"Well, I'm a dentist and I've seen human bones before,” Fisk announced, “and I say those bones are human.” For the first time Tremaine almost liked him.
The matter was settled beyond doubt by Anna Henckel, who had been rooting in the glacial detritus while the others stared at the bones.
"Look,” she said flatly and held out a waterlogged, brown, ankle-height shoe, rotted and misshapen, the lugged sole curling away from the leather upper. “A Raichle boot,” she said.
When nobody, including Tremaine, seemed to grasp the significance of this, she added darkly: “It is the shoe we were outfitted with."
"Still,” said Walter, who seemed thoroughly shaken, “what does that prove? Other people wear Raichles. Anyone could have thrown away a shoe, or-"
Grimly, Anna shook her head. “There is no mistake.” She dipped it so that they could look into the opening in the top. Inside, in a welter of rotten, dirty-gray wool, was a jumble of narrow bones.
Shirley shuddered convulsively. “How can you touch that?"
This was followed by a long, tortured silence, broken at last by the familiar, elegant baritone of M. Audley Tremaine.
"Will this cursed glacier,” he cried in a voice laden with passion, “never let their bones rest in peace?"
He glanced around, swiftly and surreptitiously. Had he overdone it? No, they all seemed genuinely moved. (Not the immovable Anna, of course.) What a line it would make in the book, what a marvelous scene. He didn't know about the “cursed,” though. A little too melodramatic? He'd have to think that through.
"I imagine we should bring these remains back with us,” Anna said, still holding the shoe. She looked at Tibbett. “Is there a suitable container on the boat?"
"Seems to me,” offered Pratt, “that we ought to leave ‘em where we found ‘em. Been here for thirty years. Don't see much point in moving ‘em."
"Not much point?" Shirley was shocked. “Are you nuts, or what? This could be what's left of your brother, for God's sake! Do you want to leave it for the animals to chew on?"
"Bears been chewing on ‘em all this time,” was Pratt's unsentimental reply. “Don't see much point in moving ‘em now."
"Jesus,” Shirley said, having recovered enough by now to speak out of the side of her mouth again, “can you believe this guy? Look, this could be my sister too, you know, and if it is, I don't want her lying out here anymore.” To Tremaine's amazement, her horsey face suddenly bunched up and reddened; tears spurted from her eyes. “Damn,” she said, and turned away.
Pratt shrugged and shifted his weight from one foot to another, looking abashed. “Either way,” he said around his pipe. “Dudn't much matter to me."
"Mr. Tibbett, what is the proper course?” Tremaine asked, not overly optimistic about getting a definitive reply.
"Oh,” Tibbett said, still looking at the shoe with extreme distaste, “well.” He cleared his throat. “I'm not absolutely sure, to tell you the truth. I'll go back to the boat and radio my chief ranger. He's more familiar with this…this sort of thing, you know. He'll know the right way to go about it."
"And in the meantime,” Anna said decisively, “we look some more and see what we can find."
"Mort, how would I claim a set of Lego blocks?"
FBI Special Agent Morton Kessler resignedly clicked off the microphone of the dictating machine into which he was recording a memo to file and looked wordlessly at his colleague. It was the sort of question you expected John Lau to ask, and Kessler had learned not to be surprised. Other agents’ expense statements listed hotel bills, taxi rides, and meals, but John Lau wasn't quite like other agents. He had come to the FBI late, in his thirties, and unusual expense statements were the least of the many ways he didn't quite fit the mold.
Kessler had gotten to know Lau well in the four years since the big Hawaiian ex-cop and former NATO security officer had joined the bureau. What with the partitionless bullpen arrangement on the sixth floor of Seattle's federal building, you learned a lot about the other agents in your squad. The desks were placed in groups of three, arranged in a triangle, with the agents facing in toward the center. It wasn't very often that all three agents were in off the street at the same time, but even so, you got to know your desk mates pretty well.
"Like anything else,” Kessler said. “Put it under miscellaneous and hope for the best."
"Right, thanks."
Kessler tried without success to go back to his memo. Again he flicked off the machine. “John, I know I'm going to be sorry I asked, but what the hell is a set of Lego blocks doing on your claim form? I mean, it's not something you see every day."
"Well,” John said, continuing to write, “this informant was getting mixed up drawing the layout of a house in Renton, so I thought if I got him a set of Legos he could-"
"-build you a model. Right. Of course. It's obvious.” He got up out of his chair. “I need to get a file in rotary. If anybody calls be back in ten."
The single telephone shared by the three desks rang. Kessler hung back while John picked it up.
"Five-Squad. Lau."
"Mr. Lau, this is Annie. Will you hold, please?"
"For me,” John mouthed to Kessler, who waved and headed for the filing unit.
"The SAC wants to speak with you, Mr. Lau,” Annie went on.
Abbreviations and acronyms were not John's long suits; no more than claims and paperwork. “SAC?"
From halfway across the room Kessler turned. “Special agent in charge, for Christ's sake!” he hissed. “The boss.” He shook his head once, briefly raised his eyes to the fluorescent lights, and continued on his way.
John waited, ear to the telephone. The special agent in charge of the Seattle field office was Charlie Appletree, a veteran from the old school who still wore a dark suit and white shirt to the office every day, and still sported a crew cut, although there wasn't much to cut anymore. He had been a confidant of every director since Hoover, with the exception of William Ruckleshaus, whom he had openly regarded as a naive, pipe-smoking do-gooder. “I don't know where you came from,” he was reputed to have told the gentle Ruckleshaus in a celebrated exchange, “or who the hell you are, but you sure as hell aren't the director of the FBI."
Generally speaking, however, he was more restrained; soft-spoken, intelligent, subtly political.
"Hello there, John. How are you today?"
"Fine, sir."
"Look, I've just had a call from Dan Britten, the SAC in Anchorage…” He paused, familiar with John's small failings. “Uh, you know what SAC means…?"
"Sure.” John laughed with amusement at the question. “Special agent in charge."
"That's right, that's right.” Appletree sounded pleased. “Good. Well, it seems Dan got a call from the resident agent in Juneau, who got a call from the National Park Service people at Glacier Bay. They've turned up some bones there, apparently human, and they need some help."
"Foul play involved?"
"No, nothing like that. It's a matter for the NPS, not the bureau. They're pretty sure they're the remains of a scientific party that was lost years ago in an avalanche. No question of murder."
"Uh-huh.” John toyed with his pen. “I guess I don't see how we're involved."
"We aren't, really. But they need a forensic anthropologist to sort out the bones and tell them what they have, maybe get them positively identified. The Glacier Bay people asked the Juneau agency to help them out, but the woman they usually use is somewhere in South America at the moment. So Juneau called Anchorage, and Charlie remembered that anthropologist you've brought in a few times-"
"Gideon Oliver."