Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 06 - Icy Clutches

by Icy Clutches

"Well, there isn't much,” Gideon said, “but I think we ought to be able to come to a few general conclusions about just who we have here. Tell me, do you lose many people out there?"

  "We don't lose any," Tibbett said defensively. “Well, a few every year, of course, what with crevasses, and slides, and people who refuse to take commonsense precautions, but as far as I know, the only people who ever died right there, right on Tirku Glacier, were the ones in 1960."

  "So these pretty much have to be from the expedition?"

  "Well, yes, certainly, I'd say so. Narrows it down, doesn't it?"

  "To three people,” Gideon agreed. He pulled some old newspapers from the top of a file cabinet, spread them on the table next to the box, and took the boot out. “Got something that will cut through this?"

  Parker produced a utility knife. Gideon used it to cut the still-knotted leather thong, then slit the boot itself down the middle from toe to heel, and peeled the two halves downward. The mildewy smell that had hung in the air thickened noticeably.

  Tibbett made a face and rolled himself a little farther back. Parker flinched but held his ground.

  "The smell's not from the bones,” Gideon reassured them. “It's just rotting wool.” He tugged gently at the soggy, moldering tufts of material and pulled them easily apart, revealing a complete set of tarsals—ankle bones somewhat crushed but still pretty much in place, and most of the metatarsals and phalanges—the foot and toe bones—considerably jumbled. Here and there were shreds of brown skin and shriveled ligament.

  "Ah, would you prefer that we leave while you examine them?” Tibbett asked hopefully. “We wouldn't want to get in your way."

  "It's up to you. This'll probably take no more than half an hour, but I don't really think you'll find it too fascinating."

  Tibbett leaped at the opportunity. “Well, then, we'd better get going. We have things to do."

  "What things?” Parker asked.

  "Things,” Tibbett said.

  "Actually,” Gideon said, “if you wouldn't mind, maybe one of you could do me a favor and get some information from Tremaine, or maybe from Judd or Henckel."

  Parker brightened. “Sure, what do you need?"

  "I want to know what the three people who were killed looked like. Height, weight, build, that kind of thing. Distinguishing physical characteristics. And if they know about any old injuries that might show up on the bones."

  Parker nodded. “Sure, you bet.” He hesitated, frowning. “Am I wrong, or didn't I read somewhere that you didn't want to be told those things when you were working on a case?"

  "No, you're right. Anthropologists are like anybody else. Other things being equal, they see what they expect to see. I'm more objective if I don't know who I'm supposed to be looking at. But by the time you come back I'll be done, and we can see how well my findings match what you find out."

  "Right, got it.” Parker took his flat-brimmed hat from a peg on the wall. “Anything you need here, Gideon? Paper...?"

  "No, thanks. This is just going to be a quick-and-dirty run-through. I called my department from the lodge and asked them to Fed-Ex my tools. They ought to be here tomorrow or the next day, and that's when I'll get down to the nit-picking."

  "Well, there's coffee if you want some.” He placed the hat on his head and carefully adjusted it. “I wouldn't mess with those donuts if I were you. Been here about three weeks."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 4

  * * * *

  Gideon started with the mandible. He picked it up in both hands, turning it slowly, his elbows on the table. Considering that it had spent thirty years or so grinding along in a glacier, it was in pretty good shape. It was male; he knew that at once from the ruggedness, the large size, and the double prominences of the chin. (In the old days, before the sexest terminology had undergone rehabilitation, males had had square jaws. Now they had chins with double prominences.)

  And it was Caucasian, although here he was on less certain ground. Race was trickier than sex—to start with, you had more choices—and mandibles didn't offer a lot of clues. Like most physical anthropologists he didn't always find it easy to say precisely how he knew from looking at it that a certain mandible was Mongoloid, or black, or white. But—like most physical anthropologists—when he knew, he knew. And he had little doubt that the sophisticated calculations of discriminant-function analysis would bear him out when he got his tools to make some measurements (and his calculator to do some arithmetic).

  Aging was more straightforward. The mandible had belonged to an adult; that was obvious from the one tooth in place; a third molar, a wisdom tooth with a good five to ten years’ wear on it. Exactly how old an adult? Well, if you took the average age of third-molar eruption—eighteen—and added that five or ten years to it, you came up with an age of twenty-three to twenty-eight, and that was Gideon's guess.

  But here he was on shaky ground again. Eighteen might be the average age that wisdom teeth came up, but betting on averages would make you wrong more often than right, especially with something as wildly variable as third-molar eruption. As he liked to point out to his students, an awful lot of people had drowned in San Francisco Bay, which was just three feet deep—on the average.

  And as for that “five or ten years of wear,” it sounded fine, but it was even less reliable. Tooth wear depended on what you chewed. If you ate a lot of gritty, abrasive stuff, your teeth were going to wear down quickly. If you lived on puddings and jellies, on the other hand, you'd have a few problems, but worn teeth wouldn't be one of them.

  All of which suggested that twenty to thirty-five would be a more prudent estimate than twenty-three to twenty-eight. But what the hell, Gideon thought, why not go with his first impression, which was (as he often told himself) no mere shot in the dark, but the soundly based if intuitive assessment of a highly trained scientist? Well, make it twenty-five, plus or minus three. That would narrow things down and still be reasonably defensible.

  Was there anything else the mandible could tell him? No dental work on the molar, of course; that would have made it too easy. And no signs of pathology. Eleven of the twelve tooth sockets were empty, but their margins, where they hadn't been broken or abraded, were crisp, without any sign of bone resorption, which meant that there had been no healing. Which meant in turn that they had loosened and fallen out after death. Which is what usually happened in skulls that took any kind of tossing around. The only reason the third molar was still in place was that it was slightly impacted, wedged crookedly into the angle of the ramus.

  There were a few signs of trauma: a curving crack in the cusp of the molar and some crushing at the back of the left mandibular condyle, the rounded projection that fits into a recess just in front of the ear. And there were a few fracture lines radiating from the broken edge where the right side of the jaw had been sheared off just behind the empty socket of the first bicuspid. All bore signs of having happened right around the time of death—what pathologists called perimortem trauma. Nothing surprising there. When you were done in by an avalanche, there were bound to be a few dings.

  So: What he had was a male Caucasian of about twenty-five, probably of at least average size and in apparent good health, with nothing to suggest that he hadn't been killed in an avalanche and a few things to suggest that he had. He'd go over it more carefully when his equipment arrived, but he didn't think there was anything else to learn from it; at least nothing that would help in making an identification.

  He put it down and picked up the femoral fragment. It was the upper six or seven inches of the bone, and it had taken more of a beating than the mandible. It had obviously been well chewed over, and apparently by more than one kind of animal: bear for certain, and something smaller, a marten or weasel. From the looks of it the crows or ravens had had a go at it too. Still, there was always something to be learned...

  He fingered the head, the caput femoris, the golfball-sized hemisphere that fitted into the acetabulum to make
the ball-and-socket joint of the hip. Most of it had been gnawed away, but he could see enough to tell that it was mature; the very end of the bone, the epiphysis, was securely attached to the shaft, which happened at seventeen or eighteen for this particular union. And the sex was male. He didn't need measuring calipers to see that the diameter of the head was somewhere near fifty millimeters, well above the normal female range.

  And that was all there was to say about the femur. No way, unfortunately, to tell if it had come from the same person as the mandible. Later he'd try calculating a total height estimate from it, but for now he had to settle for adult male, period.

  That left the contents of the boot, and there wasn't much to learn there. The twenty-six bones of the human foot—seven irregularly shaped tarsals comprising the ankle and heel, five long metatarsals forming the arch, and fourteen stubby little phalanges making up the toes—were singularly lacking in information of use to the forensic anthropologist. Either that, or feet had understandably failed to capture the forensic anthropological imagination enough to stimulate any detailed studies.

  Whichever it was, all Gideon could say about them after he'd cleaned them, arranged them, and briefly examined them was that the foot, like the mandible and femur, had belonged to a fairly large adult male. The large talar surface told him that, and the bulky metatarsals. (Not that it took an anthropologist to figure it out. How many people were there walking around in size twelves who weren't male, adult, and reasonably large?) He'd know more after his tools and tables came, but even then he wasn't expecting much of anything to come from it.

  He stretched, wandered around the room until he found a chipped mug on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, and poured himself some coffee from the automatic maker on the corner of one of the desks. He gave serious consideration to the two withered cake donuts in the open Hostess box, but decided in the end to heed Parker's warning. No place to wash his hands first anyway.

  He stepped out onto the wooden porch. The crisp breeze, straight off the glaciers, sent a shiver crawling down his back (or was that the bitter black coffee?), but it felt good to be out in the fresh air after bending over those stale, sad fragments. He felt a little stale himself, or perhaps just disappointed. He hadn't come up with much of anything. He didn't even know how many people were represented on that table.

  He changed his mind about having a donut, went back in, got a paper towel to hold it in, and came back out, munching slowly.

  The scanty results weren't his fault, of course; there simply were no distinctive features, nothing to separate one individual human being from another; no healed fractures, no signs of surgery, no distinctive anomalies or peculiar genetic formations. The only interesting features, really, were those perimortem injuries to the mandible. Funny, when you thought about it, how much they...

  He frowned, finished off the donut with his third bite, and went back inside. He picked up the mandible again, thoughtfully stroking the broken margin with his thumb. Then he fingered the cracked molar, the crushed condyle. Was there something to think about here after all, or was he just—

  The door opened. “Hey, are you still at it?” Parker asked. “You need some more time?” He waited at the door. Behind him Tibbett peered warily over his shoulder.

  Gideon glanced up at the wall clock. They'd been gone almost an hour. It had seemed like fifteen minutes, but he was used to that when he got absorbed in skeletal material. Reluctantly he put the mandible down: He could give it some more thought tomorrow, when he had a decent lens.

  "No, come on in,” he said. “I'm just about finished."

  Parker approached. Tibbett kept pace with him, remaining a gingerly half-step behind.

  Gideon told them as much as he was relatively sure of. The mandible was from a male Caucasian of twenty-five, give or take three years, probably above average size. The femur and the foot were also both adult male, both above average size. No indicators of race, but no reason to think they weren't also Caucasian. That was it. His materializing questions about the mandible he kept to himself for the time being.

  "Well—does that mean they're all from one person?” Tibbett asked.

  Gideon spread his hands. “It could be one person, could be three. There isn't any duplication of parts, so there's no obvious proof that it's more than one, but that doesn't mean it isn't. And the appearance of the bones isn't different enough—or similar enough—to say for sure whether they all belong to the same person. And except for the bones in the boot, none of them are adjacent to each other in the living body, so we can't even put them together to see how well they fit or don't fit."

  Tibbett's eyebrows went up. "That's the way you tell?"

  Gideon smiled. Explaining skeletal analysis was like telling someone how you made a matchstick disappear or plucked a coin out of nowhere. A lot of otherwise intelligent people were disappointed when they found out there wasn't any magic involved.

  "Well,” he said, looking soberly at the assistant superintendent, “I'm thinking of applying the Baker and Newman regression equations for determining bone association from relative weights in ostensibly commingled remains. If I can get an accurate scale."

  "Ah,” Tibbett said, his sense of propriety restored. “We'll certainly see that you get an accurate scale."

  "Well, it's not three people,” Parker said. “I can tell you that right now."

  Gideon looked inquiringly at him.

  "There were three people on that survey team,” Parker said, “but only two of them were men. The other was a woman, Jocelyn Yount. And since these bones are all from men, they can't be her, right? That leaves James Pratt and Steve Fisk."

  "Why, that's right,” Tibbett said appreciatively.

  "But we still don't know for a fact that these are from the survey,” Gideon said.

  Parker shook his head. “Nah, those are the only missing people we've ever had in that section of the bay. Since they started keeping records, anyway. Arthur's right about that."

  "Well, of course I am,” Tibbett agreed.

  And he probably was. Certainly there was nothing about the bones that suggested that they hadn't been there for twenty-nine years. True, they still had a trace of the distinctive candle-wax odor that meant the fat in the marrow was somewhere beyond the rancid stage but short of the dried-up stage. Ordinarily this would mean the time of death had been anywhere from six months to four or five years earlier. But this too was wildly variable, depending on conditions, and cold could slow it down tremendously, as it retarded all degenerative changes in dead tissue. And with bones that had been in a glacier for two or three decades, you were going to get one hell of a slowdown.

  "Owen,” Gideon said, “did you have a chance to talk to anyone about what these people looked like?"

  "Sure did. Dr. Henckel and Professor Tremaine both."

  "And? Did either of the men fit what we seem to have here? Caucasian, twenty-five or so, tall, probably well built?"

  Parker laughed, dropped into a wheeled swivel chair, and pushed off a few inches, heels in the air. “They both did. Both big healthy guys, twenty-four, twenty-five years old."

  Gideon hesitated. “Did they say either of them had anything wrong with his face?"

  "His face?"

  "A wired jaw, maybe; something like that?"

  "No, why?"

  "Yes, why?” Arthur asked. “What are you getting at?"

  "No matter. Well, the bones could belong to either of them, or both. I'm afraid I can't do any better than that."

  "Well, that's that, then.” Tibbett rubbed his hands briskly together. “All we can do is what we can do. Thanks so much for your help, Gideon. I'll initiate procedures to see that the remains—"

  "Wait a minute, Arthur,” Gideon said, “I think you're jumping the gun. I haven't given those bones a decent going-over yet. Besides, you're going to want to go back to the Tirku area to see if there's anything else out there."

  "I'm going to want to do no such thing.” Tibbett's voic
e ratcheted up a notch. “We've already searched. I found that horrible jawbone. It was the most macabre experience I've ever had in my life.” His eyes rolled up. “Alas, poor Yorick."

  "I think Dr. Oliver's right,” Parker said.

  "Why? What is there to be gained? What—"

  But the ranger knew how to get his supervisor's attention. “We'll have to submit a recovery report on this. How will it look to Washington if we can't put down that we instituted a systematic search for remains?"

  "I just told you—"

  "With equipped, professional park-ranger personnel.” Tibbett sagged. “All right, all right. Let's get it done. What do you suggest?"

  "Jesus Christ,” Parker said abruptly, looking at the empty Hostess box. “You ate one of those donuts?"

  "I get hungry when I work,” Gideon said. “It wasn't that bad."

  "Yeah, but still—"

  "Owen, this is serious,” Tibbett snapped. “Now what do you suggest?"

  Parker grunted good-naturedly. “Bill Bianco's taking the glacier rescue class up Tarr Inlet for tomorrow's field training. Why don't Russ, Frannie, and I hop a ride on the boat? They can drop us off at Tirku and pick us up on the way back. It'll give us a good three hours or so to look around."

  "Fine,” Tibbett said, sighing. “You have my approval."

  "You'll probably want to come too, Dr. Oliver,” Parker said.

  "I sure do."

  Tibbett made fluttery motions with his hands. “Just a minute. I don't know about that. We have to be careful here. Our insurance provisions wouldn't cover anybody who isn't on official government business."

  "Well, what the hell would you call this?” Parker asked, then added, “sir."

  "Well, I don't...Gideon, would you say it's absolutely necessary for you to be present?"

  Gideon leaned forward. “Absolutely,” he said earnestly. “If they do find some more bones, it'd be extremely important for me to observe the contextual and relational conditions firsthand."

  It would also beat hell out of spending the day moping through the rest of the Alaska Geographics.