Aaron Elkins - Little Tiny Teeth

“Yuck,” said Tim.

“You’ve lost me, Doc,” John said. “Okay, this piece of bone, this ring of bone, was maybe nailed up with a nail gun – this nail gun right here, it looks like – but how does that translate to the guy was killed with it? How do you know what killed him?”

“And I still want to know how they made this,” said Phil, who had finally taken the bone from Gideon and was peering at the smooth, circular border of the hole in the center. “It’s like it was made with a, with a…”

“It was made with the nail gun,” Gideon said, “which also nailed it to the wall – and on its way from doing the first to accomplishing the second, it made a hash of his brain.”

His open-mouthed audience waited for more.

“Well, first of all, you have to remember that a good nail gun can generate a fantastic velocity; around fourteen hundred feet per second, if I remember correctly.”

“You’re kidding me. That’s faster than the muzzle velocity on my old Detective Special,” John said. “And that could sure do a lot of damage.”

“And so can a two-inch steel nail, especially with a flat, round head, although more often than not, it just makes a hole in the skull and merely gets embedded in the brain.”

Duayne winced. “‘Merely,’ the man says.”

“But once in a while, especially with a powerful gun driving it, it doesn’t happen that way. It happens the way it happened here.”

The sequence would have been like this: The point of the nail would have easily perforated the skull, making a small, circular hole – smaller than the one now visible in the bone – but a millisecond later the round, flat head of the nail would have struck the skull as well, creating a larger opening. It would have driven partway through, then gotten wedged in the hole it had made, which would have transferred its energy to the immediately surrounding bony tissue, breaking away the ring of bone he now held in his hand. The nail would then have continued plowing through the brain, dragging the ring along with it and doing dreadful destruction, then exploded out the back of the head, bony ring and all, and then kept going a few feet – it couldn’t have been far, because so much of its energy would have dissipated, which would have been why it wasn’t embedded very deeply in the door.

“And that’s how it happened,” he finished. “I think.”

They had listened to this virtuoso analysis, part enthralled, part horrified, and for a moment it almost seemed as if they were going to break into applause, but they only shook their heads, or clucked, or softly whistled.

Except for Duayne, who murmured, “Amazing, just amazing.”

“Question,” Mel said. “Where’s the rest of him?”

“Very good question,” said Gideon. “Obviously, the body’s not here.”

“Burned up inside, perhaps?” suggested Maggie. “In fact, maybe they set the fire to cover it.”

“Oh no, I don’t think so. You can see this wasn’t an especially hot fire – apparently no accelerants involved, no gasoline or anything like that. A fire like this, or an ordinary house fire – it’s not nearly hot enough to consume a body. If he was inside, we’d be able to spot him.”

“Well, if it worked the way you said, Doc,” John said, “then he would have been standing a few feet in front of the door, just about where we are right now, when he got shot. We’re only ten or fifteen feet from the edge, and there’s no beach right below. It would have been easy enough to roll him over the edge and into the river.”

“That’s true, but whatever happened, there’s probably some of him – blood, brain tissue, hair, pieces of his head – left around where he was shot. Which, as John says, was probably right where we’re standing.”

“And which we’d better get off of,” John added. “The police aren’t going to appreciate our stomping around a crime scene.”

“What police?” Vargas said with a guttural laugh. “Malagga? You think he’ll care enough to get his fat rear end all the way over here? Why should he?”

All the same, Vargas moved off six or seven steps, as did everybody else except Gideon, who had dropped to his hands and knees to have a better look at the ground.

“You mean Malagga would be responsible for investigating this?” John asked Vargas, as most of the others somewhat uncomfortably checked the soles of their shoes for any human residue that might be sticking to them. From the relief on their faces, it was obvious that none was found.

Vargas shrugged. “We’re still closer to the checkpoint than we are to Leticia, and there can’t be any police stations between them… there’s nothing between them except a few Indian villages… so, yes, I think it would fall to Malagga – if it fell to anybody.”

“Well, all the same, the cops have to be told. We’ll add that to what we tell them when we get to Leticia and let them decide what to do.”

“I’ve found something,” Gideon called. In the variegated red, yellow, and brown forest litter it would have taken more than the naked eye to spot blood spatter or brain tissue, but bone was different. He held up a roughly triangular chunk of bone an inch across at its widest point.

“This is a piece of the occipital – the rear of the skull, way down low. I can see some of the superior nuchal line and just the start of the occipital protuberance, and here on the inside, what I think is the transverse sinus… the left transverse sinus.” He hefted the piece. “This would have happened when the nail blasted out the back of his head. There are probably some more pieces around.”

For the next twenty minutes he continued crawling around the general area, coming up with another chunk of occipital, and five more pieces – no more than crumbs, really – that he recognized as bone but were too small to identify. By that time, everybody but Phil, John, and Vargas had grown bored and gone back to the ship. Vargas had gone to sit on the steps of the nearby shack and shake his head and mumble to himself, and John and Phil were idly watching Gideon.

“So what are you going to do with the pieces?” Phil asked.

“Turn them over to the police in Leticia, I guess. As John said, tell them about all this, and leave it up to them. Although I’m hoping I’m able to keep that ring of bone from the frontal. It’d make a hell of an addition to my study collection.”

Phil grimaced. “Jesus, you’re as bad as Duayne with his bugs. How come Julie hasn’t divorced you?”

“I’m referring to the collection in the forensic lab at the U,” said Gideon. “I don’t keep the damn things in my living room.”

“So what do we have here?” John was musing. “Can’t be a suicide.”

“Why can’t it be a suicide?” Phil asked him.

“Because where’s the body? Suicides don’t get up and walk away. And from what Doc said, this would have been pretty much an instant death, am I right? He would have dropped right here.”

“You’re right,” Gideon said, still on his knees. “Something as big as that bone ring, with the nail attached, tearing through the brain? He was dead before he hit the ground.”

“Well, maybe he committed suicide and somebody else moved him,” Phil suggested. “Buried him, or threw him in the river.”

“Yeah, it could be,” John said agreeably. “There isn’t exactly a lot to go on.”

“One thing we can assume,” said Gideon, getting slowly to his feet, “is that this wasn’t a premeditated homicide.”

“You mean because of the weapon,” John said. “Nobody with murder in his mind plans on doing it with a nail gun.”

“Right, a weapon of impulse, of opportunity.” Gideon brushed leaves and soil from his knees and got up. “One thing, though, John. I have to say I’m starting to agree with you.”