Aaron Elkins: Icy Clutches

The bones were gone.

"It's 9:00 A.M.,” Julie said in his ear. “Do you really want to get up, or would you rather sleep some more?"

"Up,” Gideon mumbled into the pillow. “If I sleep any more, I won't be able to move at all."

Softly she stroked the side of his head with the back of her fingers. “How's your jaw?"

Gideon gave the question some thought. “My jaw's okay,” he said finally. “The rest of me feels like hell."

I know, I know, he told his cerebral cortex. Generalized malaise and stiffness went along with postconcussive trauma reactions. Big deal.

"Nothing to worry about,” he said. “I'm just a little achy.” He opened his eyes. Julie, already dressed, was sitting in an armchair she'd pulled to the side of the bed.

"Coffee's on,” she said. “Want some?"

"Uh-huh. Maybe a couple of aspirin, too."

While she got them he worked up to a sitting position against the headboard and checked himself over more thoroughly. His shoulder and arm were all right. The scrape on his jaw was not much worse than a razor burn. Only the area on his left side, at the base of his ribs-where he'd bounced off the counter-was truly sore, and that wasn't as bad as it would have been had Julie not made him press some towel-wrapped ice to it when he'd gotten back to the room. He probed it with his fingers, flinching when he pressed too hard. It didn't feel as if anything were broken, but maybe he'd cracked that twelfth rib. Best to have it x-rayed when he got back home. Not that there was anything to do about a cracked twelfth rib anyway, other than wrapping it with one of those awkward canvas belts for a month. He leaned against the headboard, tipping his head back, muttering to himself. God, he was getting just a little old for this.

He made himself get out of bed-otherwise he'd really stiffen up-got into his bathrobe, groaning under his breath, and shuffled carefully to the table and chairs near the window. It was a pearly, northern kind of day, gray but drenched with light. He grasped the arms of a chair and lowered himself slowly into it.

Julie poured the coffee, watching him settle creakily down. “Gideon, does it ever occur to you that for a scholarly type you lead a-well, a rather physical sort of life?"

"Yes, it does. I was just thinking about that myself. I don't know why it is. It's not as if I invite it."

"Mm,” she said noncommittally, watching him down the aspirin and start on the coffee. “John stopped in about twenty minutes ago. He's been talking to all of them."

He looked up from the cup. “Has he gotten anywhere? Does he know-"

She shook her head. “No more than he did last night."

Which wasn't much. The three of them had sat around the room for almost two hours trying to make sense of things. John had briefly considered a late-night search of the Tremaine party's rooms (on a voluntary basis; they had no warrants), but they had agreed there was no point. What would he be looking for? The chance that the person who had taken the hones had brought them back to his or her room was nil. They had probably been tossed into the thick woods, or buried under some brush or in a rotted log, or thrown into the cove itself.

So Gideon had lain back on the bed, holding the ice to his ribs, while John, with an attention to detail that was new to Gideon, had him describe three separate times what had happened in the shack. Then they had fruitlessly tossed around ideas on what anyone could have wanted with the bones. At midnight Julie finally threw John out, settled Gideon down, and turned out the lights.

Now she poured some coffee for herself and sat down next to him at the table, pursing her lips, frowning into her cup.

"Okay, let's hear it,” he said brightly. Making it to the chair without hurting anything had cheered him up.

She looked at him. “Hear what?"

"Your new theory."

"What makes you-"

"Your expression. When you purse your lips like that it means something is being hatched:.

She eyed him, her head cocked. “We've been married too long."

"Not hardly. Come on, let's hear it."

"Well…” She hesitated. “I keep coming back to Jocelyn and whether or not she's dead."

He smiled at her. “No one's ever going to accuse you of prematurely giving up on a hypothesis. How can she not be dead? We've finally gotten ourselves a female femur-or at least we had a female femur. Whose else could it be?"

"No, I was looking at it differently this time; the other way around. That femur is the only real evidence that Jocelyn is dead, right? Maybe somebody took it to get rid of that evidence."

"To get rid of the evidence that she was killed? What for?"

"I don't know, but why else would anyone take it? There wasn't anything special about it, was there? Just that it was female."

"Yes, but nobody knew that except you and me. Remember, at the press conference I told them I hadn't sexed it yet."

"All right, then, maybe they were trying to keep you from finding out. Maybe-"

"Julie, how would they know it was female?"

"Well, then…” She stretched and laughed. “You sure take all the fun out of it. Okay, what's your theory?"

"Oh, no, I'm not even trying to come up with a theory. I'll just stick to what I'm good at: pointing out the flaws in yours. You know what? I'm hungry."

"Good. John went to the dining room to get us all some breakfast. I could tell you'd be waking up in a few minutes, and I knew some food would do you good."

"How could you tell I'd be waking up in a few minutes?"

"Oh, you make these noises when you're starting to wake up."

"Like what?"

"Snork, unk, mrmp. Like that."

He made a face. “You're right; we've been married too long."

He had just finished getting into his loosest shirt and trousers when John got back.

"Hey, Doc, you look great; halfway human again. Breakfast is on the way. Ham and eggs okay?"

"Ham and eggs sounds wonderful.” Gideon lowered himself into the chair again, somewhat less stiffly than the first time. The aspirins were working, and moving around had loosened him up. “Julie says you haven't been getting much of anywhere."

"Not so's you'd notice. But I'm starting to get some ideas. That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

He had barely sat down when there was a double tap on the door. He got up to admit Cheri, the sunny, skinny waitress who'd been serving them at dinner.

"You guys must rate,” she said. “We don't usually do room service.” She edged in sideways to clear the big metal tray on her shoulder, then stooped in a fluid, practiced movement, to put it on the table as smoothly and noiselessly as a professional bowler lays down a ball.

"Ham and eggs, ham and eggs, ham and eggs,” she said, pulling the covers off the plates and setting them out. “OJ. all around. Sourdough toast. Coffee. That do it?"

"Looks great,” John said. “Thanks, Cheri.” He rummaged in his wallet and came up with two dollar bills. “Wait a second. Doc, you got another couple of bucks? All I have is a twenty."

But Gideon was sitting as if suddenly turned to stone, staring hard at nothing, and it was Julie who had to supply the bills. “He's oblivious again,” she said matter-of-factly to John. “Can't you tell from his eyes?"

And he was. When Cheri had come in lugging that heavy tray, something in his mind had popped open like a box. Theories, and hypotheses, and guesses all spilled out at the same time and fell into new niches. He'd had it all wrong. He'd been miles from the right questions, let alone the right answers. If not for Cheri he'd still be miles away.

He'd made a mistake, a bad one; he and Dr. Worriner both. They had failed to follow the advice they'd given hundreds of students. Don't jump to conclusions. Never assign sex, age, or anything else on the basis of a single indicator. Well, they'd jumped. Worriner had shown him two partial left humeri in Juneau, both identified as male, and Gideon had agreed with the identification. He had also agreed with the conclusion: The bones belonged to Steven Fisk and James Pratt, the only two males caught in the landslide.