Aaron Elkins - Uneasy Relations

“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.

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.

Dr. Kazimir Figlewski was waiting for them in the anteroom. Instead of the roomy hospital scrubs favored nowadays by most pathologists, he was wearing an old-fashioned black rubber apron over a sleeveless undershirt. He was a skinny, smiling scarecrow of a kid with a wild thatch of stiff, blond hair that sat on the top of his head like a nest, and big, round, flaming red ears that stuck out like a pair of mug handles. His pale, bare, unmuscled arms were covered in light brown freckles.

Gideon was visited by one of those intimations of his own advancing age that had begun popping up lately. When did they start making doctors this young? Fausto had told him Figlewski was somewhere in his late twenties, but since when were people in their late twenties as young as this?

“I am greatly happy to meet you, professor,” Figlewski said. His accent was what you might expect from someone named Kazimir Figlewski, throaty and Slavic, with long, broad, gliding vowels. He grinned and thrust out his hand.

Gideon, somewhat fastidious (many a small-minded colleague would say squeamish) around fresh remains (less than five hundred years old, say), couldn’t help sneaking a look at the proffered hand. Shaking hands with a man – a boy – who had just finished poking around inside a dead body didn’t appeal to him (some pathologists still worked without gloves part of the time, after all), but the hand looked clean and white enough. He took it.

“Thanks, Dr. Figlewski, same here.”

“Please, you call me Kaz.”

“And I’m Gideon. I hope you don’t think I’m horning in, Kaz.”

“Oh, no, please. Fausto warns me you are coming.” He laughed. “I mean he tells me you are coming, that you think maybe we got some foul play here. That’s great – I mean, I am wery interested to see what you do, how you do this. Is a great honor to meet you. I read your papers wery much in journals. ‘The Bone Doctor.’ ” He grinned.

“Close enough,” said Gideon, smiling.

“We don’t never have a real forensic scientist come here before, you know. No reason for it. Last murder we have is two years ago. This is before I start working with police.”

This is before you finished medical school, Gideon thought. “Yes, Fausto told me,” he said.

Fausto had also told him that Figlewski wasn’t really an ME in the American sense of the word. While his formal title was “forensic medical examiner,” he was simply a local pediatrician who had a part-time contract with the Territory of Gibraltar; what might be called a police surgeon in a small American town. He spent a great deal more time clucking over infected ears than he did in the autopsy suite. Fausto thought highly of him, though, and with reason. He had emigrated from Poland to England as a fifteen-year-old speaking no English. Despite this language handicap, thirteen years later he had a medical degree from the University of East Anglia, and last year he had come to Gibraltar, answering the call for doctors to work in the new hospital.

“But I already do some traffic fatalities,” he said, lest Gideon should think him inexperienced.”

“Your first burn case, though?”