Aaron Elkins: Make No Bones

I am pleased to report that Dr. Jasper’s son and executor, Dr. Casper Jasper, has wholeheartedly approved the disposition of his father’s remains in this manner, and they were transferred to Bend some two weeks ago. Miranda assures me that they will be permanently installed in time for Sunday’s preview reception for WAFA members. As a longtime associate of Albert Evan Jasper, I can assure you that this final outcome of his bequest is fully in line with his wishes.

On behalf of NSFA, welcome to the fifth biennial WAFA conference. I regret that personal business will prevent my arriving until Monday evening, but I look forward to greeting you all then.

“Well, I guess you’d have to say this is pretty interesting,” Gideon said, handing it to her.

She had hardly begun to read it when she looked up, frowning. “’Ironically, the particulars of his tragic death made such application problematical…’ What does that mean? Didn’t you tell me he was killed in a bus crash down here?”

“It means there wasn’t much of him left, and what there was was in pretty bad shape. Burned to a crisp, in fact. Him and thirty or forty other people. The bus ran into some kind of fuel truck and pretty much exploded into flames. It was really horrible, I understand. There wasn’t much left of anybody.”

“How do they know which one was Jasper, then?”

“It wasn’t easy. Nellie and the others worked on the victims for days, and they never did positively identify everyone. In Jasper’s case, the jawbone and some of the teeth were still left, and they were able to match them up with his old dental charts.”

The sounds of cars starting up drifted to them from the parking area in front of the main building. Gideon looked at his watch. “We probably ought to get going ourselves. Reception starts at five.” He smiled. “You’re right, we wouldn’t have had time.”

Julie glanced at the letter again without getting up. “Nellie Hobert? The man who wrote this letter actually worked on the body?”

“They all did. Nellie was one of Jasper’s ex-students too; the very first, I think. He was here at the lodge for the meeting. As I understand it, they had no idea Jasper was even on that bus. They didn’t know he’d left. In the morning they got a call from the state police saying there’d been this awful traffic accident, and could they possibly help identify the dead? Everybody pitched in, of course, and it was only after they got down to work that they realized he was probably one of the victims.” He stood up. “The dental records made it definite.”

“Yuck.”

Gideon shrugged. “It’s what forensic anthropologists do.”

“I know, but the idea of his own students, people who were celebrating his retirement with him the day before-handling his teeth, poking at his bones…” She shivered. “I repeat: yuck.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve always thought there was something highly appropriate about a forensic anthropologist winding up as the subject of a forensic analysis.”

“Maybe, but it’s highly creepy too. If you ask me, you should be glad you weren’t there.”

Gideon couldn’t argue with that. Jasper’s remains aside, being up to his elbows in a morgue room full of the ghastly remnants of people who had been crushed and burned to death a little while before was an experience he was glad to have missed. He’d had his share of similar ones, but it wasn’t something you got used to. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy working with bones-nothing fascinated him more-but the older they were the better he liked it, with ten thousand years being just about right.

He held out his hand. “Come on, let’s get going. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to miss the unveiling. You can read the rest of the letter in the car.”

“I don’t know…” she began doubtfully.

“Believe me, with Miranda MC’ing things, there won’t be anything morbid about it.”

He was turning their car out of the lodge in the wake of a bus hired for those who didn’t have cars, when Julie looked up from the letter with a spluttering laugh. “He named his son Casper Jasper?”

“I told you, he was a bit of an oddball.”

“Well, I guess he was. Dr. Casper Jasper. Is his son an anthropologist too?”

“I think he’s an internist.”

“Oh, a real doctor.”

“Ha,” Gideon said, “most amusing. I met him once, you know.”

“Casper?”

“Uh-huh. He was still in medical school-I was just out of grad school myself-and his father brought him along to a conference. A big lanky guy, about six-seven; nice enough but a little, well, spacey. Some of us were walking along a street-I think it was in Tucson-and Casper, being as tall as he is, ran smack into one of those metal awning rods in front of a store. Caught him right across the forehead. Very disconcerting.”

“I should think so.”

“I mean for the rest of us. One second he was talking along with us, chattering away, and the next he was out cold and flat on his back. At first nobody could figure out what happened. The rod was way above everybody else’s head.”

“What did you do?”

“His father took over, and very efficiently too. Wouldn’t let anybody move him until we got an ambulance there to run him in for x-rays. And he was fine. They didn’t even keep him overnight.” He shook his head. “You should have seen that rod, though.”

For most of the short trip to Bend they followed the bus in silence, content to take in the immense views. They were in what Oregonians called the High Country, but dominating the sky to their right was the even higher country of the eastern Cascades: Mount Faith, Mount Hope, and Mount Charity-the wind-scoured, volcanic peaks better known as the Three Sisters, from which the town of Sisters to the north had taken its name. Below and on their left, at the base of the shoulder along which the road traveled, was a totally different landscape: the wheat-gray desert country of central Oregon, seeming to spread out forever, flat and featureless except for dusty, cinder-cone volcanoes and the strange, black, fan-shaped forms that Julie told him were ancient lava flows.

The highway itself traveled through a kind of buffer zone, a pleasing countryside of gnarled junipers, gently rolling rangeland, healthy-looking cows, and occasional ranch houses. Bend itself arrived with a bang. One moment they were in open, unspoiled country, and the next moment Mountain View Mall, an honest-to-God suburban shopping mall, popped up in front of them, right out of the sagebrush, and they were in the city. Highway 20 became Third Street, an undistinguished, trafficky thoroughfare of malls, motels, and all-you-can-eat buffets, varied by an occasional body shop or auto-parts store.

They had lost the bus by now, but Julie had the directions. “Right on Greenwood,” she told him. “Follow the signs to the college. Tell me some more about Dr. Jasper-the father, I mean.”

“Let’s see…I guess the first time I ever saw Albert Evan Jasper was at the AAA meeting in Boston. This was maybe sixteen or seventeen years ago. There was a banquet in one of the hotels, and Jasper was sitting up at the head table with the bigwigs. I was way in the back with the other graduate students. Well, a waiter asked us what kind of a conference it was, and one of the guys at our table said we were phrenologists-we told people’s personalities by the bumps on their heads.”

“Not that far from the truth,” Julie observed.

Gideon lifted an eyebrow in her direction but otherwise ignored this. “Well, the waiter said how about a reading, and my friend told him we were mere students, but if he wanted one from the world’s greatest living practitioner, just go up and ask Jasper. So up he marches to the head table. We couldn’t hear anything of course, but we could see the waiter talking and Jasper listening with a funny look on his face, just blinking slowly back at him.”