Aaron Elkins - Unnatural Selection

“Is that right?” Victor said, eyes wide, head swiveling from person to person.

“Now, wait a minute,” Julie said. “A lot of books never come out. That doesn’t mean the author’s dead. And a lot of books take more than two years to write.”

“I can vouch for that,” Gideon muttered.

Liz turned to him. “Look, you said the bone was from an adult male. Why couldn’t it be him?”

“I didn’t say it couldn’t be. I don’t have any real reason to think it isn’t. But I also don’t have any real reason to think it is. You have to admit it’s an awfully long shot, based on pretty flimsy evidence-or rather nonevidence.”

“You don’t have any other hypotheses to go on,” Liz said.

“That’s true enough.”

“You could always mention it to Sergeant Mike tomorrow,” Julie suggested. “He’ll certainly know how to look into it if he wants to.”

“Very good, I’ll do that,” Gideon said, searching for another subject to move on to. “So how’d the poker game go after I left last night?”

“Awful,” said Donald at the same moment as Victor said “Great,” which effectively answered Gideon’s question.

“Will you be joining us tonight?” Donald asked.

“I don’t think so,” Gideon said with a grin. “Can’t afford it.”

The strands of fog continued to thicken and spread through the night, so that in the morning several of the interisland commercial boat operators called off nonessential operations for the day, and there was some doubt about whether it would be possible to get Hicks and his dog from St. Agnes to St. Mary’s. But Ron, the pilot of the police launch/water ambulance, was up to the task, and shortly after 10:00 A.M., Truscott Hicks and Tess the Border collie were deposited on the Hugh Town quay, where they were met by Gideon, Clapper, and Robb. At Gideon’s request, Robb had brought a couple of trowels for digging (although Gideon was privately counting on the sand’s being soft enough for bare-handed retrieval); a toothbrush and paintbrush for cleaning; some large paper bags and marking pens; and, from Islands Home Hardware, a few doors down from the police station, a three-foot length of large-gauge wire screening and a five-gallon bucket. He would use the last two items to sift the sand around and under any finds that were made, hunting for anything that might turn up.

In addition, Robb, on his own, had brought a pad of graph paper, a folding ruler and tape measure, the office digital camera, several pairs of disposable gloves, and a sleeve of plastic envelopes for incidental items that might be found.

“It’s the boy’s first likely homicide,” Clapper told Gideon, sounding like an amused parent, “and he’s determined to do it up right.” His next thought seemed to catch him by surprise. “Well, so am I, if it comes to that.”

They walked a few steps from the quay to where the Scillies’ one and only official conveyance, a white Land Rover with bold, blue-checkerboard detailing, was parked alongside the quay. The word POLICE was printed in giant block letters on a six-inch-wide horizontal band of eye-assaulting, Day-Glo chartreuse that encircled the entire van.

“Hard to miss, innit?” Clapper said approvingly. “PC Robb will drive the two of you. I’ll follow along in my own motorcar.”

Hicks, Gideon, and Tess climbed into the backseat, and Robb started the engine. Tess briefly explored those parts of Gideon that were of canine interest and went back to nestle down, close up against Hicks’s leg, her head between her paws.

They drove north, out of town and past a couple of pleasant beaches that had picnickers and strollers on them despite the fog, then past a few scattered restaurants and guesthouses, a sprawling flower farm, and the nine-hole Isles of Scilly Golf Club. The paving ran out just beyond the golf course, and they continued north, bumping along on an otherwise empty and increasingly primitive dirt road bordering a rocky coast perforated by occasional isolated sandy coves.

“Well, it’s got to be this one,” Robb said, stopping at the very limit of anything that could reasonably be called a road. “That’s Halangy Point up ahead, and there’s the Creeb right out there.” He pointed to a low, bare little island not far offshore. “And this is the only sandy stretch between them.”

“Ah,” said Gideon. If nothing else came of the day, at least he now knew what a creeb was.

Behind them, Clapper pulled up in a dusty, beat-up Vauxhall Astra. They were only a couple of miles from the center of Hugh Town, but a world away from the hurly-burly of bustling streets, souvenir shops, and day-trippers. The cove itself was a hundred-yard-wide curve of gravelly sand bordered by rocky outcroppings at either end, with more scattered rocks and a few meager patches of dune grass at the back. Not a particularly attractive beach, especially for this beach-blessed part of the world, and there were no signs of footprints, no litter. It looked as if nobody had been on it for months.

“Good place for the dog to work,” Hicks said.

Good place to bury a few sackfuls of body parts, Gideon thought.

On the far side of the road the land swept away into a region of rolling green uplands sparsely dotted with stone farmhouses and occasionally patterned by hedgerows into squares and rectangles that ran up and down the hillsides. This, Gideon knew, was also the part of the island most richly populated with the ruins of the Stone Age villages and rock-cairn burial chambers that he still meant to get to, if there was time-if, that is, no interesting hoard of bones turned up today.

“Not much beach this morning,” Clapper said more or less to himself as they got out of their vehicles at the side of the road above the sand. “Tide’s still up. Maybe thirty yards down to the water. We won’t be able to get below the high-tide line for some time.”

“Not much point in looking there anyway,” Hicks said. “Anything buried there would have been washed away in the winter storms long ago, with new sand having been deposited to replace the old.”

Gideon nodded his agreement as he held out his cardboard cup for some of the hot, sweetened tea that Robb had thoughtfully brought along in a metal carafe. With the increase in the fog, along with a stiff breeze, the temperature had dropped six or seven degrees, and he was regretting not having taken Julie’s advice to put on a fleece under his Windbreaker. Clapper’s comb-over was standing straight up in the wind, but he seemed not to notice.

While the men sipped their tea, Tess tugged impatiently at the end of her leash, her head turned up, her tongue lolling, and her strange, warm yellow eyes trained eagerly on Hicks.

He laughed as he looked down at her. “Tell me she doesn’t know she’s going to have a chance to get some work in. Tell me she doesn’t love it.”

He crumpled his cup and placed it in the litter sack in the van. “Well, let’s get started, shall we? I’ll have her begin over there, at the north end, so that she can work into the wind. More effective that way, you see.”

As the four men trudged to the other end of the cove, Gideon used the time to study the dune grass. Burials had a way of changing the vegetation that grew above them, or rather a number of ways. Most obviously, and most often, they provided nutrients that made plant growth more luxuriant. On the other hand, they sometimes slowed growth by damaging or restricting roots. So one of the important things, when hunting a burial, was to look for an area of growth that was noticeably different from the surrounding area. But in this case, the grasses were so skimpy and scattered to begin with that they gave no clue.

Hicks hopped nimbly down the rocks to the sand, followed by the others, with Tess growing more excited by the second. They were a bit more protected from the wind here, and Gideon eased open the zipper of his Windbreaker.