Icy Clutches

by Aaron Elkins

  Gideon's cerebral cortex had no pertinent advice for him. He did the only thing he could think of, which was to launch himself at the light, or rather just below it, arms spread, hoping to get them around a body. But the person holding it was a step ahead of him. The flashlight was apparently being held well off to the side. Gideon's forearm brushed against what felt like a hip, but his arms dosed around nothing, and he fell heavily to the floor, immediately going into a roll and scrambling toward the light again.

  It went abruptly out, leaving him trying to blink away the afterimages, then came on again a foot or two to the left. Was it farther away? Closer? He lashed out at it from his knees, feeling like an animal caught in a net of illumination, unable to get at its captors. The light went out as he thrust at it, and came on almost at once, a little more to the right. Out again. On again.

  An abrupt rustling sound, a sudden movement.

  Out again.

  * * * *

  Chug, chug, chug, chug. Slowly, the train slipped peacefully away into the darkness, the steady beat of the wheels lulling him into a...

  Train?

  Gideon opened his eyes. He was lying on his back on the floor of the contact station, a few feet from the open door, with a throbbing head and an upset stomach. Rolling his eyes gingerly upward, he could see the narrow black tops of spruce and hemlock trees framed in the doorway against the not-quite-as-black sky. He realized at once that he had been unconscious only a few seconds; the chugging noise was running footsteps on the path back to the lodge. He could still hear them, or rather the sounds of someone mounting the wooden stairs leading to the main building and the boardwalks that led to the rooms.

  He knew better than to try to give chase. It was going to be a few minutes before his legs would be able to take him anywhere; before the rest of him would want to go, anywhere. He wiggled his fingers, moved his toes. His nervous system seemed to be working all right. When he became aware of a hot, wet stinging at the left corner of his chin, he touched it with a finger. It was nothing awful; a small, raw scrape coated with a thin ooze of serous fluid and maybe a little blood. That was where he'd been hit, then. Probably with the flashlight. Not over the head, but on the jaw, the way a boxer was knocked out.

  That was fortunate; less likelihood of real damage this way. The mobile jaw automatically swiveled away from the force of a blow, diffusing it in a way that the more rigid cranium couldn't. All in all, he was sure he hadn't been seriously hurt. He felt no worse—no better either—than the couple of times he'd been knocked out several lifetimes ago when he was working his way through graduate school by boxing in local fight clubs. The disorientation and nausea were to be expected. And the fact that he couldn't remember the blow that had knocked him out was no cause for concern. That was normal. A transient axial distortion of the brain stem caused by a blow to the chin, which is what a knockout is, almost always resulted in retrograde amnesia that—

  "Ah, shut up,” he mumbled half aloud. Christ, what he didn't need now was another lecture from his cerebral cortex. Grunting, he pushed himself up on one elbow and waited, eyes closed, for the queasiness to subside a little. After a minute, he got cautiously to his feet. Everything ached, not just his jaw, but that was hardly a surprise. He switched on the ceiling lights and went to the counter. No surprise there either.

  The bones were gone.

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  Chapter 23

  * * * *

  "It's 9:00 A.M.,” Julie said in his ear. “Do you really want to get up, or would you rather sleep some more?"

  "Up,” Gideon mumbled into the pillow. “If I sleep any more, I won't be able to move at all."

  Softly she stroked the side of his head with the back of her fingers. “How's your jaw?"

  Gideon gave the question some thought. “My jaw's okay,” he said finally. “The rest of me feels like hell."

  I know, I know, he told his cerebral cortex. Generalized malaise and stiffness went along with postconcussive trauma reactions. Big deal.

  "Nothing to worry about,” he said. “I'm just a little achy.” He opened his eyes. Julie, already dressed, was sitting in an armchair she'd pulled to the side of the bed.

  "Coffee's on,” she said. “Want some?"

  "Uh-huh. Maybe a couple of aspirin, too."

  While she got them he worked up to a sitting position against the headboard and checked himself over more thoroughly. His shoulder and arm were all right. The scrape on his jaw was not much worse than a razor burn. Only the area on his left side, at the base of his ribs—where he'd bounced off the counter—was truly sore, and that wasn't as bad as it would have been had Julie not made him press some towel-wrapped ice to it when he'd gotten back to the room. He probed it with his fingers, flinching when he pressed too hard. It didn't feel as if anything were broken, but maybe he'd cracked that twelfth rib. Best to have it x-rayed when he got back home. Not that there was anything to do about a cracked twelfth rib anyway, other than wrapping it with one of those awkward canvas belts for a month. He leaned against the headboard, tipping his head back, muttering to himself. God, he was getting just a little old for this.

  He made himself get out of bed—otherwise he'd really stiffen up—got into his bathrobe, groaning under his breath, and shuffled carefully to the table and chairs near the window. It was a pearly, northern kind of day, gray but drenched with light. He grasped the arms of a chair and lowered himself slowly into it.

  Julie poured the coffee, watching him settle creakily down. “Gideon, does it ever occur to you that for a scholarly type you lead a—well, a rather physical sort of life?"

  "Yes, it does. I was just thinking about that myself. I don't know why it is. It's not as if I invite it."

  "Mm,” she said noncommittally, watching him down the aspirin and start on the coffee. “John stopped in about twenty minutes ago. He's been talking to all of them."

  He looked up from the cup. “Has he gotten anywhere? Does he know—"

  She shook her head. “No more than he did last night."

  Which wasn't much. The three of them had sat around the room for almost two hours trying to make sense of things. John had briefly considered a late-night search of the Tremaine party's rooms (on a voluntary basis; they had no warrants), but they had agreed there was no point. What would he be looking for? The chance that the person who had taken the hones had brought them back to his or her room was nil. They had probably been tossed into the thick woods, or buried under some brush or in a rotted log, or thrown into the cove itself.

  So Gideon had lain back on the bed, holding the ice to his ribs, while John, with an attention to detail that was new to Gideon, had him describe three separate times what had happened in the shack. Then they had fruitlessly tossed around ideas on what anyone could have wanted with the bones. At midnight Julie finally threw John out, settled Gideon down, and turned out the lights.

  Now she poured some coffee for herself and sat down next to him at the table, pursing her lips, frowning into her cup.

  "Okay, let's hear it,” he said brightly. Making it to the chair without hurting anything had cheered him up.

  She looked at him. “Hear what?"

  "Your new theory."

  "What makes you—"

  "Your expression. When you purse your lips like that it means something is being hatched:.

  She eyed him, her head cocked. “We've been married too long."

  "Not hardly. Come on, let's hear it."

  "Well...” She hesitated. “I keep coming back to Jocelyn and whether or not she's dead."

  He smiled at her. “No one's ever going to accuse you of prematurely giving up on a hypothesis. How can she not be dead? We've finally gotten ourselves a female femur—or at least we had a female femur. Whose else could it be?"

  "No, I was looking at it differently this time; the other way around. That femur is the only real evidence that Jocelyn is dead, right? Maybe somebody took it to get rid of that evidence."

&
nbsp; "To get rid of the evidence that she was killed? What for?"

  "I don't know, but why else would anyone take it? There wasn't anything special about it, was there? Just that it was female."

  "Yes, but nobody knew that except you and me. Remember, at the press conference I told them I hadn't sexed it yet."

  "All right, then, maybe they were trying to keep you from finding out. Maybe—"

  "Julie, how would they know it was female?"

  "Well, then...” She stretched and laughed. “You sure take all the fun out of it. Okay, what's your theory?"

  "Oh, no, I'm not even trying to come up with a theory. I'll just stick to what I'm good at: pointing out the flaws in yours. You know what? I'm hungry."

  "Good. John went to the dining room to get us all some breakfast. I could tell you'd be waking up in a few minutes, and I knew some food would do you good."

  "How could you tell I'd be waking up in a few minutes?"

  "Oh, you make these noises when you're starting to wake up."

  "Like what?"

  "Snork, unk, mrmp. Like that."

  He made a face. “You're right; we've been married too long."

  He had just finished getting into his loosest shirt and trousers when John got back.

  "Hey, Doc, you look great; halfway human again. Breakfast is on the way. Ham and eggs okay?"

  "Ham and eggs sounds wonderful.” Gideon lowered himself into the chair again, somewhat less stiffly than the first time. The aspirins were working, and moving around had loosened him up. “Julie says you haven't been getting much of anywhere."

  "Not so's you'd notice. But I'm starting to get some ideas. That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

  He had barely sat down when there was a double tap on the door. He got up to admit Cheri, the sunny, skinny waitress who'd been serving them at dinner.

  "You guys must rate,” she said. “We don't usually do room service.” She edged in sideways to clear the big metal tray on her shoulder, then stooped in a fluid, practiced movement, to put it on the table as smoothly and noiselessly as a professional bowler lays down a ball.

  "Ham and eggs, ham and eggs, ham and eggs,” she said, pulling the covers off the plates and setting them out. “OJ. all around. Sourdough toast. Coffee. That do it?"

  "Looks great,” John said. “Thanks, Cheri.” He rummaged in his wallet and came up with two dollar bills. “Wait a second. Doc, you got another couple of bucks? All I have is a twenty."

  But Gideon was sitting as if suddenly turned to stone, staring hard at nothing, and it was Julie who had to supply the bills. “He's oblivious again,” she said matter-of-factly to John. “Can't you tell from his eyes?"

  And he was. When Cheri had come in lugging that heavy tray, something in his mind had popped open like a box. Theories, and hypotheses, and guesses all spilled out at the same time and fell into new niches. He'd had it all wrong. He'd been miles from the right questions, let alone the right answers. If not for Cheri he'd still be miles away.

  He'd made a mistake, a bad one; he and Dr. Worriner both. They had failed to follow the advice they'd given hundreds of students. Don't jump to conclusions. Never assign sex, age, or anything else on the basis of a single indicator. Well, they'd jumped. Worriner had shown him two partial left humeri in Juneau, both identified as male, and Gideon had agreed with the identification. He had also agreed with the conclusion: The bones belonged to Steven Fisk and James Pratt, the only two males caught in the landslide.

  Wrong. Wrong because one of those arm bones wasn't male at all. That piece with the prominent, rugged, oh-so-obviously masculine deltoid tuberosity...was female. He was ready to bet on that now, thanks to Cheri. Because—how had he allowed himself to forget?—there was one kind of habitual activity that could do that to a woman's humerus. Oh, there were plenty of things that would develop the bone overall, but just one, as far as he knew, that would exaggerate only the deltoid tuberosity without also developing the other muscle insertion points.

  Waiting tables. Lifting trays, year after year, with the time-honored technique Cheri had been using all week. Male or female, anyone who hefted those thirty-pound trays five days a week was eventually going to come out of it with a hell of a deltoid tuberosity on the weight-bearing arm. If an anthropologist wasn't careful, if he relied on that criterion alone, he could easily misidentify the humerus of a hardworking waitress as that of a man.

  Which is just what he'd done, and what Worriner had done before him. But at least Worriner had an excuse; anthropologists hadn't known about the “waitress tuberosity” in 1964. Gideon, however, had no excuse but carelessness; carelessness and wanting the old man to have done it right. The fact that the rest of Worriner's work had been competent, that the other identifiable bones had all been male, that the humeral fragment had simply given him nothing else to go on, all had led him into being sloppy and acquiescent.

  My God, where had his brain been? What was it Cheri had said a couple of days ago at dinner? I got muscles on my muscles. And how could he have forgotten what Shirley Yount had been shouting at Elliott Fisk the day Gideon had gone up to talk with them all about the bones? She was killing herself taking classes full time and still working in a goddamn Chinese restaurant, humping dishes every night. And hadn't Elliott countered with something about her having been a waitress since she'd been fifteen? How could Gideon have failed to remember that? How much more obvious could things be?

  That was Jocelyn's humerus, he was positive.

  Well, ninety-nine-percent positive.

  "I made a mistake,” he said aloud.

  "A mistake?” John said lazily. He and Julie had begun their breakfasts.

  "On the bones."

  Julie put down her fork. “You made a mistake on the bones?"

  "Is that so amazing?"

  "It's just nice to be reassured that you're human once in a while."

  "Come on, Julie, that's not fair. I never said I was infall—"

  "Take my word for it,” she interrupted in her gruff, funny imitation of his voice, “I've looked at ten zillion bones—"

  "One zillion,” he said, laughing along with them. “Not enough, I guess. Remember those two left humeri of Worriner's in Juneau?"

  "Sure. Both male. That's how you knew there were parts of at least two bodies: Pratt's and Fisk's."

  "Right. Only I was wrong. We were both wrong. One of them wasn't male."

  He explained about deltoid tuberosities and waitressing. This took some time, and when he was done, John and Julie were still looking at him with something less than total comprehension.

  "Okay,” John said a little suspiciously, “so it's Jocelyn's humerus; so what does that tell us?” He spread his big hands, knife in one, fork in the other. “What's the big deal? We already knew she was dead."

  "Don't look at me,” Julie said, chewing. “I seem to be missing something too."

  "The big deal is this,” Gideon said. “When we came up with that female femur yesterday—the one that got stolen last night—we concluded that we finally had parts of all three skeletons, right?"

  John chewed slowly. “Umm..."

  "Sure we did. We already had parts of two males, or so we thought, and now here was a female femur. That makes three."

  "I guess so,” John said.

  "But if that's Jocelyn's humerus down in Juneau, then we don't; at least not for sure."

  "We don't?” John said.

  "We don't?” Julie said.

  Gideon restrained his impatience. It had taken him long enough to put two and two together, and he was supposed to be an expert. “Look,” he said, “we know we have some of Steve Fisk, all right; no question about it. That jaw was positively identified by the dental work, and then we matched the ramus and the punctured cranial fragment to it."

  "Okay,” they both said.

  "Okay. And we have some of Jocelyn: the female femur they found yesterday and now that misidentified humerus I've been talking about."

  Tw
o cautious nods this time.

  "But now—with that humerus reassigned from James Pratt to Jocelyn—it's possible that all the male fragments belong to Steve Fisk, since there aren't any other duplications. And that means, or it could mean, or it's at least conceivable—"

  "Gideon, dear,” Julie murmured, “I don't mean to press you, but you do have a way—"

  He sat back in his chair and put his hands flat on the table. “I think I know who killed Tremaine, and why. And who clobbered me,” he added with satisfaction. He drew a breath. “I think it's—"

  "Gerald Pratt,” John said.

  Gideon looked at him. “John, you have to stop doing that. It's really irritating."

  John laughed. “Is that who you're talking about? Pratt?"

  "Yeah, that's who I'm talking about,” Gideon said grudgingly.

  John slapped the table and stood up. “I'm gonna pick up Julian and go have a talk with Pratt right now. Owen too,” he added. “He's got proprietary jurisdiction. If there's an arrest, he oughta be the one to make it.” He headed for the door.

  "You're going to arrest him right now?” Gideon asked. “This minute?"

  "I'm not sure.” He paused, musing, with his hand on the doorknob. “Doc, how the hell did you figure out it was Pratt? Even with that stuff about the bones."

  "How the hell did you figure it out?” Gideon responded.

  But John was already gone. Julie stared after him at the closing door. “How the hell did anybody figure it out?” she muttered. She leaned toward Gideon, frowning.

  "Figure what out?” she said.

  * * * *

  Gerald Pratt was sitting by himself at one of the tables that looked out over the cove, a half-empty cup of coffee before him. He was wearing his orange coveralls; already looking like a prisoner, John thought.

  "Mr. Pratt?” he said.

  Pratt, caught predictably in the act of tamping his pipe, looked up from under his eyebrows to take in the three men. “Hm?"

  "Could we speak with you, please:"

  "Sure,” Pratt said, and pointed with the pipe. “Have a seat.” If he was made uneasy when none of them moved, he didn't show it. The pipe went into his mouth and was laboriously lit. “What about?” he said through the resulting fug.