“Aw, jeez,” Fausto said.
“Fausto, is there anything at all that caught your eye about the fire? Anything that made you think it might not have been an accident? ”
“No, nothing, but I have to admit, I wasn’t looking that hard. No reason to. According to Burkhardt – this lieutenant, fire department – it started on the bed, that much is for sure. And he was smoking, that’s for sure too – or at least, what was left of his pipe, which wasn’t that much, was right next to what was left of him, which also wasn’t that much, which was on what was left of the bed, which was practically nonexistent. The whole cottage burned down to the ground, you know? Place was full of these glues and solvents-”
“He spent his days gluing pots.”
“-so there were accelerants all over the place. Neighbors said it was more like an explosion than a fire. You know, whooof! Never saw a body burned like that. He looked like a piece of burned wood, all black and shriveled. I mean, this one gives new meaning to the term fried to a crisp.”
Which is rapidly becoming one of my least favorite metaphors, Gideon thought. “Where is it now?”
“The body? In the morgue. The ME just finished the postmortem.”
“Already?”
“Told you, we don’t have much call for postmortems. Did most of it yesterday afternoon, wrapped it up this morning. Don’t have his report yet – Figlewski, his name is – but he called me five minutes ago, soon as he was done. It’s the usual. Died of smoke inhalation. No reason to think it’s anything but what it looks like, he says.”
“Uh-huh.” Gideon hesitated. “Do you suppose I could have a look at it?”
“You want to look at the body?”
“Yes.”
A dry, one-note chuckle. “Trust me, there’s not a lot to look at.”
“Still.”
“Sure, why not? But what are you looking for?”
“I don’t know, but I’d like to have a try. What shape is the skull in? Is any of it left?”
“Ah, you want to know if somebody bashed him over the head or something first, then started the fire to cover it. Am I right, or am I right?”
“You’re right.”
“Well, I can answer that for you right now. The answer’s no.”
“Uh-huh. And how did you establish that? If I’m not being too inquisitive. ”
“I established it,” said Fausto, “with state-of-the-art, high-tech information I received at this seminar I once took from this famous professor.”
“Ah, well, then it must be reliable. Come on, Fausto, explain.”
“What is this, a test? Okay.” He paused to gather his thoughts.
“In this seminar I learned that, in a fire, a skull can explode from the heat. But only if it wasn’t broken to start with, you know? Because if there was a hole or a crack in it already, there would be a vent for the steam pressure from inside to escape?”
“Yes, that is what I said, but-”
“Well, there sure as hell wasn’t any vent, because his skull looks like an exploded coconut. The top’s completely blown off, all the way down to the, what do you call ’em, right under the eyes, the cheekbones-”
“Malars.”
“Right, all the way down to the malars in front, and in the back, all the way down to the bone in the rear-”
“The occiput.”
“I know, dammit, I was just gonna say that. Let me finish a sentence, will you?” He waited to see if Gideon meant to comply, then went on. “The occiput, what’s left, you can really see how it just burst open, you know, because there are these kind of flaps of bone, bent outward, like-”
“And from all this you surmise?”
“I surmise,” said Fausto, bristling at Gideon’s tone, “that since the skull exploded, there was no preexisting opening in it to vent the pressure, and therefore no preexisting cranial trauma. Would that be correct, Professor Oliver?”
“No, that would be incorrect, Detective Chief Inspector Sotomayor. ”
“Whaaat?” This exclamation was followed by a few seconds of aggrieved silence, and then a shouted: “You’re the frigging guy I learned that from! I was practically quoting you! I still got my notes, I-”
“Yes, but things change, my good fellow. New things are learned. Old assumptions are discarded. That is the nature of science. That is the essence of empiricism. One must be ready to cast off even the most cherished beliefs if they are contraindicated or unsupported by the evidence.”
“Yeah, right. In other words, you screwed up. When you were showing us all those fancy diagrams with those line-of-force arrows that explained everything? You didn’t know what the hell you were talking about. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“You could put it that way,” Gideon agreed.
He was far from the only one who’d been wrong. For decades the “exploding skull” hypothesis had been a cornerstone of forensic investigations involving burned bodies. The idea was that steam pressure built up inside the skull from the boiling (or rather, roasting) brain, eventually blowing apart the sealed vessel that was the cranium, much in the way that an unpunctured potato explodes in the microwave. But if the cranium was not sealed, that is, if there were preexisting openings – bullet holes, blunt force fractures – then the steam would safely escape through these vents without blowing up the skull – in the same way as it safely escapes through the skin of a fork-punctured potato. Thus, the reasoning went, while an unexploded skull was not proof positive of the lack of preexisting injuries – the effects of fire were not that predictable – an “exploded” skull was a good indication that it had been whole to begin with.
But when this intuitive, reasonable-sounding hypothesis was finally put to the test only a few years ago in a study involving the experimental burnings of scores of cadaver heads, it turned out not to hold up. Skulls did not explode like hot potatoes. They might fragment or warp because the heat had deformed them and made them brittle, or because a stream of cold water from a fireman’s hose hit the sizzling bone and cracked it, or because debris fell on them, or because they broke while being recovered. But explode – no, not a one.
“Well, that’s a hell of a note,” Fausto grumbled when Gideon had finished explaining. “So how much else of what you told us am I not supposed to believe anymore?”
“Fausto, except for this one thing, I promise you, you can rely with implicit faith on every word I uttered.”
“Uh-huh. Until they turn out to be contraindicated or unsupported by the evidence.”
Gideon nodded. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”
“Okay,” Fausto said with a sigh, “so where does all that leave us?”
“Right where we were before. Would it be all right for me to have a look at the body?”
“Pick you up in twenty minutes,” Fausto said and clicked off.
FOURTEEN
The Gibraltar morgue was in St. Bernard’s Hospital, which stood at the northern end of the city in what was called Europort, a modern, waterside complex strikingly different from the cozy, matey, “ ’ere’s mud in yer eye” ambience of Main Street. Here were the high-end, balconied luxury apartments with their three-year waiting lists, and the tasteful, polished wood and brushed stainless steel headquarters of the colony’s financial, insurance, and investment companies. Here too were the not quite so refined offshore gambling and tax haven centers that had lately become main sources of Gibraltar’s income.
Fausto drove them there in his pride and joy, a gleaming black, low-slung sports car – a Lamborghini Diablo, he said, clearly expecting a gush of admiration and astonishment from Gideon (in this he was sorely disappointed) – that was perfectly suited to the DCI’s diminutive size, but required Gideon to sit with his feet off the floor and his knees jammed up against the dashboard. It also required some planning and a few contortions to get in and out through the butterfly-wing doors. And of course, Fausto drove it like any sports car enthusiast, which is to say like a maniac, careening joyfully around the narrow streets and tight corners of the old town, pedal to the floor. Gideon twice thought it was all over, but somehow they did make it. The hospital itself was brand spanking new, a smooth, cream-colored monolith of seven stories, of which Gideon was to see none. The hospital garage in which Fausto parked was underground, and the morgue was a floor below that.