And of those, the best was that he was already unconscious. As in sleeping.
At ten he called Bertaud to make a preliminary report. “Colonel,” he said when he had finished and Bertaud had politely but coolly complimented him, “I was wondering about his sleeping bag. Did anyone have a look at it?"
"Sleeping bag?” Bertaud repeated. “I don't believe such a thing was found."
"Wasn't his gear at his campsite up above?"
Papers shuffled at Bertaud's end. “Cooking tools, yes, clothing, food…I think there was no sleeping bag."
"But-that seems odd, doesn't it?"
"I suppose it does, but there was no reason at the time-” Abruptly he saw where Gideon was heading. “You think the murderer came upon him in his sleep? That the bag was bloodied and therefore disposed of somewhere to hide it?"
Gideon was glad that Bertaud had come up with it on his own. “It's possible, don't you think? God knows there'd have been plenty of blood."
"God knows. I'll have the area more thoroughly searched, Dr. Oliver. You'll have a written report for me later?"
"This afternoon. You're taking this on as a full-scale investigation, then?"
"Personally,” said Bertaud at his most resolute. “And if you will ask Mr. Lau to come and see me and tell me again about these American mobsters of his, you can say to him I will pay closer attention this time “
The rest of Gideon's examination produced nothing of significance, but there were two areas that particularly caught his interest. He spent some time over the old repairs to the skull simply because he was so impressed. The original damage had been even more devastating than had been visible the night before, involving not only the forehead but the delicate bony orbits of the eyes and the zygomatic bones alongside them. They too had been wired back together in several places, and the surgeon had done an amazing job of restoration the sort of miracle operation that orthopedic surgeons modestly and routinely referred to as “bone carpentry.” The fact that Brian had come out of it looking normal, had even been a “good-looking guy,” according to John, was astounding.
The other thing that he came back to, had already come back to again and again, was a phenomenon that had him intrigued and frankly puzzled. For at least the fifth time he picked up the fibulas and studied them, running his finger over the unusually roughened surfaces near their upper ends. On the face of it, they weren't anything very startling. The fibula was one of the two long bones of the lower leg-the thin one, not the thick, sturdy tibia that formed the shinbone-and the rough, pitted area at its top was merely the attachment site for one of the leg muscles. Nothing extraordinary in that. The exaggerated roughness simply meant that the muscle attached to it had seen heavy use; habitual, strenuous activity put stress on muscles, as everyone knew, and built them up. And where these built-up, heavily used muscles tugged on the bone-as forensic anthropologists and hardly anybody else knew-they too created stress and eventually built up and roughened the bony surfaces.
Given a knowing eye, these stressed and roughened skeletal surfaces could sometimes be read like a job description. Occupational indicators, they were sometimes called. There were “seamstress's fingers,” “waiter's humerus,” “shotputter's ulna,” “shoemaker's sternoclavicular joint"; even “executive's foot"- the result of years of sitting at a desk in a tipped-back swivel chair with the heels off the floor and the weight pressing on the toes.
But if there was any common name in the trade for an overdeveloped posterior aspect of the capitulum fibulae, Gideon had yet to run into it. The problem was, the muscle that attached to it, the soleus, didn't do anything in the usual sense. Well, that wasn't quite true. Its function, according to the anatomy books, was to provide some help to the gastrocnemius-the big muscle that formed the calf-in plantar-flexing the foot; that is, in pushing the toes powerfully downward, an essential part of the human gait. But the fact was that the considerably larger gastrocnemius was more than strong enough to do that by itself, and that it already had the help of several other muscles anyway.
So what did the soleus do, why did we have the things at all? The answer seemed to be that they were muscles of balance. They helped keep the ankles, and thus the body as a whole, firm and steady while walking. While standing still, for that matter. An important function, certainly, but not one that generally made great demands on the muscle fibers or the bone they attached to. Yet in Brian's case, not only was the attachment area heavily developed, but the pull of the muscles had been so powerful that the tops of both his fibulas had actually been tugged out of shape, bowing backward in their last couple of inches.
And this was something Gideon had not seen before. Brian Scott, whose bones in general showed that he was no more heavily muscled than the average man, had had the most extraordinarily developed soleus muscles he had ever run across. Why? How did you even get such things? If Gideon were asked what sort of exercises to do to develop them he wouldn't have known what to answer. Stand on the edge of a two-by-four an hour a day? Walk a tightrope every evening after dinner for an hour or two?
While he stood there pondering, he heard John speaking to Viennot in the autopsy room.
"I'm in here, John,” he called. “Next door.” He still had one of the fibulas in his hand when John came in with two cups of coffee.
"Fibula,” John proclaimed, setting one of the cups down for Gideon. Some years before, he had attended a seminar that Gideon had put on for law enforcement people.
"That's easy enough,” Gideon said. “But which one, right or left?"
"Hey, don't push your luck.” He looked down at the bones with a meditative air. “So this is Brian.” But he was clearly less disturbed by the idea than he'd been the day before. Cleaned skeletons can be fascinating, informative, evocative, puzzling-but they're not horrifying or pitiful, once you're used to them, and when you come down to it, they all look pretty much the same. See one and you've seen them all. It's hard to feel much in the way of emotion for any particular skeleton, or even to connect it in a visceral way with any particular person.
"So how's it going?” John asked.
Gideon pointed out the nicked cervical vertebra. “Cut throat, no question about it."
John looked at it, even ran his finger over the cut. “That's an awful little ding to kill somebody. Is Bertaud going to buy it?"
"It's not the ding, it's what happened on the way to the ding. And yes, Bertaud's already bought it. I talked to him a few minutes ago."
"Good, maybe we'll finally get some action."
"I think so. He wants you to come in and tell him about the Mob connections by the way."
"I already told him once."
"He says he'll listen this time. How'd you do with Nick?"
"Hard to say. I think basically he just wanted to talk about it. I'll tell you one thing, I'm starting to believe him about Therese. I think maybe he did call it off because she was so shook up. And now he's worried about the memorial service and how that's going to affect her. He'd like to have Brian back in the ground by then; you know, so it's over and done. I told him I didn't think there was much chance."
"I don't think so either.” Gideon sipped the coffee; stale but welcome. “Tell me, what did he say about the facial surgery? Did he know about it?"
"Not a thing. Brian never mentioned it. I'm not sure Nick believes you."
Gideon sank into a chair and eased his shoulders back; he was still a little stiff from leaning over the bones. “Doesn't that strike you as peculiar, John? Here's some kind of absolutely devastating accident-it had to have been a major event in Brian's life-why would he make a secret of it?"