Aaron Elkins - Make No Bones

He’d always been frank in his reservations about the process and about his own skills. All the same, when the WAFA schedule was being prepared, Miranda had asked him if he’d put on a demonstration, mainly for the students in attendance. She had offered to provide all the materials he’d need and he’d agreed. The half-day session was on the schedule for the following afternoon-and that, he supposed, made him the closest thing to an expert they were going to get.

“I think-” he began.

“Stand up so people can hear you,” Nellie said, waving him up.

Gideon stood. He didn’t have much to say. “My opinion is that there wouldn’t be much point. When you already have a pretty good idea whose skull you’ve got, there are quicker, better ways to confirm it.”

“Right you are,” Les said from the audience. “What do we need to mess around with clay for? There are some good pictures of Salish in the file, and we can use video superimposition and computer-generated imaging to see if they match the skull.” Since he’d become a consultant, Les had developed an appreciation for high-tech anthropology.

Nellie vigorously nodded his agreement. “I’ll take it a step further than that. There’s no need for any of this mumbo-jumbo here. Not only do we have virtually the man’s entire skeleton, we have his complete dentition, which can be compared directly to Mr. Salish’s dental records, once Mr. Lau locates them. What more do we need?”

In the matter of facial reconstruction, Nellie was firmly on record as a scoffer. He had written several articles on the subject. The kindest of them was an article in the Journal of Forensic Science entitled, “Facial Reconstruction: Harmless Fun but Not to Be Believed.”

“We’ll know if it’s Salish, all right,” he said, “and we won’t have to resort to facial reconstruction to do it.”

“But what if it isn’t?” one of the students asked; a mustached thirty-year-old in khakis and a scuffed slouch hat; one of several who seemed to have studied anthropological dress with Indiana Jones. “Maybe it’ll turn out to be someone else. At least a reconstruction would give us a place to start.”

“Not necessarily,” Gideon said. “You have to understand, a facial reconstruction is a long way from an exact likeness. Nobody’s going to look at it and say: ‘My God, that’s him!’ All you can do is show it around and hope; see if it looks even a little familiar to anybody.”

“But what’s wrong with that?” asked another student. “Couldn’t we do that?”

“Show it around? To whom? Who’s missing that we know about?”

The student shook her head. “I don’t follow.”

“Well, reconstructions are like fingerprints. They’re not any good unless you have something to compare them to- somebody to compare them to, and we don’t have anybody we’re looking for. Nobody but Salish, and as Les and Nellie said, there are better ways of proving it’s Salish.”

“But-”

“And if it turns out to be someone else, some other missing person, we don’t have any idea of where he’s missing from-according to the lieutenant, it’s not from around here-so where do we show it around? And to whom?”

“Oh,” the young woman said, and sank disappointedly back. “I see.”

“Thank you, Gideon,” Nellie said, pulling together his notes from the lectern. “And now I think-”

Gideon was still standing. “But on the other hand…”

He still didn’t see any forensic point in it, but by now his teacherly instincts were engaged. Throwing cold water on any glimmer of student interest went against his grain. Besides, seeing how close the reconstruction came to Chuck Salish’s face would make it interesting for him as well as them.

“On the other hand, I’m supposed to do a demonstration tomorrow afternoon anyway. I was going to use a skull from the museum collection, but I don’t see why I couldn’t demonstrate just as well on an actual murder victim.”

“Yes, it does add that certain je ne sais quoi,” Leland said, sotto voce.

“But if I’m going to go through the whole process for real,” Gideon went on, “even if we just skim through it, it’ll take more than an afternoon. I’d better get started in the morning.”

“But how can you do that?” It was Miranda. “Nellie, aren’t you still working on it?”

Nellie considered. “I’ll tell you what. You go ahead and work with the skull tomorrow, Gideon. I still have plenty to do on the postcranial skeleton. Let’s see, isn’t tomorrow afternoon’s general session going to be at the museum?”

It was, someone volunteered. The topic was blunt-force skull fractures, and they would be using Miranda’s collection.

“Well, then, why don’t we give you until…oh, four o’clock, Gideon? Since everyone will be in Bend anyway, we can all drop by and see how your work stacks up against the photos-and against the memories of those of us who remember Mr. Salish. An impartial evaluation of the art of facial reconstruction, done in the spirit of scientific inquiry.”

The smile he directed at Gideon was somewhere between that of a friend for a friend, and of a frog for a fly.

“Not fair and you know it, Nellie,” Gideon said. “A day isn’t enough for a thorough job, especially if I’m supposed to be teaching while I’m doing it. Three or four days, maybe-”

There were a few good-natured boos.

“Come on, Doc, put your money where your mouth is,” John murmured. “Give it a shot.”

Gideon sighed. “All right, fine,” he announced. “For what it’s worth. But it’s not a test of the method. And it means we’ll have to get started early tomorrow. We’d better get the reconstruction going at seven.”

The looks exchanged among some of the students suggested a slight diminution of enthusiasm.

“Miranda,” Gideon said, “is there a problem getting the materials to me that early?”

“No, I’m usually at the museum by six. Quiet time, you know. I’ll go on over to the sheriff, get a room set up for you, and see that there’s coffee and donuts.”

“Can you do that?”

“Sure, they owe me. And I can sign the skull over to you then.”

Leland, looking dissatisfied, waved a finger at Gideon. “This means you won’t be able to attend the regular morning session.”

“No, I suppose not. What’s on?”

“I am. I’m presenting an overview of recent developments in coprolite analysis and their applications to forensic archaeology. With slides and hands-on material.”

There was a near-imperceptible pause. “Damn, Leland,” Gideon said, “it looks like I’ll have to miss it.”

“I think I’m getting bones on the brain,” Julie said.

Yawning, Gideon flipped another pebble into the creek. “Who wouldn’t?” Ploop.

They had gotten up early to spend some time together. With Gideon committed to the all-day reconstruction and Julie planning to pay a working visit to Lavalands National Monument, they wouldn’t be seeing each other until late afternoon. They’d had a quick cup of coffee and then walked along the nature trail, a wooded path following the smaller of the two streams that ran through the heart of the old resort and into the woodlands to the north.

It had been a good idea. With the heat wave predicted to continue (John was delighted), the growing but still tolerable early-morning warmth had intensified the sweet, spicy fragrances of the pine forest, so that every breath was thick with cinnamon and vanilla-like scents; markedly different from the cool, cedary aromas of coastal Washington. They had walked hand in hand, quietly, glad to be enjoying the freshness together before the rest of the world had gotten moving. Underfoot, the path lay three inches deep in pine needles as long and golden and pungent as hay. Walking through them made dry, swishing, silky sounds that soothed their ears. And when there was the unexpected, rasping crunch of a hidden pine cone being stepped on, they laughed.