Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 02 - The Dark Place

by The Dark Place

  Chace brushed the comment aside with a wave of his hand. "Pranks. Kids probably, amateurish, as I’m sure you know. I’ve already seen the casts and rejected them. I’m not one of your fanatics, Professor. I don’t accept everything people tell me. When I certify something, it’s real. And I’m telling you I’ve seen eighty clear, fresh sets of prints with my own eyes, in Washington and British Columbia alone." He leaned back and waited for Gideon’s reaction.

  "Olas Murie once made a simple observation," Gideon said. "He pointed out that where tracks are abundant, the animals that make them are abundant." Chace looked warily at him, not sure where he was heading. Gideon continued, "You say you’ve seen all those Bigfoot tracks—eighty?"

  Chace nodded. "Eighty-two, and another ten probables I didn’t certify."

  "Well," Gideon said, "how many bear tracks have you seen? I mean clear, fresh, unmistakable ones. Or mountain lion? How is it that a presumably rare creature can leave so many tracks? Are they more common than bears?"

  "Maybe they are. We don’t have an accurate count, but we know there are many populations of them."

  "You keep saying you know," Gideon said, "not you think."

  "We know. The Bigfoots are there, watching us, hiding from us. No question about it."

  "Then why," Gideon said, "hasn’t anyone ever found a bone, a carcass? Don’t they die and leave remains? Why hasn’t a dog ever dragged a piece of a Bigfoot home with him?"

  Chace sat quietly a while, then sighed. "It’s like I told you, Roy. They’ll deny the evidence even when it’s right in front of them if it doesn’t fit their theories."

  "What do you mean, they?" Abe said cheerfully to the room at large. "I’m denying something? I’m just sitting here listening." He spoke good-humoredly to Chace: "Who’s denying?"

  Chace looked darkly at Abe for a long time, then noisily expelled air through his nostrils: an unambiguous snort of derision. The skin under Gideon’s eyes grew taut; for the first time he was angry, angry at this shifty con man who derided Abraham Goldstein. Before he could speak, however, Abe went calmly on, still smiling: "All the same," he said, "it’s a funny thing… Where’s the kids?"

  Chace looked at Linger and shook his head slowly back and forth. Linger glanced at Gideon with a small, polite smile of commiseration. Gideon hadn’t followed the question either, but he’d long ago given up wondering if Abe’s mind ever wandered. It didn’t.

  "The kids," Abe repeated patiently. "Aren’t there any Bigfoot kids? All the tracks I ever heard of, they’re sixteen, eighteen inches long. All the Bigfoots anybody ever sees, they’re great big guys that scare the pants off everybody. No one ever sees a little baby Bigfoot? A medium-size teenager, even, say six feet high? How come?"

  Gideon had never thought about it; it was a good question.

  Chace didn’t agree. "I don’t see much point in continuing this," he said. "You’ve obviously closed your minds. There’s nothing I can say that would—"

  "It’s not a question of say," Gideon said, "it’s a question of show. It’s evidence that’s needed, not argument."

  "I have in my home," Chace said slowly, with infinite patience—he was straining the limits of his tolerance to give it one more try—"a glass-walled box in a climate-controlled vault. In that box sits nearly two pounds of fecal matter. I can show you letters from the University of Michigan, the University of Arizona, and Cal Poly, all of which say that those feces cannot be identified as belonging to any scientifically known form of life." He paused to let the weight of his words sink in. "They were found in 1974 in a cave…" When Gideon wearily closed his eyes and shook his head, he stopped. "You don’t believe me?"

  "Oh, I believe you," Gideon said wearily, "but I’m sure you know quite well that once feces have dried, a lab analysis usually can’t do more than identify the digested or undigested contents—grass, hairs, bits of bone. Determining species from old fecal matter is impossible except indirectly, through dietary analysis."

  "Goddamn it!" Chace exploded. "There is evidence, plenty of evidence! There are bones, tools…whole frozen bodies that have been sent to museums and colleges. They disappear! There have been hundreds of specimens that disappeared in museums, hundreds!"

  Chace was on his feet, shouting and waving his arms. "You goddamn so-called scientists look at it for five minutes and you brand it a fake—" His rage choked him, and he turned his back on the others.

  It was an argument Gideon had heard before but one which always astounded him: the strange belief that the scientists and academicians of the world had formed a sinister conspiracy to suppress knowledge of Bigfoot, or UFOs, or snaky monsters that lurked in lakes. As if there were a scientist anywhere who wouldn’t give his right arm, both arms, to come up with definitive evidence of any of them.

  "Well," said Gideon, "I think maybe we’re beginning to repeat ourselves." He stood up, and Linger arose instantly, still gracious. "Thanks for your hospitality, Mr. Linger. I think we’d better be getting back; I have to be up early." He turned to Chace and forced himself to smile. "Dr. Chace, if you do come up with hard evidence, I assure you I’d be more than glad to look at it."

  "Oh, no," said Chace, not bothering to turn around. "No, no. If I find me a Bigfoot, you so-called scientists are gonna be the last ones to ever get your hands on it. I haven’t been killing myself all these years so some cloud-nine Ph.D. with clean fingernails gets all the glory."

  "All right," said Gideon, shifting down to turn from Hill Street onto Highway 20, "I came, I listened, I kept an open mind—to a reasonable point. Do I now have your approval to discard the Bigfoot-as-killer hypothesis?"

  "You sure do," Abe said. "What a plosher that guy was. That means a phony, a blowhard."

  "I wouldn’t have guessed."

  "Goniff," Abe mumbled under his breath.

  "Crook," Gideon said.

  "Crook, you got it. Boy, am I tired. I’m going to grab a little nap." He lowered his chin to his chest, blew out his cheeks, and began at once to snore, or rather to make the small, periodic clucking noises which Gideon knew to be his snores.

  Gideon had left Linger’s house disgruntled and annoyed, but the deserted, sweeping bends of the road had relaxed him, and the occasional glimpses through the trees of Discovery Bay, glinting like pewter in the moonlight, had lulled him into a soft reverie. If nothing else, that absurd discussion had killed the notion of Bigfoot as a murder suspect. It was a pleasure to put the lid on that particular box, even if he had no other hypotheses. But then, he didn’t need a hypothesis, he reminded himself. Murder hypotheses were John Lau’s problem. Gideon had done what he’d been asked to do: a skeletal analysis. And he’d delivered good value. The only thing at Lake Quinault that still interested him was a very live, most unskeletal Julie Tendler. And he would be pursuing his investigations in that regard in a very few hours.

  Abe clucked away, swaying peacefully from side to side as the car swung smoothly around the big curves that meandered through the endless black forests. Even when they got to Highway 101, with its brightly lit patches and with huge trucks roaring wildly by them, he slept on. In the neat little town of Sequim, where Highway 101 became East Washington Street, Gideon slowed, unsure of where the turnoff to SunLand was.

  Abe began to twist and snuffle. "Right turn on Sequim Avenue," he said with his eyes closed. "A Gulf station on the corner." He opened his eyes. "Next block."

  As Gideon made the turn, Abe stretched and sighed contentedly. "Listen," Abe said, "could I ask you a question?"

  "Could I stop you?"

  "What are you being, funny?"

  "What do you mean, funny?"

  They were both smiling. "Tell me," Gideon said, "why do you people always answer questions with questions?"

  "Why shouldn’t we?" It was a very old joke, but it always made them laugh. "You got something against the Socratic method?"

  "Should I have?" Gideon asked.

  Abe leaned forward and patted Gideon’s arm. "Enough already. W
ho are you supposed to be, Henny Youngman? Look, you want to hear my question or not?"

  "Why not?"

  "No, this is serious. And it’s the same old question: If it took this superhuman strength—"

  "Let’s say extraordinary," Gideon said.

  "—extraordinary strength to kill this Eckert, poor guy, who killed him?"

  "I’m starting to think I was wrong," Gideon said. "Maybe a fairly strong person could have done it. John Lau’s having some tests run. They’re throwing spears into pig carcasses or some such thing."

  "And what conclusion do you think they’ll come to?"

  "I think they’ll conclude it took superhuman strength." Gideon was quiet a moment. "Abe, I guess I’m up a tree on this. I just don’t have any hypotheses."

  "Well," Abe said happily, "I got one. I figured it out while you were driving. You probably thought I was sleeping, right?"

  "Just because you snored for a solid half hour? Of course not."

  "No, I was thinking. And finally I said to myself, what a schlemiel I am. Schlemiel, that means—"

  "I know. So why are you a schlemiel?"

  "Because anybody who calls himself an anthropologist, it should take him five seconds to figure it out. We’re both schlemiels. Look, remember you called me this afternoon about the dig?"

  Gideon nodded.

  "And what did you say you found?"

  "The distal end of a juvenile humerus."

  "And what else?"

  Gideon was puzzled. "Nothing. A piece of wood. An arrow straightener, maybe."

  Abe waved off the idea as ridiculous. "No, no. Whoever heard of an arrow straightener like that? Look, it had a hole at one end, right? The kind of hole that maybe once had a peg stuck in it?"

  "I suppose so."

  "And if it did have a peg in it, what would you guess it was?"

  Gideon didn’t see why Abe was harping on a twelve-thousand-year-old artifact. "I don’t know, Abe," he said impatiently, a rare way for him to talk to the old man.

  Abe took no offense. "So," he said cheerfully, "guess."

  "An atlatl?"

  "Finally," Abe said, "the light dawns."

  "I don’t—" Gideon began, and then the light did dawn. "Atlatl!" he exclaimed. "Of course! An atlatl! My God, I’ve been—"

  "A schlemiel," Abe said. He settled back against the seat. "Now that I’ve solved your case for you, Professor Skeleton Detective, I’m going to catch forty winks. Wake me up when we get to Phlegmatic Haven." In an instant he was asleep again. Or thinking.

  Gideon’s mind was buzzing. An atlatl. A spear thrower. How could he possibly have failed to make the connection? The atlatl was one of the most primitive of weapons, a step above the hand-thrown spear, a step below the bow and arrow. It had been common among prehistoric hunters all over the world.

  Its use took skill, but the principle was simple: The atlatl added an extra joint to the arm, and more length, in much the same way as did the sort of slingshot one whirled around one’s head. The spear was laid on the atlatl, its butt against the peg. Both objects were held in the hand and the spear was flung from the atlatl, more or less catapulted from it.

  The result was a projectile that could be thrown with many times the force that could be achieved without it. The Spanish conquistadors of Aztec Mexico had found to their considerable discomfort that an atlatl-propelled spear could pierce metal armor. And not five miles from where they were at that moment, at the Manis site, an atlatl-launched spear point had been found deep in a vertebra of a twelve-thousand-year-old mastodon. Certainly there was no doubt about its ability to penetrate the seventh thoracic vertebra of a mere human being.

  Gideon frowned as he turned off the road at the big, wooden SunLand sign and drove down the dark entry drive. A doe stepped lightly from behind a pine tree, her eyes beaming back the headlights. She froze momentarily, then bounded across the road in two arcing leaps to disappear into the foliage, her graceful, raised rump remaining as an afterimage. Gideon barely noticed her. Twelve thousand years. And the atlatl he’d found this morning, if that’s what it was, was even older. As far as he knew, the atlatl had been extinct in North America for hundreds of years. Until March 1976.

  Abe gave a final cluck, cleared his throat, and opened his eyes as Gideon braked to a stop in front of his compact modern home. "Already?" he said. "How about some chess?"

  "Chess? It’s practically midnight."

  "Well," Abe said, his voice cracking pitifully, "an old man like me never knows how much time he’s got. He’s got to take his enjoyment when he can. But maybe you’re right."

  When Gideon helped him out of the car, Abe sighed and groaned. "I guess an old man can’t expect you young people should want to spend an hour with him," he said mournfully, "even if there isn’t much time left."

  Gideon laughed, but he was dismayed to find his hand completely encircling Abe’s upper arm. Through the sleeve of the coat it felt like a dry wooden stick sheathed in loose, papery leather. "Okay," he said, "let’s play some chess. Maybe you can beat me for once."

  Bertha had waited up for them and shuffled off in furry slippers to make some tea. They sat down at the chess table in the den.

  "Bertha!" Abe bawled suddenly as Gideon held out his hands, a pawn concealed in each. "Gideon wants another bite to eat!"

  "No, really—" Gideon said.

  "Quiet, you’re a growing boy. So, you agree it was an atlatl?"

  "I’m sure it was."

  "You think it was. Don’t be so sure."

  "But—"

  Abe waggled his hand at him. "All right, let’s assume it was. Now, the next question: Who goes around using an atlatl in 1982? Who killed this guy?"

  "It was 1976."

  "Oh, that’s entirely different. All right, 1976."

  Gideon extended his hands again. "I thought you wanted to play chess."

  "You can’t talk and play chess at the same time?"

  Abe chose the left hand. "All the time I get black," he said. "That’s how come you always win."

  "Take white if you like."

  "To beat you I don’t need any favors. So what do you think? Who killed him?"

  "Well," Gideon said, "there’s the atlatl and the fact that he was buried in a hundred-year-old Indian cemetery—"

  "So therefore it was Indians who killed him?" asked Abe, a cheerful devil’s advocate. "What kind of logic do you call this?"

  Gideon pushed his king’s pawn up two squares.

  Abe frowned at the conventional opening as if he’d never seen it before. "There’s a law that only Indians can use atlatls? A Caucasian or an Eskimo couldn’t have buried him in an Indian cemetery?" Abe moved his own king’s pawn out to face Gideon’s and looked up. "What’s to smile at? Is it such a terrible move?"

  "No, I’m smiling because you’re telling me exactly what I told John Lau last week when he was so sure it was Indians."

  "But now you think so, too?"

  "Let’s just say it’s emerging as the most probable hypothesis."

  Abe laughed. "Let’s just say you think so, too. Boy, you cloud-nine Ph.D.s!"

  "Okay," Gideon said, grinning, "let’s say I think so, too. Look, you say anybody could have buried him in that cemetery, but, as far as we know, there wasn’t anybody who knew—except the Indians themselves, of course—that there was a cemetery in there at all. The federal archaeologists never heard of the cemetery or an Indian group, and neither did the universities."

  Bertha padded in with a glass of hot milk and honey for Abe, and tea with coffee cake for Gideon.

  "Just the tea for me, thanks, Bertha," Gideon said.

  "Don’t look at me," Abe said to Bertha. "He changed his mind."

  Bertha fussed over her father for a few minutes while he grumbled and told her he wanted a stiff bourbon, not baby food. She pooh-poohed him, patted him a final time, and left.

  Abe sipped his hot milk. "I actually like this stuff, you know? But don’t tell Bertha." He put down the
glass. "I got another question: If there are Indians in there, how come nobody but you knows it?"

  "All I can think of is that they’ve kept themselves hidden," Gideon said weakly. Abstractedly he swung his king’s bishop off to the right, where it focused on the opposing king’s bishop’s pawn. "And since the cemetery’s been in use at least a century, they must have been hiding all that time. What do you think? Is it possible?"

  Abe frowned at the chess board. "Always with that damn bishop. This time you’re not going to catch me." With the back of a finger he pushed his king’s rook’s pawn up one square. "Ha. Now let me see you come in with that knight, Mr. Wise Guy." He settled back, pleased with himself.

  Gideon smiled. For all his brilliance, Abe had never gotten the hang of chess.

  "Look at him, so sure of himself," Abe said. "I got a few tricks up my sleeve, wait and see." He took another sip of milk. "Look, Gideon, they’d have to be invisible, just about. That place, that Olympic rain forest, it’s pretty remote in there, but it’s still America. You got hikers, surveyors, botanists, shmotanists, everybody. But in a hundred years nobody ever saw them? It’s pretty hard to believe."

  "It’s happened before, Abe."

  The old man was silent a while and serious, his tongue probing the inside of his cheek. "The Yahi, you mean. Ishi."

  Chapter 7

  Ishi. The most romantic name in the annals of American anthropology. Ishi, the Wild Man, who had staggered naked and starving into the little California town of Oroville one summer morning in 1911 and collapsed, terrified, in the corral of a slaughterhouse. Ishi, the last of his people, who had grown to adulthood on the isolated slopes of Mount Lassen. For decades white men had believed the Yahi extinct, killed off by settlers and gold prospectors in the 1850s and 1860s. But a small band had lived on in the most remote forests, barely self-sufficient and constantly dwindling. By December of 1910 there were only two left, and when the old woman died in December, her son Ishi lived in awful solitude through the winter and then finally stumbled blindly down from the hills, hopeless and desolate beyond imagining, for in all the world he was the only one who spoke his beautiful Yahi, who knew the Yahi ways. In all the world no one else would ever remember his mother or sister or his own young manhood. And when he died, all of it would be as if it never was.