Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 02 - The Dark Place Read online

  Julie sipped her coffee quietly, smiling at the faraway look in the agent’s eyes. "It sounds like you like him a lot," she said softly.

  "Yeah, I like him."

  The look left his eyes abruptly, almost with embarrassment. He clapped the potato chip bag into a crumpled ball and tossed it into the basket. "You’re not going to leave that doughnut, are you?"

  Chapter 3

  From the air the lake was beautiful, deep blue in the warm sunlight, and dotted with white sailboats. Their occupants waved as the pilot dropped the little Cessna 210 smoothly toward the water, its engine rackety and echoing. The dense woods that began at the shore and stretched many miles to the northwest were the rain forest, Gideon knew. He studied them curiously, just a little disappointed to find them pleasant and cool-looking, not in the least sinister.

  The plane landed on the water not far from what he knew must be Lake Quinault Lodge, a set of big, rambling buildings set comfortably at the back of a huge, lush lawn that sloped down a good two hundred feet to the lakeshore. Turning, the blue and white Cessna, rocking gently in its own wake, taxied slowly toward the dock at the foot of the lawn.

  He spotted John at once among the two dozen people lounging on the dock. One of the many things he enjoyed about him was how genuinely pleased the big Hawaiian always seemed to see him and there he was, steady and solid-looking in his denim shirt and jeans, grinning happily at Gideon through the airplane window.

  When Gideon jumped down from the Cessna’s doorway, there were a few moments of handshaking and back-clapping, and finally a powerful hug. Not for the first time, it occurred to him that of all the men he knew, John Lau was the only one he could comfortably and unselfconsciously embrace.

  With a final thump on Gideon’s shoulder, John turned to a black-haired woman of about thirty in the gray shirt and olive pants of the National Park Service. "This is Julie Tendler. She’s the chief ranger. Been a hell of a lot of help."

  "Hi, Professor," she said. "I really enjoyed your book. I was an anthro minor," she added by way of explanation.

  "I’m glad you liked it," he said with the tolerant smile of a gracious celebrity. Actually, he was delighted. As the author of A Structuro-Functional Approach to Pleistocene Hominid Phylogeny, he’d yet to become jaded by the approbation of the masses.

  Gideon swung his suit bag over his shoulder and they walked up the sloping lawn to the main hotel building. On the way, John explained about the three missing persons. Two had disappeared six years before on the then new but since closed Matheny trail between the Queets and Quinault rain forests. The third, Claire Hornick, had vanished only a few days ago, about eight miles from there. The search for her had turned up the bones, and that’s when the FBI had been called in.

  Gideon checked into the lodge and left his bag at the registration desk. They walked across the grand old lobby with its ancient, wicker furniture, old-fashioned and comfortable.

  "I haven’t seen wicker writing desks in an American hotel for a long time," Gideon said. "Or a parrot in the lobby."

  "Yes," Julie said, "it’s a great old place."

  John held open the door, and Gideon awkwardly bowed Julie through, not at all sure if she would like the gesture. She went through with a pleasant smile, and they stepped out into the town of Quinault. It was a shock. They had entered the hotel building from a spacious, sunny lawn peopled with sunbathers and laughing volleyball players, and with ten square miles of open lake at their backs. When they walked out through the rear entrance, no more than forty feet away, they stepped into a sunless shadowy world of almost solid green, hushed and perceptibly cooler and more moist than the lawn.

  The "town," invisible from the air, consisted of several buildings out of the nineteenth century along either side of a narrow road. On the right was an old post office and a weathered, rustic general store—"Lake Quinault Merc," the sign said—with a wooden porch complete with an old dog sprawled drowsily on it. On the left was the Quinault Ranger Station, a group of small frame houses. Everything was dwarfed and hemmed in by towering walls of cedar and spruce, so tall and close together that the sky was visible only as a narrow slit high above the road. The road itself gave the illusion of being cut off at either end by more tree walls, and the overall effect was like being at the bottom of a sunken corridor, a narrow, gravelike canyon cut deep into the living mass of trees.

  It was in its own way extraordinarily beautiful, but the impact on Gideon, used to the scrub oak and open hillsides of California, was so oppressive that he unconsciously moved his hand to his already open collar to get more air.

  "This is fascinating," he said. "I’ve never been in a rain forest before."

  Julie laughed. "Oh, this isn’t the rain forest," she said, her eyes looking down the road beyond the barrier of trees. "The rain forest’s in there. This is just regular woods."

  The ranger station complex was better. The growth had been cut away to provide an open space, probably by some early, claustrophobic chief ranger, and Gideon breathed more easily as he stepped into it.

  In the workroom at the rear of the main building, the burials were neatly arranged on a scarred oak table, each one consisting of a pitifully few fragments in front of a numbered paper bag. Four of the groupings sat next to frayed, soiled baskets with red and black designs. On the table, in front of the one chair with arms, were the magnifying glass and calipers that Gideon had requested on the telephone.

  Gideon quickly identified five of the six, including all those that had been in baskets, as Indian burials that had been in the ground at least twenty years.

  John nodded disappointedly. "That’s what Fenster told us."

  "I don’t think there’s any doubt about it," Gideon said. "The baskets, the fact that the bodies were cremated, the fact that some of them have been buried a lot longer than others—a hundred years at least, I’d say, for that one there—it all suggests an old, established burial ground."

  Julie was frowning. "I don’t know. I think I know the history of this rain forest as well as anyone does, and I never heard of any Indians who ever lived here. And I don’t remember cremated burials in baskets being very common among North American Indians."

  "Maybe not. I’m not an ethnologist, but I know the practice exists, or existed. Some of the central California peoples used to do it."

  When Julie continued to frown he said firmly, "Trust me, I’m a world-renowned authority."

  John laughed but Julie looked at him curiously. "Joke," Gideon said. "Now, let’s have a look at this last one. Fenster thinks this might be one of the hikers?"

  "Right, Doc," John said. "You want their descriptions?"

  "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."

  He placed the point on a white sheet of paper and traced its outline with a pen. Then with dotted lines he extended the shape. "It’s hard to say, but I’d guess this is what it must have looked like complete." He had drawn a tapering form about three inches long and an inch and a half wide at its base.

  Julie moved closer to the table, squeezing between the two men. Gideon was aware of the nearness of her hip and of her faint, fresh fragrance as she bent over the drawing.

  "I’ve read a lot of Northwest Coast ethnology and archaeology, Dr. Oliver," she said, "and this doesn’t look like an arrow. It looks a lot like the kind of spear point they’ve turned up at the Marmes Rockshelter in eastern Washington."

  "Does it?" said Gideon, interested. "Yes, it could be a spear. He changed the drawing a little, sketching in a few lines. "That does look better. The wooden shaft would attach there."

  "Hold it now," John said. "Are we saying this guy was killed by a spear—a wooden spear with a bone point? That’s just a little bizarre, to say the least."

  Gideon leaned back in his chair and shrugged.

  "So what does that add up to?" John asked. "Was he killed by an Indian?"

  "With a bone spear?
" Julie said. "You’re kidding. The point I was talking about is ten thousand years old. And the local Indians are tribes like the Quileute and the Quinault. They’re busy managing their fish hatcheries and motels. With computers. They don’t go running around with bone spears."

  "Do you know anybody who does?" John asked with a shade of temper. He looked at Gideon. "All right, what’s your theory, Doc?"

  "Uh-uh," Gideon said. "I’m the anthropologist. I’ve told you these are the remains of a husky white male about twenty-nine and that this is a bone spear point in his spinal column. You’re the one who gets paid to come up with theories. But I agree with Julie; you’re on the wrong track if you think the spear necessarily means Indians."

  John shoved his chair back and thrust himself out of it. "All right," he said, pacing, huge and bearlike in the small room, "we find a body in an Indian graveyard. He’s in there with what you tell me are Indian skeletons buried in Indian baskets. He’s got a bone spear that looks just like what the local Indians used to use stuck in him. But," he said, plopping back into his chair, "in no way could it possibly be an Indian who killed him. I don’t follow the logic."

  "Look," Gideon said, "I didn’t mean it couldn’t be an Indian. It could be anyone. I meant don’t assume the circumstances point to an Indian."

  Julie moved away from his shoulder and swung around to sit on the table, disturbingly near. He could have rested an arm on her thigh without moving from his chair. "I’m not sure about your logic either," she said, looking down at him.

  Your logic? He was aware of an absurd letdown feeling. He had expected her support. "What exactly bothers you?" he asked.

  "In the first place, how do you know without doing any lab tests that the skeleton hasn’t been in the ground twenty years, or a hundred? I know you’re not familiar with the soil or the climate…" She paused to let him answer.

  "I just know," he said, telling the truth. "You get a feel for it, even if you can’t quantify your methods. Color of the bone…weight…density…" He picked up the vertebra. "Five years at least, ten years at most." He turned to John. "Have you ever known me to guess wrong?"