Aaron Elkins - Where there's a will

Fukida opened the bag and took out three lidded sixteen-ounce cardboard cups. “Here, I stopped on Ali’i Drive and got us some real coffee. I don’t know,” he said, looking hard at Gideon as he handed a cup to him, “I think I should have got you a decaf.”

“This’ll be fine,” Gideon said. He laughed and dropped back into his chair. “Thanks, smells wonderful.”

Fukida took a seat across the table from them, took the lid off his cup, crossed an ankle over one knee, and immediately started jiggling his foot. “I gather the autopsy report wasn’t too helpful?”

“Not about those missing toes, no. It’s the one place in the report where he decided to be concise.”

“What about the photos?”

“No, there wasn’t anything-”

“He means the autopsy photos, not the crime-scene ones, Doc. You haven’t even looked at them.”

“ Autopsy photos! I forgot all about them!” He reached for the envelope.

“He’s also a little absent-minded,” John explained.

There were six black-and-white photographs: two pre-autopsy shots of the body from different angles, one of the entry wound, two taken during dissection that showed the bullets’ trajectory… and one excellent-quality close-up of the right foot, post-dissection.

“Ah,” Gideon murmured with satisfaction. He propped the photo against one of the case files that were now strewn on the table and settled back in his chair, hands clasped on his belly, to study it from three feet away. After a minute he leaned forward so that his face was twelve or fifteen inches from it. Finally, he straightened up.

“You were both on target,” he announced. “This was faked. It’s not Torkel. Those toes got hacked off after he died.”

“I knew it. I told you.” Fukida was pleased for a moment, but then he rolled his eyes. “Oh, boy, like I really need this.”

“Or possibly right before,” Gideon said, “but that makes no sense. Anyway, it was peri-mortem, not antemortem. It didn’t happen years ago, that’s for sure.”

“You’re positive about that?” Fukida asked dejectedly.

“Oh, yes. And it wasn’t done by any surgeon, I’m positive about that, too. Or if it was, you better hope he never operates on you.”

Whatever it was that had done the job, he explained, had been a sharp instrument, but sharp like a heavy chef’s knife is sharp, not like a scalpel or a surgical saw.

“See”-he pointed to the photograph-“if you look at the cut ends of the bones, you can see that they’re not clean. There’s been some crushing at the margins.”

Fukida wasn’t at all sure he could see it, but John, who’d had more experience in this line, nodded. “‘Hacked’ is the word, all right. An axe, that’d be my guess.”

“I don’t think so, John. Look at the second toe, right above the cut-those striations running laterally across the bone? They’re pretty clear.”

These Fukida was able to make out. “Hesitation marks?”

“Right. The same kind of thing you get when someone’s trying to cut his wrists and can’t quite get up the nerve, or find the right spot. I think they were the first attempts to cut the toe off, and Torkel-or whoever did it-was trying to cut through the joint, which is pretty hard to find if you’re not up on your anatomy, because the bases and the heads of the phalanges are wedged really close together; they kind of overlap, more so as you get older. So, on the next try he resorted to brute force and just chopped his way right through the bone; a single stroke each time, or maybe a single stroke to lop off both toes, but I don’t think so. Almost certainly used a hammer or something like it to drive the blade through. The weapon itself was probably some kind of small, heavy blade, something like a heavy-duty box-cutter, maybe.”

“Why couldn’t it have been an axe?” John asked.

“If he’d had an axe to start with, why would there be any hesitation marks at all? When you swing an axe, you swing it. You’re not looking for some delicate little joint to slip it through. Both toes would have come off with the first whack. Besides, you’d have to be pretty good with an axe, or with anything else big, to clip just those two and not damage the ones on either side; especially the big toe.”

“That’s true,” John allowed.

“And the reason we know it happened after he died,” Fukida said, “is because there’s no-what did you call it, Johnny?”

“Osteoporotic atrophy. And resorption, let us never forget resorption.”

“Also, the medullary cavities are wide open,” Gideon said. “No capping, no healing at all. This man had those two toes right up until he died. Ergo, whoever he is, Torkel Torkelsson he is not.”

Fukida expelled a long, disgusted breath. “Wasn’t there a ring? Do I remember right? Wasn’t he wearing Torkel’s ring?”

“Not exactly wearing,” Gideon said. “There weren’t any fingers, but the ring was near his hand, where the fingers would have been.”

Fukida nodded. “So that was a plant, too; part of the scam. And we bought it. ‘Screw-up’ is right.”

“Looks like it,” John said. “Doc, you want to tell me something? All you had to do was take one look at the picture and you spotted this. This coroner, he had the real thing right in front of him, and he never saw it? I don’t care how spaced-out he was. I mean, even I can see it-”

“Now that I’ve pointed it out.”

“Well, yeah, but I’m not a medical examiner. Jesus, Teddy, what kind of coroners do you have here?”

“Hey, give me a break,” Fukida said. “This isn’t like it was in Honolulu. People are nice to each other here. We don’t have a lot of homicides. We don’t have a real forensic pathologist. We don’t even have real coroners; the police are all deputy coroners, and the autopsies, when we do ’em, get done under contract, by local doctors. Meikeljohn was just a urologist from Waimea that was willing to do it, so we used him a couple of times. What would he know from bones?”

“True, not too many bones in the urinary tract. At least now,” Gideon said, smiling, “I know why the bladder got all that loving attention.”

“What about an ID?” Fukida asked. “The pictures tell you anything that indicates it’s definitely Magnus?”

“Or definitely isn’t?” John added.

A shake of the head from Gideon. “There’s not much to work with. The sex is right, and the age is in the ball-park somewhere. That’s about it, and that applies to a whole lot of people. So the answer is

… I don’t know, not for certain.”

“So,” John said to Fukida, “what now?”

“Now? Now I put an addendum in the case file to the effect that we screwed up slightly.”

“And then?”

“Then what?”

“ Then what do you do? Where do you go from there?”

Fukida twisted his baseball cap around so that it was backwards, leaned back in his chair, and clasped his hands behind his neck. “Beats the hell out of me. What do you suggest?”

John stared at him. “What the hell kind of-”

Gideon interrupted. “We thought,” he said mildly, “that you might want to reopen the case.”

Fukida rocked back and forth in his chair while he considered, his hands still clasped behind his head. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

“But-” John began.

“No, wait.” He took off the cap, ran a hand through his thick black hair, and leaned soberly forward. “Look, Oliver, Johnny-you convinced me. The guy that was autopsied isn’t Torkel Torkelsson. This guy pulled off the scam of a lifetime, making us-making everybody-think that the body in the fire was his, so he could get away without leaving a trail.”

“Right!” John said. “So-”