Aaron Elkins - Skeleton dance

"But in reality he just keeps going?" said Gideon, who was beginning to think Joly was making a pretty good case.

"Precisely. He continues flying at this low altitude and lands his craft at some prearranged site he has chosen. Even if he were to be detected in flight again, his Cessna would be so low and so small that it would appear as no more than a fleeting image for one or two sweeps of the radar antenna-and in any case, with the transponder deactivated it could not be identified. You understand?"

Gideon turned back from the window, impressed. "You've really been looking into this, haven't you?"

"Is it so preposterous to wonder," Joly continued, "whether this was his way of escaping from his difficulties, his way of leaving his troubles behind and starting a new life?"

"Well-"

"And remember this: Carpenter's 'tragic' communication with the air traffic control tower was recorded on the night of September 25. Less than seventy-two hours later, on September 28, Madame Renouard made her report to the police asserting that Bousquet had not been seen for several days. Doesn't this bring us back to the possibility-"

"No, it doesn't. You keep harping on that, but on that score you're off-base, Lucien. Ely didn't kill him. It's impossible. He-"

Joly held up a finger. "Do you recall telling me that when Carpenter was working in these boondocks of yours-these remote, isolated boondocks, with the rifle so very close at hand-that he sometimes had an assistant, a single assistant, working with him?"

"Sure."

"Do you know who that assistant was?"

"I have no-you're not going to tell me it was Bousquet?"

"But I am. Bousquet was frequently with him, serving as a manual laborer and paid from Carpenter's own pocket."

Gideon, surprised, slowly shook his head. "But they hated each other. Why would Ely hire him?"

"Apparently he had little choice. Jean Bousquet was the only worker available with some experience of archaeological sites."

"Well, all right, so they were working together. That doesn't mean anything. Remember, he was still alive two months after Carpenter left. He called."

"Yes, so say the fellows of the institute. But it has yet to be independently confirmed."

"It's been confirmed, all right. Madame Lacouture, Beaupierre's secretary, remembered it too. She had it in her logbook. I saw it. Sorry to spoil your theory, Lucien."

Joly digested this. "Secretaries say whatever they're told to say; it's their job."

Gideon laughed. "You haven't met Madame Lacouture. I'd be surprised if anybody tells her what to say."

"She sounds something like my secretary, now that I think of it," Joly said with a slow smile.

"And anyway, even if you're right, which I don't believe, what would Carpenter be escaping from? Let's say he actually killed whoever the bones belonged to. The body was safely buried, nobody knew about it-why would he want to disappear?"

"And what about his humiliation over the Old Man of Tayac, or have you forgotten that?"

"Oh, that, right," said Gideon, who had in fact forgotten for the moment.

"Imagine further his state of mind," the inspector said, removing a stray shred of tobacco from his tongue with the tip of his finger and discarding it in an ashtray after careful study. "He would have felt that the world was closing in, that his life was incapable of reconstruction. He was an intelligent, resourceful man; would a new identity have been so terrible a prospect?"

Gideon returned to his chair and lowered himself thoughtfully into it. Joly's doubts were getting through to him. "Maybe it wouldn't, at that. From what we've been finding out about him, he'd had several lives before."

He drained the lukewarm remainder of his Coke, crumpled the can in his fist, and tossed it into a wastebasket already brimming with cans and paper cups. "Ely Carpenter still out there somewhere," he said slowly. "Well, I grant you, it's an intriguing thought."

"Yes," Joly said, "but what are we to do with it? Where do we begin to search for him? It's a cold trail we have in front of us."

"It's worse than a cold trail, Lucien; it's a dead end-two dead ends. Not just Carpenter, but the body in the cave too. Remember, we have no way of proving that he was or wasn't Bousquet; and with the bones gone, we're never going to have any."

"Well, there you have-" Joly glanced up at the entrance of a blue-uniformed policeman, blonde, blue-eyed, and ridiculously young-looking, who had deferentially approached their table. Joly's visage stiffened to that of an inspecteur principal.

" Que vous desirez, Noyon?"

"I'm very sorry to interrupt, inspector," the officer said in French, "but Prefect Marielle wanted me to ask you… what do you wish done with the bones?"

There was a moment's silence, and then:

"Bones?" said Joly.

"Bones?" said Gideon.

"Yes, the bones," Noyon repeated. "The dog's bones."

Joly smacked his forehead-harder than he'd intended, judging from the wince that followed. "The dog's bones! I forgot completely. Where is my brain? Gideon, we do have some skeletal material for you to look at."

Gideon stared at him. "Did I miss something there, Lucien? I mean, sure, I'll be happy to look at your dog bones if you want me to, but I don't quite see-"

"No, no," Joly said, laughing, "not the ' dog bones,' the 'dog's bones.' Toutou's bones."

"Umm… Toutou's bones…"

"Toutou!" Joly said impatiently. "The Peyrauds' dog, the animal that first discovered the remains in the cave and brought home some of the bones. Marielle collected them-"

"Well, why didn't you say so?" Gideon said, jumping to his feet. "You expect me to know the damn dog's name? Where are they? Let's go."

Joly rose more slowly, looking at his watch. "I believe I'll leave them to you, my friend; I have other things to pursue. I'll come back in an hour?"

"Fine," said Gideon, who preferred working without an audience for a lot of reasons, not least among them that he liked to talk to himself. "Maybe I'll be able to tell you something by then."

"I hope so, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. I've seen these bones; they don't look like very much."

"Well, we'll see." Turning to Noyon Gideon spoke in French: "Okay, Officer Noyon, lead on. Where are they?"

"They are in the evidence room, sir," said Noyon. "If you would care to follow me?"

In police parlance, "evidence room" usually referred to a secure area-perhaps a steel-barred cage or a locked room with a stout metal door-in which labeled bags and boxes were neatly ranged on shelves along with carefully tagged larger items of material evidence relating to crimes, such as rifles, axes, and ball-peen hammers. In the case of the Les Eyzies municipal police department, however, the evidence room was a paper-supply cubicle attached to the office of its prefect, Auguste Marielle.

Marielle, a bulgy man in a blue-and-white uniform, emerged from the cubicle with a thick red folder, the old-fashioned, expandable kind with accordion sides, held closed by a string wound around a couple of cardboard grommets. "I'm afraid you won't find much of use in these, professor."

He placed the folder on his handsome teak desk and undid the string. "Of course, one can see at once," he said in French, "that, except for a few mouse bones, they are human. There's little doubt about that much. Beyond that, however, I feel safe in saying no more than"-he cleared his throat: hm-hm-hhhmmm -"that, ah, they are clearly male, and most likely adult-yes, yes, clearly adult, and, ah… so forth. Would you agree, professor?"

"I would, yes, but it'd probably be worth going over them again."

"As you wish, although in my opinion there is little further helpful information to be gotten from them. You might like to know, incidentally, that Professor Emile Grize, a most eminent and well-regarded expert-perhaps you know him?-agreed with my conclusions entirely."