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I thought about that. Would my son, Jeff, stick by me, right or wrong? What if I disgraced him — what if I were fired for misconduct with an underage female student? Would Jeff, my blood, follow the code? What about Art, my closest friend? He’d certainly stuck his neck out for me today. Would I do the same for him, if push came to shove?
“Must be nice to know you can count on that.”
“Mostly.” He paused. “Not always.”
“I can see how it might complicate things for a sheriff sometimes.”
I heard another swallow, though it didn’t seem to be preceded by the sound of a swig. “Ever’thing seems tangled up right now, Doc. See, Leena — she was family, too. She was blood, too. Seems like somebody needs to stick by her, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, it does. Her baby, too — seems like that baby could also use some good folks in its corner.”
Liquid gurgled into the sheriff’s mouth. “Doc, you ever raise your head and look around and wonder what happened?”
“How do you mean?”
“Wonder how the hell you ended up where you’re at, dealing with the shit you’re dealing with? ’Scuse me.” I waited for him to continue. “This sure ain’t what I pictured for myself, you know? Man, back when I was playin’ ball, I had my ticket out of here. I was gonna shake the dust of Cooke County offa my cleats.” Even from my brief time in his jurisdiction, I could imagine how thrilling that prospect must have seemed. “And then I got sent sprawling back home. Crawling back home.” He exhaled loudly. “Hell of it is, I been trying to do a good job. Which ain’t always easy to do up here. Lots easier to do a bad job, you know? Now, I ain’t even sure what a good job is anymore.”
“Well, don’t give up. Maybe it’ll get clearer before long. Like your coach used to tell you, look for daylight and run like hell.”
“Did he say that?” He pondered. “Daylight. Yeah. Maybe.” He drew another long breath, like he was winding up to something. “Doc, I trust you, and that’s more’n I can say ’bout a lot of people. I was outta line when I tried to shoot you, and I ’pologize.”
“Thanks.”
“You just do the best damn job you can, you hear?”
“I will. You too, Sheriff.”
“Awright. We’ll see you, Doc. You better get some sleep.”
Amazingly, I did.
CHAPTER 23
Miranda was laying the last of Billy Ray Ledbetter’s ribs on a tray when I walked into the bone lab. The torso had simmered for a day and a half in our biggest kettle, a steam-jacketed vat nearly the size of a frontier-era bathtub. The kettle wasn’t the only thing simmering, judging by Miranda’s face. She looked away when she saw me. Keep things light and breezy, I told myself. “Anything interesting?”
She flushed. “I’ll let you decide for yourself.” She shoved the tray along the counter in my direction and headed for the door. So much for light and breezy.
“Miranda, wait.” She paused, her hand on the knob. “Please. Come talk to me about this.”
“You don’t need me to tell you anything about this. You don’t need a pathologist, either. Hell, an undergraduate — a goddamn undergraduate—could tell you the story on these ribs.”
She wasn’t making it easy. “I don’t mean what’s wrong with the ribs. I mean what’s wrong with you and me.”
She turned. “You and me? There is no ‘you and me,’ Dr. Brockton.” She turned the knob and cracked the door.
“Miranda, wait. Look, I made a mistake. I’m sorry I did, and I’m sorry you saw me make it.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” She shoved the door open furiously. It banged against the doorstop outside and careened back into her, catching her on the forearm. She yelled in pain. “Ow, shit! Oh, goddamn! Oh, son of a bitch. Oh, oh, oh!” I started toward her, but she saw me coming and shouldered on through the door to get away. The heavy steel door slammed shut behind her.
Yeah, Einstein, that went well, I sneered at myself. What a screwup. I plopped onto an ancient stool and laid my forehead on the counter. Closing my eyes, I took three deep breaths and tried to calm my mind by focusing on the sounds around me instead of the turmoil inside. Somewhere in the bowels of the structure, the ventilation system thrummed. Outside, beyond the maze of girders and concrete pilings, a weed-eater buzzed relentlessly, then gave a strangled cry and died. Moments later, the ventilation system fell silent, too. In the sudden quiet, all I heard was a deep groaning, the sound of an animal in pain. I looked out the lab’s wall of windows for the source of the sound.
Miranda sat crumpled on the concrete steps outside the stadium, her purse and backpack a few steps below her. Hunching over, she clutched her right arm to her chest, sobbing from somewhere deep inside. I hurried outside. As I got close, I noticed that the ulna — the forearm bone that runs from the elbow to the wrist — had a lumpy kink that hadn’t been there sixty seconds earlier. The bone was broken; things just kept getting worse.
“Miranda, you’re hurt. Let me take a look at that.” I laid a hand on her shoulder.
She shook it off. “Don’t touch me. Just leave me alone.”
“No. Until I get you to a doctor, I’m not leaving you alone.”
“Look, I’m a big girl, okay? You don’t have to take care of me. Besides, I wouldn’t want to make you late for your next babysitting session.”
“Miranda, I made a mistake. I’ve never done that before, and I’ll never do it again. I’m sorry, but I’m only human.”
“But…why her?” And she began to sob anew.
Jess was right. I had been blind and careless. “Oh, Miranda. Listen to me. You’ve already got the best of me, don’t you understand? If we tried to have more, we’d end up with nothing.”
She raised her head and stared at me with anguished eyes. “You don’t know that. Why do you say that?”
“Miranda, I love working with you. It’s my favorite part of my job, and my job is the only bearable part of my life these days. When we’re in the lab together, I don’t feel thirty years older than you. I feel young and smart, and connected to a person I like and admire enormously. But if we were together in a different way — in a relationship, in a bed — our thirty years’ difference would hit us like a ton of bricks. Sooner or later you’d feel sorry for me, and then you’d feel trapped by me, and then you’d start to despise me. And that would kill me. It would absolutely kill me.”
Something in her face softened a bit. “Oh, bullshit, how could I ever despise you? I worship the damn ground you walk on.”
“Not so much. Not lately.”
“Don’t be stupid. Of course I do. I’m just…so…furious at you for messing around with…with some child!”
“Temporary insanity. Point taken. A never-to-be-repeated mistake. She is, after all, a whole five years younger than you. But just for the record, in the eyes of the law, I believe she’s an adult.” A low growl emanated from Miranda’s throat, which I took to be a good sign — too much feistiness in it for a suicide candidate. “She’s smart, too, for an undergraduate.” The growl ratcheted up a few decibels. “And fairly easy on the eyes…” An elbow — her left elbow — shot out and caught me in the ribs. “Ow. Not as smart or fetching as you, of course, but then again, who is?”
“Damn you, why can’t you just let me stay mad?”
“Well, judging by that arm, it’s not so good for your health.”
“Oh, that. I did that on purpose. So I could file a worker’s comp claim. I’m tired of being your defleshing slave.”
“You’re saying you needed…a break?” She groaned at the pun. “By the way, if you really want to sound professional, you should use the German term, diener.” She rolled her eyes. “Come on, let’s get you over to Student Health and get that ulna set.”
