Little Tiny Teeth

by Aaron Elkins

  “Nobody nailed it to the wall!” Mel exclaimed, almost angrily. “Nobody — What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Nobody nailed it to the wall in the sense you’re thinking,” Gideon amended. “I’d guess it wound up there accidentally.”

  After a few moments of blank stares all around, John spoke up. “Oh, well, now that we’ve had that explained…”

  Gideon couldn’t help laughing. In spite of himself, in spite of the grisly situation, he enjoyed these public moments of seeming wizardry. They were as close to fun as anything in the forensic business came. “Wait a second,” he said and walked back to the lean-to that had the tools on it. He came back with the Makita nail gun. “Now,” he said, scanning the ground, “anybody see the nail I pulled out of the door?”

  “Here it is.” Vargas bent, picked it up, and handed it to Gideon.

  “See these spiral grooves in it?” Gideon said.

  “It’s a roofing nail,” John said. “The grooves help anchor it.”

  “Fine, a roofing nail,” Gideon said. “Now look at the nails that are still left in the cartridge of the nail gun.”

  “They’re the same!” Tim exclaimed.

  “Yes.”

  “So that means…” Maggie began, then frowned and shook her head incredulously. “What does it mean?”

  “It means,” said Gideon, “that someone almost certainly killed him with this nail gun. Or let’s just say he was killed with the nail gun. Possibly he did it to himself by accident — or not by accident. People have tried committing suicide with them, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.”

  “Yuck,” said Tim.

  “You’ve lost me, Doc,” John said. “Okay, this piece of bone, this ring of bone, was maybe nailed up with a nail gun — this nail gun right here, it looks like — but how does that translate to the guy was killed with it? How do you know what killed him?”

  “And I still want to know how they made this,” said Phil, who had finally taken the bone from Gideon and was peering at the smooth, circular border of the hole in the center. “It’s like it was made with a, with a…”

  “It was made with the nail gun,” Gideon said, “which also nailed it to the wall — and on its way from doing the first to accomplishing the second, it made a hash of his brain.”

  His open-mouthed audience waited for more.

  “Well, first of all, you have to remember that a good nail gun can generate a fantastic velocity; around fourteen hundred feet per second, if I remember correctly.”

  “You’re kidding me. That’s faster than the muzzle velocity on my old Detective Special,” John said. “And that could sure do a lot of damage.”

  “And so can a two-inch steel nail, especially with a flat, round head, although more often than not, it just makes a hole in the skull and merely gets embedded in the brain.”

  Duayne winced. “‘Merely,’ the man says.”

  “But once in a while, especially with a powerful gun driving it, it doesn’t happen that way. It happens the way it happened here.”

  The sequence would have been like this: The point of the nail would have easily perforated the skull, making a small, circular hole — smaller than the one now visible in the bone — but a millisecond later the round, flat head of the nail would have struck the skull as well, creating a larger opening. It would have driven partway through, then gotten wedged in the hole it had made, which would have transferred its energy to the immediately surrounding bony tissue, breaking away the ring of bone he now held in his hand. The nail would then have continued plowing through the brain, dragging the ring along with it and doing dreadful destruction, then exploded out the back of the head, bony ring and all, and then kept going a few feet — it couldn’t have been far, because so much of its energy would have dissipated, which would have been why it wasn’t embedded very deeply in the door.

  “And that’s how it happened,” he finished. “I think.”

  They had listened to this virtuoso analysis, part enthralled, part horrified, and for a moment it almost seemed as if they were going to break into applause, but they only shook their heads, or clucked, or softly whistled.

  Except for Duayne, who murmured, “Amazing, just amazing.”

  “Question,” Mel said. “Where’s the rest of him?”

  “Very good question,” said Gideon. “Obviously, the body’s not here.”

  “Burned up inside, perhaps?” suggested Maggie. “In fact, maybe they set the fire to cover it.”

  “Oh no, I don’t think so. You can see this wasn’t an especially hot fire — apparently no accelerants involved, no gasoline or anything like that. A fire like this, or an ordinary house fire — it’s not nearly hot enough to consume a body. If he was inside, we’d be able to spot him.”

  “Well, if it worked the way you said, Doc,” John said, “then he would have been standing a few feet in front of the door, just about where we are right now, when he got shot. We’re only ten or fifteen feet from the edge, and there’s no beach right below. It would have been easy enough to roll him over the edge and into the river.”

  “That’s true, but whatever happened, there’s probably some of him — blood, brain tissue, hair, pieces of his head — left around where he was shot. Which, as John says, was probably right where we’re standing.”

  “And which we’d better get off of,” John added. “The police aren’t going to appreciate our stomping around a crime scene.”

  “What police?” Vargas said with a guttural laugh. “Malagga? You think he’ll care enough to get his fat rear end all the way over here? Why should he?”

  All the same, Vargas moved off six or seven steps, as did everybody else except Gideon, who had dropped to his hands and knees to have a better look at the ground.

  “You mean Malagga would be responsible for investigating this?” John asked Vargas, as most of the others somewhat uncomfortably checked the soles of their shoes for any human residue that might be sticking to them. From the relief on their faces, it was obvious that none was found.

  Vargas shrugged. “We’re still closer to the checkpoint than we are to Leticia, and there can’t be any police stations between them… there’s nothing between them except a few Indian villages… so, yes, I think it would fall to Malagga — if it fell to anybody.”

  “Well, all the same, the cops have to be told. We’ll add that to what we tell them when we get to Leticia and let them decide what to do.”

  “I’ve found something,” Gideon called. In the variegated red, yellow, and brown forest litter it would have taken more than the naked eye to spot blood spatter or brain tissue, but bone was different. He held up a roughly triangular chunk of bone an inch across at its widest point.

  “This is a piece of the occipital — the rear of the skull, way down low. I can see some of the superior nuchal line and just the start of the occipital protuberance, and here on the inside, what I think is the transverse sinus… the left transverse sinus.” He hefted the piece. “This would have happened when the nail blasted out the back of his head. There are probably some more pieces around.”

  For the next twenty minutes he continued crawling around the general area, coming up with another chunk of occipital, and five more pieces — no more than crumbs, really — that he recognized as bone but were too small to identify. By that time, everybody but Phil, John, and Vargas had grown bored and gone back to the ship. Vargas had gone to sit on the steps of the nearby shack and shake his head and mumble to himself, and John and Phil were idly watching Gideon.

  “So what are you going to do with the pieces?” Phil asked.

  “Turn them over to the police in Leticia, I guess. As John said, tell them about all this, and leave it up to them. Although I’m hoping I’m able to keep that ring of bone from the frontal. It’d make a hell of an addition to my study collection.”

  Phil grimaced. “Jesus, you’re as bad as Duayne with his bugs. How come Julie hasn’t divorced you?”

  “I’
m referring to the collection in the forensic lab at the U,” said Gideon. “I don’t keep the damn things in my living room.”

  “So what do we have here?” John was musing. “Can’t be a suicide.”

  “Why can’t it be a suicide?” Phil asked him.

  “Because where’s the body? Suicides don’t get up and walk away. And from what Doc said, this would have been pretty much an instant death, am I right? He would have dropped right here.”

  “You’re right,” Gideon said, still on his knees. “Something as big as that bone ring, with the nail attached, tearing through the brain? He was dead before he hit the ground.”

  “Well, maybe he committed suicide and somebody else moved him,” Phil suggested. “Buried him, or threw him in the river.”

  “Yeah, it could be,” John said agreeably. “There isn’t exactly a lot to go on.”

  “One thing we can assume,” said Gideon, getting slowly to his feet, “is that this wasn’t a premeditated homicide.”

  “You mean because of the weapon,” John said. “Nobody with murder in his mind plans on doing it with a nail gun.”

  “Right, a weapon of impulse, of opportunity.” Gideon brushed leaves and soil from his knees and got up. “One thing, though, John. I have to say I’m starting to agree with you.”

  “About the Law of Interconnected Monkey Business?”

  “Uh-huh. There’s just too much going on. All that craziness last night on the boat, and now the warehouse burning down and somebody getting killed… What do you think, Phil?”

  The question caught Phil in the middle of a vast yawn. “What do I think?” he said before it had quite finished. “I think I need a nap. I’m going back to the ship. See you guys later.”

  “Why don’t you have a talk with Vargas, Doc?” John suggested. “Maybe you can get something out of him about what’s going on.”

  “Me?” cried Gideon, who had no taste, and not much talent, for the guileful subtleties of interrogation. “Why me — why not you? You’re the cop.”

  “That’s why; I’m a cop. I’ll scare him. And this isn’t my jurisdiction, you’re right about that. But you, you’re just a private citizen being friendly. Besides, he likes you.”

  “He likes you too,” Gideon said lamely.

  “No, he doesn’t. I make him nervous. Come on, look at the poor guy.” He tilted his chin toward the house, where Vargas was sitting forlornly on the steps, his elbows on his knees. “Aside from everything else, he looks like he can use a friendly ear to talk into. I mean, I’m not saying he’s guilty of anything, but something’s going on, and he knows more about it than he’s been telling us.”

  “Okay,” Gideon said with a sigh, “I’ll give it a try. Um, how do I start?”

  John shrugged. “Any way you want. Ask him when he expects us to leave. After that, just play it by ear.”

  “Oh, thanks, that’s a huge help. They must teach you that stuff at the academy.”

  “See you back on the boat, Doc.”

  “Captain Vargas,” Gideon said, approaching the house, “I was wondering when you think we might be getting the Adelita going again.”

  Vargas raised his head and made an attempt to smile. “Very soon, professor. I was hoping that the workmen who live here would come back. Surely they will, soon? Perhaps I give them one more half hour, no more.” He brightened at a rustling at the edge of the jungle a few yards away. “Ah, you see? Here they…” He leaped to his feet, eyes practically popping from his head as the newcomers emerged from the bush. “Madre de Dios!”

  SEVENTEEN

  THERE were three of them, the kind of beings for whom there is no longer a polite term: savages, primitives. Wild men. You could sense that, instinctively and at once, from their veiled eyes, from the way those dark, impassive eyes looked at you but didn’t look at you, focusing on nothing, as if the consciousness that lay behind them was in some other place and time. The men seemed to hold their bodies apart as well, standing tall (or as tall as they could; the biggest was perhaps five-foot-four) and poised and aloof. Their foreheads and cheeks were tattooed with complex designs of undulating lines and dots in orange, blue, and black. Their lips were dyed blue and their eyebrows plucked and replaced with thin, painted, blue crescents. Their thick black hair hung loose in back and was chopped into bangs in front. Quills or small, thin bones ran horizontally through their nasal septa. Although they wore no earrings, the holes in their ears showed they often did. Their earlobes had been dragged and stretched by heavy ornaments into two-inch long flaps. Their smooth chests were daubed with more dots and waving lines, this time in white. Their clothing consisted of short bark kilts — aprons, really. All were barefoot, all had yellow-gray teeth in terrible condition.

  Vargas couldn’t stop staring at them. “Chayacuro?” Gideon whispered, about equally scared and enchanted.

  “No, Arimaguas!” Vargas whispered agitatedly. “God help us, real tree climbers! Be careful.” He grinned at them, bobbing his head. “Hola, amigos!” Slipping off his watch, he held it out invitingly. “Le gusta? Un regalo! OK?” Do you like it? It’s a gift!

  The nearest one took it from him, a casual flick of the hand without any change in his stone-faced expression, more or less without looking either at Vargas or the watch, then gestured at Gideon’s wrist.

  “Give him your watch,” Vargas said.

  “Wait a minute, why—”

  “Give it to him!” Vargas urged. “They’re as bad as the Chayacuro. Worse! Give them what they want, don’t upset them. Trust me, give them the watches and they’ll go away.”

  Gideon unclasped the watch and handed it to the Indian. “Un regalo,” he said, with markedly less enthusiasm than Vargas had shown. And a gift it had been, from an appreciative fellow professor for whom he’d filled in for a couple of weeks. Well, at least it would make a good story when he told her about it. Oh, the watch? Sorry, Marilyn, it was taken from me in the Amazon by a bunch of Indians with bones in their noses.

  The second watch was handed to another man, and both objects disappeared under their aprons. That they had some contact with modern life was shown by the shotguns that all three carried on their shoulders with the grace and ease of long custom. Also by the fact that at least one of them, the one who’d taken the watches, spoke a primitive Spanish.

  “You come,” he said, not particularly threateningly. Not particularly friendly, either. Not anything. Just an announcement. You come. He was the oldest of the three, a man probably in his late thirties or early forties, with a nose that had long ago been diagonally split across the bridge with a knife or, more likely, a machete. (In addition to the shotguns, each had a machete slung over his back in a sheath of woven palm fronds.) Gideon could see that the vicious, ropy, white furrow of a scar extended upward from his nose, over his right brow all the way up to and under his clipped bangs. Below, it ran down his left cheek to the corner of his jaw. It was deep enough to have done some serious bone damage, and indeed, his left malar — the cheekbone — was conspicuously caved in, making one eye appear weirdly lower and bigger than the other, like a head in a Picasso painting. Clearly, someone had once tried to cleave his head in two and very nearly succeeded, but here he was, spectacularly disfigured but otherwise apparently hale. I’d hate to see what the other guy looks like, Gideon thought.

  “Come? Come where?” Vargas demanded, gathering up a few shreds of his dignity. “I am the captain of a ship, I have a ship to—”

  “You come,” he repeated in exactly the same toneless tone, and at his nod the other two unshouldered their shotguns. Gideon noted that a firearms safety course had not come with the weapons. Each carried his gun with the action closed, and with his finger curled on the trigger, not alongside it or on the trigger guard. He had no doubt at all that there were live shells in the chambers. A jag of one of the double muzzles in Gideon’s direction made it clear that he was included in the invitation as well. He thought briefly of yelling for help, but everybody else was bac
k on the Adelita, and the Adelita was at the base of a forty-foot bank that was sixty or seventy feet away. It was unlikely that they’d hear him, and even if they did, what would ensue in the thirty or forty seconds it took anyone to reach them? Besides, what could they do against three men, whatever their size, who were armed with shotguns and machetes?

  “We’d better go with them, Captain,” he said.

  “You come, yes?” He was grinning now, and his voice had taken on a wheedling, nasty tinge, like a Japanese soldier’s in a World War II movie. “Now.”

  With one of the Arimaguas in front leading the way, and the other two behind them, Vargas and Gideon were marched into the bush.

  “Captain Vargas, what’s this about? I think you know more—”

  “No talk,” said Split-nose. An unexpected and painful jab of the gun into Gideon’s lower back emphasized his point. Both of the following Indians chuckled merrily at Gideon’s “Hey!”

  The jungle closed in at once. In thirty seconds, the warehouse clearing was completely obscured from sight. In a minute, they were unable to see more than ten feet in any direction. The path, if there was a path, was invisible to the two white men, although the Indians clearly knew where they were going. Their naked, callused feet moved with speed and certainty over the uneven ground.

  Gideon absently watched their rhythmic, confident motion for a few moments, and then did a double take that nearly brought him to a standstill (and no doubt another jab with the shotgun). These were feet such as he’d never seen in life before, and they filled him with a sense of wonder that almost made him forget the uncomfortable circumstances he was in. He’d read descriptions of tribes with feet like these in the accounts of nineteenth-century jungle adventurers, and had even seen group photographs of them, but he’d thought of them as historical curiosities at best; things of the past, long disappeared from the earth. Certainly, he’d never expected to see them for himself, except in a rare individual case, and here were three pairs of them!