Carved in Bone

right. I tried to fly one of these contraptions once.”
    “And?”
    “And like the Lyle Lovett song says, ‘Once is enough.’ Most complicated hand–eye, brain–machine coordination I ever tried to do. I’d get one thing almost right, and in the process, I’d get two or three other things wrong enough to turn us upside-down or sideways. Flight instructor actually kissed the ground when we got back down alive.”
    Something caught Art’s eye, and he took another look into the cockpit, pointing at a rectangular object. “Bill, mind if I reach in and grab that box?” I shook my head and stepped aside. Art leaned into the cockpit and extracted a charred rectangle, not much bigger than a cigarette pack, and laid it on the ground beside him. Then he leaned back in, peered around, and emerged with a larger metal case as well. He took both objects to Sarah and gestured with the smaller one at an evidence bag. She held it open as he tucked them inside.
    “How do you want me to label this?” she asked.
    “Label it ‘RF unit’ and put a question mark after that,” he said.
    He looked thoughtful for a moment, then walked to the back of my truck and ran his hands along the underside of the rear bumper. “Eureka,” he said, and yanked something loose. It, too, was a small metal case, with a wire dangling from one end.
    I stared at it. I didn’t recognize it, and I’d looked under my bumper many times, retrieving the spare key I kept there in a magnetic case. “What’s that?”
    “A beacon.”
    “What kind of beacon?”
    “An RF beacon. Somebody put a radio frequency transmitter on your truck.” I was still playing catch-up. “Like those radio collars biologists put on the wolves in Yellowstone.” Art pointed to the helicopter wreckage. “See those metal prongs sticking up from the roof of the cockpit? That’s a directional antenna array, which picks up the signal from this transmitter here. The boxes I found in the cockpit are the receiver and control unit. They pick up the signal from the beacon and compute your direction and distance. Orbin was tracking you, Bill.”
    “Why would Orbin want to track me?”
    “Well, maybe the sheriff and his boys figured you might lead ’em to O’Conner. Or maybe this was Orbin flying solo, so to speak, and he wanted to settle up with you for that day we got the drop on him and his brother. From what you told me about his visit to Cousin Vern’s pot patch, he wasn’t the type to forgive and forget.”
    “The thought of Orbin tracking me like an animal gives me the shivers,” I said.
    “Yeah, me, too,” he said. “But I’d say you got the better end of the deal. And now we know why Orbin showed up here right after you did.”
    Steve Morgan didn’t say a word. But the TBI agent didn’t miss a syllable of the exchange between Art and me.

CHAPTER 37
    I PARKED IN MY USUAL spot under the streetlight behind the Regional Forensic Center and let myself in the back door with the keypad combination lock. It was nearly midnight now, and my back and neck ached from leaning into the helicopter’s cockpit for three hours straight. The morgue looked deserted, though in fact it was never unattended. If I’d rung the loading bay doorbell, a video camera would have swiveled in my direction after a few moments, and a groggy morgue assistant would have buzzed me in. But since the assistant was probably a pathology intern—and therefore desperately short on sleep—I’d let myself in, and I moved through the hallways as quietly as possible, lest I disturb a much-needed nap.
    Once in the basement of the hospital itself, I caught an elevator up to the seventh floor, which housed the cardiac care unit. The night duty nurse at the station smiled broadly when she saw me. “Hi, Dr. Brockton; good to see you,” she beamed. “What brings you up here at almost midnight? You must be scouting for likely donors.” We shared a laugh at the joke, which I heard some version of almost any time I crossed from the catacombs of the dead to the wards of the ailing.
    “Not tonight,” I said, “but if you get any hot prospects for me, give me a call. Actually, I wanted to check on one of your new patients, Sheriff Tom Kitchings, who came in on LifeStar a few hours ago.”
    “He’s a popular guy,” she said.
    “Oh?”
    “A gentleman was here earlier, right before I came on shift, and one of his deputies just left. I’m surprised you didn’t bump into him in the