ROYAL GIBRALTAR POLICE PROPERTY RECORD FORM LISTING OF PERSONAL EFFECTS
Case # 2005-44
Name of deceased: Sheila Laura Chan
Property recorded on: 24 August 2005
Property recorded by: Anthony Burns, Sgt., Jesse Figueroa, Clerk
Found on and in immediate vicinity of deceased:
Cash: GBP24.77
US $5.59
Jewelry:
“Swiss military” wrist watch, ankle bracelet.
Clothing:
Deceased was clothed in shirt, cap, walking shorts, belt, socks, sandals, underwear.
Other:
Trowel, sunglasses, ballpoint pen, wallet, comb, purse, credit cards (Visa, MasterCard), other cards (California Driver’s License, Social Security, Berkeley Public Library, Safeway, Pier 1).
Found in deceased’s lodgings, Room 434, Eliott Hoteclass="underline"
Cash:
None.
Jewelry:
None.
Clothing:
3 shirts, 2 prs walking shorts, 1 pr jeans, 1 pr slacks, 1 pr walking shoes, 1 pr running shoes, 1 pr bedroom slippers, 4 sets underwear, 3 prs socks, 1 pr pyjamas.
Other:
Suitcase, ballpoint pen, gel pen, Hi-Liter pens, nail clippers, scissors, 2 plaster vertebrae, 2 books (The Neanderthal Legacy; Neanderthals amp; Modern Humans in Late Pleistocene Eurasia), shoulder bag, purse, lipstick, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, sunscreen, 4 bottled drugs and medicines (aspirin, Ambien, Prozac, multivitamins, Lipitor).
Is property of evidentiary value?
No.
Released to:
No known relatives or claimants. Property donated to local charities or destroyed, 29 August 2005.
He was still studying this sheet, intently and protractedly, when Fausto returned, hanging up his jacket and coming to look over Gideon’s shoulder. “Find something interesting?” He slipped out his cuff links as deftly as he’d inserted them, and crisply refolded his shirt sleeves.
“Uh-huh,” Gideon said thoughtfully. “A couple of things. What were these, do you remember?” He tapped one of the entries with his finger: 2 plaster vertebrae.
“Oh, yeah. They were models, not real. What about them?”
“It says at the bottom it was all given away or destroyed. There wouldn’t be any way of tracing what happened to them, would there?”
Fausto slowly shook his head. “Not if it doesn’t say there. Why, you think they might be important?”
“Well… yes. Considering how light she was traveling – how little else was on that inventory, they must have been important – maybe something to do with the paper she was going to give. You have to admit, they’re funny things to carry around with you and keep in your hotel room.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised to find them in your hotel room.”
“That’s a point,” Gideon admitted with a smile. “But you know, what’s equally interesting is what isn’t there.”
“What isn’t there?” Fausto said, scowling down at the sheet.
“Let me ask you, can I assume this inventory is absolutely complete? I mean, would it include every single thing you found on her, or at the hotel?”
“If she had it, it’s on the list. Why, what isn’t there?”
“Think about it a minute. She was going to give a presentation, right?”
“Right, yeah.”
“A major paper, you said.”
“Yeah…”
“So…?”
“So how about just telling me?” Fausto said irritably. “I guess I’m just too dumb to see it on my own.”
“Where’s the paper?”
“The paper,” Fausto echoed. “What paper, I don’t-”
“Fausto, these were professional, highly academic meetings. At a conference like that, people don’t just get up and talk off the tops of their heads, the way I did at the cave. Everybody reads their papers. Aloud.”
“That must make things really stimulating.”
“It’s awful, but that’s still the way it’s done. Well, where’s the paper? For that matter, where are her notes? She’d almost certainly have had notes with her. Maybe handouts too. And chances are, she would have brought her laptop with her, full of background material and details, and maybe so she could make a PowerPoint presentation. Where’s any of that?”
Fausto took the folder from him, went around the desk, and sat down again, studying the inventory form line by line. “I see what you mean. Not there, all right.”
“Someone took them,” Gideon said flatly.
“ Maybe someone took them. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That’s one of your mottoes, isn’t it?” He was thumbing restlessly, abstractedly, through the rest of file, not really looking at it.
“Fausto, look at the facts. One-” He ticked the point off on his thumb. “-Sheila Chan’s all set to give a big paper, but before she can do it she gets killed and all her notes disappear. Two-” This one on his index finger. “- I’m scheduled to give a big speech, and somebody does his best to kill me… and comes a lot closer than I like. Three-” The middle finger. “-Gunderson’s scheduled to make some kind of speech at the Europa Point ceremony, but somebody kills him before he can do it and burns his house down to boot. Are you telling me you don’t see a pattern here?”
“I don’t know… yeah, maybe, okay.” Fausto nodded his reluctant agreement, then unexpectedly produced his bark of a laugh. “Hoo boy. Talk about interconnected monkey doodoo. Little did I know that archaeology was such a dangerous profession. Thank Christ these meetings are only once every four or five years. Otherwise we’d be up to our eyeballs in homicides.”
“You probably are up to your eyeballs in homicides,” Gideon said a little grumpily. “You just don’t know it because you don’t have an obliging expert like me around to help you out.”
“Yeah, that must be it,” Fausto said, thinking. The file was still open on his desk. He was drumming his fingers on the topmost form. “Look, I think the place to start with Chan-” He snapped his fingers with a sharp clack that Gideon, an ineffective fingersnapper, envied. “Hey, I just remembered – I think I might know – come on.”
In a flash he was out of his chair, through the door, and hustling down the corridor with his quick, short, decisive steps, heels clicking on the linoleum tiles. Gideon followed, his longer legs allowing him to keep up with a more moderate stride. They went to the booking room, where Gideon had been fingerprinted. The woman who had rolled his prints was sitting at a metal desk, still humming while she used a metal ruler to pencil lines onto a flow chart. As they came in, she stopped humming and sat up straight. “Can I help you, Chief Inspector?”
Fausto’s eyes were hunting around the room, searching for something, not finding it. “Rosie,” he said after a moment, “you used to have a kind of little vase in here. You made it out of a couple of plaster vertebrae that were part of the property inventory from the cave-in out at Europa Point. I don’t see them.”
Rosie swallowed. “Inspector Pullen said it was okay to take them, sir,” she said nervously. “I did ask. I mean, I know that’s not according to the books, but they were just going into the dustbin anyway, and I thought they’d be cute for, you know, a single rose or something, so I just glued them together-”
“I know, I know,” Fausto said in what was as close as he ever came to a soothing tone. “There’s no problem. I just wanted to know where it is. Professor Oliver here wants to have a look at them.”
“It’s not here anymore.”
Damn, Gideon said to himself.
“It’s at home.”
Ah, Gideon said to himself.
“My ten-year-old – she’s interested in bones. She wants to be a medical illustrator – she has it on her desk now. She uses it to hold her favorite pen.” She was half out of her chair. “Do you need it right now, sir? Shall I run home and collect it?”