presidential candidates,” he said, and several of the people at the conference table smiled grimly. “Satterfield's too smart to fall for it.”

“Then what?”

“Well, let's think about this. Bait on a hook. What kind of bait do fish go for?”

“Worms,” I said. “I should make myself wriggly and slimy?”

“Think ‘lures.' Artificial lures. Shiny. Sparkly. The shinier you look, the more he'll notice you. The more he'll
hate
you. The more satisfaction he'll get out of reeling you in and gutting you on the dock.”

“Wait, wait,” I said. “I thought he was the fish, not the fisherman. You're saying the
fisherman
is gonna take the bait?”

“Don't be so literal, Doc. What I mean is, the shinier you look, the more he'll want to chew you up and shit you out. How's that?”

“More consistent but still gross,” I said. “But let me see if I'm following you. If I were put under a big, bright spotlight—if I were hailed as the greatest thing ever to happen to UT and Knoxville and the state of Tennessee—that might make Satterfield come after me sooner?”

“Well, yeah, it might. But that's a big if, Doc. It's not always easy to arrange a coronation on a week's notice.”

“Watch me,” I said.

“I'M SORRY, DR. BROCKTON, HE'S STILL TIED UP,”
said the provost's secretary, for what must have been the hundredth time. I had been back from the task force meeting for more than an hour, and for more than an hour, she'd been telling me that the provost was tied up.

“Well, go untie him,” I snapped.

“I've given him your messages,” she said. “All seventeen of them. I'm sure he'll return your call—your many,
many
calls—at his first opportunity.”

I sighed. Clearly I was being punished. Banished to the doghouse. As far as I could tell, there was no telephone service
in the doghouse, so I doubted that the provost would call me at his first opportunity, or at
any
opportunity. Clearly it was time to up the ante. “Tell him I'll do it,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Tell him I'll do it. Accept the award in Neyland Stadium. At Homecoming. At halftime.”

“I'll relay that message,” she said, and then, suddenly, “Oh, excuse me, Dr. Brockton, my other line is ringing. Can I put you on hold for just a moment?” Before I had a chance to ask if I had a choice, she had already done it. I remained in limbo for several minutes, and when she came back on the line, she said, nice as pie, “Dr. Brockton? The provost has just gotten out of his meeting. He can speak with you now, if you like.”

I considered saying,
No, I've changed my mind—it really wasn't important
, but I decided she probably wouldn't see the humor in it, so I played it straight. “Excellent. Thank you.”

“Bill,” the provost said in his warmest voice. “Sorry to be so slow getting back to you. You wouldn't believe the day I've been having.”

“Probably not,” I replied, matching his tone as best I could. “Listen, I've given a lot of thought to what you said, and I certainly don't want to deny UT a chance to shine. I wouldn't have won this award without all the support I've gotten from the university over the years, so I'd really like to be part of a big Homecoming celebration after all.” Suddenly I had another idea. A simple, brilliant idea. I tacked on three more words: “If I can.”

“Of course you can!” He paused. “What do you mean, ‘If I can'?”

“I might be away,” I said slowly, as if reluctantly deciding to reveal a secret. “On a job interview.”

He made a brief barking sound, which might have been either laughing or choking. “You can't be serious.”

“Sounds crazy,” I said, “but the thing is, I really like working with my assistant, Miranda. So if I can't convince her to stay here, the only thing to do is go with her. To the FBI lab. They have a supervisory position—senior scientist—that just came open, and the interview schedule is . . . challenging. It might conflict with Homecoming.”

“Have you lost your mind? You would actually consider leaving UT to follow your
assistant
? Christ, Bill, don't tell me you're sleeping with her?”

“No!
God
no. It's just that she's one of a kind. Truly . . . exceptional.”

I heard a grunt. “So that's what you're after—you're still angling for an exception to the damn hiring policy. Blackmailing me so you can offer her a tenure-track job.”

“Blackmail? I would never stoop to blackmail,” I said cheerfully. “This is extortion. A far kinder, gentler tactic.”

I could practically see him glaring as he said, “And this really means that much to you.”

“It does,” I said.

After a pause and a sigh, he said, “All right. The Faculty Senate will have my hide, but I'll do it. Oh, and Bill?” His voice lost all its prior warmth. “Don't ask me for anything else.
Ever
.”

“I won't,” I said. In my mind, I added,
Especially if I'm dead
. Aloud, I added, “Thank you. I can't wait for Homecoming.” And before he could change his mind or question me more closely about my FBI job interview—an interview that existed only in my imagination—I hung up.

I PRACTICALLY LEAPED DOWN THE TWO FLIGHTS OF
steps to the bone lab, and when I opened the door, I gave it such a push, it rebounded off the wall and nearly hit me in the face. “Impressive,” said Miranda, looking up from a notepad. “You must've eaten your spinach this morning.”

“I have good news,” I told her.

“We could all use some good news.” Miranda had taken Waylon's death hard—I knew she had been fond of the deputy, but the depth of her grief had surprised me. “And this good news is? You've decided that my dissertation is so brilliant, I don't have to defend it?”

“Better than that.”

“You don't mean—you
can't
mean—that you've sworn off terrible puns forever?”

“Even better.”

“What could possibly be better than that?”

“I talked some sense into the provost,” I said. “He's agreed to make an exception to the hiring policy. Tenure track—yours for the taking!”

“How the hell did you manage that? You've got pictures of him boffing a freshman on the president's desk?”

“Ewww. No, I do not. I just explained what a devastating blow it would be if UT lost you. The point—the good news—is that now you can stay here after all.” I beamed, waiting for her response—a hug, a Happy Dance, a face-splitting smile.

Instead, she furrowed her brow. Then, remarkably, she frowned. “But . . . Dr. B . . . I've already accepted the FBI job.”

“I know, I know, but that was because I couldn't offer you a tenure-track job here. Or thought I couldn't. But turns out I can!” She continued to frown. “Miranda, it's okay—the FBI'll
understand. Sure, they'll be disappointed, but they'll get over it. Hell, there must be a dozen other people who could do that job—not as well as you, of course, but very capably. I can call the Bureau for you, if you want.”

“No!” The speed and the force of it surprised me, and it seemed to have surprised her, too. “I mean, thank you, but . . . please don't.” Now she looked on the verge of tears. “Here's the thing, Dr. B. I appreciate your faith in me. And I appreciate how you went to bat for me, because I know it couldn't have been easy to get an exception to the hiring policy. But you're not just my mentor. You're my hero. My role model. I want to be like you. And I can't be like you if I stay here. Don't you see? I've got to leave the nest and spread my wings—branch out on my own—if I want to do it right. If I want to do it the way
you
did it.”

When I had first broached the idea of her staying on here—it seemed a lifetime ago, but in reality it had been only a few weeks—Miranda had compared me to a plantation owner at the end of the Civil War, offering to pay a former slave for labor that had previously been free. That comment, half joking, had wounded me, but only superficially: a paper cut, nothing more. But this—this talk of heroes and role models: this was a blade slicing straight into my heart—slicing all the more keenly because of the kindness and generosity behind the pointed words.

And couch it however she might, the bottom-line fact remained unchanged: I still could not bear the idea of her not being here. “I'm late for a meeting,” I lied, my voice suddenly thick and unfamiliar. “I think you're doing the right thing,” I lied again. “The FBI is so lucky to get you.” I ended, at least, by speaking a truth.

I gave her shoulder a quick squeeze, then turned and
hurried out of the bone lab. “Dr. B? Hey, Dr. B,” she called after me.

I held up a hand—my fist closed, my thumb raised in a gesture of false jauntiness—and turned the corner into the safe, obscuring shadow of the stairwell, the steel door closing between us as I trudged up the steps.

EIGHT DAYS HAD PASSED SINCE WAYLON HAD DIED;
six days since Jeff's family had flown off to exile in Canada and since I had agreed to accept my Professor of the Year award during halftime of the Homecoming game. The ceremony had been announced with full-page ads in the
News-Sentinel
and on billboards flanking every highway into town. I'd spent a half hour on camera at WBIR, waxing rhapsodic to Beth Haynes about how the ceremony would be the high point of my life.

And now it was time.

Overhead and all around us, Neyland Stadium rumbled and shook with the stamping of multitudinous feet. “Sounds like the Vols just put some more points on the board,” Decker said. We were in my administrative office, awaiting the buzzer that signaled halftime.

“I'm glad the Vols are moving the ball well,” I grumbled. “Me, I can barely move at all.” Two of Decker's SWAT guys hoisted my academic robes over my head, then clumsily threaded my arms through the sleeves. The gown was a
strangely snug fit, and I felt like the Michelin man, or a kid in a snowsuit.

Except it wasn't a snowsuit I was wearing under the gown; it was a bomb suit. I wasn't wearing the high collar or the helmet, but I was wearing a bulletproof vest under the bomb suit, just in case. “You're trading mobility for survivability,” Decker said. “Not a bad trade-off, I'd say. In this rig, only thing you need to worry about is a rocket-propelled grenade. That, or a tactical nuke.”

“I worry about a head shot,” I said. “What if he shoots me in the head?”

“Oh, that.” He gave a philosophical-looking shrug. “He shoots you in the head, we shoot
him
. Then we clean up the mess and feel really bad.” He frowned. “Seriously, Doc, you don't have to do this. I know you want to draw him out, but you really don't have to take this risk.”

“Deck, there are ninety thousand people out there expecting to see me get a medal draped around my neck. I can't back out.”

He smiled. “No offense, Doc, but eighty-nine point nine thousand of 'em came to see the game, not you. As long as the Vols come back out and play the second half, nobody's gonna be heartbroken. We make a PA announcement that you've been called out on a forensic case, and everybody'll say, ‘Good ol' Dr. Brockton—there he goes again!' No shame in choosing to be safe.”

I shook my head. “If I chicken out now, it just means I have to keep looking over my shoulder, jumping every time a car backfires or a kid lights a firecracker. I'm sick of that, Deck. Let's get this over with.”

He frowned. “He might not try anything today, Doc. He's gotta know we're on high alert.”

“He might know, but he won't care. Look at it from his point of view: If he shoots me out there on that field, not only does he win, he wins in front of ninety thousand people. Plus a TV audience of millions. How could he resist?”

Decker shrugged. “I know, he's bound to find it tempting. Still, there's no guarantee he'll take the risk.”

“No guarantee,” I agreed. “But there's a chance. And if he's out there waiting, and I don't show up? I'll have pissed away a golden opportunity. When will I ever have this much protection again? You've got, what, fifty, sixty guys out there?”

“More like two hundred,” he said, “once you count the FBI and TBI agents and UT police. Hell, you've got better security today than Obama had when he came to town.”

“Deck, that's not your politics showing, is it?”

“I better take the Fifth on that.” He grinned slyly. “But you? It would be a real shame if we lost
you
.” From overhead came another roar, and I saw Decker's eyes flicker as he put a hand to his ear to catch a transmission on his radio. “Okay, Doc, it's halftime. Showtime.”

“But Daddy, I have to pee.”

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” THE PA SYSTEM BOOMED,
“you've seen him featured on
60 Minutes
and
Cold Case Files
. You've read about him in
USA Today
and the
New York Times
. Please welcome America's top forensic scientist . . . the creator of the world-famous Body Farm . . . and now, the man who's just been chosen as
National
Professor of the Year . . . the one, the only . . .
Dr. Bill Brockton!
”

Perhaps Decker was right—perhaps everyone in the stadium had come only for the game—but even so, the crowd did
a commendable job of feigning enthusiasm, for as I stepped out of the dark access tunnel and lumbered, blinking and waddling, out to the sunlit center of the field, I could have sworn that all ninety thousand people rose to their feet, clapping and cheering.
A good day to die
, I told myself.
Far worse ways to go
.

I struggled up the steps of the platform that had been rolled to midfield, my bomb-suited legs as stiff as those of the Tin Man in need of his oil can. The provost welcomed me with a handshake and a huge, fake smile, then turned to the microphone and talked. And talked. And talked. Was he actually so fond of the sound of his own voice, or was he making sure Satterfield had plenty of time to line up a clean shot to the head? He talked so long, I found myself doing mental calculations: If Satterfield fired from one hundred yards away—say, from the top of the Jumbotron scoreboard, or the top of the press box, or the interior of a skybox, or the roof of the geology building—how long would it take the bullet to reach me, assuming it was traveling three thousand feet per second, which Deck had told me was the muzzle velocity of a high-powered rifle?
Easy
, I thought.
A tenth of a second
. And how much time between the arrival of the bullet and the arrival of the
crack
of the gunshot, which would travel at the considerably slower speed of sound, eleven hundred feet per second?
Not quite two-tenths of a second
. So if I were still alive and conscious for half a second after the bullet left the muzzle, I might—might—hear the sound of the shot that nailed me.
But not if my brains are spattered all over the provost
, I concluded.

Eventually, miraculously, the provost finished saying all he had to say, apparently, for he stepped forward, hoisted a loop of satin ribbon over my head, and hung a heavy medal on me.

But why was I still alive? And why was there no commotion—no shrieking from the spectators, no shouting on the platform, no fusillade of bullets from the SWAT officers—exploding around me? I surveyed the stadium, turning in a complete circle, seeking some sign of Satterfield. I stretched out my arms, raising them shoulder-high—the highest I could manage, within the confines of the bomb suit and vest.
Here I am
, I yelled wordlessly.
Do it. Come on, damn you—do it
.

The crowd—understandably misunderstanding my gesture, misreading it as a sign of exuberance, not frustration—went wild, woke from their provost-induced slumbers and erupted, cheering and stomping and bellowing their approval. I heard air horns and cowbells and whistles.

But still I did not hear a gunshot, and by the time I had rotated in two complete circles, seeing police galore, but no assassin, I knew that the plan had failed, that Satterfield had been too smart to take the bait. Bowing my head—not in modesty, but in defeat—I waved a feeble farewell, waddled down the platform steps, and lumbered off the field.

Decker met me just inside the access tunnel. Even in the semidarkness, I could read the mixture of disappointment and relief on his face.

“Deck, there's good news and bad news,” I said. “The good news is, Satterfield didn't kill me. The bad news is, he didn't try.”

“Maybe we came on too strong, Doc, scared him off. Maybe we should've played it a little lower key. Blended into the crowd more, you know?”

“Maybe I'd be dead now if you'd gone low-key,” I countered. “Or maybe he's dead—for all we know, Satterfield bled to death after Waylon winged him, or choked to death on a
chimichanga last night—or he's in lockup somewhere, busted for DUI. Who knows. Who the
hell
knows.”

“Sorry, Doc. It was worth a try, and you were brave to do it.”

“Thanks. Now get me out of this getup, because by now I really do need to pee.”

THE BATHROOM WAS DOWN ONE FLIGHT OF STAIRS
from my office, positioned halfway down the staircase that descended to the bone lab. As I was about to enter the restroom, I thought I heard footsteps, followed by the rasp of the lab's steel door scraping across its sill. “Miranda?” I called, “are you here?” There was no answer, and the noise filtering down from the crowd in the stadium made it difficult to know what, if anything, I'd heard at the base of the stairs. I hurried into the restroom, grateful for the chance to pee at last.

Leaving the restroom, I heard another sound from below, definitely—a forceful thud, and then another.
What the hell?
I trotted down the stairs, delighted by how easy it was to move, and move quickly, now that I was no longer encased in the bomb suit. I tried the doorknob and was surprised to find it unlocked—surprised because the UT Police required the entire building to be secured and empty during football games. The sole exception, of course, was professors who were being trussed up in body armor and trotted out on stage as live targets for psychopaths to shoot at. Or not.

Just as I was about to open the lab's door, I looked outside—out the glass exit door at the base of the stairwell—and paused. Something had caught my eye . . . but what? I looked down at the floor, at my feet, to reset my vision, then quickly looked up again, hoping that whatever had caught
my attention subliminally would do it again, but overtly this time. The Homecoming bunting was unusual, of course, as was the “Congratulations Dr. Bill Brockton—U.S. Professor of the Year” banner. But neither of those was the thing that had flipped a switch in my subconscious. The thing that had flipped a switch in my subconscious was smaller and subtler than either of those gaudy decorations. The thing that had flipped a switch in my subconscious was barely noticeable, up there amid the spiderwork of steel I-beams supporting the stadium. The thing that had flipped a switch in my subconscious was . . . a slender, horizontal aluminum angle bracket, attached to a vertical I-beam with what appeared to be a cable tie. Looking left and right, I saw identical brackets. their silvery luster contrasting with the reddish brown of the steel, fastened to the neighboring I-beams as well. Fingers shaking, I grabbed my phone, found Decker's number, and hit the “call” button.
Answer, Deck
, I prayed.
For God's sake, answer the damn phone
.

“Doc? What's taking you so long? Did you get lost, or did you need to download a file, as my kids would say?”

“Deck, listen. Are you still in my office?”

“Yeah. I thought you were—”

“Shut up. Listen. Go to the window and look out.”

“What?”

“Go look out my window. At the vertical I-beams. What do you see?”

“Doc? Are you okay? I don't quite—”

“Do it
now
, Deck—
look!
”

“Okay,
okay
. Don't get your panties in a twist. I'm at the window. I'm looking out. I see two big ol' grimy I-beams . . .” The phone went silent.

“You see them?” I said in an urgent whisper. “Those
brackets? Aren't those demolition charges? Cutting charges?” What was the term I'd learned at the ATF lab a few months before? “LSCs? Linear shaped charges?”

In my ear, I heard Decker begin to whisper, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

“Deck, what do we do?”

“Holy Mary, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

Christ
, I realized,
it's his PTSD again
. “Decker, come on, man—get a grip. I need you.
We
need you. Stop praying and start being a cop.”

Behind me, I heard the bone lab door rasp open. I turned and saw Miranda's face leaning around the door frame, her hair rumpled, her eyes wide and wild. “Hey,” I said. “What are you doing here? You know the campus police don't want us using the building on game days, don't you?”

Instead of answering, she took a step forward, and I saw a huge handgun pressed to her head. Then, prodded by the barrel of the gun, she took another step, and I saw one of Decker's SWAT guys behind her, in olive-drab fatigues and a vest. Only it wasn't one of Decker's men; it was Nick Satterfield close behind Miranda, his left hand gripping her upper arm. “Do come in,” Satterfield said. “We didn't want to start the party without you.”

Stunned, I walked slowly toward them, my hands up, my fingers spread wide. He was leaning against the door to hold it wide, and as I passed them in the doorway, entering the lab, he shifted the barrel, pressing it hard beneath her ear, causing her to grunt in pain. “We were just about to call you, weren't we, Miranda? But you saved us the trouble. Very thoughtful of you.”

“This place is crawling with cops,” I said. I turned to face him, my knees weak, halfway sitting on the table at the center of the lab for support. “If I'm not back in my office in five minutes, they'll start looking for me.”

“And I'll be part of the search party,” he said, a cold, smug smile on his serpent's face. “In fact, I'm going to be the one who finds you.” On the desk just inside the door sat a matching helmet, and I realized with horror that once he put the helmet on, Satterfield would look exactly like all the other SWAT team officers. “And then I'm going to lead you and your teacher's pet back onto the field—we'll have to call a time-out—and we'll get a microphone. And then you'll tell all those people that you're a fraud. That you pose as a good man, but you're not.”

There was the sting of truth in his words. I'd gotten Waylon killed, and now I'd led Miranda into deadly peril. And as the implications of what I'd seen through the window continued to sink in, I realized that perhaps I had led thousands of people—no, tens of thousands—to their deaths. If Satterfield had rigged the stadium's supports with demolition charges, the entire upper deck could come crashing down. “You'll tell them you're an evil man, and you're about to prove it.”