Icy Clutches

by Aaron Elkins

  "No,” Gideon said, “that's different. The tendons in the wrist shorten after death. But...” He gingerly reached out a hand toward Tremaine's blue-clad forearm and pushed gently. The entire arm moved stiffly, with resistance, perhaps an inch. Gideon stepped back, barely restraining an unprofessional grimace.

  "Well, there's large-muscle stiffening of the shoulder and arm, so I'd say it's fully set in,” he said. “If I remember right, that takes about twelve hours."

  "I don't get it,” Owen said. “Don't your muscles flex when you get rigor mortis? Don't you sort of curl up? Don't you—what the hell is rigor mortis, anyway?"

  "The muscles don't flex,” Gideon said, “they stiffen. From a decrease in the concentration of adenosinetriphosphate in the fiber. Which is caused by the postmortem conversion of glycogen to lactic and phosphoric acid."

  "If you don't want to know, don't ask,” John told Owen. “So what are you saying, Doc, that he's been dead twelve hours? Since nine o'clock last night?"

  "Since ten, anyway. At least since then."

  "And you saw him alive when?"

  "During the cocktail hour,” Owen said. “He came over to rake us over the coals. That was a little before six, wasn't it, Gideon?"

  "About ten to."

  "Right,” John said with satisfaction. He raised the flap of a breast pocket and pulled out a little notebook. “Time of death,” he said as he wrote, “between 5:50 P.M. and 10:00 P.M."

  Gideon shrugged uneasily. He was out of his element. “Look, John, there are a lot of factors that can hasten or retard rigor; things I don't know anything about. Temperature...hell, I don't even know what all the factors are."

  "Stop worrying, will you? I told you I wouldn't hold you to it.” He had walked to the window while speaking and was examining the snap lock on the frame. “Locked on the inside,” he said, “but that doesn't mean anything. It's the kind that locks itself when you close it."

  He came back to the body, looked at it a few seconds longer. “Listen, Owen, will you give the state troopers a call and ask them to send their man out right away? And a crime-scene investigation crew while they're at it. Tell them what we've got here."

  "Crime?” Owen said. “You think this is murder?"

  John looked at both of them. “I wouldn't be surprised, folks."

  "Jesus,” Owen muttered, “Arthur's just gonna love this.” He headed for the door. “Okay, I'll do it right now.” He exhaled softly. “Then I better tell Arthur."

  "Don't touch the knob,” John said. “Just pull it open. I didn't shut it all the way. And, Owen?” He hesitated. “I didn't mean to take over like I did. I'm here because you asked for help on an old murder. This"—he jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Tremaine's body— “is another case. You've got proprietary jurisdiction. If you want me to back off, just say so. It's your baby if you want it."

  Owen stared at him. “You gotta be kidding,” he said.

  John laughed. “Okay, look, I tell you, one thing you could do is have this room sealed till the state people get here."

  "Uh, sealed?"

  "Well, secured. Just have one of your law-enforcement types stand outside the front door. Somebody with a sidearm. And somebody outside by the back window too. I wouldn't want anybody getting in while the room's empty."

  "Empty? You're not staying here?"

  "Here?” John said, surprised. “Hell, no, what about that bacon and eggs?"

  * * * *

  "Aahh,” John said, sloshing his English muffin through the glutinous orange residue of one of his sunny-side-up eggs, “this is great. The bacon's got a little fat on it for once.” He poured another glob of ketchup into the depression he had made for that purpose in his hashed-brown potatoes and shoveled another forkful into his mouth.

  John's transparent pleasure in food usually stimulated Gideon's appetite too. Not this time, however. He looked away from the happily chewing FBI man, focusing instead on the big Tlingit totem carving on the wall of the dining room. He had ordered only orange juice and toast, and he was having a hard time with the toast.

  John masticated contentedly, washed down the potatoes with a slug of coffee, then went after more bacon.

  "What makes you think it was a murder?” Gideon asked.

  John stopped with his fork in the air. “You really don't know?"

  Gideon didn't have a clue and said so.

  The bacon was deposited into John's mouth and thoughtfully chewed. “When I tell you, you're gonna argue with me."

  "I won't argue with you. Why would I want to argue with you?"

  "Yeah, you will. Look, Doc, you know how sometimes when you're explaining something to me about bones—like when you look at some little piece an inch long and say, ‘This guy was five-foot-nine, and right-handed, and weighed a hundred and sixty-two-and-a-half pounds, and—’”

  Modesty came to the fore. “Come on, John."

  "'—and had a pimple on the left side of his ass'? And I say, ‘How can you tell all that from a goddamn pinky bone?’ Remember what you always say?"

  "No."

  "You say, ‘This may take a small leap of faith.’”

  "It does sound familiar,” Gideon allowed.

  "Well,” John said, “this is gonna take a small leap of faith.” He leaned forward. “You ready for this?"

  His eyes were sparkling. It wasn't often that he got to do the edifying, and when the opportunity came he relished it.

  Gideon smiled. “I'm ready."

  "The false teeth,” John said.

  "The what?"

  "The false teeth."

  "What false teeth?” Gideon didn't remember any teeth at all; just that awful purple tongue filling Tremaine's mouth.

  "In the glass,” John said.

  "What glass?"

  John made an irritated sound. On the goddamn nightstand—” He held up a peremptory hand. “Doc, if you say, ‘What nightstand?’ I swear to God..."

  "What nightstand?"

  "You're amazing, you know that? How the hell did you ever get to be a famous scientist? You never notice anything."

  "Beats the hell out of me,” Gideon said with a sigh. The last couple of days hadn't been doing much for his self-esteem. “I guess we notice different things. Maybe that's why we make such a good team."

  "Yeah,” said John grumpily, and then when he realized Gideon meant it, more energetically, “Well, yeah, right. Anyway, the thing is, Tremaine's teeth weren't in his mouth; they were sitting in a glass of denture cleanser. That's what made me wonder."

  "You mean, why would someone who plans to kill himself go to the trouble of putting his teeth in a glass of cleanser?"

  "Well, that too. But the main thing is"—John mopped up the last of his egg with the last of his muffin—"is that suicides usually do it with their teeth in."

  "Really."

  "Sure. And if they wear glasses, they generally take ‘em off. If they're ladies, they make sure to put on a little makeup.” The muffin was popped into his mouth and disposed of. He looked sideways at Gideon. “Doc, you really don't know this stuff,” he said with mild incredulity. “I would've thought a big-time anthropologist—"

  "John,” Gideon said with a sigh, “just do me a favor and—"

  John waved his hand amicably. “Well, the point is, people worry about how they're gonna look when they're found. I'm not talking about the crazies that blow themselves up, or set fire to themselves, or slice themselves up with a power saw. But people who hang themselves, or take pills, or sit out in the car with the windows closed and the carbon monoxide pouring in—they like to look nice. Generally speaking."

  Gideon nodded. “You're probably right."

  "Sure, I am. The minute I walked in there I didn't like it. Would you figure a guy like Tremaine to let himself be found wearing a bathrobe with nothing under it? Wouldn't you figure he'd put on silk pajamas, maybe an ascot?"

  "Yes, I guess I would."

  "But there were those yellow silk pajamas laid out on th
e bed. Why would he lay them out, then not put them on, if—” John's eyes narrowed. “You did see those pajamas, didn't you, Doc?...Doc?"

  Gideon crossly drank some orange juice.

  "Unbelievable,” John said. “Hey, are you gonna eat that or not?"

  Gideon shoved his untouched toast over to him. John opened a packet of strawberry jam and lathered half a slice. “There was one other little thing,” he said. “One of the passkeys was missing last night at the end of the afternoon shift. Turned up this morning in the bottom of the laundry cart. What do you think about that?"

  "I think you're right. We have a murder. Another murder."

  "Yeah, I think so.” John pointed toward the sky. Another Kwakiutl Airlines plane, this one pontoon-equipped, was tilting down over the cove. “Well, here come the pros; maybe they'll be able to come up with something better than false teeth in a glass.” He swallowed the toast and stood up. “I better go down to the pier and meet them. You want to come along, or do you have things to do?"

  "I have things to do,” Gideon said.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 11

  * * * *

  Well, not really. All he had to do was to continue his analysis of the skeletal fragments. There was nothing about this that couldn't wait, but he preferred to give the pathologist plenty of breathing room. Forensic pathologists were a generally amiable—even jolly—breed, but when Gideon hung around watching them ply their trade, they tended to get crabby and make rude remarks about skeleton detectives.

  Owen had gotten him a more convenient place to work: the “contact station,” a ranger post that had recently been built to provide information to lodge guests. This was located about two hundred feet from the main building, overlooking Bartlett Cove at the foot of a long pier from which tour boats operated in the summer. A small, neat, wooden building, it had been closed since Labor Day, and it made a good place for him; bright, clean, and uncluttered, still smelling of fresh paint and newly carpentered wood, with plenty of waist-high counter space that allowed him to work standing up, something he preferred.

  The perforated cranial fragment was in a safe at park headquarters, but the other bones were here, and his equipment had arrived from the university in Port Angeles. Gideon set up shop on the main counter, under an intimidating wall display of mounted Alaskan crabs. He whistled softly as he unpacked. The smooth, expensive tools of steel and wood were always a delight to handle, always cleared his mind—even of images like Tremaine's dead face and exposed, dewlapped throat. Precise and finely machined the tools might be, but they were marvelously low-tech, uncomplicated things all the same: measuring calipers, jointed boards, gleaming, six-foot-long telescoping rulers. They would have looked fine in a 1930s mad-scientist movie. Even the names would have fit right in. “Bring me the goniometer, Igor.” “Do not be frightened, my dear; “I am merely going to put the head spanner on you."

  But soothing as they were to work with, there wasn't much they could tell him. Gideon spent an hour measuring, then checked his measurements. He determined the transverse and vertical breadths of the head of the femur and its subtrochanteric diameters; he computed the various angles, heights, lengths, and thicknesses of the mandible and the tarsals; he patiently measured the five metatarsals and the other foot bones. He made a dubious estimate of total height from the partial femur. (This was getting into “fudge-factor country,” as John called it.)

  And when he finished it all, he knew what he had known before: The bones had come from one or more sturdily built males in their mid-twenties and within an inch or so either way of six feet. Almost certainly James Pratt and/or Steven Fisk.

  The difference now was that, if need arose, he could justify his conclusions with figures, something that always pleased policemen and prosecuting attorneys. The funny part was that all the measuring really added nothing new. Most of the impressive-sounding calculations—the platymeric index, the claviculo-humeral ratio, the various robusticity indices—were recent approximations of time-honored subjective judgments, and not the other way around at all. When a choice had to be made, was there an experienced practitioner who wouldn't go with the testimony of eyes and fingertips over that of calipers and calculators? Not likely. Or of goniometers either. This was a dark secret that he and other professors guarded from the tender ears of their graduate students, who would, if they stuck with it long enough, eventually find it out for themselves.

  Well, at least he could do something about preserving the fragments, now that they were dry. He was looking for a container to mix the acetone and Duco that Owen had gotten for him, when John appeared on the wooden porch of the building, a giant Styrofoam cup in either hand. Gideon pulled open the door for him.

  "Hiya, Doc. Figured you could use some coffee."

  "I sure can, thanks.” He lifted off the plastic lid and took a grateful swig. “Where'd you find coffee this time of the morning?"

  "Restaurant kitchen. They keep a pot going in there."

  Gideon laughed. When there was a kitchen around, John usually didn't take long to make a friend in it. He took another swallow. “How's Dr. Wu coming?"

  John growled. “He booted me out. Dr. Burton W. Wu. Kind of a touchy little bastard. Like you."

  "Me?” Gideon said, surprised. “Touchy?"

  "Yeah, like when you come in to look at some bones and you don't let anybody tell you anything about anything. You have to figure it all out yourself."

  "That's not being touchy. That's trying to keep myself honest. You know that."

  "Yeah, I know, but I'm not used to it from a medical examiner. I was in there examining the scene, you know? Being really careful not to disturb evidence, not getting in anybody's way. But finally this guy turns around and grins with these sharp little teeth and tells me to get the hell out of the room because he's trying to work and I'm bugging him. Jesus Christ,” he muttered, “prima donnas all over the place. Everybody's gotta have everything just the way they want it or they have a temper tantrum."

  He put his unopened coffee on the counter and dropped into a chair. “What the hell,” he said with a sigh, never one to sulk very long. “How's the coffee?"

  Gideon took another taste, rolling it judiciously on his tongue. “Well, now that you mention it, it's a little heavy on the cream. And I prefer half-and-half to the nondairy stuff. And in the future it'd be nice to get something to stir it with. Also—"

  John looked sharply at him, began to speak, and then burst out laughing, a sunny peal that folded the skin around his eyes into a network of happy crinkles. As usual, Gideon couldn't help laughing along.

  "Anyway,” John said, stretching his legs out and getting his heels up on a carton on the floor, “I took off and told the little bugger where he could find me. Now, fill me in on what's been going on around here. What are these meetings Tremaine was having? Who're these people he was meeting with?"

  "There's not too much I can tell.” Gideon pulled over an armchair and told John what he knew. He explained what Tibbett had told him and described his own meeting with the group with all the detail he could remember. John jotted down a few notes. It took no more than fifteen minutes. “Okay, Doc, that'll be helpful.” His notebook went into a breast pocket of his jacket. “Now tell me what's going on with the bones."

  They got up and went to the counter. The fragments were neatly arranged on butcher paper. “Here they are,” Gideon said, “but there isn't anything new to tell. Owen's sending a couple of his rangers back out there today and tomorrow, and maybe they'll come up with some more, but right now, all—” His attention was caught by movement outside, glimpsed through the side window. “Looks like the little bugger's found you."

  The diminutive figure of Burton Wu was striding rapidly down the path from the lodge, purposeful and splayfooted. Splay-kneed, really; every small step swung him off to one side or the other with a roller skater's waddle. A moment later he appeared around the corner of the building, walked in, and looked at the
two men sourly. Then he went directly to the counter. It took him seven steps to cover the eight feet.

  "Bones, huh?"

  "Yes,” Gideon said, “they're from—"

  "You got some more of that coffee around here, chief?"

  "Sorry, no,” Gideon said.

  John held out his cup. “Here, I haven't touched it."

  "Thanks.” Wu took it, pulled the cover off, and sipped. He made a face. “Cold. And way too much sugar. You know what that stuff does to you?"

  All the same he kept it, taking rapid, minuscule sips and continuing to make faces. He looked at the bone fragments without interest for eight or ten seconds, then spoke to John. “Well, that's no suicide in there. It's homicide, all right. No doubt about it."

  "That's what I thought,” John said, looking distinctly self-complacent.

  "You were lucky, chief,” Wu told him. “That false-teeth crap doesn't prove a thing. Save it for the shrinks.” The pathologist had a small man's way of making everything sound like a challenge. His speech was crisp and blunt, leavened only slightly by echoes of the quick, singing vowels of Canton. Parents from China, Gideon guessed, and himself raised in Los Angeles or San Francisco.

  "Is that right?” John said crossly.

  John's ancestry was Cantonese too. From an anthropologist's perspective they made an interesting contrast, a textbook demonstration of the difference made by a single generation's interbreeding with the vigorous native stock of Hawaii. At ten inches taller, eight inches broader, and almost a hundred muscular pounds heavier than Wu, John loomed over him.

  Not that the waspish Dr. Wu was intimidated. “Yeah, that's right,” he said, narrow chin thrust up and out. “And the missing key doesn't prove a goddamn thing either. Fortunately, we've got some scientific things to go on.” He rubbed his hands briskly together. “Now, the first thing I noticed was indications of postmortem hypostasis superior and inferior to the ligature; diffused but mostly a dorsal distribution."

  "No kidding.” John was an excellent cop, but like many excellent cops he had a block against scientific terminology. Or not a block so much as a self-erected barrier; the innate skepticism of the man of action for the man of words.