"We know what ‘femur’ means,” Elliott Fisk grumbled.
"They belong to one or more males in their mid-twenties,” Gideon went on. “That's about all I can tell right now."
"And did you find any more today?” Tremaine asked.
"Yes,” Gideon said offhandedly. “Part of a cranium."
He watched Tremaine, who brushed impassively at a bit of lint on his crisply pressed trousers.
"Males?” Shirley asked. “Then there aren't any…any remains of my sister?"
He shook his head. “I'm sorry, no. Everything so far seems to be male. The rangers will be doing some more searching near Tirku in the next few days; they might turn up some more.” They would be doing it by themselves. His only pair of heavy shoes would take a week to dry.
He waited for more questions. They watched him noncommittally. Where was the “burning interest” Tremaine had talked about? Or was it Tremaine himself who was so eager to know exactly what he'd found out? He glanced at him again, but Tremaine merely returned the look with a faint, meaningless smile.
Gideon fidgeted in his chair. He was uncomfortable with the residue of tension still in the atmosphere, uncomfortable with the macabre situation he found himself in-talking so matter-of-factly to next of kin about their relatives’ mandibles and crania. And uncomfortable with his role in things so far. He had, in effect, practically accused Tremaine of murder, but Tremaine knew nothing about it. A secret accusation. Gideon was anxious for things to be out on the table. Tomorrow, he hoped; maybe even this evening. But that would be up to Owen.
It was Gerald Pratt who broke the silence. He pointed with the stem of his pipe at the paper bag Gideon had brought. “What's in the sack?"
"These are some items of clothing and equipment we found today. The chief park ranger asked me to show them to you to see if you could identify them."
Pratt put the pipe back in his mouth, leaned back, and crossed one skinny, sharp-shinned leg over the other, “Well, let ‘er rip."
"By all means,” said Tremaine. Was it Gideon's imagination, or did he suddenly look shifty?
The bag rustled noisily while Gideon got it open, and now for the first time they all showed what seemed to be genuine curiosity, if not quite “burning” interest. The ragged strip of plaid cloth was not recognized by anyone, although Walter Judd thought that Jocelyn Yount might have had such a shirt. But neither Anna nor Tremaine was willing to confirm this, and after a minute Judd began doubting it too, finally talking himself out of the notion. Gideon put the material back in the sack.
"Shouldn't that be kept in a plastic bag?” Fisk asked disapprovingly.
"Not while it's wet. Putting it in a plastic bag is the last thing you'd want to do."
Fisk's lips compressed. He wasn't so sure about that.
Gideon took the eyeglass frames from the sack and laid them on the table where they could be seen. They were from an inexpensive pair of sunglasses, in the wraparound style that had been popular in the sixties, and had now been twisted back into an approximation of their original shape. “Ban-Sun” was stamped on the inside of one of the aluminum temple pieces.
"You know, that looks familiar,” Judd said, tapping his lower lip with a finger.
"Everything looks familiar to you,” Anna said. “Maybe you should go back to sleep."
Judd chuckled as happily as if she'd complimented him. “No, now wait, just wait a minute.” He appealed to Tremaine. “Don't you remember one of those boys wearing a pair like that? I think it was James Pratt. I'm almost sure it was. Or was it Steve?"
Tremaine frowned. “I do remember something…"
"Were they-” Gerald Pratt's voice caught in his throat. He swallowed. “With orange lenses?” he asked Judd. “Jimmy always said to wear orange sunglasses. Said they filtered the ultraviolet rays or something."
"You know, I think that's right,” Judd said slowly.
Tremaine snapped his fingers. “By God, you are right. I remember now. Wraparound orange sunglasses; ugly things.” He looked at Gideon. “You think these might be James's?"
Gideon didn't answer. With his tongue between his teeth, he was busy probing with a ballpoint pen at the collapsed browpiece of the glasses, a thin, straight band of metal folded into a U-shaped trough and then crimped to hold the missing plastic lens. After a few seconds he managed to get the point between the crimped edges and push out onto his palm the tiny, shiny particle that had caught his eye. He looked at it briefly, then turned his hand over so that it dropped onto the white Formica surface of the little table in front of him. A scrap of broken plastic no bigger than a fingernail paring. Gleaming. Transparent.
Tangerine-colored.
A murmur went around the group, a soft “ah” of appreciation.
"Those Jimmy's then?” Pratt asked huskily. He had gotten out of his chair to come tentatively closer.
"It looks as if they are,” Gideon said gently. He held the frames out to him on the palm of his hand.
Pratt pulled momentarily back as if they might sting him, then came forward again, taking them gingerly from Gideon, turning them over, staring at them, trying to find God knows what. The muscles in his throat worked.
"Just turned twenty-five,” he said thickly. “My baby brother, you know."
Abruptly he thrust the frames back at Gideon. With his other hand he stuck his pipe into his mouth and took two quick, furious puffs, blowing out rather than sucking in. Glowing sparks of tobacco popped from the metal bowl.
"Would I get to keep ‘em?” he asked. “After you people've finished with ‘em?"
"I think so,” Gideon said. Empathy had made his own throat tight. “I can't see why not."
"Good, then.” He wiped the back of his hand across his nose, shrugged, and went back to his chair, chewing on the pipe. The shoulders of his bright blue coveralls hunched slackly away from his body as he sat down, as if he had shrunk inside them.
"Well, then,” Gideon said into the awkward silence, “one more thing."
As soon as he took the broken ice ax from the sack, Anna spoke out sharply.
"It's one of ours. An Alpiner."
Judd nodded gravely. “Right you are. I remember."
"Were they all exactly the same?” Gideon asked. “Is there any way to distinguish one from another?"
"After thirty years,” Tremaine snapped, “you expect us to remember who wrapped red tape around the handle and who used yellow? Not that there's any tape left on this one. Really, is there some purpose to this?"
"I'm just trying to come up with anything that might be useful in identifying the remains. If we knew for sure whose ice ax that was, it could help."
"Well, it seems as if you'll have to figure it out on your own,” Tremaine said impatiently. He closed the loose-leaf binder in front of him, tucked it under his arm, and stood up with the brittle agility of a man who worked hard at aging gracefully. “Thank you for coming, Dr. Oliver. And now, if there's nothing else, the fire is dead, the Icebreaker Lounge is open for business, and I, for one, am in dire need of the comfort of a Rob Roy.” With a nod he was gone, his rich voice seeming to hang in the air behind him.
Tremaine's voice was all his own. Like the larger-than-life stars of Hollywood's golden era-Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, John Wayne-he had created a way of speaking that was to be found in no one else on the planet. Lush but nasal, British but American, elegant but intimate.
About what you'd expect, was Gideon's grumpy and uncharitable thought, if you crossed John Gielgud with W. C. Fields.
Chapter 8
"Five-squad. Lau."
"Mr. Lau? The SAC would like to see you, please."
With his shoulder hunched to prop the telephone receiver against his ear, John continued to fill out a quarterly progress report. Christ, the bureau put you through a lot of paperwork. Which was saying something, coming from a man who had put in four years in the NATO Security Directorate.