Aaron Elkins: Skull Duggery

Wordlessly, Bustamente stuck his finger into a dark hole not far from the middle of the slab. “You see?”

“From a bullet?” Sandoval asked. If he squeezed his eyelids together, leaving just a slit, he could see it without really seeing it.

“Without question.” He removed his finger. “You see how the borders of the perforation appear to have been eroded or eaten away? So that the hole is ‘cratered,’ as we might say?”

“Yes,” said Sandoval queasily, although all he could make out through his squint was a roundish hole with blackened edges. There was no denying, though, that it was the right size for a bullet hole. He had shot enough rabbits to know as much.

“This eroded area is what we refer to as an ‘abrasion collar,’ ” Bustamente continued, in the manner of a teacher talking to a not-too-bright pupil. “It is the result of scraping from the rotating motion of the bullet as it penetrates the skin. Being unique to gunshot wounds, it leaves no doubt as to the source of the penetration. Judging from the size of the hole, I would guess the bullet was. 32 caliber, but I leave that to the experts.”

“I see. And it would have killed him?”

Bustamente uttered a croaking, incredulous laugh. “Certainly, it would have killed him. Imagine if it had happened to you.” To illustrate, he jabbed a bony forefinger into Sandoval’s chest at about the same spot. “It would have exploded your heart, devastated it.”

“Ah,” said Sandoval, whose heart was, in fact, feeling more than a little devastated. Murder. Tumult. Inconvenience. The State Procuraduria de Justicia taking over his office, taking over the whole municipal building, all four rooms of it. The policia ministerial giving him orders, making clear their contempt for him, swaggering and bullying their way through the village. Detectives… judges…

It was only what he’d expected, he thought with a resigned sigh. Expect the worst, his stern, cheerless father had counseled him on many an occasion, and you will get what you expect. Only it will be worse. Sandoval had quoted it to one or two people and they had laughed. But his father hadn’t meant it as a joke, and the message had sunk in.

“And if by a miracle that were not enough,” continued Bustamente, “the fall would have finished the job.”

“He had a fall too?”

“A long one. There are many broken ribs. Was he perhaps found at the foot of a cliff or mountain, a height of some kind?”

“Yes.”

Bustamente was pleased. “You see?”

Sandoval heaved a forlorn sigh. “This means I will have to report the matter to the policia ministerial, doesn’t it?” he said glumly, already knowing the answer.

“The sooner the better, I would say. I would not waste any time. They don’t like delays.”

“And what happens to the body? Do you take it away with you?”

“Not me!” exclaimed Bustamente. “”I submit my own report. That’s the end of my responsibility.”

“So what do I do with him? We can’t just leave him here.”

“I suggest that is precisely what you do. Lock the place up securely and await the attentions of the policia, who will not be long in coming, I promise you.”

Sandoval nodded soberly. If only old Nacho had stayed on the regular paths like anyone else. Or if he had to stray sometime, couldn’t he have waited a few measly weeks longer? Sandoval would no longer have been the jefe by then; he would have been safely, agreeably, delightfully engaged in the administration of the village council’s affairs, with no responsibility for corpses or murders or “You have a problem on your hands, Chief Sandoval,” Bustamente observed.

“You’re telling me.”

“No, I mean an additional problem. I found no bullet. I searched the thoracic cavity thoroughly. It’s not there.”

Sandoval frowned. “But why should you expect to find the bullet? It might be anywhere. Do you expect to find the bullet when you shoot a rabbit or a deer? Bullets continue on their way-”

Bustamente shook his head. The problem was, he said, that there was no exit wound. The mummified skin on the back and sides of the body was intact. Ergo, the bullet had never exited. But he had searched the thoracic cavity thoroughly and it was nowhere to be found.

“I don’t understand. How can that be?”

Bustamente twisted his skinny neck, working out the kinks. “Shall we go outside now? I want some fresh air.”

They went to a stone memorial bench in the cemetery, where they sat awkwardly side by side. Sandoval himself felt a little better there; the air was fresh and he was among family. It seemed sometimes that half the population of Teotitlan was either a Sandoval or related by marriage to a Sandoval. Bustamente offered him a cigarillo, was turned down, and lit one for himself.

“So then where is it, this bullet?” Sandoval asked. “If not inside the body, then where?”

“There is only one possible answer.” Bustamente got his cigarillo going, shook out his match, and emitted twin streams of blue smoke from his nostrils. “It could only have fallen back out through the perforation by which it entered.”

That didn’t sound right to Sandoval. “But can a bullet do that? Come out through its own wound?”

“I don’t see why not. It’s not usual, that’s so, but-”

“And you said it was a problem for me. Why is it a problem for me if you found no bullet?”

Bustamente dropped the barely smoked cigarillo onto the concrete pad that supported the bench and ground it out under his sole.

He arched his scant eyebrows. “Do you want to turn in a report to the Procuraduria de Justicia in which you tell them you were not capable of finding a bullet that probably lies within a meter of where the corpse was discovered? Would you prefer the policia ministerial to find it for you?”

“I would not,” Sandoval said softly, but with feeling.

Bustamente uttered a short laugh. “I should think not. You had better return to where he was found and locate it. And if you do not find it there, you must search every millimeter of earth on the way back. That is my considered advice. It may well have come out while the body was on the burro.”

Sandoval blew out his cheeks and exhaled. What a job this was going to be. “I’d better get started now.” They both stood up. “Is there anything else you need to tell me?”

“Nothing that would interest you,” Bustamente said curtly. “I will have my own report for the police next week. And now if you’ll excuse me-”

Flaviano Sandoval was by nature a mild, even a timid, man, given to diffidence and conciliation, as opposed to temper outbursts, but at this he bristled. “I am the police,” he said forcefully. “If you have additional information, I wish to know it.”

But Dr. Bustamente was not a man to be intimidated, least of all by Flaviano Sandoval. “I meant the real police,” he said drily, but it was beyond him to resist demonstrating his expertise. “If you must know, however, I can tell you that it is my judgment that to become desiccated to this extent, he had to have been lying out in the open for at least eight months, more likely ten.”

“And I would say no more than six months,” Sandoval said, still bristling.

Bustamente stared at him. “Chief Sandoval, I have twenty-two years of experience in these matters. I have certificates in forensic medicine, in clinical pathology, in maxillofacial pathology…”

Sandoval let him rattle on. It was Bustamente’s fault he was in this mess-well, in a way it was-and he owed the officious, self-important old man a comeuppance.

“Six months,” Sandoval repeated when Bustamente paused for breath. “No more.”

Bustamente smiled a lipless smile. “Oh yes? And perhaps you would care to tell me on what premise you base this learned conclusion?”