[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Ah, he said. I understand. I d certainly have no problem with that. But
it s not my call. This is the highest-profile case anybody around here can
remember, and the director and the public-affairs people are pretty touchy. So
far, access is limited to the GBI, FBI, and DMORT teams. Hell, we even turned
away the governor, who wanted to come up and hold a press conference in the
woods with that grungy crematorium in the background. He paused, and in the
distance I could hear the hum of refrigeration units, the beep of a truck
backing up, and the squawk of a public-address announcement asking somebody or
other to report to the command post.
Well, I d appreciate it if you d give it a shot at least, I said.
Could save you a little time and money, I added. If I find her, that d be
one less person for you to ID. One less DNA test to pay for.
Good point, he said. We re at three hundred twenty-seven bodies already,
and we haven t finished searching. Can you maybe help us ID another fifty or
sixty?
If I say yes, does that give me a better shot at getting in to look for Aunt
Jean?
You bet, he said.
I d love to pitch in for a week or two, I said, but I want to stay close to
home until Garland Hamilton s back in custody. It s not like I m out beating
the bushes myself, but I do want to stay near the phone.
I understand, he said. Dr. Carter was a good M.E. she worked with us on a
couple of cases that crossed jurisdictional lines and I was sorry to hear
she d been killed. There was an awkward pause, and then he added, I was also
sorry to hear the police suspected you at first.
I appreciated Sean s sentiments, but I suddenly wished the conversation hadn t
taken this particular turn.
Page 61
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Listen, Sean, I bet you ve got half a dozen people clamoring for you, I
said. I d better let you get back to work. Call if you get the okay for me to
come down in the next couple days.
I will, he said. I ll give it my best shot.
His best shot must have been pretty good, because two days later a Georgia
state trooper swung open the gate and waved me into the driveway of the
Littlejohn property. The watchdogs inside the fence were gone, replaced by a
pack of television crews patrolling the outer perimeter. Several cameramen
jogged toward my truck, cameras bobbing on their shoulders, but by the time
they reached the gate, I was already crunching down the driveway in a cloud of
dust.
After threading through the pines for a quarter mile, the driveway emerged
into a yard the size of a football field. To the left was a pond measuring
maybe fifty yards across; to the right was a single-story brick ranch house
with a small front porch at the center, framed by two white columns. I d
probably passed a dozen such houses, I realized, flanking the thirty miles of
two-lane highway between Chattanooga and here. Next came a small prefab wooden
building, roughly ten feet square the sort of thing that might house a
snow-cone stand for a few months in the summer. Beyond that was a big,
barnlike shed. Inside, I glimpsed a tractor, a bushhog mowing attachment, a
battered old pickup, and the first indication that this was anything other
than an ordinary rural farmstead a handful of concrete burial vaults.
The next odd thing I saw, as I passed the shed, was the row of stainless-steel
refrigerated trailers parked behind it, their cluster of diesel generators and
compressor motors combining to produce a roaring, clattering chorus. From here
on, the driveway was lined with police vehicles county, state, and federal
cars, marked and unmarked plus crime-lab vans and DMORT trucks. The final
building was tucked beside a large turnaround area at the end of the drive.
This building resembled a dilapidated garage with a rusty metal flue at one
end, and I recognized it as a smaller, shabbier cousin of the immaculate
crematorium I d visited in Alcoa. Beside it, I noticed with a jolt, was a huge
barbecue grill.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]