"Really."
"Sure. And if they wear glasses, they generally take ‘em off. If they're ladies, they make sure to put on a little makeup.” The muffin was popped into his mouth and disposed of. He looked sideways at Gideon. “Doc, you really don't know this stuff,” he said with mild incredulity. “I would've thought a big-time anthropologist-"
"John,” Gideon said with a sigh, “just do me a favor and-"
John waved his hand amicably. “Well, the point is, people worry about how they're gonna look when they're found. I'm not talking about the crazies that blow themselves up, or set fire to themselves, or slice themselves up with a power saw. But people who hang themselves, or take pills, or sit out in the car with the windows closed and the carbon monoxide pouring in-they like to look nice. Generally speaking."
Gideon nodded. “You're probably right."
"Sure, I am. The minute I walked in there I didn't like it. Would you figure a guy like Tremaine to let himself be found wearing a bathrobe with nothing under it? Wouldn't you figure he'd put on silk pajamas, maybe an ascot?"
"Yes, I guess I would."
"But there were those yellow silk pajamas laid out on the bed. Why would he lay them out, then not put them on, if-” John's eyes narrowed. “You did see those pajamas, didn't you, Doc?…Doc?"
Gideon crossly drank some orange juice.
"Unbelievable,” John said. “Hey, are you gonna eat that or not?"
Gideon shoved his untouched toast over to him. John opened a packet of strawberry jam and lathered half a slice. “There was one other little thing,” he said. “One of the passkeys was missing last night at the end of the afternoon shift. Turned up this morning in the bottom of the laundry cart. What do you think about that?"
"I think you're right. We have a murder. Another murder."
"Yeah, I think so.” John pointed toward the sky. Another Kwakiutl Airlines plane, this one pontoon-equipped, was tilting down over the cove. “Well, here come the pros; maybe they'll be able to come up with something better than false teeth in a glass.” He swallowed the toast and stood up. “I better go down to the pier and meet them. You want to come along, or do you have things to do?"
"I have things to do,” Gideon said.
Chapter 11
Well, not really. All he had to do was to continue his analysis of the skeletal fragments. There was nothing about this that couldn't wait, but he preferred to give the pathologist plenty of breathing room. Forensic pathologists were a generally amiable-even jolly-breed, but when Gideon hung around watching them ply their trade, they tended to get crabby and make rude remarks about skeleton detectives.
Owen had gotten him a more convenient place to work: the “contact station,” a ranger post that had recently been built to provide information to lodge guests. This was located about two hundred feet from the main building, overlooking Bartlett Cove at the foot of a long pier from which tour boats operated in the summer. A small, neat, wooden building, it had been closed since Labor Day, and it made a good place for him; bright, clean, and uncluttered, still smelling of fresh paint and newly carpentered wood, with plenty of waist-high counter space that allowed him to work standing up, something he preferred.
The perforated cranial fragment was in a safe at park headquarters, but the other bones were here, and his equipment had arrived from the university in Port Angeles. Gideon set up shop on the main counter, under an intimidating wall display of mounted Alaskan crabs. He whistled softly as he unpacked. The smooth, expensive tools of steel and wood were always a delight to handle, always cleared his mind-even of images like Tremaine's dead face and exposed, dewlapped throat. Precise and finely machined the tools might be, but they were marvelously low-tech, uncomplicated things all the same: measuring calipers, jointed boards, gleaming, six-foot-long telescoping rulers. They would have looked fine in a 1930s mad-scientist movie. Even the names would have fit right in. “Bring me the goniometer, Igor.” “Do not be frightened, my dear; “I am merely going to put the head spanner on you."
But soothing as they were to work with, there wasn't much they could tell him. Gideon spent an hour measuring, then checked his measurements. He determined the transverse and vertical breadths of the head of the femur and its subtrochanteric diameters; he computed the various angles, heights, lengths, and thicknesses of the mandible and the tarsals; he patiently measured the five metatarsals and the other foot bones. He made a dubious estimate of total height from the partial femur. (This was getting into “fudge-factor country,” as John called it.)
And when he finished it all, he knew what he had known before: The bones had come from one or more sturdily built males in their mid-twenties and within an inch or so either way of six feet. Almost certainly James Pratt and/or Steven Fisk.
The difference now was that, if need arose, he could justify his conclusions with figures, something that always pleased policemen and prosecuting attorneys. The funny part was that all the measuring really added nothing new. Most of the impressive-sounding calculations-the platymeric index, the claviculo-humeral ratio, the various robusticity indices-were recent approximations of time-honored subjective judgments, and not the other way around at all. When a choice had to be made, was there an experienced practitioner who wouldn't go with the testimony of eyes and fingertips over that of calipers and calculators? Not likely. Or of goniometers either. This was a dark secret that he and other professors guarded from the tender ears of their graduate students, who would, if they stuck with it long enough, eventually find it out for themselves.
Well, at least he could do something about preserving the fragments, now that they were dry. He was looking for a container to mix the acetone and Duco that Owen had gotten for him, when John appeared on the wooden porch of the building, a giant Styrofoam cup in either hand. Gideon pulled open the door for him.
"Hiya, Doc. Figured you could use some coffee."
"I sure can, thanks.” He lifted off the plastic lid and took a grateful swig. “Where'd you find coffee this time of the morning?"
"Restaurant kitchen. They keep a pot going in there."
Gideon laughed. When there was a kitchen around, John usually didn't take long to make a friend in it. He took another swallow. “How's Dr. Wu coming?"
John growled. “He booted me out. Dr. Burton W. Wu. Kind of a touchy little bastard. Like you."
"Me?” Gideon said, surprised. “Touchy?"
"Yeah, like when you come in to look at some bones and you don't let anybody tell you anything about anything. You have to figure it all out yourself."
"That's not being touchy. That's trying to keep myself honest. You know that."
"Yeah, I know, but I'm not used to it from a medical examiner. I was in there examining the scene, you know? Being really careful not to disturb evidence, not getting in anybody's way. But finally this guy turns around and grins with these sharp little teeth and tells me to get the hell out of the room because he's trying to work and I'm bugging him. Jesus Christ,” he muttered, “prima donnas all over the place. Everybody's gotta have everything just the way they want it or they have a temper tantrum."
He put his unopened coffee on the counter and dropped into a chair. “What the hell,” he said with a sigh, never one to sulk very long. “How's the coffee?"
Gideon took another taste, rolling it judiciously on his tongue. “Well, now that you mention it, it's a little heavy on the cream. And I prefer half-and-half to the nondairy stuff. And in the future it'd be nice to get something to stir it with. Also-"
John looked sharply at him, began to speak, and then burst out laughing, a sunny peal that folded the skin around his eyes into a network of happy crinkles. As usual, Gideon couldn't help laughing along.