Aaron Elkins - Twenty blue devils

The hamburger came on sliced French bread with an elegant dab of creamy sauce on it-Bearnaise, Gideon thought- and with a separate plate of fries. With barely a glance at the sauce, John scraped it off with a knife, poured on ketchup from the Del Monte bottle that the waitress had brought, and got happily to work. Gideon's Spanish omelet was more like a stir-fry mixed into some scrambled eggs, with tomato sauce on top, but there was a French flair to it and it tasted good, and it was a few minutes before the subject that was on both their minds came to the fore again.

"Doc, where do we go from here?” John said.

"Where is there to go? Look, I think Bertaud is wrong. But I could be wrong too."

John peered at him. “Where did this come from? You seemed pretty sure of yourself yesterday."

"I'm pretty sure today too. I think those maggots mean Brian was attacked with a knife. But I wouldn't swear to it, I wouldn't bet my life on it. All we saw were a few fuzzy photographs. We're dealing with probabilities here, John, not absolutes. To me, it seemed as if the probability of foul play was high enough to justify an exhumation; to Bertaud it didn't. I think he's wrong, but I can't really blame him.” He speared a piece of cooked celery and popped it into his mouth, “And this being French Polynesia, Bertaud gets the last word. Unless you think Nick could be swung around-"

John shook his head.

"-I don't see that we have any options."

"Mm,” John said and thoughtfully munched another couple of ketchup-logged fries. Gideon thought that was the end of it, but a moment later John spoke.

"We could always dig the body up ourselves,” he said offhandedly.

Gideon's celery nearly went down the wrong pipe. He managed to get it rerouted without choking, then stared at John. “You couldn't have said what I thought you said."

"I said we could always dig the body up ourselves."

"You can't be serious! What, in the dead of night? With hooded lanterns, and cloaks pulled over our faces? What the hell kind of thing is that to suggest? Christ, from an FBI agent yet!"

'Well, I don't hear anything better coming from you.” Gideon couldn't argue with that.

"Anyway,” John said, “it wouldn't be the dead of night.” He raised his eyebrows and looked quizzically at Gideon; a why-don't-we-just-talk-about-this-a-little-more kind of look.

Gideon started to say something, then thought better of it and took a slow, steadying sip of the coffee they'd ordered after their meal. The thing to do was simply to stare coldly at John, as he was now doing, making it clear from his stony expression that it was out of the question. To discuss it at all would be to suggest that it was within the realm of possibility, and that would be a mistake. He had done some damnfool things in his life, a rather high percentage of them at John's instigation, and he was sincerely afraid of getting himself talked into another. He more than understood his friend's point of view, after all-somebody had almost certainly murdered Brian Scott and was going to get clean away with it, and that galled Gideon too, who hadn't even known Brian. But, good God, he certainly wasn't going to go around digging up corpses on his own, particularly in the face of Bertaud's repeated warnings to mind their own business. It was crazy even to think about it, let alone talk about it.

He sighed. “What do you mean, not the dead of night?"

John smiled at him. “I mean-"

"And you can wipe that grin off your face. I'm just asking a question. I didn't say I'm going along with this. I'm not going along with this."

"Naturally, of course not, we're just talking theoretically,” John said, smiling some more, so that the skin around his eyes crinkled up. “What I mean is that the cemetery Brian's buried in is this old native graveyard in a back corner of the plantation. It's just this little place, maybe a quarter of an acre. Nobody goes near it from one year to the next. It's where they used to bury the copra workers in the old days. They don't even use it anymore; I think Brian's the first person to be buried there in ten years. And we can take a back road to it that doesn't go anywhere near the working part of the plantation. I'm telling you, even in the middle of the day there wouldn't be anybody to see us."

"Theoretically speaking,” Gideon said.

"Theoretically speaking,” agreed John. “So what do you say?"

"I say you're out of your mind. Aside from breaking the law-"

"That's not a problem. Look, we dig up the body, you have a look at it right there, check out that hand, see if it's what you think-"

"What do you mean, right there? At the grave?"

"At the grave, yes. If you don't find anything that means anything, we just cover him back up and leave quietly. But if you do, then we bring the police in on it. Bertaud would have to do something about it then. He wouldn't have any choice. You've got a reputation-"

"Yes, I know,” Gideon said. “The Skeleton Detective. I'm real famous in America. I remember how deeply it impressed him last time."

"Look, Doc, Brian's an American citizen; we could make an international incident out of it if they didn't do anything. And, believe me, Bertaud may be a jerk but if we can really convince him it's murder, he'll follow up. And he's not going to make a fuss about us breaking some health department regulation by digging up a grave.” He gulped down some coffee. “Theoretically."

"John,” Gideon said, “you're not seeing the whole picture. You're imagining we go get a couple of shovels, dig down six feet-"

"Not even six feet, probably."

"-and there he is in a box and all we have to do is pry the lid off. Well, they don't bury people that way anymore, not even here. The plain old hole in the ground went out with ‘Alas, poor Yorick.’ Those holes are lined with cement nowadays, or maybe cinder block, and they usually have a concrete cap on top. You need heavy equipment to get it off-a crane, a backhoe-"

John was shaking his head. “Not this grave, Doc. No concrete, no cinder block, not even a coffin. Not even a headstone. Brian was kind of a nut about Tahiti. He really fell in love with it, with the history. He always said he wanted to be buried in the old native cemetery, and he wanted his body treated the old native way. And that's just the way Therese handled it."

"I doubt that,” Gideon murmured, mostly to himself.

"What do you mean, you doubt it? I'm telling you."

"Well, the old Tahitian way was-you don't want to know."

"Sure, I want to know. What do you mean?"

"Well, what they used to do here, and in the Marquesas and the Tuamotus too, was to puncture the skin to let out the fluids, take out the brain, use a hook to remove the viscera by way of the anus, then mummify-"

John looked horrified. “Pikes! No! That's disgusting! I only meant there's no coffin, no concrete. And he's buried in sand, not dirt, just a few feet down. Therese hired an old Tahitian priest to do the burial. Nick took me up there yesterday; I saw for myself. It'd be a snap, Doc. Twenty minutes’ work."

Gideon shifted uneasily. “John, I'd like to help, you know that, but it just doesn't-"

John leaned earnestly across the table. “Look, I'd do it by myself, you know that, but what would I do with the body when I got it up?” He looked at the tabletop. “I need you. Brian needs you. I know you, Doc, you're like me; you can't just let something like this pass. It's not right."

Gideon sighed deeply and drained his cooling coffee. Brian needs you. How was it that Doug Ubelaker, the anthropologist at the Smithsonian, put it? We are the final chance for the voice of the victim to be heard. The Hippocratic oath of the forensic anthropologist.

He sighed again, even deeper this time, and rose. “I saw a quincaillerie on the way over here. On rue La Garde."