Aaron Elkins - Skeleton dance

"Lucien," Gideon asked, stopping him on the landing between floors, "how positive are you that it is a suicide?"

Joly looked down his long nose at him. "Do you doubt it?"

"I'm just asking."

Joly shrugged. "Well… fairly positive, I'd say. No, quite positive, but I'll leave it to Roussillot to explain the medical details to you; as you'll see, the trajectory of the projectile, the nature of the wound itself-oh, all sorts of things point to suicide, along with certain psychological tendencies… you seem a little doubtful, Gideon, or am I mistaken?"

"Frankly, you seem a little doubtful, Lucien."

"I? No, not at all," Joly said doubtfully. "Roussillot makes an excellent case."

"Then what's bothering you?"

"Nothing is bothering me." Irritably, he produced and lit a cigarette. "All right, to tell you the truth, it's only that everything… all these events… they come together so, so-"

"Neatly?"

"Yes, precisely!" Joly said, jabbing with the cigarette for emphasis. "There is no Carpenter to question, no Beaupierre to question, and now no Bousquet to question. Nobody! The snake begins at its own tail, swallows itself, and disappears entirely, and we are left with no choice but to take things as they appear. Has that occurred to you?"

"You know, now that you mention it, I think it has crossed my mind. Come on, we might as well see what Roussillot's come up with."

The autopsy room was small but up-to-date: a square, unsettlingly antiseptic room with walls of white, glazed brick, harsh fluorescent ceiling lights, stainless steel sinks, and two doors, one a swinging hospital-type door from the corridor, through which Joly and Gideon entered, the other a massive stainless steel affair leading to the refrigerated storage area beyond.

In the center was a single zinc autopsy table fitted out with its own double-sink, hoses, and drains at one end to flush away the many sorts of gunk that needed flushing away, and above it a microphone for in-process dictation, a couple of spotlights on tracks, and a hanging, meat-market-type scale (an apt metaphor, Gideon reflected) with a basin for weighing various body parts.

Roussillot, clad in a clean white lab coat, was waiting for them beside the table, on which lay the nude, hairy, supine body of a man, his head propped up on a curved plastic neck rest, his hair stiff and wild. A black hole in almost the exact center of his chest, at the sternal notch marking the midpoint of the border between thorax and abdomen, stood out starkly against the putty-colored skin, which had by now begun to slough off here and there. Other marks of decay were unpleasantly evident as well, but Gideon was relieved to see that the corpse had been washed, which had gotten rid of the maggots, and that there wasn't much smell; he had steeled himself for a gagging stench, considering that the dead man had been lying outdoors for several days in warm, humid weather.

That was the good news. The bad news was that the body was untouched by the knife. Despite Gideon's cowardly dawdling at the cafe; Roussillot had kept his word and waited for him.

He made himself take a hard look at the face. Discoloration, insect activity, and bloating had had their usual disagreeable effects, but it was still possible to get some idea of the living man's appearance.

"Well, it's not 'Dr. Roussillot,'" he said to Joly. "I can tell you that much."

Roussillot was understandably startled, but Joly quickly explained, to the pathologist's loud amusement.

"Well, Dr. Oliver," Roussillot said, his blue eyes bright, "I look forward enormously to working with you. As you see-" He pointed hospitably to a wheeled side table with an assortment of shining instruments on it: scalpels, scissors, forceps, probes, saws, "-we are all ready for you; enough for two, and I think we'd better get started. There's a coat for you on the rack; gloves in the box."

"Uh, thanks, but can we hold off for just a minute? Lucien's been telling me that you're pretty certain it's a suicide."

"No, no, you'll never catch me saying 'certain,' not in this business. But the probability is extremely high, as I'm sure you can see for yourself."

"I'm a little out of my element here, doctor. Perhaps you could show me?"

Roussillot gave him grateful look. "With pleasure. Now then." He was practically rubbing his hands with professorial joy. "First of all…"

First of all there was the nature of the external wound to be considered. As Professor Oliver had no doubt observed, the crater in Bousquet's chest, now so clean and bloodless, was obviously a contact wound. Although there had been no charring of the flesh, no powder-stippling, no soot-the professor was aware that an air rifle's charge, being no more than compressed air, would leave no such residue?-it was still eminently clear that the muzzle had been placed directly against the chest. This could be definitively shown by bringing the suicide weapon itself into contact with the wound. Here Roussillot, reaching behind him, grasped a sleek, modernistic-looking rifle with un-blued, stainless steel barrels, a gleaming walnut stock, and a green tag dangling from the trigger guard. Holding it above his head with both hands, he slowly lowered it, only a little theatrically, until the muzzle rested directly on the wound, neatly covering it.

As Professor Oliver could plainly see, the faint purple-brown bruises around the wound were neither more nor less than a muzzle-stamp from this weapon; this very weapon and no other. The precise imprint of the muzzle itself could clearly be made out, as well as the end of the front sight immediately above it, and even the rim of one of the two air-reservoir cylinders just below it. In fact, an examination by lens would show that an imperfection in the steel of the air reservoir was exactly reproduced in the skin.

It was all as he said, and Gideon nodded his agreement-as far as it went. "I can't argue with that, doctor, but after all a contact wound doesn't necessarily mean a suicide."

"Necessarily, no," said Roussillot. "Usually, yes."

"You are speaking of a rifle, of course, and not a handgun, Roussillot," Joly said. "And so it is, Gideon. How many murderers equipped with a rifle would choose to walk up to their victims in order to place the muzzle of their weapons conveniently against their chests before firing?"

"Yes, well, I guess that's true enough… "

"There are other considerations," said Roussillot, "all of which must be taken together. For example, there are no indications of struggle, and-although the laboratory has not finished its work-there seems to be nothing suggestive under the fingernails"

"Mm."

"Let us turn to the mind, the psychological conditions. Now, I don't claim to be a psychiatrist, but I've made a small study of the pathology of behavior as well as that of the bodily processes, and it seems to me that everything we know about this man's history points to his having a reactive-depressive personality with an inclination toward violent, sociopathic, and self-destructive behavior."

It was clear that something more than "mm" was expected of him, and Gideon did his best to be tactful. "Yes, well, I can certainly see what you mean, but I'm afraid you're really out of my line now."

"If you combine these traits with a repressed-"

Gideon headed him off as politely as he could. "And what about the trajectory of the pellet?"

"Ah, the trajectory, yes. Let us see what we have."

He took an eight-inch probe from the table and delicately slipped it, rounded handle-side down, into the hole in Bousquet's chest, as much as possible letting it slide in of its own weight, down the tunnel that the pellet had torn through flesh and muscle, nerve and blood vessel. It went in about four inches and stopped-the dull clink when it hit the pellet was audible-and when Roussillot let go of it it remained in place, held by the tunnel's collapsed walls.