Thomas flushed. Then he admitted, “I took photographs. I took fingerprints. Everything. I put particles of bone in plastic bags. I am making a special portfolio for my academy application, to guarantee my admission.”
“Everything?”
“You know. Tissue samples, for DNA. Blood samples The dirt from their boots. I recorded the direction of the wind, the time of sunrise, air temperature. The entry wound to the back of Victim One was inflicted by a heavy-edged weapon and probably severed the spinal cord. The puncture wound in the skull of Victim Two could have been from a large-caliber bullet.”
“I think the killer stood right beside his victims,” Shan explained. “I doubt if he used a gun. Did you see any stippling on the skin around the hole? When a gun is fired at close range particles of burning gunpowder leave traces.”
Thomas’s eyes widened. He pulled a piece of paper from a pocket and scribbled a quick note, then began to brag again. “I took a fly larvae out of the flesh and froze it. We can correlate the life-stage development of the larvae with other indicia, to confirm my finding of the time of death.”
“And how exactly did you make your finding?”
“Rigor mortis. The hardening of the skeletal muscles begins within two to three hours and begins to dissipate within twenty-four hours. When I found the bodies in the morning the stiffness was just disappearing.”
“It may be dangerous to rely on such criteria when the limbs have been severed.”
“The hands. Only the hands were cut off at first. I do wish I had the hands.” Thomas fixed Shan with a meaningful gaze. “Even if the flesh of the fingertips was deteriorating we could inject them with saline solution to raise the ridges enough for prints, right? And I could probably match the hands to the bodies from my photographs and even draw inferences about their professions.”
Shan went very still. “Are you saying you have photographs?”
Without another word the boy leapt up and shot out the door. He returned panting, extending a small silver digital camera. “I haven’t printed anything out, but you can view them right here. The hands were gone when I discovered the bodies. When I returned with my equipment the bodies had been dismembered and some of the limbs were missing.”
His camera held a dozen photos, and though the small screen did not display much detail, there was enough. Shan had to calm himself before taking a second look. Unfortunately, Thomas had taken pictures only of the small clearing where the bodies had been, not of the campsite itself, and none of the two men’s faces. Their clothes were blood drenched. The shirt on one of bodies also bore soil stains showing its wearer had been dragged. One appeared to be younger; on his back was a long wound, as Thomas had described. The flat rock in the center of the little clearing still had one arm stretched across it, in the direction of the low sprays of blood. Shan pointed to the puncture wound on the older man’s skull. “The edges are not uniform enough for a bullet entry.”
Thomas nodded. “And there was no stippling. You have changed my theory of the case.”
“You have a theory?”
Thomas nodded again. “I have to have a case theory, a hypothesis, for my project. The criminals were runaway soldiers, that was my first idea, deserters turned bandits. But if there was no gun, then I will say the culprits were Tibetans, a gang of hooligans with axes and hammers.” He looked up, his eyes brighter. “Ragyapa! It could be a gang of criminal fleshcutters. This could be a movie script!”
“Ragyapa remove the clothes from corpses before cutting them up,” Shan pointed out. “And they don’t take away body parts. They leave them all at the scene. And they crush the bones.”
Thomas frowned. “Reactionary Tibetans then. The first victim lingered. A cloth was stuffed in his mouth to silence him.”
Shan nodded solemnly, wondering about the boy who coldly took photos of dismembered men for a school project. “What exactly did you do,” he asked, “after your first visit?”
“I went back for one of Heinz’s guns. When I returned there were dogs circling about the rocks. I fired the rifle and they ran.”
Shan stared at the boy in disbelief. “Another approach,” he observed in a steady voice, “might have been to wait in hiding with your camera, in case the murderer returned to dispose of the bodies.” If Thomas had scared away the dogs, then certainly he would have spooked the murderer.
“But then my portfolio would have been incomplete,” Thomas pointed out. “I still had to lift the fingerprints and evaluate the angle and force of the cutting instrument. The dogs would have destroyed evidence and contaminated the crime scene.”
“And your conclusion about the instrument used to cut off the hands?”
“It had to go through bone and ligament. A surgical bone saw would fit.”
It wasn’t so much an investigation, Shan told himself, as a word game. Sound bites from famous detective shows I have watched. “I’m old-fashioned,” he said. “How about something that fits the context, like a small ax? It would account for the wound in the back and the severed hands.”
Thomas nodded, making more notes.
There were four more photos of the dead men. The young one had worn denim pants and a sweatshirt; the older man, a T-shirt and sweatpants. The other eight photos were all of bloodstain patterns.
“Why were you really imprisoned?” Thomas asked. “I saw a movie once where an investigator was sent to prison to infiltrate a criminal ring. Did you kill anyone in prison? A good policeman doesn’t need a gun. I have a book about the ten ways to kill with your hands.”
Shan clenched his jaw. As unlikely an ally as Thomas might seem, Shan needed the boy. “I saw many people die in prison.”
Thomas hesitated, then nodded. “Of course, if it was true, you would deny it. The best ones never break their cover.”
“I can see you have a brilliant career ahead of you in Beijing.”
“Would you write a letter of recommendation for me?”
The charade was getting out of hand. “Your family has imprisoned me,” Shan pointed out.
“But I unlocked the door,” Thomas declared.
Shan pushed open the door to the large sitting room with a finger. He stepped into the empty room, then eyed the door that led outside. He returned to Thomas and leaned on the table beside him. “Where is your evidence? Your samples?”
“I sent them to Beijing, to a friend in a lab.”
Shan paced around the room. The adjoining office was empty. “Why did you cross to the other side of the mountain? Why go to the trouble, when you have all this?”
“This is my uncles’ stuff. I’m my own man. I do my own thing. They wouldn’t approve but I’ve made friends of some of the miners. They are always looking to trade things.”
“What do they have that you could want?”
“Gold, of course. I can get them little comforts. A can of peaches, a bag of raisins, a toothbrush, a razor. Vodka and brandy. The closest store is fifty miles away. Everyone is in business, right? Uncle Heinz says we all participate in the global economy, no matter where we live.”
Thomas’s particular home in the global economy, Shan realized, was a storehouse replenished regularly by the People’s Liberation Army. “How often do you go to Drango village?”
“That dump where the farmers live? Never.”
“Then how often do you see Chodron?”
“That old yak? He stays in his wallow on the far side.”
Shan considered the boy’s words. He said he never went to the village but he had admitted that he knew who Chodron was. Shan picked up the camera and asked Thomas to show him how to scroll through the photos, pausing at the last, a tiny one of the man sometimes called the saint, sitting between the blood-drawn images. He leaned over the boy, speaking in a low, urgent voice, Thomas nodding assent to his secret assignment. When they finished, Shan scolled through the photos one more time. “Did you look for identification on the bodies?”