Free The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5 by Jefferson Bass Page A

would appear to be a bit of a bottleneck.” She turned to me and frowned. “I don’t get it,” she pondered out loud. “What makes a hand transplant a thousand times more complicated than a heart transplant? Hearts have lots of blood vessels and nerves, and the potential for the recipient’s body to reject the transplant would appear to be the same, whether it’s a heart or a hand, wouldn’t you think?”
    I considered that for a moment. “I’m not sure that it’s the complexity that accounts for the difference,” I answered. “A heart transplant’s a lifesaving procedure—if you need a heart and you don’t get one, you die. But there are a lot of people walking around minus a hand or two. So maybe refining the techniques in hand-transplant surgery isn’t considered as high a priority.”
    “Hmm,” she grunted, and did another search. “Guess how many boob jobs were done in 2008?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “Four hundred thousand. What doesthat say about priorities? Plenty of surgeons up to speed on that.”
    “There’s a lot of money in plastic surgery,” I said. “It’s the free market at work.”
    “Swell,” she retorted. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of perkiness.”
    I sighed. “So the bottom line here, since it’s a left hand Eddie needs, is that the bionic hand, the i-Hand, looks like his best bet?”
    “Looks like,” she agreed. “Be good to learn more about it, though—get a review from somebody other than the manufacturer’s own marketing department.”
    “I think I know just the guy to ask,” I said.
    THE GLEAMING WHITE PLANE TAXIING toward me was unlike any I’d ever seen. It had wings and a tail, true, as well as a pair of turboprop engines. But the engines were at the trailing edge of the wings and faced aft, so the propellers pushed the plane rather than pulling it. The fuselage wasn’t cylindrical but slightly bulbous, like the sleek body of a seal or a killer whale. The wings were set far back, near the tail; up near the plane’s nose was a much smaller pair of wings that angled slightly downward. As the plane turned its two-eyed, droop-winged nose directly toward the ramp, I realized that it bore a striking resemblance to a flying fish. A flying catfish, to be precise. The props stopped, the engines spooled down, and a door just behind the cockpit swung open. A small folding stair unfolded outward and down, and Glen Faust, M.D., Ph.D., descended from the aerial catfish and strode toward me, a leather satchel slung over one shoulder. “Dr. Brockton,” he called, “so nice of you to pick me up.”
    “Welcome to Tennessee,” I said. “It was worth coming out here just to see that airplane. I’ve not seen one of those before.”
    He smiled. “It’s a head turner, isn’t it? It’s an Italian design, which is why it looks so damn sexy. Nearly as fast as a jet—cruises at four hundred miles an hour—but a lot more efficient. Room for nine, and a high ceiling, thanks to that fat fuselage. Interesting thing is, the fuselage is actually an airfoil and provides part of the lift. That allows smaller wings—and therefore less drag. Clever, huh?”
    “Clever,” I agreed. “Sounds like you know almost as much about the plane as the pilot.”
    “I am the pilot”—he smiled—“about half the time, including today. When we were looking for a new corporate aircraft, I decided to meddle. ‘I’m a pilot,’ I told the CEO, ‘and I’m also in charge of research. Let me research this.’ He fell for it.” His smile broadened into a grin. “You wouldn’t believe the view coming down the Shenandoah Valley today at twenty thousand feet. I could see Knoxville all the way from Roanoke.” Roanoke was 250 miles to the north, so what he was describing was impossible; still, the day was crystal clear—thirty miles to the east of the airport, the Great Smoky Mountains looked an easy walk away—so I could almost believe the claim.
    I led him from the ramp