"No, let’s do it the usual way. Let me see what I can find out on my own. I wouldn’t want to bias my judgment with any preconceived ideas," he explained for Julie’s benefit, looking at the small pile of brown bones.
"Quite proper for a world-renowned authority," Julie said.
Gideon looked up quickly.
"Joke," she said. "Honest." She smiled, and Gideon realized suddenly that she was very pretty.
He returned his attention to the bones. "There’s not much here," he said. "It’s been partially burned, and it looks like some animal’s gotten in and made off with most of it. Look, you can see where something’s been gnawing on the edge of the scapula."
Julie shivered suddenly and apologized. "Sorry, I guess I’m not used to this."
"There’s no need for you to be here," John said gently. "If you want-"
"No, I’m intrigued. Don’t pay any attention to me. If I faint, just go on without me."
Gideon leaned forward, studying the fragments intently: fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae, held together by a few shreds of brown, dried ligament; third and fourth thoracic vertebrae; left scapula, whole except for some gnawing and breakage along the rim.
He shook his head. "It’s going to be hard: There’s no way I can tell the race from these, but I’m pretty sure it’s male."
John jotted something in his notebook, looking less than hopeful, but Julie was eager.
"How can you tell it’s a male?"
"The scapula. See the rough, ridged areas on the extension?" He handed the bone to her. She hesitated momentarily, then took it. "That’s where the deltoid and the trapezius muscles…Do you remember your anatomy?"
"Not much," Julie said.
"Okay, that’s where the large shoulder muscles attach," Gideon said, careful not to sound patronizing. "The ruggedness of the bone shows the muscles were heavy, powerful. A female would have smaller shoulder muscles, and you’d barely see any ridges."
"But what if it was a woman with large muscles?" Julie asked. "Women are a lot more athletic than they used to be."
"Well, if the female heavyweight weight-lifting champion of the world is missing, maybe we’ve found her, but I don’t think so. It’s much more than a question of athletics. If a man and a woman exercise the same amount, the man will still have a lot heavier, denser muscles and thicker, rougher bones. A woman would have to exercise a great deal more even to come close."
The corners of Julie’s mouth turned down.
"I’m sorry if it offends you," Gideon went on, "but there really are some differences between men and women that are genetically determined, and muscularity happens to be one of them. I’m speaking statistically, of course; there’s no way I can be completely certain on this particular bone."
"I’m not sure if I agree," Julie said.
Gideon, slightly annoyed, was about to reply when she suddenly added, "But who am I to disagree with a world-renowned authority?" and broke into another warm smile. She really was extraordinarily attractive, Gideon thought, even beautiful.
"Male," said John flatly, writing. "Okay. Anything else you can tell us?"
He looked so dejected that Gideon laughed. "You mean anything to justify my fee? Yes, I think so." He picked up the scapula and turned it slowly in his large hands. "He’s over twenty-three," he said after a while. "All the epiphyses are fused."
Gideon put the bone on the table and leaned close to it, using the magnifying glass like a jeweler’s lens. "And he’s definitely under forty. "No sigh of atrophic spots."
"Of what spots?" asked John dully, writing.
"Atrophic. As you get into middle age, the supply of blood to the scapula decreases, and the bone atrophies in places." When John winced, he added, "Don’t worry, it’s harmless."
Gideon turned the bone over several times more, still peering through the magnifying glass. "Ah!" he said, "Look at this. Just the tiniest bit of lipping on the circumferential margin of the glenoid fossa-"
"Doc," said John, "you’re going to have to go a little slower or else speak English."
"Don’t worry, I’ll write it up for you. The important thing is that lipping starts about thirty. I’d say he’s twenty-nine, or maybe just turned thirty, considering that the epiphyses look as if they’ve been fused six or seven years."
John put down his pad and looked squarely at Gideon. "Doc, is this on the level? Eckert was twenty-nine. Did you know that before?"
"I don’t play games like that, John, you know that."
"No," said John, "you don’t." He wrote some more on his pad.
"Was he muscular, five-ten or six feet, a hundred and ninety pounds?" Gideon asked.
John scrambled through the file. "Height five-eleven," he said with something uncharacteristically like awe in his voice, "weight one eighty-five. I didn’t think even you could tell that from a single bone, let alone a shoulder blade."
Gideon shrugged offhandedly but glanced at Julie. She seemed, he was gratified to see, as impressed as John. "Just educated guesses," he said. "We can apply some height formulas to the vertebrae and see if we come up with the same thing." He picked up a vertebra. "There’s a shadow of osteophytosis here; bears out the age estimate of around thirty. What the heck is this?" he said, fingering the strange protuberance.
"Fenster wasn’t sure. He thought maybe"-John flipped through his notes-"some sort of bone disease…exostosis…"
"I don’t think so," Gideon said, excitement rising in his voice. He held the bone in his hand and leaned over it, the magnifying glass practically touching it, his eye an inch behind the glass.
"You look like Sherlock Holmes," Julie said.
"Hmm," Gideon said after a while. "Definitely."
"You sound like Sherlock Holmes," she said. "I’m dying of suspense. What is it?"
"It’s not a growth," Gideon said, handing the bone to her. "I think it’s an arrow point that penetrated the vertebra and broke off, so the tip is still embedded, and that rough projection is the surface of the broken part."
"An arrow point?" John cried, rocking forward in his chair and extending his hand for the vertebra. He picked gently at the projection with his fingertips. "It sure looks like bone to me."
"It is bone," Gideon said. "Eckert-if that’s who it was-was shot by a bone arrow."
"But people haven’t used bone arrows for centuries," Julie said. "Even the most primitive groups in the world use metal points now."
"Yes," said Gideon quietly, "astounding, isn’t it? But I really think there isn’t any doubt. There’s no periosteum."
"Doc-" John began exasperatedly.
Gideon smiled. "All right, I’ll speak English." He slid the magnifying glass along the table to John. "The outer layer of bone is the periosteum. It stays on the bone even when it’s been buried for hundreds of years; thousands, for that matter. But when you make a bone implement, and shape and smooth it, you invariably scrape it off. If you look carefully, you’ll see that outer layer all over the vertebra, except for that projection."
John held the glass and bone out in front of him like a farsighted man trying to read a menu. "I don’t-"
"Okay, never mind that," said Gideon. "Look at the bone around the base of the projection. You can see it’s crushed inward, obviously by the force of the arrow entering the-"
"I see!" John cried. "It’s as if…it’s all…"
Julie had risen and looked over his shoulder through the glass. "All mushed in," she said.
"Right," Gideon said. "All mushed in." He took back the bone, grasped the projecting part tightly, and wiggled it.
The point came out at once, noiselessly, without disturbing the crushed rim of bone surrounding it. A faint odor of decay came from the hole in the vertebra. Julie moved back, wrinkling her nose.
"It’s a projectile point, all right," Gideon said.
"It sure is," John said. "Goddamn."
Gideon laid the point on the table. It was a triangular piece of ivory-colored bone a little over an inch long, its base rough and jagged. "It was in there deeper than I thought," he said, "about an inch. It almost went clean through."