Make No Bones

by Aaron Elkins

  “Well, it was a little more than a guess,” Nellie said with a bit of edge to his voice. “We knew those fragments were male, we knew they were Caucasian, we knew they were at least middle-aged, we knew—I forget what else we knew. It’s been ten years.”

  “But thousands of people are male and middle-aged. Millions of people—”

  “But millions of people hadn’t made reservations on that particular bus. Chuck had. It’s all in the files, Farrell, and I’ll defend our decision as sound, based on what we knew at the time.”

  “But—” Honeyman clumsily poured mineral water into his glass and gulped it down. Gideon doubted that he was aware of doing it. “All right, but if you feel that way about it, why are you changing your mind now? What’s different now? Why are you doing this to me?”

  “What’s different now is that we’ve turned up an unidentified body in an unmarked grave. That wasn’t a factor, or rather not a known factor, in 1981.”

  “So? So? This person could be anybody, somebody we’ve never heard of. Why do you want to assume it’s Salish, for God’s sake?”

  Nellie smiled. “You really don’t want it to be Salish, do you?”

  “You have no idea,” Honeyman said unhappily. “ I have no time for this. A nice unidentified John Doe, one more poor old drifter from ten years ago, with no leads—that I could cope with. But a murdered FBI agent? You don’t know what you’re doing to me.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, Farrell, truly, but I have two basic reasons for thinking that’s Chuck back there in the workroom. First”—like the old professor he was, he began ticking them off on his fingers—”according to what you’ve told us, this happened in 1981, and 1981 is when he happened to be with us at Whitebark Lodge.”

  “Him and you and plenty of other people. It was a booming resort back then.”

  “Yes, but how many of those people are unaccounted for?”

  He let this sink in, then moved to the next finger. “From what you say, there are no open missing-person files or unsolved homicides from 1981. So, whoever this is, apparently no one is even aware he’s missing. Does it really take such a leap to wonder if it isn’t someone we all thought was on the bus?”

  Honeyman wasn’t ready to give up yet. “But why Salish in particular?” he persisted. “What about some of the other remains? Didn’t you say there were other people you couldn’t identify for sure?”

  Beneath Nellie’s eye a muscle jumped. “That’s true. In some cases we had to base identifications on a ring, a—a leg brace…”

  “Well, then, that means other people could be ‘missing,’ too, without anybody knowing. Why couldn’t it be one of them?”

  Good question, Gideon thought.

  “I’m sorry, Farrell, but I don’t think so,” Nellie said. “The possible whereabouts of every person who could conceivably have been on that bus were tracked. Your own department worked on it. So did the state people. IBM lent us a couple of computers. And yes, a few possibles were never run down, at least not to everybody’s complete satisfaction—that’s hardly surprising in a case like this. But there were only two guests at Whitebark who weren’t accounted for, who were not demonstrably alive and kicking…Albert Jasper and Chuck Salish. Albert was identified beyond dispute. That leaves Chuck.”

  Good answer, Gideon thought. “Nellie, what about Salish’s physical characteristics? What we have here is a male Caucasian, probably in his fifties, about five-nine, give or take an inch or so. Did Salish fit that?”

  He thought for a moment, sucking on the pipe. “Oh, yes.”

  “So would half the people in Deschutes County,” Honeyman said, but without conviction. However unwillingly, he had come around to Nellie’s point of view.

  Gideon had too. “If it’s Salish,” he said, “it ought to be easy enough to prove. That skeleton’s almost whole, with a good set of dentition. A copy of Salish’s dental records ought to settle it.”

  “That’s a fact,” Nellie said. “And unless I’m mistaken, we already have those. They’d be in the medical examiner’s file from 1981. I’m sure we got medical and dental records on everyone.”

  He sucked on the pipe and blew out a turgid brown cloud. Two people who were in the act of sitting down at the next table wrinkled their noses, looked disbelievingly at each other, and quietly took their sundaes several tables farther away.

  Honeyman was crunching ice between his teeth and looking depressed. “All right, let’s say it is Salish. I don’t suppose you’d have any idea who would want to kill him?” Gideon had the impression he was praying for a no.

  Nellie blinked at him. “How on earth would I come to have any idea about that?”

  Honeyman shrugged deferentially. “I only meant that you were there. He was one of your party. I just thought you might—”

  “Farrell,” Nellie said, “if that question means what I think it means, you’re about twenty miles off base. Whoever murdered Chuck Salish, it wasn’t somebody from WAFA. We’re on your side, or have you forgotten?”

  To his credit, Honeyman held his ground. “As far as you know, nobody in the group had any kind of grudge against him?”

  “Nobody there even knew him before Albert showed up with him.” Nellie was staring hotly at Honeyman, his bearded chin thrust out. “Now listen, Farrell, this is a respected organization of certified forensic scientists, and I’m privileged to head the national organization. There isn’t a one of those people you’re asking me about who hasn’t had more experience working with law enforcement than you have, dammit, and I resent your implications.”

  Honeyman shifted impassively into the stolid copspeak that policemen used at such times. “I’m sorry you feel that way, sir, but I’d still like an answer to my question. To your knowledge, did any person there have a grudge against Mr. Salish?”

  Gideon winced. It was probably the first time in Nellie’s life that anyone had talked to him in that particular tone.

  “No,” Nellie said angrily, “nobody had a grudge against anybody.”

  “I see. Everything was sweetness and light,” Honeyman said, continuing to show more backbone than Gideon had given him credit for.

  Nellie scowled at him for a moment, then bent his head while he used a paper clip to jab ferociously at some clotted tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. “Yes,” he muttered, “that’s right.”

  Gideon stared at him. Nellie Hobert, ordinarily about as devious as a duck, was holding something back; he was almost sure of it. There was nobody whose forthrightness Gideon trusted more than Nellie’s, and yet—

  “Hell,” Nellie mumbled as he got the pipe going again,

  “I’m sorry, Farrell. I apologize. It’s been quite a day.” “Nothing to apologize for, sir,” Honeyman said, still stiff. Nellie’s face split into its familiar Muppet grin. “Then stop calling me ‘sir,’ all right? It makes me nervous.” Honeyman relaxed and smiled back at him. “Me too.” “It’s just that I thought you were barking up the wrong tree, that’s all.”

  “I probably was.” He looked at his watch. “Five o’clock. Look, I better get a deposition from you. Would this be a good time to come on back to the office?”

  “I don’t see why not. I don’t have anything pressing until eight. I’ve promised to report to the membership on the skeletal analysis.” He smiled wryly. “It appears I’m going to have some interesting things to tell them.” He glanced at Honeyman. “You have no objection to my telling them about Chuck Salish?”

  Honeyman hesitated, then shook his head. “Go ahead, they may as well know. Christ, an FBI agent! Dr. Oliver, you’re welcome to come on over to the office too. You might be able to add something.”

  “I can’t see what,” Gideon said. “Besides, I promised my wife I’d have a before-dinner drink with her. I’m already late.”

  “You’ll be at the evening session?” Nellie asked him.

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” Gideon said. He got up and made his good-byes, but his smile felt strained.

  Wha
t was going on with Nellie?

  CHAPTER 9

  Boeuf Wellington, Whitebark Lodge’s dinner entree, sounded dangerously ambitious to Gideon and Julie (the previous two main courses having been Rhoda’s Meatloaf and Pineapple-Wiener Kabobs). It also failed to appeal to John, who was in the mood, as always, for a hamburger. Thus, with a little over an hour to spare before Nellie’s eight o’clock report, the three of them drove to Sisters for dinner.

  “Place looks like Dodge City,” John observed as they pulled into a parking lot off Cascade Avenue.

  He had a point. Ordinarily, when town fathers decide that their central area needs a face lift, they focus their resources on making it look bright and new. In Sisters they took a different approach; they made it look bright and old. Pokey tourist traffic and roaring logging trucks aside, driving down the main street of Sisters was like driving through a freshly painted Western movie set: wooden I880—style storefronts, overhanging balustered porches that made half the buildings look like bordellos, and plank boardwalks. All this in a town in which no building predated the twentieth century.

  Surprisingly, it had worked. The town’s appearance, while undeniably cute, had managed to stay somewhere this side of cutesy. Perhaps it was the surrounding pine forests, perhaps the bare, lonely, upward sweep of the Three Sisters to the southeast. Or maybe it was the hard-to-miss presence of so many honest-to-God, red-suspendered, flannel-shirted, wire-whiskered loggers. On either side of the parking slot into which Gideon had pulled were battered pickup trucks with bumper stickers. The one of the left said: “Save a logger, eat an owl.” The one on the right announced: “I love spotted owl—fried.”

  Whatever it was, the rugged Old West ambience clicked, and if the pre-1970 photographs in one of the shop windows were any guide, the new-old Sisters was a big improvement over the old-old Sisters.

  John’s state of mind at dinner was greatly improved. Farrell Honeyman, pleading shortage of manpower, had formally requested his assistance on the case, calling Seattle while Nellie was still in his office. And Charlie Applewhite, John’s boss, had tentatively approved, at least until it was positively determined whether the murdered man was Special Agent Chuck Salish. If it was, and they had the killing of a federal agent on their hands, the FBI’s involvement would become much more than tentative.

  “There’s one problem, though,” John told them. “Applewhite says that if it looks like it’s gonna take a lot of time, I better make my apologies on that lecture.”

  Gideon studied him. “Gee,” he said, “I wonder if it’s going to take a lot of time.”

  John peered gravely back. “Heaps,” he said, and all of them laughed.

  They were in the Hotel Sisters Restaurant, located in a yellow frame building dating from almost as far back (1912) as it had been made to look. Getting into the spirit of things, they had passed up the dining room to eat in Bronco Billy’s Saloon, complete with a swinging-door entrance from the lobby, a dark, polished, authentically antique bar backed by a long mirror, and buffalo and deer heads mounted on the walls. The waitresses wore cowboy vests and bolo ties.

  They had eaten lunch late and weren’t hungry enough for the dinner plates, so they asked for sandwich menus. All of the entries, in accordance with what seemed to be the custom in this part of Oregon, had Western appellations: the Lone Star, the Barnyard Bird, the Buckaroo. Even the hamburgers had names: the Brama Bull (“smothered in mushrooms and melted cheddar cheese”), the Bullrider (“smothered in barbecue sauce”).

  John was having trouble finding what he wanted. “So what’s a plain hamburger?” he asked the waitress.

  She pointed with her pencil at the bottom of the menu. “Right there, hon.”

  “‘The Roper,’” John read aloud. “’Plain and simple, no bull. He looked up at her and laughed. “Okay, I’ll have a Roper. But with fries.”

  “They all come with fries, honey.”

  Gideon and Julie asked for Barnyard Birds—broiled chicken sandwiches with chili, jack cheese, and guacamole. The waitress jotted down their orders and brought back a plate of nachos and three mugs of the local Blue Heron beer.

  “Gideon, how long will it take to prove whether that skeleton is Chuck Salish’s or not?” Julie asked.

  “That depends on what kind of file there is on him in the ME’s office. If they already have dental records, medical records, photographs—”

  “They do,” John said. “I talked to them on the phone.” “Well, then, I’d say it’ll take Nellie all of five minutes.

  This guy has a missing tooth and some fillings, so a look at Salish’s dental charts should—”

  “They don’t have the dental charts,” John said. “I thought you said—”

  “Everything but. They had them, because they’re listed on the file contents sheet, but they’re not in the file.” “What about dental x-rays?”

  John shook his head. “There’s nothing at all from his dentist. Everything else’s still there.”

  The three of them looked at each other. “You don’t suppose they could have been accidentally lost?” Julie asked.

  The others regarded her silently.

  “No, I didn’t think so,” she said. “Gideon, why would somebody take just the dental records and leave everything else?”

  “Well, I don’t know just what else there is, but the dental stuff is your best bet for making a positive identification, so I’m assuming someone didn’t want us to find out who this was.”

  “No, doc, we can’t say that for sure,” John said. “For all we know, somebody took those records out of the file years ago, long before anybody found the skeleton.”

  “But not before somebody buried it,” Gideon pointed out.

  John swallowed some beer. “Yeah, true.”

  After a few moments’ silence, Julie said: “Interesting, but where does that get us?”

  “Beats me,” Gideon said. “Anyway, it shouldn’t be too hard to get copies again.” He worked a sticky, cheese-soaked tortilla chip free from the mass on the plate, loaded it with ground meat and salsa, and brought it carefully to his mouth.

  John shook his head. “I don’t know about that. The dentist’s name isn’t on the contents sheet, and Salish’s wife is in a nursing home now. She doesn’t remember who the hell Chuck Salish was, let alone his dentist. But I’ve got the FBI office in Albuquerque looking into it. They’ll come up with him.”

  Gideon washed down the chip with a gulp of beer. “You’ve been busy, haven’t you? When did you hear about this, a whole two hours ago?”

  “Well, yeah, but we’re talking about a murdered special agent here. The Bureau’s funny about things like that. We take an interest.”

  “Let’s say his dentist can’t be located,” Julie said. “Could Nellie make an identification anyway?”

  “Well, there are some skeletal features that ought to show up in the medical records,” Gideon said. “A healed fracture, a few arthritic joints in the foot. But that kind of thing is trickier, less definite. It’d probably depend on whether there are x-rays, and what kind of x-rays.”

  John had been staring down at his mug, slowly rotating it on its coaster. Now he looked up. “Doc, you realize that I have to look at all your old pals as prime suspects here.”

  Gideon realized it, all right. He’d been thinking of little else. “Including Nellie?”

  “Well, I’m not real worried about Hobert. If he had something to hide, all he had to do was keep his mouth shut, and this’d be just another John Doe. Besides, from what I hear, everybody in the Bureau who’s ever worked with him’ll vouch for him personally, right up to the director.”

  Gideon drank some beer, began to say something, then took a slow second swallow. “I’ll vouch for him too.”

  “Yeah, I like the little bugger myself. All the same, I asked one of the ME’s deputies to sort of casually just happen to hang around the room with him while he’s working on the skeleton tomorrow.”

  “What about when he�
��s not working on it? That workshop in the museum isn’t exactly secure. Anybody could get at it.”

  “I’m way ahead of you. The skeleton’s being moved to a room in the Justice Building downtown. Nellie can work there just as easy.” He used a chip to scoop up some salsa. “Just to be on the safe side, you know?”

  Gideon nodded; he knew.

  Julie didn’t. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” she said. “John, all these people are forensic anthropologists. They work with the police. Surely there are other suspects?”

  “Like who?”

  “Well, like…it could be anybody. Somebody Salish once sent to jail, or one of the other guests at the lodge, or an employee, or a, a—”

  “Julie, here’s a guy who comes to a resort with a bunch of anthropologists, okay? He’s an FBI agent, but he’s not here on a case. In fact, he’s out of his region. And he winds up killed and stuffed in a hole. As far as we know, the only people with any connection to him are these six anthropologists. So who the hell else is there that makes any sense? Where else do I start? You tell me.”

  “Well…”

  “And there’s something else,” John went on. “Somebody knew enough to get rid of the dental records, right? And they needed access to the ME’s files to do it, which you can’t just walk in off the street and do. Doesn’t that sound like one of the anthropologists who worked on the bus crash? Doc?”

  “I suppose so, yes,” Gideon said reluctantly. John’s thinking was sound enough, but these were friends and colleagues who were being so blithely accused; people he’d known and respected for years. Agreeing with John didn’t make him feel any happier about being co-opted.

  “But what motive would they have?” Julie asked.

  “What motive would anybody have?” John answered. “That’s what an investigation’s for.”

  She sighed and leaned back. “Well,” she said, patently unconvinced, “you two are the experts.”