Body Farm 2 - Flesh And Bone by Jefferson Bass Read Free Book Online Page A

me dead-on and raised her left eyebrow by what seemed to be an inch, while the right remained perfectly stationary.
    I laughed. “How’d you do that?”
    “What, this?” She did it again, this time with her right eyebrow.
    “Yeah. That’s amazing. How’d you learn to do that?”
    “Diligent practice. While the other med students were dissecting cadavers, I was perfecting facial gymnastics in the mirror. Honing indispensable skills like this.” One side of her mouth suddenly turned upward in a big smile; the other side drooped in an exaggerated, clownlike frown; it was as if invisible hands were tugging in opposite directions on either side of her face. I shook my head in astonishment. “It’s just muscle isolation,” she said. “Like belly-dancing, only higher-brow.” She did the eyebrow again to underscore the pun.
    I tried to duplicate the maneuver. I felt my whole face contort with the effort. She grimaced in mock horror. I took another run at it; this time, I felt my scalp shifting and my ears twitching. “Ow. I think I just pulled a muscle I didn’t know I had.”
    She shook her head and patted my arm. “There, there. We all have our special talents. I’m sure you’ll discover yours one of these days.”
    “Hmph,” I said. “Now you’re patronizing me.”
    “Everybody needs a patron,” she said.
    I opened the cabinet and pulled out a tall glass, then filled it with ice cubes from the freezer and handed it to her. She set it on the counter and half filled it with vodka, which she topped off with cranberry juice.
    “You don’t need to measure?”
    “It’s not chemistry lab,” she said. “Plenty of margin for error.” She took a long pull and smiled happily. “Ah, just what the doctor ordered. You sure I can’t corrupt you?”
    “Pretty sure,” I said. “I can barely keep up with you sober. I wouldn’t have a prayer if I were impaired.”
    “You would if I were more impaired,” she said, taking another swig.
    I took this as a sign that it was time to put the steaks on. I opened the fridge, took out the steaks, and unwrapped the white butcher paper. They were big, thick filets, nearly as tall as they were wide, wrapped in bacon. I’d picked them up at the Fresh Market, the grocery store on the edge of Sequoyah Hills. Sequoyah is Knoxville’s ritziest neighborhood, unless you count some of the suburbs to the west, in Farragut. Normally I shopped at Kroger—not the Fellini Kroger, but a far closer and far tamer one—but the Fresh Market’s meat was the best in town. It was actually worth paying Sequoyah Hills prices for.
    My house was in Sequoyah Hills, but it was not of Sequoyah Hills, to borrow a prepositional distinction Jesus once made to his followers about their relationship to the world. I had an archetypally common ranch house—an extra-ordinary house, I sometimes called it—which shared a shady circle with a half dozen other ranchers. The only remarkable thing about them was the way they were surrounded by hundreds of mansions. Whenever things got dangerously ostentatious in the neighborhood—a fancy symphony party or political fund-raiser at the Versailles-like palace around the corner, attended by glittering people in formal wear—it comforted me to imagine our modest homes as pioneer wagons, circled for self-protection. If our protective circle were ever breached, it probably wouldn’t take long before every ranch house on the street got torn down and replaced with some stucco-slathered behemoth three or four times as big, crowding its property lines and its equally steroidal neighbors. Not that I was bitter or anything.
    Plopping the steaks on a plate, I sprinkled both sides with salt and pepper, rubbing the seasonings in, then dashed some Worcestershire sauce on top to add a little zing.
    Jess nodded approvingly. “You gonna put some sizzle in that steak?”
    “Gonna try.”
    “How you cooking them?”
    “I’m a guy; on the grill, of course.”
    “Gas or