Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 07 - Make No Bones

by Make No Bones

  “What happened?” he said. There was dust in his mouth.

  “Yes, they say that too. When you think about it, it’s fascinating how banal people’s remarks are in situations of—”

  “Gideon, you’re all right.” Julie’s voice, frightened but trying to be reassuring. “You had a fall.”

  “A f—?”

  Abruptly, he remembered. He tried opening his eyes but winced at the light. Julie shaded his face with her hand so he could open them again. He was still on the slope, head slightly downhill. Above, on the trail, he could see people peering anxiously down at him. At his side, leaning over him, were Julie and a man he recognized as Vern Sauer, one of the few WAFA members who wasn’t a professional anthropologist. Sauer was a physician, a coroner somewhere in Nevada.

  Gideon wet his lips and spit out sour dust. “How long have I—”

  “—been unconscious,” Sauer said happily. “I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.”

  “Only a few seconds,” Julie said anxiously. “How do you feel?”

  “Okay, I think. I’d like to get up. It’s hot.” He started to push up.

  “Now you just hold your horses,” Sauer told him, pressing him back. “Sorry, I’m not much on metaphors,” he said with a laugh, and continued his prodding. “Let’s just make sure you’re all in one piece before you get going.”

  Gideon lay back without resistance, swept by a billow of nausea. Julie reached for his hand.

  “I’m fine, really,” he told her weakly. “A little queasy, that’s all.” He squeezed her hand.

  “How many fingers am I holding up?” Sauer asked.

  “Two,” Gideon said. Below, near the stream, he could hear a horse stamping nervously, and the voice of one of the wranglers trying to soothe it.

  “And now?”

  “Three. Is that Rosebud down there?”

  “Yes, she’s fine.”

  “Did she fall on me?”

  Sauer laughed. “If that thing landed on you, you wouldn’t have to ask. No, you got out of its way, but apparently you hit your head on a stump.” He probed some more, gently moved Gideon’s limbs, asked a few questions. Then he leaned back. “Well, it looks like he’ll live,” he told Julie.

  Getting up was easier than he expected. The queasiness was uncomfortable, but he seemed to have suffered nothing worse than some abrasions on his back and shoulders. They were only now beginning to sting, and he thought he could feel a few small tracks of blood. The back of his head hurt, but the skin didn’t seem to be broken. There was going to be a hell of a lump, though.

  Sauer brushed pebbles from him. “Going to be able to walk? We’re only five minutes from the lodge.”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. When you get back I want you to take a bath, get into a pair of pajamas, and climb into bed. Then I want to have another look.”

  “Vern, I appreciate it, but I’m fine now. I don’t need a doctor.”

  “Be a sport, Oliver. When do I ever get a chance to work on a live body anymore?”

  “I’ll have him ready for you,” Julie said.

  “I have to finish that reconstruction,” Gideon said. Sauer shook his head. “Not today.”

  “I just—”

  “I’ll have him ready for you,” Julie said again, this time more firmly, for Gideon’s benefit.

  He was too unsteady to argue. With their help he climbed slowly back up the slope.

  Tracy, taut-faced and anxious, ran to them from a knot of people comforting a noisily distraught Callie.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” Gideon said. “How’s Callie—the other rider?”

  “All right, I think. She never—she never fell off. Oh, God, I knew we shouldn’t have come back this way!” Tracy was close to tears. “I was supposed to have people sign waivers before we started out. I—”

  “Don’t worry about it, Tracy,” Gideon said. “I don’t think anybody’s going to get sued.”

  Sauer cut in. “Do you suppose we could start back, please? I’d like to get this man off his feet.”

  Tracy practically snapped to attention. “Absolutely. Right now. Sir?” she said to Gideon. “Did you want to mount up again, or would you rather walk?”

  Gideon managed a smile. “I think,” he said, “I’d just as soon walk.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “I can’t find anything to be concerned about,” Sauer said, sitting back. “I’d take it easy for a day or so if I were you. And let me know right away if you have any vision problems or anything of the sort. Need anything for the pain?”

  “No,” Gideon said, “the scrapes sting a little, that’s all.” He buttoned his shirt and gingerly felt the lump behind his left ear. “My head’s not too bad. I’ll take a couple of aspirin if it bothers me.”

  “Good thinking. Well, then, I’ll be on my way.” He zipped up his bag and stood. “Julie, those dressings can come off tonight. They’re just to sop up any bleeding, of which there shouldn’t be much. Just stick on some Band-Aids if you think he needs them.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” she said.

  “Vern, thanks a lot,” said Gideon.

  Sauer grinned at them. “Believe me, the pleasure’s all mine. Autopsies are no end of fun, but one gets bored after a while.”

  As he left the cottage he passed John Lau coming in. “He’s perfectly all right; nothing to worry about,” Gideon heard Sauer say in response to John’s murmured question.

  John came into the bedroom. “How ya doin’, Tex? Little trouble in the saddle?”

  “He was doing beautifully,” Julie said loyally. “It wasn’t his fault.”

  “Right,” John said. “How many other people fell off their horses?”

  Gideon sighed. “None, just me.”

  John dropped into the rattan armchair that Sauer had vacated and looked at Gideon. “So I guess that’s it for the reconstruction.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I do feel okay now, and I hate to just leave it, and I was thinking I might, um, head over there and put in a couple of hours…” He paused to permit a reaction from Julie, who tended toward a forceful and despotic maternalism at times like this.

  Surprisingly, she failed to come roaring out of her chair. “I think that’s a good idea,” she said quietly. “If you feel well enough.”

  Gideon was speechless.

  Even John was surprised. “You do?”

  “Gideon—John—I think that—now will you let me get this out before jumping all over me? I’m not so sure this was an accident,” she said, speaking rapidly to keep from being interrupted. “I was only a few feet away from Callie when it happened, and I didn’t see anybody else jostle her, or anything at all. Nobody was even moving. All of a sudden she just took off, yelling. I think she knew darn well what she was doing, and 1 think—well, that’s what I think.” She drew a breath and waited for a response.

  John, his arms crossed, leaned back, tipping the chair onto its rear legs. “I suppose I could ask around, see if other people saw it the same way.”

  Julie stared at him. “You mean you’re not going to try to argue me out of this? You think I might be right? I’m stunned. Gideon, you too?”

  “Sorry, I don’t see it.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Why would Callie want to kill me?”

  “Kill you?” The idea obviously distressed her. Gideon hadn’t much liked it either. “Who said anything about killing you? I think she wanted to keep you from finishing the reconstruction, that’s all.”

  “By scaring my horse? It’s way too iffy. How could she know she’d get a chance to do it? How could she know for sure it’d throw me off? How could she know I’d be hurt at all? Besides, Callie’s horse was giving her trouble the whole morning. I just don’t think—”

  “All right, all right,” Julie grumbled, “I gather you don’t think it’s highly probable.”

  “And why would it matter to anyone whether I finished or not? You know a reco
nstruction isn’t that critical. It’s just not that reliable. The dental records are what’s going to count in this one.”

  “Yeah, but who’s got dental records?” John said, taking up the argument. “That reconstruction could turn out to be the closest thing we’ve got to proof that it’s Salish.”

  “God help us, then,” Gideon said. “Look, we’re ninety-nine percent sure it’s Salish right now. What difference would a little more evidence make one way or the other? Why would Callie or anybody else care?”

  “I can think of a damn good reason,” John said. The front legs of his chair hit the floor with a thump. “Let’s assume for a minute that Callie’s mixed up in Salish’s murder somehow, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay. Well, then, she’d care plenty, because if we can show this is Salish for sure—for absolute, positive sure the Bureau’s gonna jump into this with both feet. If it’s not, if it just might be Salish, then Applewhite maybe gives me another day or two here to see what I can come up with, and that’s it. It’s all Honeyman’s again.”

  Gideon frowned. “So?”

  “So if you killed somebody, who’d you rather have on your tail, Farrell Honeyman or the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

  After a pause Gideon said, “I see what you mean.”

  “Right. Hey, I’m not knocking Farrell, you understand.”

  “But look, John, it still doesn’t figure. In the first place, you could never use a reconstruction as ‘proof that anybody was anybody. It’s the first step toward an ID, not the last one—which all these people know perfectly well. Second, what good does it do anyone to stop me from finishing? You can always get somebody else—somebody really good at it—to do one later if you want it.”

  John sighed. “Listen, Doc, I don’t know what the hell is going on any more than anybody else does. I don’t know if Julie’s right or wrong. I just think it’d be a real good idea if you went ahead and finished the thing. Let’s see where that gets us.”

  “Well, I’m not going to argue with you about that. John, would you mind dropping by the meeting room and letting the kids in my class know we’ll get started again down at the justice building in half an hour?”

  Slowly and stiffly, Gideon swung his legs over the side of the bed. He was not in any real distress, now that the headache and nausea had receded, but there was no mistaking the fact that he’d taken a pounding. “Better tell them forty minutes,” he said. “I’m not going to be setting any speed records.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, Doc, we’ll just get on with it and leave everybody be. You can explain what you did later. How long you figure it’ll take?”

  “Couple of hours, once I get there.”

  “One o’clock,” John said. “Tell you what, let’s just have Nellie and the others—the ones who knew Salish—come see it then. I’d kind of like to see what they have to say.”

  “Gideon, are you sure you’re up to this?” Julie asked, frowning. “Maybe it isn’t such a good idea.”

  “I’m perfectly fine. I feel like I fell off a horse, that’s all.”

  “Well, you’re not driving to Bend by yourself. And I can’t drive you because I got myself talked into leading a hike to Metolius Springs this afternoon.”

  “I’ll drive him,” John said. “No problem.”

  “And you’ll be with him the whole time?” She was starting to sound more like the old, familiar Julie.

  “I won’t let him out of my sight, Julie.”

  “Not that I don’t appreciate all this concern,” Gideon said, “but do you really think I’m going to be in all that much danger working at the sheriff’s office?”

  “You never know,” John said, getting up. “If things get too exciting you might fall off your chair.”

  Completing the reconstruction was basically cosmetic, an effort to make the final product more like life and less like a horror-movie prop. Ears were molded and stuck on, eyebrows were etched into the forehead, and the back and sides of the skull were covered with modeling clay. More clay was used to form a neck, and the whole was mounted on a clothing-store bust originally made for displaying ties and shirts. Gideon added a few wrinkles and sags to the jowls, befitting a man in his late fifties, and patted down the clay with a square of sandpaper to give it a grainy, skinlike texture. Then came a thin layer of pancake makeup and a little rouge, an artfully draped shirt, and an unfortunately youthful brown wig that looked as if Miranda had picked it up in a drugstore.

  Gideon used his own comb to tuck a few stubborn plastic strands into place and stepped back. All things considered, he was reasonably pleased.

  No one else was.

  Everyone but Harlow had shown up, and once they’d examined it, they all expressed the same opinion. There were, they said, a few things about the reconstruction that reminded them of Salish, and a few things that didn’t, but nothing either way that was close to persuasive. In other words, the reconstruction was essentially useless, a judgment with which Gideon had to agree once he’d looked at Salish’s photograph for himself. Whatever the reason, he had missed the boat, and he freely admitted it.

  “Oh, I’d hardly say that,” Nellie said, generous in his small victory. “Given the intrinsic fallibility of the process, I’d say you’ve done wonderfully well”

  “I guess that’s a compliment,” Gideon said, “but—”

  Miranda, who had been meticulously comparing Salish’s pictures to the reconstruction, spoke wonderingly. “Am I crazy,” she said, “or am I crazy?”

  Leland pursed his lips. “A question worth pondering.”

  Miranda was squinting at the reconstruction, framing different parts of the face with her hands. “Gideon, can I make a few changes in this?”

  “Changes? Sure, why not?”

  She studied the clay head silently for a few more seconds, her round face pensive. “Scissors,” she said, like a surgeon about to go into action. John found a pair of shears and handed them to her. Miranda removed the wig, snipped away some of the front, put it back on the naked scalp, took it off again, and cut away some more of the now-receding hairline. The others watched in attitudes of doubt or puzzlement.

  Before replacing it she went to the other side of the table and turned the reconstruction so that its back was to everyone else. “I think this’ll work better if you see it all at once.” She found a thick black marking pen and made some judicious dabs on the face, out of sight of the others.

  A mustache? Gideon looked again at one of Salish’s photographs. No mustache. No receding hairline either.

  “What’s she supposed to be doing, Doc?” John asked.

  Gideon shook his head. “Who knows?” And yet, dim and barely formed, there was the shadow of a disturbing and fantastic idea.

  “Leland, lend me your glasses,” Miranda said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She held out her hand. “C’mon, Leland, give.”

  Reluctantly, Leland gave. Without the massive horn-rims he was a startlingly different man, fragile and defenseless, like some squishy night creature caught unexpectedly in the glare of automobile headlights.

  Miranda put the glasses on the uncomplaining clay face and studied it some more. “Gideon, you don’t mind if I smush the nose up a little?”

  “What? Uh, no, smush away.” Gideon was staring uncertainly at what he could see of the reconstruction. Surely, even from this angle, there was something about the way the thick brown earpiece of the glasses lay against the broad temple, about the way the slightly depressed zygomatic arch rode low and flat on the cheek…but, no, he had to be imagining it. Miranda pushed delicately on the nose with her fingers, then stepped back to see the result better, her lips pressed together in concentration. She pushed again, picked up the shears one more time, cut away a few more tufts of hair, and disarranged what was left.

  Then she turned it to face them. “You have to imagine that the hair is more gray.”

  That was all she said, and a
ll she had to say.

  It seemed to Gideon that sound and movement stopped as suddenly and utterly as if they’d all been caught by the freeze-frame button on a VCR. For two or three seconds this taut, electrified stillness gripped them, and then Leland snapped it.

  “Oh…dear…God,” he whispered, and followed this with a soft, nervous titter.

  Gallic jerked convulsively, staring pop-eyed at the reconstruction. Her mouth was working but nothing came out.

  Next to her, Nellie mumbled vaguely to himself. He looked stricken, almost as if he might faint. One hand clenched and unclenched.

  Only the consistently unflappable Les remained in character. “What,” he murmured with an only slightly incredulous smile, “is wrong with this picture?” John, on the periphery, seemed not to know what was going on, as of course he didn’t. Even Miranda seemed stunned by her own handiwork.

  And so it looked as if it were going to be up to Gideon to speak the words. A tiny shiver, like the touch of a spider, crawled up between his shoulder blades. He cleared his throat.

  “It’s Albert Evan Jasper,” he said.

  CHAPTER 13

  But saying it didn’t mean he was ready to believe it. And yet, what else was there to believe? So convincing, so utterly inarguable, was the likeness, that it would have been absurd for him to keep telling himself that this couldn’t be, that Albert Jasper had been killed in a bus crash, not stealthily buried in the floor of an unused storeroom; that his remains had been identified with absolute certainty by an expert and reputable team of forensic experts—by, in fact, the very people now staring with such seeming perplexity at that unmistakable, bulldoglike face.

  Like tumblers clicking in a complex lock, questions, answers, and surmises turned over in Gideon’s mind, rearranged themselves, slid smoothly if bewilderingly into new niches. The uppermost uncertainties of the last few days—Was this or wasn’t this Special Agent Chuck Salish? Was he actually killed during the first WAFA meeting? Were any of the WAFA members really involved in his murder?—had suddenly become nonquestions.