Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 02 - The Dark Place

by The Dark Place

  "Lots of times. What about those hand bones in the Reilly case, or the arm bone you said was sharpened when a dog had just chewed it up?"

  "Those were different. That humerus had been sharpened, only it was a dog that—" He stopped and joined John in easy laughter. John had earned the right to be critical.

  He wasn’t so sure about Julie, however. "What bothers you in the second place?" he said to her.

  She picked up one of the baskets. "These," she said. "I’ll check my texts later, but I’m sure these weren’t made by any recent Washington Indians. The form is wrong, and the way the decoration is overlaid. The twining itself doesn’t look right. At least I don’t think so."

  Here she might have a point. Gideon knew little about basketry. "You could be right," he said, not sorry about the opportunity to agree with her.

  Julie put the basket back on the table. "Besides that, there aren’t any Indians who live in the rain forest itself, and there never were, not on a steady enough basis to have graveyards."

  "Doc," John said impatiently, "is this point well made? I mean, was it carved by someone who knew what he was doing?"

  Gideon took the fragment in both hands, running his fingers along the facets. "It’s crude," he said, "but whoever made it had plenty of experience. Why? Were you thinking someone might have been trying to make it look like an Indian killing?"

  "Yeah," John said.

  "Then why bury the corpse? It was just by luck you found it at all."

  John nodded soberly. "I know. I’m just trying to cover all the angles." He looked down at the desk, suddenly uncomfortable. "Look," he said, "I’ve gone out of my way not to tell you about the Bigfoot tracks they found near the body—"

  "Bigfoot!" Gideon said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. "Come on, John, you’ve got a perfectly solvable crime here with a rational explanation. I’m not even going to discuss a creature for which there isn’t a sliver of physical evidence—no live specimens, no skeletal material, no fossils, no carcasses, not even a reliable photograph. The very notion that a giant anthropoid could exist unseen…" He looked suddenly at John. "What do you mean, you’ve gone out of your way not to tell me?"

  John’s eyes twinkled, but his mouth kept its serious line. "I thought you might give me a lecture if I mentioned it."

  Gideon laughed. "See? That confirms your good sense. So no more talk of Bigfoot." But then he said, "There were tracks?"

  "Yes," John said, "but definitely made yesterday, after we found the first skeleton, so there’s no direct connection. The local Sasquatch Society got all excited and made casts, and our people made some to send to headquarters. Fenster wouldn’t have anything to do with them. Said they were pranks."

  "He’s right. Forget about Bigfoot, John. You’ll make yourself and the FBI look ridiculous. And I’m sure as hell not going to get involved."

  "Look," John said, "I’m not stupid. I think it was a prank, too. But I’m not forgetting about anything that might be connected." After a moment he added, "You could at least look at the tracks."

  "It wasn’t Bigfoot, John, and I’m not spending my time giving credibility to a set of joke footprints."

  John was up again, thrashing the air with his hands the way he did when he was excited. "It wasn’t an Indian! It wasn’t Bigfoot! What was it, your average, everyday John Q. Citizen who walks around with a bone spear and kills people and buries them in the forest? Or maybe Eckert speared himself to death?"

  After a lunch of ham sandwiches and chocolate milk from Lake Quinault Merc, Gideon aged and sexed the Indian burials, explaining to Julie and John as he went along: a man in his forties, another man of about eighty, two elderly women, and two infants, possibly twins, who had been buried in one grave and misclassified by Fenster as a single burial. He had identified a horrendous abscess in the upper jaw of the old man as a probable cause of death, but there wasn’t enough left of the others to provide any more information.

  He put down the magnifying glass and the charred heel bone he’d been holding and rubbed the back of his neck.

  "John, I’m not doing you any good. Why don’t I just go on back up to Dungeness and get back to my dig?"

  "I guess you can if you want to, Doc, but why not relax and spend the night at the lodge? The Bureau’ll pick up your tab, and we’ll get you on a plane tomorrow."

  "The food’s quite good at the lodge, if that’s any incentive," said Julie, then added, as if she’d been addressing John all along, "Professor Oliver would be a help at the press conference tomorrow."

  "In that case, I’ll stay," Gideon said, smiling.

  Late that afternoon, John had flown back to Seattle, saying that he hoped to be back for the press conference. If not, Gideon was perfectly free to talk as an anthropologist about anything he had found but was not to speak for John or the FBI.

  "Also," John said with a smile, "please try not to engage, like, in any elaborate hypothesizing in advance of the facts."

  Gideon promised he wouldn’t, and he and Julie saw John off from the foot of the dock on the sunny blue lake. It seemed perfectly natural, then, to ask her if she was free for dinner, and he nonchalantly did so. She accepted equally matter-of-factly, and they agreed to meet in the lobby of the lodge in an hour and a half.

  Gideon did not often think about his appearance; not for the past few years, at any rate. He knew that he was not a conventionally handsome man; his nose, broken twice in college boxing matches, had long ago taken care of that. But he also knew his soft brown eyes combined with that mashed, crooked nose, heavy brow, and cleanly masculine jaw in a look of gentle ruggedness that many women found attractive. Whether the recent appearance of gray at his temples made him more attractive it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder.

  So why was he wondering now, standing in front of the mirror in the old-fashioned bathroom of his cottage? The reason was Julie, of course. She had reached him somehow, had stirred him in a way he hadn’t been stirred in a long time. During an unhurried, relaxing session in the old-fashioned, marvelously comfortable six-foot tub—there was no shower—he had found himself thinking and feeling things he’d almost been ready to put in his past.

  He was not on the prowl by any means, not the sort of man whose antennae were always quivering and alert. For nine years he had lived with Nora and had loved her as deeply and unreservedly as a man can love. There had been no one to compare with her when she was alive, and none since she’d been killed three years ago. Still, once in a long while a woman would come along who would rouse him and kindle the old feelings.

  At first, when he’d self-consciously begun to date again at thirty-seven, they’d all been intent on "significant emotional relationships"; all he’d been after was some straightforward, uncomplicated sex. More recently, as his own thoughts had begun to turn to significant emotional relationships, the women he seemed to meet just wanted to get laid and be done with it.

  He had no idea what Julie was after, doubted that she was after anything from him. She wasn’t even the kind of woman he usually found physically attractive, not blond and long-limbed and svelte, as Nora had been. Julie was black-haired, with slightly slanting jet-black eyes that seemed perpetually on the verge of laughter. She was round, and even a little plump—in a definitely pleasing way—and she lacked Nora’s cool elegance. Nora had looked wonderfully at home in a museum or a fine restaurant. Julie looked like she belonged in a kibbutz, standing in the sunlight with a hoe in her hand and white shorts on those provocative, curvy hips. He wondered what her legs looked like bare. Probably firm and tan and smooth. God knows they seemed attractive enough in those tight ranger pants.

  She was waiting for him when he got to the restaurant, and they ordered martinis before dinner. Gideon told her about the dig he was working on at Dungeness Bay during his fall teaching recess.

  "It’s a fabulous site. I turned up a scraper and some worked caribou bone inside of a week, and some charcoal, and then finally some human skeletal material—a male and a f
emale—just a few days ago. It’s all stratigraphically dated at twelve to thirteen thousand years. That makes it at least as old as the Manis Mastodon site near Sequim, maybe older."

  The waitress brought their martinis. "My name is Eleanor," she said, putting them on the table. "Enjoy."

  They touched glasses. Julie was smiling. "It’s nice to see a man so enthusiastic about his work."

  "It’s not just the work; it’s the site itself and the fact that I’m working it alone. The cave’s in the side of a cliff right on the edge of Dungeness Bay, looking across those magnificent straits. The digging itself is mostly a kind of mindless, easy work, you know, more dental pick than spade. And so you poke away and dream, and think, and every now and then you look up and there’s that blue water and the gulls…"

  Julie was looking at him over the rim of her glass, her black eyes twinkling. "I get the feeling you like being alone."

  Gideon frowned slightly. Was he sounding eccentric? Reclusive? "Well, sometimes, maybe, but it’s not as remote as I’ve made it sound. I spend a few evenings a week with an old professor of mine, and the site is right below a main road. When I finish up I just climb a few feet to the top of the cliff and walk across the road to my motel. TV, fridge, all the modern conveniences. If you’ve never been up that way you ought to come on up. It can’t be more than a three-hour drive. I’ll show you around."

  "Did I just get an invitation to your motel, Professor?"

  Gideon laughed. "Tell me something about you. How long have you been with the Park Service?"

  She told him she had been a ranger-naturalist for six years, first at Mesa Verde for a summer, then at Lassen, and now in the Olympics for the past two years. She had a master’s degree in ecology, with an anthropology minor, and a B.A. in psychology.

  Gideon sipped his martini, a good one, sharp and stony and ice-cold, and looked at her as much as listened. She had changed to a tailored beige pants suit that made her eyes and hair even blacker. And she didn’t look at all out of place in a fine restaurant, he decided, and would no doubt look splendid in a museum. When she bent her head to drink, her hair fell forward around her face in soft, dark swirls, as in a slow-motion television advertisement. Once, when they both leaned forward over the table, he smelled her hair’s clean, woodsy fragrance.

  Somehow, she began to talk about her personal life. She’d been married at eighteen in her hometown of Denver, but her young husband had had problems with drugs, and she’d divorced him after a few months. Then she’d gone into the Army and served as an MP in Germany.

  "That was an interesting experience. I learned to shoot; got pretty good at judo and karate too."

  "I think I’d better withdraw that invitation to my motel," Gideon said.

  When the waitress returned for their order, he hadn’t yet looked at the menu.

  "They’re famous for their grilled salmon here, Professor," Julie said.

  "She’s sure right about that, Professor," the waitress agreed, writing down the order with evident satisfaction when Gideon nodded his agreement.

  "Julie," Gideon said, "I’m the last person in the world to refuse a little respect, but I’d prefer ‘Gideon’ to ‘Professor,’ if that’s all right with you."

  "That’s fine; I just noticed that John calls you ‘Doc,’ so I thought you liked that sort of thing."

  "I told him long ago to call me by my first name, so he started calling me ‘Gid.’ ‘Doc’ is a compromise."

  Gideon noted that she didn’t ask him any personal questions and knew that John had told her about Nora. That pleased him; it meant that Julie had been interested enough to ask questions.

  When the salmon came, along with a bottle of Gamay Beaujolais that Gideon had ordered over Eleanor’s injunction that white wine went with fish, it was placed before them worshipfully.

  "Enjoy," said Eleanor again, her voice husky with reverence.

  The fish was indeed extraordinarily good, with pink, firm flesh that tasted like fine veal.

  "It’s called blueback salmon," Julie said. "The Quinault Indians have rearing pens on the lake, and they’re the only ones who can get them. The lodge has a special contract with them."

  "It’s superb."

  "They catch them with bone-tipped spears," said Julie, blandly chewing.

  Gideon put down his fork. "They what?"

  Julie laughed. "Joke. They use only the most modern methods, I assure you."

  "I’m glad to hear it," Gideon said, returning to the fish, but his thoughts had gone back to that triangular point on the workroom table. He sipped the beaujolais abstractedly.

  "Uh-oh," Julie said, "I’ve started him thinking serious things." She drained her glass and held it out to him to be refilled. "Let’s go back to us."

  Gideon slowly shook his head. "There’s something that bothers me…"

  "What?"

  "I don’t know, but something’s wrong. Or not wrong, just not right." He refilled her glass and his own. "The hell with it. Intuition is a sidewise kind of thing, and you can’t push it; at least not mine."

  They clicked glasses again and made small talk through the rest of the main course. When Gideon asked for the bill, Eleanor told them they couldn’t think of leaving without ordering the house specialty, a creamy chocolate cheesecake, with their coffee.

  "If she says ‘enjoy’ when she brings it, I’ll scream," Julie said.

  "So help me, I’ll kill her myself."

  "Enjoy," Eleanor said heartily when she placed the cake before them and was greeted by a burst of laughter that sent her away baffled but beaming.

  In the final ruddy afterglow of the day they walked down the deserted, cool lawn to the shore and listened to the gentle, steady lapping of the tiny waves against the gravel.

  "You’re going to throw a stone in the water," Julie said.

  "Why would I want to do that?" It had been just what he was going to do.

  "Inborn male trait. Genetic. Haven’t you noticed? From the age of three on, no boy or man can pass a body of water without tossing in a stone. That’s why our lakes are silting up."

  "Ah, but I’m no ordinary tosser. I’m a world-class skimmer, silver medal, ought-four Olympics. Give me some room, now."

  He sidearmed a pebble out into the darkening lake. Together they counted the soft splashes as it hopped over the water, leaving spreading circles on the smooth surface. "Two, three, four…five."

  "A new world’s record," Gideon said, "and you were there."

  "Let me try," Julie said. "Here goes."

  "You’re holding it too high. You have to do it underhand."

  "Oh, yeah?" She threw the stone. There was a heavy plunk.

  "One," they said.

  "See?"

  Julie shook her head. "Nope. I think it’s something men can do and women can’t, that’s all."

  "You might be right, actually. Women do throw differently than men; they have different shoulder girdles. In a male, the top of the sternum is on a level with the third thoracic vertebra—" He stopped when Julie laughed. "John’s right, you see," he said, smiling. "I do tend to give lectures."

  "I like it," she said. "You’re a professor. That’s the way you’re supposed to be. Are you absentminded, too?"

  "Well, actually, you know, that depends more or less on the nature of… What was the question again?"

  She laughed again, and they stood silent for a while, listening to the water and smelling the clean breeze coming off the lake. Gideon began to think about putting his arm around her. Did people still do that on first dates? Or did they run right off to bed, and only put their arms over each other’s shoulders when they were better acquainted?

  "Chilly?" he asked when he saw her shiver. "Would you like to get a nightcap at the bar?"

  "I don’t like bars very much."

  "I don’t either," he said with sincerity. "I have some Scotch in my cottage, though, right across the lawn."

  She looked at him for a long second. "I think maybe the b
ar would be better this time."

  As they turned from the lake, she smiled and took his arm. "I need a chance to practice up on my karate."

  After the soft, cool lakefront, the bar was a shock, full of happy, noisy people, mostly in their fifties and sixties. Even the walls were crowded: elk, antelope, and deer heads peered down from every flat space with lustrous, ruminant eyes. There was a monstrous salmon over the bar and even a small bear, seemingly frozen in midstep with one foot raised as it was padding over the top of the upright piano.

  They found a free table in a corner and sat down. The laughter and closeness had made them suddenly shy with each other, and they were still searching for something to talk about when Gideon’s brandy and Julie’s Grand Marnier came.

  "I’m going to practice, you know," Julie said. "I intend to beat your rock-skimming record, even if my vertebrae are funny."

  "It’s not that they’re funny," Gideon said brightly, working hard to reawaken the conversation, "it’s just that their relationship to the sternum…" He put down his brandy snifter abruptly. "Holy cow, do you know where your seventh thoracic vertebra is?"

  "I’m not sure. Have I lost it?"

  "No, I’m serious," he said. "It’s just about the middle of the back, at the thickest part of the rib cage."

  "That’s fascinating, but I have the feeling I’m missing something."

  "Julie, the seventh thoracic—the one the spear point was in—it’s here…" He groped over his right shoulder with his left hand, and under his left arm with his right hand, but he couldn’t reach it. "Let me palpate yours," he said, leaning toward her.

  "Professor Oliver! Is that legal in a public place?"

  "Damn it, Julie—"

  "Yes, sir," she said quickly, putting down the liqueur and turning so he could reach her back.

  His sure fingers quickly found the familiar prominence of the lowest cervical vertebra at the base of her neck, then the first thoracic, and the second. After that the back muscles made the spines harder to feel, but he worked his way carefully down, counting aloud, until he pressed the seventh.