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CHAPTER 1

The woman’s face blurred and smeared as I pivoted the caenic features — features I’d seen a thousand times on my television screen — whirred into autofocused perfection: wavy honey-blond hair, indigo eyes, a elina Jolie lips Knoxville news anchor Maureen Gershas forty-two — e, high-dollar version of forty-two She was beautiful and vibrant and healthy-looking, except for one minor detail: Maureen Gershas dead

“Pardonthat out of dozens of corpses to choose from, you’ve picked one worthy of Victoria’s Secret for your little photo shoot”

Miranda Lovelady was both raduate assistant and my self-appointed social conscience A sy, Miranda was a young woman of liberal opinions, liberally dispensed We didn’t always see eye to eye, but five years of collegiality and camaraderie tempered our occasional personal differences One of Miranda’s duties was running the Anthropology Departy laboratory, the bone lab tucked deep beneath the grandstands of the University of Tennessee’s football stadiuray Research Facility—“the Body Farm,” UT’s three-acre plot devoted to the study of hu bodies as they decayed in various settings and conditions, we’d gained trehts that allowed forensic scientists all over the world to give police more accurate time-since-death estimates in cases where days or weeks or even years elapsed between the time someone was killed and the time the body was discovered

Despite the rural-sounding na to resemble a city of the dead, at least in population density The nurown steadily — from a handful a year in our early years to well over a hundred a year now Scientifically, the population boom was a bonanza, but it was also an e out of elbow rooe roo the location of each body with GPS coordinates with just a few keystrokes, she could print out an up-to-the-y helped us keep track of where we’d already put people, and it also helped us pinpoint patches of unclairound on which to house new residents Unfortunately, the patches of unclai scarce and small

We’d tucked Maureen Gershwin — known to television viewers throughout East Tennessee as Maurie, or sometimes by her nickname, “The Face”—in the awking Gershwin had risen through the television ranks, froirl to reporter to anchorwoman, and recently she’d added occasional commentaries she called “Maurie’s Minutes,” which took a more personal, reflective tone Those had ive her soh I was photographically invading that privacy The facility was off-li nuates: anthropology grad students, the UT police force, the instructors and students of the National Forensic Acade-stomached VIP visitor from the university’s board of trustees Like all our donated corpses, Maurie Gershas identified not by naband identified her only as “21–09,” the twenty-first donated body of the year 2009—but she was so well known to Knoxville television viewers that there was no hope of keeping her anonys had rendered her fanizable

As I tinkered with the camera’s zoom control, Miranda took the opportunity to chide— you sure you don’t want to swap those out for so flashier? Maybe a little black dress that shows soe?”

“Come on, Miranda,” I snapped, “you saw the letter she sent with her donor form She asked to have her deco other donor requests, like being put in the shade of ato concede “Besides, I’ her face, not the rest of her”

“But you can see my point,” she persisted, “can’t you? Don’t you think it’s a tad creepy that you’re ai this camera at this particular corpse, the most beautiful corpse in the history of the Body Farm? Crap, Dr B, she looks better dead than I do alive”

I glanced from the neoreen eyes, framed by a cascade of chestnut hair I actually preferred Miranda’s looks, but I knew she wouldn’t believe ,” I said “Day by day — hell, hour by hour — she’ll get a lot less gorgeous We’ll end up with one glaoes from bad to worse and from worse to worser”

“I don’t understand why she asked for this”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said “I understand, and, more to the point, she understood She talked to o, back when she produced that three-part series about the Body Farm for Channel 10 You remember the end of the series, when she added a ‘Maurie’s Minute’ about the ireat touch, signing the consent form at the very end of the newscast”

“I hated it,” Mi

randa said “She was playing to the camera Or maybe just to Dr Bill Brockton”

I stepped away froht Miranda’s eye “Excuseto the corpse, “but I refute you thus Looks to me like she said what she meant and meant what she said Remember what the letter said? ‘I wish I could watch what happens to me’? Her coanchor, Randall Gibbons, said she’d told hi the subject of a science docuuess — one last story, filed frorave”

“Swell Film at eleven, smell at twelve,” Miranda joked mirthlessly “Deathstyles of the Rich and Famous We do bow before beauty, don’t we?”

I snapped a picture, then checked the display on the back of the cahtly off and the screen ashed out by the daylight, but I had to agree that Miranda had a point: Even dead, Maurie Gershas a beauty, at least for a few more hours “Her looks did have a lot to do with her success,” I conceded, “but I don’t think they defined her, at least not to herself In fact, I think she had a healthy sense of irony about the fleeting nature of physical beauty”

“Yeah, well Too bad her cardiovascular syste as her sense of irony,” said Miranda “Stroking out at forty-two, and right there on camera no less”

“Aneurysm,” I said “Not stroke” Gershwin had died of an aortic aneurysm that ruptured catastrophically — and in the one undetected “Did you see the news any of the last few nights before she died?”

Miranda nodded

“Did you notice that her voice was a little hoarse?”

She looked atup in a question

“One of the laryngeal nerves — the recurrent vagus nerve, which controls the voice box — wraps around the aortic arch A fast-growing aneurys hoarseness Maurie thought she’d just strained her voice last week during a charity telethon — that’s what she said on the air two nights ago, right before she died — when in fact her body was trying to warn her”

Miranda shook her head “Sad Ironic Here’s another irony for you: Her deaththe news Somebody posted an Internet video of that clip from the newscast where she collapses in midsentence They called it ‘Fil, thirty million people had watched her die”

“Thirteen e?”

“Thirty million”

The figure stunned me “That’s probably twenty-nine and a half million more than ever watched her live”