Skeleton Dance

by Aaron Elkins

  "I should think so, yes."

  "So we're back to suicide. Felix!" he called. "Are you or are you not intending to bag the hands at some point?"

  "And how was I supposed to bag them?" said the aggrieved Felix. "He had them under him, didn't he? And then I didn't want to interrupt you and the inspector."

  Muttering, he knelt by the body's right hand, shook out a paper bag, produced a length of cord, and expertly began to slide the bag around the hand, when Joly intervened.

  "One moment, Felix." He dropped to his knees beside the investigator, so intent on the yellowed, upturned hand that for once he gave no thought to grass stains. "Roussillot, what would this be?"

  He was pointing at the base of the little finger, which was encircled by a sort of furrow, as if a tightly wound rubber band had been removed only a little while ago.

  "Well, now…" Roussillot said, bending attentively over the hand. "Yes. You notice that the skin here is not only indented, but has a dry, withered appearance, quite different from the greasiness of the rest of the hand. As to its cause—"

  "Could he have worn a ring there recently?" Joly asked impatiently.

  "A ring? Why, yes," Roussillot said. "It could very well be that. It probably is that. The compression of the tissue would have… my God, Joly, you don't think—?"

  Chapter 22

  Gideon had started to nod peacefully off over Psalmanzar for the third time when Monsieur Leyssales knocked discreetly on the wall beside the open door. There was a telephone call for the professor. If he liked he could take it on the desk telephone in the lobby.

  "Gideon, we have Bousquet," were Joly's first words.

  "Congratulations, Lucien. When did you find him? Where?"

  "This morning, on the riverbank a few miles below Les Eyzies, where he'd been for the last several days."

  In Gideon's drowsy state of mind it took a few seconds to penetrate. "He's dead?"

  "A suicide, it seems."

  "It seems?"

  "A figure of speech. There's not much doubt. He shot himself—with the same rifle that killed Carpenter."

  "The same rifle that—why would he—what would he—"

  "I have no idea."

  "Where was the gun, Lucien?"

  "Where you'd expect. Underneath the body. He had collapsed forward onto it."

  "His fingerprints were on it?"

  "They were. Faint, smudged… but ultimately identifiable."

  "Huh. So you think… what? That he killed Jacques and then he went out and killed himself?"

  "I should be surprised if it were the other way around," said Joly dryly. "And apparently a single day elapsed between the two. Roussillot, after endless equivocation, has finally concluded that he's been dead about two days. Beaupierre was killed three days ago, as you know. Are you there?" he asked when there was no response from Gideon.

  "Lucien, I have to tell you, I have a funny feeling about all this. Why would Bousquet kill himself?"

  "Remorse?"

  "You're not serious."

  "I'm simply—Gideon, if you're free, why don't you come to the morgue here in Périgueux? It would be easier to talk. And Roussillot especially asked me to say he would be happy to delay the autopsy until you arrived."

  "Please, not on my account. I'm not that keen on autopsies. I like my corpses ten thousand years old. Not," he added, "that I don't appreciate the gesture."

  "He'll be disappointed. He was hoping you'd be there."

  "What for? He's the pathologist, not me."

  "I think he wants to show off a little for you. He doesn't often get so distinguished an audience, you know."

  "I'm flattered, but—"

  "And the truth is, I would be more comfortable as well. Not that Roussillot isn't perfectly competent, of course, but all the same… well, you know how it is, and inasmuch as you're here in any event—"

  "Okay, sure. I doubt if I'll be any help, but tell me how to get there."

  He used the pen chained to the reception desk to jot down the instructions. "Thanks, I'll see you in a little while. Oh, and please—will you tell Roussillot to feel perfectly free to get started without me? In fact, encourage him to." Watching that first big "Y" incision—clavicles to pubis—was something he could easily live without.

  "Who was it?" Julie asked, looking up a moment later. "Anything important?"

  "Joly," Gideon said. "They found Bousquet. He killed himself, apparently right after murdering Jacques. He used the same rifle that killed Ely."

  "Really!" She put down her pen. "So that's that," she said thoughtfully after a few moments. "All the loose ends have been tied up."

  "Yeah. That's what's bothering me about it."

  Julie looked at him with her head cocked. "Why should tying up the loose ends bother you?"

  "Because every loose end is tied up. Every question is answered. Who faked the Tayac find? Jacques. Who murdered Ely? Jacques and Bousquet together. Who murdered Jacques? Bousquet. Who killed Bousquet? Bousquet killed himself. End of story, case closed. No more questions to ask, and nobody to ask them of if we did have them."

  "But it happens that way sometimes, doesn't it? Murderers do kill themselves. I still don't see the problem."

  "Look, Julie, one of the things I've learned about people murdering each other is that it's never neat, it's never cut-and-dried. It's always messy, there are always loose ends, ambiguities, things that don't add up. But this package is too… too tidy, that's all."

  "Gideon, didn't you tell me the other day that I was getting too melodramatic? Well, to tell you the truth—"

  "All right, think about the air rifle for a minute. Why would Bousquet have hung on to it for three years? Did he take it with him to Corsica? And especially—why would he bring it back here?"

  "Well, presumably he did show up with murder on his mind."

  "But why bring the Cobra? An air rifle, even a super high-powered one like this one, still makes a lousy weapon. Even your cheapo Saturday night special would beat it for killing power. Besides that, it's awkward. It's big, and hard to hide, and I think you need air from a diving tank or something to charge it… and anyway, he didn't shoot Jacques, he hit him with a hand-axe. I'm telling you, something's off. We're being had."

  "I remember when I first met you, before you were the Skeleton Detective," Julie said wistfully, "you were such a nice, innocent, mild-mannered professor. You trusted everyone, you didn't see trickery and deception everywhere you looked."

  "You're right. That was before I learned the First Rule of Forensic Analysis."

  "Which is?"

  "When in doubt, think dirty," he said, laughing. "Look, I'd better get going. They want me in Périgueux, at the morgue. For the autopsy, I'm sorry to say. I should be back in three or four hours."

  "Lucky you," Julie said, getting up. "Well, I'll drive you. It's starting to rain again."

  "No, don't bother. I'm fine, really."

  "No, you're not fine."

  "Yes, I am fine. Anyway, I want to think this stuff through on the way."

  "That, my darling absent-minded professor, is what I'm worried about. I've seen you drive while you were thinking something through and it's a terrifying sight; no one on the road is safe. I'll drive; you think. And anyway," she added, reaching into the leather purse on the floor beside her, "I have the keys."

  Once in Périgueux, with the rain tapering off and the sun beginning to peek through, they left the car in a parking garage near the Arènes, the public gardens on the site of the Gallo-Roman arena, and found a sidewalk café overlooking some of the ancient, tumbled blocks of stone, where they agreed to meet again in two hours. In the meantime, Gideon suggested, it might be nice to have an afternoon espresso, and perhaps even a bite, before he reported to the police commissariat.

  "Not that I don't enjoy your company," Julie said, stirring sugar into her coffee at an awninged table, "but I thought you were in a hurry. Aren't they waiting for you?"

  "Oh, I don't think an
other half-hour's going to make any difference. Besides, the longer I take to get there, the further along Roussillot's going to be on the autopsy, which suits me fine."

  "It does? I would have thought that the further it goes the worse it gets."

  "Not to me, it doesn't. The longer the cutting goes on, the less the thing on the table resembles a human being. It's just a pile—well, separate piles, really—of intestines, liver, spleen… the lungs and heart come out early, you see—"

  "Whup-whup." Julie held up her hand, traffic-cop style. "I get the idea; thank you so much for explaining. Here, you're welcome to my tart, if you like. I can't imagine what happened to my appetite."

  "I'm sorry, honey," he said sincerely, then sighed. "Well, I've probably procrastinated about as much as I can get away with; I'd better be on my way." He tossed off the last of his coffee, stood up, and bent to kiss her. "See you in a couple of hours. Have fun."

  She gave him a sympathetic smile. "You have fun too."

  At the commissariat, he was met at the front desk by Joly, who led him downstairs to the autopsy room. (Like most autopsy rooms, it was in the basement, where there were no windows to distract the technicians on the inside or to spoil the day of any innocents who might happen to look in from the outside.)

  On the way, he succinctly filled Gideon in on what had been learned so far. That the corpse was Bousquet's had been confirmed with visual identifications, by his landlady, by Émile Grize, and by Audrey Godwin-Pope. That the weapon found under his body was the same one that had killed Ely Carpenter had also been established: the ballistics section had compared the rifling of the Cobra's barrel to the rifling marks on the pellet found under Carpenter's body in the abri and determined that they matched.

  "What about Bousquet?" Gideon asked. "Did you find the bullet—I mean the pellet?"

  "It's still in his body, unless Roussillot has removed it in the last few minutes. But X-rays have been taken, and it shows up quite clearly—a wasp-waisted pellet of the same approximate size as the one that killed Carpenter. We'll know for certain later, but I think that for now we can assume that the same weapon was used in both cases."

  "Lucien," Gideon asked, stopping him on the landing between floors, "how positive are you that it is a suicide?"

  Joly looked down his long nose at him. "Do you doubt it?"

  "I'm just asking."

  Joly shrugged. "Well… fairly positive, I'd say. No, quite positive, but I'll leave it to Roussillot to explain the medical details to you; as you'll see, the trajectory of the projectile, the nature of the wound itself—oh, all sorts of things point to suicide, along with certain psychological tendencies… you seem a little doubtful, Gideon, or am I mistaken?"

  "Frankly, you seem a little doubtful, Lucien."

  "I? No, not at all," Joly said doubtfully. "Roussillot makes an excellent case."

  "Then what's bothering you?"

  "Nothing is bothering me." Irritably, he produced and lit a cigarette. "All right, to tell you the truth, it's only that everything… all these events… they come together so, so—"

  "Neatly?"

  "Yes, precisely!" Joly said, jabbing with the cigarette for emphasis. "There is no Carpenter to question, no Beaupierre to question, and now no Bousquet to question. Nobody! The snake begins at its own tail, swallows itself, and disappears entirely, and we are left with no choice but to take things as they appear. Has that occurred to you?"

  "You know, now that you mention it, I think it has crossed my mind. Come on, we might as well see what Roussillot's come up with."

  The autopsy room was small but up-to-date: a square, unsettlingly antiseptic room with walls of white, glazed brick, harsh fluorescent ceiling lights, stainless steel sinks, and two doors, one a swinging hospital-type door from the corridor, through which Joly and Gideon entered, the other a massive stainless steel affair leading to the refrigerated storage area beyond.

  In the center was a single zinc autopsy table fitted out with its own double-sink, hoses, and drains at one end to flush away the many sorts of gunk that needed flushing away, and above it a microphone for in-process dictation, a couple of spotlights on tracks, and a hanging, meat-market-type scale (an apt metaphor, Gideon reflected) with a basin for weighing various body parts.

  Roussillot, clad in a clean white lab coat, was waiting for them beside the table, on which lay the nude, hairy, supine body of a man, his head propped up on a curved plastic neck rest, his hair stiff and wild. A black hole in almost the exact center of his chest, at the sternal notch marking the midpoint of the border between thorax and abdomen, stood out starkly against the putty-colored skin, which had by now begun to slough off here and there. Other marks of decay were unpleasantly evident as well, but Gideon was relieved to see that the corpse had been washed, which had gotten rid of the maggots, and that there wasn't much smell; he had steeled himself for a gagging stench, considering that the dead man had been lying outdoors for several days in warm, humid weather.

  That was the good news. The bad news was that the body was untouched by the knife. Despite Gideon's cowardly dawdling at the café; Roussillot had kept his word and waited for him.

  He made himself take a hard look at the face. Discoloration, insect activity, and bloating had had their usual disagreeable effects, but it was still possible to get some idea of the living man's appearance.

  "Well, it's not 'Dr. Roussillot,'" he said to Joly. "I can tell you that much."

  Roussillot was understandably startled, but Joly quickly explained, to the pathologist's loud amusement.

  "Well, Dr. Oliver," Roussillot said, his blue eyes bright, "I look forward enormously to working with you. As you see—" He pointed hospitably to a wheeled side table with an assortment of shining instruments on it: scalpels, scissors, forceps, probes, saws, "—we are all ready for you; enough for two, and I think we'd better get started. There's a coat for you on the rack; gloves in the box."

  "Uh, thanks, but can we hold off for just a minute? Lucien's been telling me that you're pretty certain it's a suicide."

  "No, no, you'll never catch me saying 'certain,' not in this business. But the probability is extremely high, as I'm sure you can see for yourself."

  "I'm a little out of my element here, doctor. Perhaps you could show me?"

  Roussillot gave him grateful look. "With pleasure. Now then." He was practically rubbing his hands with professorial joy. "First of all…"

  First of all there was the nature of the external wound to be considered. As Professor Oliver had no doubt observed, the crater in Bousquet's chest, now so clean and bloodless, was obviously a contact wound. Although there had been no charring of the flesh, no powder-stippling, no soot—the professor was aware that an air rifle's charge, being no more than compressed air, would leave no such residue?—it was still eminently clear that the muzzle had been placed directly against the chest. This could be definitively shown by bringing the suicide weapon itself into contact with the wound. Here Roussillot, reaching behind him, grasped a sleek, modernistic-looking rifle with un-blued, stainless steel barrels, a gleaming walnut stock, and a green tag dangling from the trigger guard. Holding it above his head with both hands, he slowly lowered it, only a little theatrically, until the muzzle rested directly on the wound, neatly covering it.

  As Professor Oliver could plainly see, the faint purple-brown bruises around the wound were neither more nor less than a muzzle-stamp from this weapon; this very weapon and no other. The precise imprint of the muzzle itself could clearly be made out, as well as the end of the front sight immediately above it, and even the rim of one of the two air-reservoir cylinders just below it. In fact, an examination by lens would show that an imperfection in the steel of the air reservoir was exactly reproduced in the skin.

  It was all as he said, and Gideon nodded his agreement—as far as it went. "I can't argue with that, doctor, but after all a contact wound doesn't necessarily mean a suicide."

  "Necessarily, no," said Roussillot. "Usuall
y, yes."

  "You are speaking of a rifle, of course, and not a handgun, Roussillot," Joly said. "And so it is, Gideon. How many murderers equipped with a rifle would choose to walk up to their victims in order to place the muzzle of their weapons conveniently against their chests before firing?"

  "Yes, well, I guess that's true enough.… "

  "There are other considerations," said Roussillot, "all of which must be taken together. For example, there are no indications of struggle, and—although the laboratory has not finished its work—there seems to be nothing suggestive under the fingernails"

  "Mm."

  "Let us turn to the mind, the psychological conditions. Now, I don't claim to be a psychiatrist, but I've made a small study of the pathology of behavior as well as that of the bodily processes, and it seems to me that everything we know about this man's history points to his having a reactive-depressive personality with an inclination toward violent, sociopathic, and self-destructive behavior."

  It was clear that something more than "mm" was expected of him, and Gideon did his best to be tactful. "Yes, well, I can certainly see what you mean, but I'm afraid you're really out of my line now."

  "If you combine these traits with a repressed—"

  Gideon headed him off as politely as he could. "And what about the trajectory of the pellet?"

  "Ah, the trajectory, yes. Let us see what we have."

  He took an eight-inch probe from the table and delicately slipped it, rounded handle-side down, into the hole in Bousquet's chest, as much as possible letting it slide in of its own weight, down the tunnel that the pellet had torn through flesh and muscle, nerve and blood vessel. It went in about four inches and stopped—the dull clink when it hit the pellet was audible—and when Roussillot let go of it it remained in place, held by the tunnel's collapsed walls.