Skull Duggery

by Aaron Elkins

  “The new case you’ve brought is interesting too,” Marmolejo said, sitting down. His toes—but not his heels—touched the floor. “A Phillips-head screwdriver? An unusual weapon, wouldn’t you say?”

  “First time I’ve ever run into it myself. But there was a report on something similar in one of the journals not long ago. Otherwise, I’m not sure I would have realized what I was looking at.”

  “And what do you surmise from it?”

  “From the fact that it was a Phillips-head screwdriver? Nothing. Well, no, not quite nothing. I think we can assume that it was unpremeditated, a crime of passion, a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

  “On the grounds that a killer planning murder would hardly bring along a screwdriver as his weapon of choice?”

  “Right. Listen, Javier, do you think there might be a connection between the two killings? I mean, two dead bodies found in the space of a year near a town that hadn’t had a murder in fifty years . . .”

  “Oh, no, I shouldn’t think so. I understand the man, Garcia, was killed only six months ago. The little girl was found a year ago, and it was estimated that her body had been there for five years.”

  “Ah, I didn’t know that either.”

  Corporal Vela returned with the translated report and handed it to Gideon. “I’m sorry, this was not easy for me. English to Spanish, I can do this. Spanish to English—not so good. Also, there was some words, scientific words I did not know to translate. I leave them in Spanish.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be okay; a lot better than I could do,” Gideon said. It was the syntax of the original, not the technical vocabulary, that would have been likely to give Vela trouble. Scientific terms, inasmuch as they were mostly Latin or derived from Latin, were pretty interchangeable from language to language. While Marmolejo began to go through the case file, he settled back to read. There was only three-quarters of a page, not much more than he had written on Garcia.

  Examination of skeleton remains, Case Number 08-Teo dVl, conducted 23 May 2008, by Dr. Gerardo Puente Orihuela, forensic physician, Oaxaca ministerial police. These remains was previously examined by Dr. Bustamente, médico legista, Tlacolula District. Remains are very partial and was too much chewing by animales.

  Bones Present:

  The cráneo and the mandíbula, the right clavícula, the right pelvis bone, the left leg bones, numerous bones of the hands or feet, and some tooths.

  Time Since the Death:

  I estimate that these bones are since five years exposed.

  Condiciones patológicas:

  None

  Trauma:

  The cráneo is muchly broken into pieces. Frontal bone, zigomático, maxilar bone all are broke. My conclusion is these breakings are from the fuerza despuntada at the time of the death and that they directly caused or contributed to the death.

  Gideon looked up. “Fuerza despuntada—that would be ‘blunt force’?”

  “Blunt force,” Marmolejo agreed.

  Gideon nodded. It was impossible to say without more detail, or without having seen the bones for himself, whether or not the doctor’s conclusion was accurate. Conceivably, the damage could have occurred through some kind of accident after death, or could have been due to carnivore foraging. But on the face of it, perimortem blunt force trauma as the cause of death—murder, in other words—certainly seemed like a good bet when you took the context (a body presumably flung down a mine shaft) into consideration. So far, he had no dispute with Dr. Orihuela.

  Years:

  Was determined from the status of epífisis closings as well as erupción of the tooths. The second muelas was present, but not the third, indicating the age of more than twelve years.

  “Muelas?” Gideon asked. “Molars?”

  “Molar teeth, yes,” said Marmolejo.

  “Mm.” Gideon went back to reading.

  Certain epífisis of the bones has begun to connect but not yet completed. Other ones are completed. This condition indicates the presence of more than twelve years but not so many as sixteen years. Therefore, I estimate this individual person had thirteen to fifteen years.

  Thirteen to fifteen seemed perhaps a little overly specific coming from someone not trained in physical anthropology, but it was also evident that the doctor had some grounding in developmental osteology and dentition, so one could probably assume that he was at least roughly in the ballpark. But the next entry, the last, gave him pause.

  Género:

  The skeleton is a female. This is showed from the shape of the pelvis and certain other factors.

  “Now there I do have a problem,” he said aloud. “Sex.”

  “Indeed, a problem for us all,” Marmolejo murmured without looking up.

  “Sex determination,” Gideon amended with a smile.

  Now Marmolejo looked up, frowning. “A mistake? It’s not a female?”

  Gideon was pleased at the colonel’s ready acceptance of his judgment; back in Yucatán, it had taken a while to win him over. All the same, a little backing off was required. “No, I wouldn’t go that far. It’s just that Dr. Orihuela didn’t give any details. ‘Shape of the pelvis and certain other factors’—well yeah, sure, the pelvis would be your best bet, but it’s full of shapes; there are all kinds of curves and angles and measurements. Some are reliable, others aren’t. Which did he mean? Did he use more than one? In any case, whatever he did use, it’s hard to see how he could have been that sure of himself; not with a thirteen- to fifteen-year-old. Now if he said, ‘This skeleton would appear to be that of a female,’ okay. Or ‘in my opinion, the skeleton is probably that of a female.’ Or ‘most sexual indicators suggest the sex is female.’ But just a flat-out ‘the skeleton is a female’? Sorry, I have to have my doubts.”

  Marmolejo stroked the corners of his lips. “So it might be the skeleton of a boy and not a girl?”

  Gideon understood why this was of concern. If the police had been operating on the assumption that the remains were those of a female and they were actually those of a male, they would have been looking in all the wrong places. The entire investigation would have been thrown off track.

  “I don’t like second-guessing your pathologist,” he said, “but . . . well, let me just say I have to wonder about his being that cut-and-dried about it. Yes, sometimes children’s bones do sexually differentiate at an early age—these are quantitative criteria we’re dealing with, after all, continuous variables ranging from no visible development at all to completely developed, so some kids are going to be ahead of other kids, ahead of the crowd, the same as they are in height, or weight, or mental development. I’ve seen kids myself, almost that young, with enough skeletal sexual differentiation to definitively mark them as boys or girls . . . but I haven’t seen them very often, and that’s what’s worrying me. It’s possible, of course, that this just happens to be one of them, but . . .”

  He trailed off, thinking. “You know, there’s another possibility, Javier,” he said after a moment. “It’s probably more likely, now that I think of it—and that is that it’s the age he was mistaken about. Determining age is a lot harder than figuring out the sex.”

  “Of course. With sex one has two possible choices. With age, there are many.”

  “Yes, that’s part of it, but it’s also that the criteria are more complex. You have to know a lot more about skeletal development to read those epiphyseal unions than you do to evaluate the sex indicators.”

  “So now you are suggesting that we may be dealing with a female after all, but an adult female?”

  “Right. If she were an adult there wouldn’t have been much problem in properly determining the sex. Of course, if that’s true, then the police would still have gone off entirely in the wrong direction. They would have been investigating the murder of a child, when in reality it had been an adult.”

  Marmolejo sighed, but he did it with a smile. “Gideon, I already begin to regret bringing you into it. Before, we were faced with trying to identify a female child
. Now that you have looked into it, it seems we may be trying to identify a female child or a male child or a female adult. How is it,” he mused, probably thinking about the Yucatán case he had earlier been involved in with Gideon, “that the more information your expertise provides, the less information we seem to have?”

  “Interestingly enough,” Gideon said, laughing, “you’re not the first person to make that observation. Well, look at it this way: at least I’ve eliminated the one remaining age-sex possibility. Assuming that Orihuela had any idea of what he was doing, which seems likely, you can forget about the category of adult male. You won’t have to waste any time exploring that particular avenue.”

  “No,” Marmolejo said dryly. “Merely the other three.”

  “What can I say?” Gideon said. “I sure wish I could have seen those bones myself.”

  Marmolejo emitted a mild, interested “Ah?”

  It seemed to Gideon that the colonel had something up his sleeve. “There wouldn’t be any photos in the file, would there?” he asked hopefully. “I might be able to tell something from them.”

  “Unfortunately, there are none.”

  Gideon spread his hands. “Well, then, I don’t know what else—”

  “No, no photos were taken, alas. All we have are the bones themselves.”

  Gideon blinked. “You still have them?”

  “According to this file, we do.” He tapped a page in it. “Until this moment I was unaware of it myself.”

  “And I could see them?”

  Marmolejo smiled. “I suspect I can arrange it. When would you like to do it?”

  “How about now? Who knows, I might be able to come up with something else as well.” He was three-quarters out of his chair.

  “No, my friend, not so fast. They’re not here. According to this, they’re in a government warehouse in Xochimilco, north of the city. I can have them brought here on tomorrow’s morning run, which generally arrives in the early afternoon. Would you be free then? Say two o’clock, to be on the safe side? I have no doubt you will continue to astound and confound me with more of the wonderful osteological rabbits that you pull from your hat with such seeming ease.”

  “I don’t know about the osteological rabbits,” Gideon said with a smile, “but yes, tomorrow afternoon is fine. Javier, why was the case closed after only a month? That’s pretty short for giving up on a murder investigation, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I would.” He clapped his small, clean hands together soundlessly. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

  He went to the door and opened it. “Alejandro, will you ask Sergeant Nava and Chief Sandoval if they would be kind enough to join us? Tell them I would like to talk about the young girl’s skeleton that was discovered last year near Teotitlán. Oh, and coffee for all, if you please. Espresso, I think.” To Gideon he said, “You will forgive me if I speak spanish. Nava has no English.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be able to follow most of it.”

  When the two entered a few moments later it was hard to tell who was more scared, Nava or Sandoval. Both seemed surprised when they were motioned to the armchair area and not the visitor’s chairs at the desk. Nava no longer had a gun stuck in his belt. Sandoval wouldn’t sit down until he was specifically asked to, and when the coffee arrived, he couldn’t quite make himself believe it was meant for him until Marmolejo personally poured it and slid a demitasse cup and saucer toward him.

  “Chief Sandoval,” a smiling Marmolejo said, as Sandoval tremblingly lifted the cup to his lips, “I’ve been looking at the file concerning the case you were involved in last year. Perhaps you can tell us a little more about the circumstances under which the girl’s remains were found. You would know more about that than anyone else.”

  With a visible effort, Sandoval managed to set the cup back on its saucer with only a minimum of clatter. “Well, there’s not much to tell, Sir. They were discovered when a Canadian tourist fell into an old mine in the hills about three kilometers east of my village.”

  “And what type of mine was it? Copper? Silver? Gold?”

  “It was an old silver mine, Colonel. They say it’s a thousand years old.” He paused. “La Mina de los Muertos.”

  “The Mine of the Dead?” Marmolejo repeated in Spanish. “And why was it called that, do you happen to know?” Gideon could see that he was trying to set Sandoval at ease, asking questions he thought the man could answer.

  “Oh, that’s not its real name,” said Sandoval, who did indeed seem to be growing more confident with this line of questioning. “I don’t think it has a name. People started calling it that maybe ten years ago, when someone found an old skeleton in it, in another passage.”

  Marmolejo’s eyebrows drew together. “Do you mean another human skeleton?”

  “Oh yes, but one of the Ancients, an Old One, you know? A thousand years old, maybe more.”

  “Ah,” Marmolejo said with a sober little smile. “And now we find ourselves dealing with a New One, eh? A Young One. Well thank you, Chief. Now, Sergeant Nava, please tell me how it was it that you were made aware of these remains?”

  The two men gradually relaxed further as Marmolejo asked his innocuous questions, gently and with no intimation of fault-finding or accusation, at least until he came to the crucial question.

  “Sergeant Nava, can you enlighten me as to why the case was closed after a single month?”

  Even before this, Nava’s huge, thick-fingered hand had been having trouble manipulating the tiny cup and saucer; watching him was like watching a trained bear trying to do some delicate trick that was too minuscule for his paw. Now he carefully, clumsily put them, clattering, down on the table. “It wasn’t closed, colonel,” he said, looking nervous again. “It was suspended.”

  “Ah, suspended. I see. And can you tell me why it was suspended after a single month?”

  “There was no place to go with it, sir. We couldn’t find out who the victim was. We looked through the records of three years ago, five years ago, eight years ago, to try to find a girl of that age who was missing. In all of Oaxaca we found no one it could possibly have been. And there were no clues—the murderer, the motive—nothing. And the case, it was so old—” Marmolejo made the smallest of gestures with his hand, only the faint shadow of a shushing gesture, but it was enough to stop Nava at once.

  “What if it had been a boy, not a girl?” the colonel asked. “Would that have made a difference?”

  “If it had been a—” A sweaty sheen had popped out on Nava’s forehead. “But the forensic report, it said—”

  “I understand,” Marmolejo said kindly. “But now it seems the report may have been in error. Professor Oliver is going to look into that. Would you foresee any problem with reopening the matter if there is a reason; assigning some of your better men to it?”

  “No, sir, absolutely not. With your permission, I would like to work on it myself.”

  “Very good. I will let you know. As we proceed on these matters, I trust you will show Chief Sandoval and Professor Oliver every courtesy.”

  “Of course. They have been extremely helpful, most obliging. We are most fortunate to have their expert counsel available to us.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  Nava, attuned to understanding a dismissal when he heard one, rose, bowed, and took his leave, still sweating but looking relieved to get out of there in one piece. His expression said it all: Madre de Dios, it could have been a whole lot worse.

  “And now, Chief Sandoval,” Marmolejo said genially, “would you care for a little more of this excellent coffee?”

  “Why yes, Colonel, I believe I would,” said Sandoval, smiling broadly and extending his cup. “With maybe a little sugar this time. But only if it’s not too much trouble, of course.”

  NINE

  “ACTUALLY, a lot better than I anticipated,” Gideon said, in answer to Julie’s asking about how the session at the Procuraduría General de Justicia had gone. “It was a little rocky at fir
st—these Oaxaca cops are a scary bunch—but once their colonel got into the act it all smoothed over. Sandoval practically fell in love with the guy.” He smiled. “You know, on the way there, all he could talk about was what thugs and crooks and brutes they all are. But you should have heard him raving on the way back: ‘A fine man, the colonel, a real gentleman. I can see things will really be different now.’ Suddenly, he’s the policía ministerial’s number one fan.”

  He stretched comfortably out in the wooden lawn chair. They were sipping white wine on the Hacienda’s brick-paved interior patio, shielded from the late-afternoon sun by the wispy but sufficient shade of what Julie had informed him was a casuarina tree. “And what about your day?”

  “Oh, Uncle Tony showed up with Jamie a couple of hours ago; that was the big event of the day. It’s amazing, Uncle Tony’s hardly changed at all—well, a little grayer, a little heavier—a lot heavier—but the same guy’s still inside, only even more so: cocky, loud, overbearing, self-centered, pretty nasty sometimes—”

  “A real charmer, huh? I can hardly wait.”

  “Well, it’s true, he can be a little hard to take, but he’s funny too. And generous, in his own way.”

  “ ‘In his own way.’ Now there’s a phrase I’ve never understood. ‘He loved her in his own way.’ ‘He was grateful in his own way.’ What does it mean?”

  “Oh, you’ll like him, you’ll see. It’s never boring around Tony. He’s unfailingly entertaining. In his own way, of course.”