Everyone did.
McGee rotated another photo, this one showing the bones of a single digit.
“These are the bones of the left fifth finger after removal of the soft tissue. Again, look at the phalanges.”
“The fingertip is present,” said Olsen.
“Yes. This was the digit that yielded the one partial print. What else?”
“These bones seem skinnier and smoother than the ones in the other fingers. And they flare out more at the ends,” said Justine.
“Head of the class, little lady.”
Normally, Olegard would have bristled at the “little lady” endearment. Given McGee’s stature, she let it slide.
“What does it mean?” Olsen asked, eyes glued to the photos.
McGee ignored him and produced a magnifying lens from the briefcase. He handed it to Justine, along with the first autopsy shot of digits one through four.
“Note there are tiny slashes at the ends of each of the first four middle phalanges.”
Leaning forward, McGee reached out and shifted his pen from thumb, to pointer, to middle, to ring man. Justine followed its progress with the lens.
“The horizontal lines?” she asked.
“Yes. Those are cut marks created by a nonserrated blade. The marks are absent on the middle phalange of the pinkie but present on its proximal phalange, the one at the near end. Cut marks are also present on the fifth metacarpal, adjacent to where the finger articulates with the hand.”
“So the left pinkie was the only digit to retain its tip and to have no cut marks at that end?” Justine said. She addressed no one in particular, as though sifting data in her mind. “The left pinkie was also the only digit to have cut marks at the end where the finger joined the hand.”
“Again, the little lady nailed it.”
The little lady handed the photo and lens to Olsen.
“May I hypothesize?” Justine asked, encouraged by McGee’s smile in her direction.
McGee dipped his chin.
Justine took it as assent. “The fingertips were removed from every digit but the left pinkie. That finger was severed intact.”
“Bravo.”
Meyer performed an eye roll directed at Nunn. Are you believing this lunatic? “You’re saying the killer hacked off nine of Thomas’s fingertips but cut off his left pinkie and left it intact?”
“No,” McGee said. “I am not.”
Meyer’s brows reached for his hairline.
“Moving on. Muntz based his positive ID on three things.” McGee raised a hand and moved a stumpy thumb from finger to finger. “First, the presence of a belt buckle belonging to Christopher Thomas. Second, a match to a partial print taken from a left fifth finger. Third, consistency between the skeletal profile obtained from the remains and Christopher Thomas’s known age, sex, race, and height.”
McGee replaced the hand-bone shots with views of the skull. As before, he pen-pointed at features in the photo.
“Short, globular head shape. Wide face, flaring cheekbones. Broad palate and nasal opening. Complicated zigzag suture pattern. Accessory bone at the back of the skull. To me that configuration screams Mongoloid.”
Blank looks.
“Those traits indicate Asian or Native American ancestry.” Slowly, teacher to dull pupils.
“You saying Thomas was Asian?” Tony Olsen made no effort to mask his skepticism.
McGee ignored the interruption. “Muntz made another error. In calculating stature he relied on only one bone, the femur. He then chose an inappropriate formula for performing a regression equation and misinterpreted the statistical significance of the estimate that equation generated. I remeasured leg-bone lengths, using the scale provided in the photographs, and recalculated stature applying statistics appropriate to Asians. My height estimate for the decedent is 162 to 168 centimeters. Christopher Thomas measured 183 centimeters.”
“What about the print?” Tiny vessels had blossomed in Tony Olsen’s cheeks. “Fingerprints don’t lie.”
“I have to admit that bothered me too. ‘Iggy,’ I said to myself, ‘it doesn’t add up. Or does it? What’s the pattern? You got a boatload of dots, now link them together.’”
Again, a stumpy thumb worked stumpy fingers, ticking off points.
“Dot: the vic is supposed to be a tall white guy, but his skull says he’s Asian and his leg bones say he’s too short.
“Dot: the left-fifth-finger bones look different from all the other finger bones, smoother and more gracile in the shafts and broader at the ends.
“Dot: every fingertip was removed but the one on the left fifth finger.
“Dot: nine digits were reduced to bone, but the left fifth finger retained its soft tissue.”
McGee did his best at crossing his arms on his chest. It didn’t go well.
“Then I remembered. The glycerin.”
Mystified looks all around.
McGee scanned the text, then read aloud from Muntz’s autopsy report: “‘One digit was deeply embedded in the femoroacetabular junction.’”
Not a single Aha! expression.
Scooching forward with an alternating cheek-to-cheek maneuver, McGee teased a photo from the assortment cascading over the desktop, grabbed the lens, and gestured everyone close.
“The bone in this shot forms the left half of the pelvis. That deep, round hole below the blade is where the head of the thighbone sits. The joint is called the femoroacetabular junction. That socket is protected by very thick muscle. Soft tissue is often preserved there long after the rest of the flesh sloughs. You with me?”
Nods all around.
Satisfied, McGee positioned the lens over the pelvic photo.
“What do you see circling the hip socket?”
“Cut marks,” said Olsen.
“Exactly.”
McGee laid down the lens. Justine picked it up and drew her nose and the glass to within inches of the print. The others assumed listening postures.
“Here’s my take. Bruno Muntz screwed up the ID. The man in the iron maiden was not Christopher Thomas. The victim was an Asian male of roughly Thomas’s age and size but slightly shorter in stature. The man’s teeth were destroyed to prevent dental identification. His fingertips were removed to eliminate prints. His left fifth finger was replaced by that of someone else. Incisions were made into the gluteal mass of the Asian victim, rather clumsy ones, I might add. Thomas’s finger was coated with glycerin and fat to retard decomposition, then jammed through the muscle deep into the dead man’s hip socket.”
“And Muntz blew this whole phalange-bone thing?” Tony Olsen flapped a hand at the photos. “The missing fingertips?”
“Distal phalanges are tiny, often missed in recovery. If he noticed their absence, which I doubt, the good doctor probably thought they’d gotten lost. Perhaps he didn’t bother to sift through all the sludge in the maiden. Thomas’s belt, with recognizable buckle, was placed on the victim. The body, sans fingertips but cum Thomas’s pinkie, was sealed inside the iron maiden. The apparatus was crated and shipped. The rest is history.”
“The mismatched bones? The cut marks?” Tony Olsen’s cheeks were now the color of raspberry sherbet.
“Muntz was a pathologist, not an anthropologist. The man overstepped his abilities.”
“But—” Justine sat forward. “One of Christopher Thomas’s teeth was found inside the iron maiden, wasn’t it? And that was proved.”
“Right again, little lady.” McGee gave her an odd, lopsided smile. “It was Christopher Thomas’s tooth. And it surely did not come out of the Asian man’s mouth.
Silence.
Olsen was the first to break it. “If you’re right, someone took brutal measures to ensure that the victim would be misidentified as Christopher Thomas.”
McGee nodded.
“Who?” Tony Olsen.
“Why?” Meyer.
McGee’s shoulders rose and dropped. Beats me.
All eyes turned to Jon Nunn.
<
br /> But Nunn was looking at Stan Ballard.
It was Olsen who voiced the question on everyone’s mind: “Then where the hell is Christopher Thomas?”
28
R. L. STINE
I know where to find them. I know more about everything than all of them.
I found Peter Heusen easily. No prob. Rented a rubber dinghy with a putt-putt motor and sailed out to his cabin cruiser moored near the St. Francis Yacht Club.
Typical San Francisco day, foggy and damp, the water choppy, blue-brown under the clouds. I could see the Golden Gate Bridge off to my right, but I didn’t come for sightseeing.
Twelve years later, and I knew how happy Heusen would be to see me.
Peter must be in his fifties now, I figured. And richer than God. Thanks in part to me.
As I came closer, I saw him seated by himself at a table on the back deck. He had a wineglass in his hand. He stood up when he saw me and stepped to the rail.
“Remember me?” I shouted. He didn’t look much older. Money’ll do that for you. He was in a white admiral’s jacket. He had a blue yachting cap pulled down on his head. What was this? Halloween?
I couldn’t see if he still had his hair. But he looked tanned and fit.
Of course he recognized me. He began waving his arms in front of him, like signaling an alarm. “Ruby? I don’t want to see you!” he shouted. “Turn around! Go back! You’re not welcome here.”
Of course he didn’t want to see me. I scrambled onto the deck and tied the dinghy to the side. The sun came out for a moment, and everything started to gleam. Like a spotlight shining on me. Time for my close-up.
I thought maybe he had some flunkies who would come push me off the yacht. But he appeared to be alone.
“I have nothing to say to you,” he said as I stepped up to his table. “You’re not welcome here. Why have you come?”
“Peter, come on. I thought you’d be more friendly.” I couldn’t keep a smile off my face. “I mean, I did a very big favor for you.”
Beneath the cap, his forehead creased. His pale eyes narrowed. “Favor for me? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I know who you are. But you never did anything for me.”
“Why, just the other day, some guy finds me, starts asking me questions about the favor I did for you.”
“What?” Peter squealed.
“Don’t worry, I had him taken care of.”
Peter looked worried now.
“Did you really think that lousy ten K was going to last me forever?” I sat down at the table. I picked up his wineglass and took a long sip. “Is this a Chablis?”
“I can call the harbor police. I’ve had intruders before.”
I picked up a biscuit from the silver bread basket. Still warm. I took a bite. “Are you really going to pretend you don’t know anything?”
He stood over me. His lips began to twitch. “I don’t have to pretend. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Amnesia? Let me help you.” I decided to go for it. “The body in the iron maiden?”
Heusen swallowed. But he didn’t blink. “Excuse me? Are you insane?”
“Jeez, how long you going to keep up this charade?”
“I’m going to call the patrol now.”
“Oh, I know who you’re going to call—and it won’t be no police.”
He made a move toward the cabin, but I grabbed his arm. “Just sit down. Let’s be civilized, Peter. Tell you what. I’ll tell you a story, and you sit there and pretend you don’t already know it.” I had to pull him down to the chair.
“I’ll give you five minutes,” he said, still playacting, but he was sweating. “What’s your story?”
“Yeah, let’s say it’s a story,” I said. “Let’s pretend it’s not all total truth.”
He stared at the wineglass in my hand. I tilted it to my mouth and drank the rest.
“Peter, let’s say there was once an iron maiden in a museum in San Francisco. Let’s say it was built hundreds of years ago, but used recently—”
“I’m not a history buff,” Heusen interrupted, shaking his head. “You’re wasting your time.”
“Well, I did my homework—after the fact.” I ran my finger around the rim of the empty wineglass.
Heusen started to his feet. “You’re out of here.”
I pushed him back down. I had to be a little rough. I could see a flash of fear on his face. His tan had disappeared.
“Let’s say there was a dead man stuffed inside the thing?”
“That’s very old news,” Heusen muttered. “Why did you come here?”
I brought my face up close to his. “Is it old news, Peter? What if I told the story—the whole story? What if I call the police?”
That got to him. I saw two red circles blossom on his cheeks. “Why would you do that, Artie?” His eyes danced around. As if he were looking for a way to escape. “It, it was a lot of years ago. Why would you go to the police now?”
“Do I look desperate to you?” I asked, leaning close to him again. “Well, I am. I am desperate. I know what you think. You think I’m a piece of low-life scum who crawled onto your big yacht like a cockroach. But I know some pretty big words for a cockroach. Like accessory. You know, like in accessory to murder?”
Heusen was breathing hard. Under the admiral’s jacket, his chest heaved up and down. “You wouldn’t dare,” he whispered. “You would turn yourself in? Admit to murder? And drag me down with you?”
I nodded. I was enjoying this. “I told you. I’m desperate.”
Heusen’s shoulders slumped. He narrowed his eyes until they were thin slits. “What do you want, Artie? Money?”
“Yes. Good guess. I want money. A lot of it.”
“Okay. Okay. Money. And then you’ll go away?”
That went very well.
Now I had one more call I wanted to make. One more call before I left town for good. I had a fat wad of money from Heusen. But I wanted more. A lot more.
I needed to make the call. Call it closure. Or call it my sadistic streak. Or maybe a victory lap. Ha-ha. And more money.
I had gotten the number out of that cowardly worm Peter.
I punched it in eagerly.
“Hello?” I recognized the voice right away.
“I have information on Christopher Thomas.”
A silence. Then: “Who?”
“Don’t you recognize my voice?”
“You—you have the wrong number.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“I’m sorry. You have the wrong number.” He hung up.
I laughed. It felt good to laugh.
“Call you back later,” I said into the silent phone.
I pulled on a jacket and headed out.
29
JEFFERY DEAVER
With his four-fingered hand, Christopher Thomas poured ancient Rémy Martin cognac into a glass obviously bought at Wal-Mart. The Trompe l’Oeil Hotel, a good one, had scrimped on a few details. Still, it made sense. It was logical. Nice booze, cheap delivery.
He glanced into the large window at his own reflection. Even after nearly ten years with his new appearance, he was never completely used to this version of himself. Not that he disliked what he saw; the plastic surgeon had been an artist.
Dr. 90210…
A zip code, he reflected, whose numbers represented about one-third of the doctor’s bill.
Now he looked past his image and gazed through the early-evening dusk.
He was angry and he was troubled. He’d heard on the news, of course, about the bungled robbery at the museum last night and had gotten brief text messages from Peter Heusen about the debacle. The sloppy keyboarding suggested the man had been drinking.
Thomas sighed. The theft had been so perfectly planned, the haul so astonishing… When Heusen had heard that Tony Olsen was putting together a memorial for Rosemary, Christopher and Heusen had immediately put together a plan that would allow them to snag one of the bigges
t troves in the history of art: works by da Vinci and Michelangelo, mostly, but also by Rembrandt, Watteau, Rubens, Tiepolo, and de La Tour. Christopher had buyers for virtually all of the pieces in place, and the net to him, after expenses, would have been millions.
But it’d all turned to dust….
And topping off the tragedy, just today he’d received that phone call.
“I have information on Christopher Thomas….”
Information? Christopher Thomas had been murdered by his wife and stuffed into an iron maiden. Christopher Thomas was dead and buried. Christopher Thomas was a faded memory—a despised or hated or, in a few cases, envied memory. That’s all the information he wanted anyone to have.
But he knew the caller.
A noise behind him intruded. He swiveled around to see Tanya—no, her name was Taylor, right?—pulling her tiny dress back on. When he’d yanked the handful of Lycra off her an hour ago and flung it to the floor, he’d been focusing on her supple body and trying to forget about the failed heist. The sex was supposed to distract him from the loss; it had zero effect, and he blamed her for that.
“Oooh,” she said, eyeing his cognac, “I wanna cosmo.”
“No. Leave.”
She blinked. “Well, you’re not very nice.” In a little girl’s singsong tone.
He walked away, ignoring her. He heard her pull together her things and leave, sighing loudly.
Who cared? There’d be more Tanyas. Wait… Taylors.
He called Heusen again, using the untraceable, prepaid mobiles that they relied on in their operations.
Finally an answering click.
“Hello?” said the slurred voice.
“You haven’t been answering me,” Thomas snapped.
“The police’ve been taking statements from everybody.”
“You’ve been drinking. Now is not the time to get drunk. What’s going on? Do they suspect anything?”
“About us? I don’t know. I didn’t hang around at the museum to find out.”
“Where are you? What’re you doing now?”
“Sitting on the boat and getting drunk.”
“Well,” Thomas said slowly, “I think we’ll be fine. There’s been no personal contact?”
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