Flash and Bones (32 page)

“There was a time we lobotomized freaks like him.”

“Those were the days.”

Slidell missed my sarcasm. “Well, that’s last season’s pennant race. Here’s a good one. Bogan’s almost sixty, and the asshole’s never left the Carolinas.”

“I guess stock car racing was all the universe he needed. That and his plants.”

Slidell shook his head.

“I keep seeing Bogan’s den in my mind,” I said. “The place was a shrine to NASCAR. Model cars, auto parts, clothing, signed posters, a zillion framed pictures. Yet not a single snapshot of Cale.”

“Freak,” Slidell repeated.

“Here’s the craziest part. The dumb wang claims to love NASCAR history but knows little of it. Women have been pushing the accelerator since before Bogan was born.”

“Yeah?”

“Sara Christian drove in the inaugural Strictly Stock race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. You know what year that was?”

Slidell shook his head.

“1949. qualified at number thirteen, finished fourteenth in a field of thirty-three.”

“Get out.”

“Janet Guthrie participated in both the Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR. In the late seventies she drove in thirty-three cup-level races. At the 1977 Talladega 500, she outqualified the likes of Richard Petty, Johnny Rutherford, David Pearson, Bill Elliott, Neil Bonnett, Buddy Baker, and Ricky Rudd. And not one of them said anything derogatory or resentful, at least not publicly.”

“She win?”

“Turn one, first lap, another car’s driveshaft went through Guthrie’s windshield. After it was replaced, the engine blew.”

“Ouch.”

“Louise Smith. Ethel Mobley. Ann Slaasted. Ann Chester. Ann Bunselmeyer. Patty Moise. Shawna Robinson. Jennifer Jo Cobb. Chrissy Wallace. Danica Patrick. And that’s hardly the full list. Women drivers are still a small minority, but they’ve always been there. And the numbers are growing each year. Did you know that approximately forty percent of NASCAR fans today are female?”

“How’d you get to be such an authority?”

I waggled my book.

“Ain’t that grand.”

“What’s going to happen to Lynn Nolan and Ted Raines?” I asked.

“Shacking up for naughty boom-boom is adultery for him, alienation of affection for her, but those gripes are largely for family courts. No one ever prosecutes.”

“She and lover boy were the unfortunate victims of bad luck and bad timing.”

Neither of us laughed at my joke.

Slidell toed the pansies bordering the brick walk. Suspecting he had more to say, I waited.

On the boom box, Dr. Hook segued into “Freaker’s Ball.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Birdie’s favorite group.”

Slidell shook his head at the puzzle of feline taste, then, “Just FYI. Padgett didn’t tell Galimore about Lovette quitting the Patriot Posse.”

“She didn’t?”

“The guy she talked to was FBI. Retired now. It’s in the file.”

“They finally let you see it?”

“Ain’t the specials special?”

“I’m still not clear on how Galimore ended up in that shed.”

“Bogan saw him poking around Gamble’s trailer before the race Friday night. He told him he’d remembered something that could shed light on what happened back in ’ninety-eight, said Galimore had to go with him to see it. Galimore had no reason to be suspicious, so he went along. In the shed, Bogan nailed him with a dart. The dose was enough to knock Galimore out but not enough to kill him, as Bogan intended.”

“Thanks for letting me know that Padgett’s dark-haired cop wasn’t Galimore.”

“Don’t mean the guy ain’t a douchebag.”

“Galimore is aware he failed a lot of people. Says he was focused on his own problems back then.”

“A cop don’t get that luxury.”

“No. And he’s beating himself up with guilt.”

Slidell didn’t respond.

“I understand how you feel.” I spoke gently. “But it is possible that Galimore has changed.”

A moment passed as Slidell studied the pansies. Then, “I did a little checking. When Galimore got tagged, there was a guy living in his building name of Gordie Lashner. Two months after Gali-more went down, Lashner got popped for dealing smack, ended up doing a fifteen-year swing.”

“You think it was Lashner’s money in Galimore’s storage bin?”

“All I know is Lashner’s a lowlife.”

“You’ll look into it?”

“I ain’t saying I think Galimore was framed.”

“Just the unfortunate victim of bad luck and bad timing.”

Same joke. Same reaction. Not so much as a smile.

Slidell watched a cyclist pedal past Myers Park Baptist across the way. He made no move to leave.

Dr. Hook started singing about Sylvia’s mother.

When Slidell spoke, his words surprised me.

“I took a fern by the hospital.”

“For Galimore?”

“No. For Dr Friggin’ Pepper.”

“That was a very nice gesture,”

I said. “I didn’t visit his bedside or nothing like that.”

“Still, it was a considerate thing to do.”

A beefy finger shot the air. “The fern business stays between you and me.”

I pantomimed a key on my lips.

“Don’t want people thinking I’m going all gooey.”

“Bad for the image.”

Slidell pulled an object from his pocket and tossed it to me.

“Galimore had that sent over to my office. Note said it was something you asked him for. Said he never had a chance to give it to you.”

The object in my lap was a NASCAR cap. On its bill was a signature scrawled in black Magic Marker.
Jacques Villeneuve
.

A grin tugged the corners of my mouth. Lieutenant-détective
Andrew Ryan, quebec cop and Villeneuve groupie, would be thrilled.

“So.” Slidell straightened his phony cool-guy shades. “Erskine Slidell still your favorite badass?”

“Yes, Detective.” My grin widened. “You are still my favorite Charlotte badass.”

FROM THE FORENSIC FILES OF DR. KATHY REICHS

In this bonus Q & A, the scribe behind Tempe Brennan takes questions on NASCAR, extremist groups, Tempe’s love life, and the difference between writing a novel and penning a script for the TV show
Bones
on FOX.

1.
Flash and Bones
begins with the discovery of a body in a barrel of asphalt in a dump next to the Charlotte Motor Speedway, and characters from the racing world become implicated in the drama. What drew you to NASCAR as a backdrop? Are you yourself a racing fan?

Prior to writing
Flash and Bones,
I had only passing knowledge of auto racing, having attended one event way back in the gray dawn of history. But almost every Charlottean knows a player in the game—be it a team owner, a mechanic, a sponsor, or a driver. It’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement each May and October when hundreds of thousands converge on our burg for big races. Like Daytona or Darlington, Charlotte is an epicenter for the sport. And, as Tempe explains in the book, stock car racing originated with bootlegging in the Carolina mountains during Prohibition.

I ended up writing NASCAR into the novel because of my longtime friend Barry Byrd, himself a huge racing enthusiast. Each time I began a new Temperance Brennan novel Barry would suggest that NASCAR would provide a rich background for a story. I finally realized he was right. Barry offered to introduce me to Jimmy Johnson and his team, to take me to the track, to include me with the gang attending the All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600.

Barry followed through on his promises. I met track owners and
managers, sports journalists, pit crew chiefs, and fans who had driven their Winnebagos from Portland, Houston, Teaneck, and Nashville. Thanks to Barry and the Smith family I enjoyed a top to bottom tour of the Charlotte Motor Speedway. My fascination with the adjacent landfill was, I fear, a source of some dismay.

2.
Flash and Bones
takes place entirely in Tempe Brennan’s hometown of Charlotte.
Spider Bones,
on the other hand, begins in Montreal, where Tempe occasionally works, then moves to Hawaii. Other books have taken Tempe to Chicago, Israel, and Guatemala. How do you decide where to set your next novel? In what city do you spend most of your own time these days?

Setting is a living, breathing part of each story I write. When Tempe travels, her destination is always a place that I know well, one in which I have plied my trade or spent time doing research.

I work and live in Charlotte, so Tempe does, too. Like her, I am a commuter, shifting regularly from North Carolina to Quebec, where I consult to the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale in Montreal. Yep. I have the mother lode of frequent flier miles.

In
Spider Bones
Tempe heads to Hawaii to pursue a case for JPAC, the Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command, the U.S. military facility dedicated to identifying the remains of servicemen and -women who have died far from home. Easy choice. I consulted for this lab for many years.

In
Grave Secrets
Tempe exhumes a mass grave in Guatemala. In the year 2000 I was invited to do the same by the Guatemalan Foundation for Forensic Anthropology.

In
Bones to Ashe
s a case takes Tempe to Tracadie, New Brunswick. This setting was suggested by an exhumation and analysis I performed for an Arcadian family living in that province.

In
206 Bones
Tempe flies to Chicago. Another no-brainer. That’s where I was born.

You get the idea. It’s better to observe firsthand than to make things up.

3. Another dominant theme of
Flash and Bones
is right-wing extremism, a subject about which you’ve written before. Members
of a white supremacist group figure as suspects in the book. How did you become interested in these factions of American society?

Extremist ideas do not offend me. In my view, people are free to believe what they will. Extremism that hurts others offends me greatly.

In
Cross Bones
I wrote of religious extremism—belief systems that refuse to accept the legitimacy of differing worldviews. In that story events take Tempe to Israel and bring her into contact with fringe groups who use violence to impose their ideologies and customs on others.

Political extremism can be equally dangerous, whether coming from the left or the right. In recent years hatred and intolerance have led to deadly attacks by domestic terrorists in the United States. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the Oklahoma City bombers; Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber. Such individuals choose to kill their fellow citizens based on their own warped definitions of morality.

After years on the run, Rudolph was arrested while digging through a Dumpster in western North Carolina, about a four-hour drive from Charlotte. I wondered who else might be hiding in the woods and back roads of my state. In
Flash and Bones,
I imagine a group of people who come from the extreme mold of Eric Rudolph and his narrow-minded brethren.

Preferring comfort in numbers, some right-wing fanatics form clubs or militias. That’s the case in
Flash and Bones.
Tempe is drawn into the world of an extremist group and must learn their philosophy and decipher their code of conduct in order to determine their role in a cold case that disturbs her greatly.

4. Over the course of
Flash and Bones,
Tempe develops a flirtatious relationship with Cotton Galimore, the head of security at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Her old flame Lieutenant-détective Andrew Ryan and sometime suitor and Charlotte attorney Charlie Hunt only make minor appearances in the story. How do you decide what Tempe’s romantic life is going to be like in each novel? Can you give readers any hints about where it might go in the future?
It’s true. Tempe’s love life is in a bit of a muddle. Andrew Ryan is preoccupied with his daughter, Lily, who is in drug rehab. And
miles away. Charlie Hunt is absorbed in a complex legal case. Miles away in another sense.

Enter Cotton Galimore, strong, intelligent, and smoking hot. Sadly, Galimore’s past isn’t exactly spick-and-span. Joe Hawkins distrusts him. Skinny Slidell loathes him. And the guy is cocky as hell.

But the heart wants what the heart wants. Inexplicably, Tempe is drawn to the disgraced ex-cop. Is Galimore really as bad as her colleagues say? Should she steer clear as everyone advises?

Nope. No spoilers here.

5.
Flash and Bones,
as with all your books, contains unique forensic twists: the body found at the dump is lodged in a barrel of asphalt, which Tempe must painstakingly dismantle. Later, chemical tests at the CDC reveal the presence of a surprising toxin in the remains. What was the inspiration for these forensic discoveries? Have you seen such corpses in your real-life work, or, in writing your novels, do you imagine the strange possibilities of homicides you haven’t yet encountered?

I am like a scavenger, always on the lookout for a snack. But instead of food, it’s criminal twists I’m after. I keep my eyes and ears open for interesting characters, bizarre case elements, and cutting-edge science. A Temperance Brennan plot may derive from any number of sources.

Starting point. I draw ideas from forensic anthropology analyses that I perform myself. My own cases.

Move one circle out. The LSJML (my Montreal gig) is a full-spectrum medico-legal and crime lab. While there I am able to observe what goes on around me, to learn about the newest thing in ballistics, toxicology, pathology, or DNA.

Continue outward. Forensic scientists love to talk to each other about their cases. Colleagues often suggest ideas for Temperance Brennan stories based on investigations in which they have been involved.

Occasionally a plot twist is inspired by a presentation I attend at a professional conference. The annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences provides particularly rich fodder. Articles in research journals also get the old brain pumping.

From my own caseload, and then from conversing, listening, watching, and reading, I get what I think of as “nugget” ideas, my core story concepts. Then, for both legal and ethical reasons, I change everything—names, dates, places, personal details. I then play the “what if?” game, and spin the nugget off into multilayered fiction.