Carved in Bone - Jefferson Bass [84]
My next call was a quick one to Art. I told him what I thought I should do, and he concurred, so I pressed the switchhook, pressed “8” again for another outside line, and dialed the number on the business card I fished from my wallet. “FBI,” snapped a no-nonsense male voice. I identified myself and asked for Agent Price. “One moment, I’ll see if she’s in,” he said, swiftly parking me on hold.
Ten seconds later, Angela Price picked up. “Dr. Brockton, how are you?” Price’s voice was crisp but cordial. “You’re not calling with a field report from another cockfight, I hope?”
“No, I’m calling from my office at UT. Somebody’s just broken in and stolen the postcranial skeleton from my Cooke County murder case.”
“Postcranial?”
“Everything below the skull, or nearly everything. Luckily, I had the cranium and the hyoid bone—the bone from her throat that shows she was strangled—in a classroom with me. So those are still safe, for the moment.”
“What would you like me to do, Dr. Brockton?”
“Well, you said to let you know if anything else cropped up, and this sure counts as cropping up in my book. Does this merit sending the Bureau’s crime scene wizards over to take a look? Just informally, of course. I’m also wondering if you folks could take temporary custody of the skull and hyoid for me, too? It’s easy to get into a professor’s office, but I can’t imagine somebody breaking into the FBI’s evidence vault.”
“Hang on a second.” She, too, was quick with the “Hold” button; must’ve been emphasized in the curriculum at Quantico. I hung in limbo for several minutes. Just as I was about to hang up and redial, she picked back up. “I’m not trying to dodge you, Dr. Brockton, but Steve Morgan, your former student? He already knows his way around that labyrinth over there. He’s on his way now, and some TBI evidence techs will be right behind him in a mobile crime lab.” She must have sensed some disappointment on my end of the line. “We just don’t have either the jurisdiction or the resources right now, and TBI does. Can you understand that?”
“I reckon I’ll have to.” I regretted the petulance of that as soon as I said it. “Sorry. Yes, of course.”
“Do you feel safe there?”
It hadn’t even occurred to me to worry about that. “Yes, I think so. Thanks for asking. A UT officer should be here any minute. In fact—yes, there’s his car now.”
“Good. Keep in touch. Don’t give up on us.” She rang off without another word, and I met the campus cop at the door. He looked young enough to be a student himself; his gun was drawn and his hand was shaking. When I explained that a TBI team was on the way, his big eyes got even bigger. Mercifully, he holstered the trembling weapon, then scurried back to his patrol car and returned with a roll of crime scene tape. With it, he fashioned a big X across the open doorway. When Steve Morgan arrived ten minutes later, he eyed the crime scene tape and sized up the eager young cop. “Anybody been in here besides Dr. Brockton?”
“No, sir,” said the young patrolman, all but saluting.
“Good work,” smiled Morgan. “We’ll take it from here. Thanks.”
The young man’s face fell. “You don’t need me here?” Morgan looked surprised by the question, maybe faintly amused. I felt bad for the UT officer, but he wasn’t ready to slink away just yet. “I, um, was sort of hoping to watch—to observe—how the TBI works a crime scene.”
Morgan smiled. It hadn’t been all that long since he was standing in my office apologizing for classroom hijinks. “Now that I think about it, Officer, if you’ve got time to stick around and control the perimeter here, the TBI would be much obliged.”
The lad practically trembled with excitement as he fished out his radio. “Unit Three to Dispatch,” he blurted. When the dispatcher responded, he snapped to attention, as if she could see him.