Free Cut to the Bone by Jefferson Bass Page A

stripper he’d dumped in the ravine. The truck needed selling. Besides, the money would be useful; he could live for a year—two, if he had to—on the thirty grand plus the monthly infusions of cash his mother’s Social Security checks provided.
    Satterfield took the envelope in his left hand, reaching into the glove compartment again with his right, this time feeling for his straight razor. Flipping open the blade, he slid the tip lightly across the rubber band to slice it, then laid the razor on his right leg, still open. He pulled the stack of currency—also rubber-banded—from the envelope and riffled through one corner of the stack, as if the bills were a deck of cards. The number 50 fluttered past many times, jerking and shimmying in small movements, like an animated drawing in a child’s flip-book. He tugged one of the fifties free and tucked it into his shirt pocket—he’d be paying cash for his bus ticket, so there’d be no paper trail leading from Birmingham—then tucked the rest between his thighs. He took a pen from his shirt pocket. “Okay, then. Hand me that title and I’ll sign it over.”
    â€œDon’t you want to count it?”
    Satterfield looked at him coolly, holding the stare long enough to make the guy squirm. “Some reason I need to count it?”
    Even by the last light of the sunset and the first flickers of the streetlamps, he could see the guy flush. Is he insulted, because he wouldn’t dream of shorting me? Or is he worried, because he actually did? “No reason, hoss. It’s all there.”
    â€œGood.” Satterfield picked up the straight razor and angled it toward the light spilling through the driver’s window, sighting along the edge of the blade, inspecting it for nicks. He glanced up from the blade and smiled. “Be a real shame if I had to come back to settle up.”

CHAPTER 9
    Brockton
    TYLER AND I WERE thirty miles northwest of Knoxville on I-75, the sun beginning to sink as we began to climb Jellico Mountain. An hour before, I’d gotten a call from the sheriff of Campbell County—“Sheriff Grainger,” he’d said on the phone, without giving his first name—asking if I could come recover a body from a creek bed. “It’s in pretty rough shape,” he’d said. “The TBI agent up here says this is just your kind of thing.”
    â€œThe TBI agent up there wouldn’t happen to be named Meffert, would he? Bubba Hardknot?”
    â€œSure is,” Sheriff Grainger had answered. “He covers Campbell, Morgan, and Scott Counties.”
    â€œLucky him,” I’d said, then realized the remark might sound offensive. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.” All three counties were mountainous and sparsely populated; coal rich but dollar poor. “Bubba be at the scene?”
    â€œOn his way over from Oneida right now. Reckon he’ll be along directly.”
    â€œWe’ll get there as quick as we can, Sheriff.”
    â€œLOOK AT THAT,” I said, pointing out the right side of the windshield. “Nature’s flying buttresses.”
    â€œHuh?” Tyler followed the direction of my point. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. Gotcha.”
    â€œThat’s it ?” I shook my head. “A miracle of nature, and the best you can manage is ‘Gotcha’?” We were halfway up Jellico Mountain on a crisp, clear afternoon in late September; a hundred yards to the east of the interstate, a series of massive stone pillars—as plumb and parallel as stonemasons could have set them—jutted from the mountainside, each pillar rearing a hundred feet high against the reds and golds of the turning leaves. “Tyler, you have no poetry in your soul.”
    â€œI’ve got no lunch in my belly, either,” he grumbled, “and it’s three o’clock. Hard to hear poetry over the growling of my