Aaron Elkins - Skeleton dance

The pathologist, after respectfully waiting to see if Gideon now chose to assume the lecturer's mantle, happily took it back on his own shoulders.

"As you know, professor, we cannot assume that we are seeing a precise representation of the angle traveled by the pellet because we have no way of allowing for the movement of the thorax and its contents during life as a result of breathing, or of the possible distension of the viscera by food or liquid, or even of the effects of gravity, inasmuch as the body is now on its back rather than upright, as it presumably-but not necessarily-was at the time of the shooting. Nevertheless, we do have before us a reliable, if approximate, indication of the pellet's path. And as we see, it flew straight back, never deviating from the medial plane, but inclining slightly upward, that is to say, in a dorso-superior-"

"Roussillot, will you never get to the point?" Joly said. "And can a man smoke a cigarette in here?"

"No, he may not," said Roussillot. "Now, to continue-and I apologize for stating what I know must be obvious to you, professor-a man intent on killing himself with a rifle is likely to do it in a seated position with the butt of the rifle propped on the ground-and with good reason. Shooting oneself while on one's feet would be awkward in the extreme. Holding it out without support would put a strain on the arms. It would produce unsteadiness. Would you agree?"

He waited for a reply, but Gideon had largely stopped listening. He was silent, working things out for himself, staring at the angled probe, barely hearing Roussillot. Still, a part of him sensed that he'd been asked a question. "Hm," he said vaguely.

"All right, then," said the easily satisfied Roussillot. "He sits-and by the way, allow me to point out that the body was found at the base of a boulder which would have made a suitable chair-he sits, enabling him to rest the stock of the weapon near his feet. If he has chosen, as in this case, not to blow out his brains but to explode his heart he places the muzzle firmly against the center of his chest, where he believes his heart to be, and where indeed it is. He takes a breath, he makes his goodbyes, he quiets the welling panic, the doubts that rise in his breast like swirling-"

"Roussillot, for God's sake," Joly snarled.

"Ah, the man, like others of his kind, has no sense of drama, of romance," said Roussillot with a good-natured sigh. "In any case, our subject eventually pulls the trigger. The path of the projectile is naturally front-to-back and upward through the body…" He gestured at the probe, still in the wound. "As indeed it is with our friend Bousquet. And there is my argument. Death by his own hand. Would you agree, professor?"

"What?" said Gideon, surfacing.

"Do you agree with Roussillot's reconstruction?" Joly asked, eyeing him closely.

"No," Gideon said, "I don't."

"You don't?" Roussillot cried, his voice breaking.

"Well, what I meant," Gideon stammered, thinking that he'd been too blunt, that he'd stung Roussillot's professional pride, "was only that-"

But he'd misread the pathologist. Roussillot was delighted. "You see?" he crowed to Joly. "Didn't I promise you he'd find something?" And to Gideon with every sign of genuine and unselfish enthusiasm: "All right, colleague, tell us, where has my reasoning gone wrong? What was my fatal mistake?"

It wasn't his reasoning that had gone wrong, Gideon told him gently, but his method. Roussillot had made a mistake that many a forensic pathologist-many a forensic anthropologist, for that matter-had made before him: he had thought the matter through, he had analyzed it piece-by-piece and step-by-step… but he hadn't gone one step further and physically reconstructed it, he hadn't tried to go through the actual motions to make sure that what had worked out so neatly in his mind would work out equally well in the real world.

"Why don't we run it through for ourselves and see what we come up with?" Gideon said.

"One moment," Roussillot said. A pale-green sheet lay furled at Bousquet's feet. He pulled it up and decorously covered the body with it, an act that Gideon appreciated. "Now then," he said, glowing with anticipation.

Gideon pointed at the rifle, propped in its corner. "Can I demonstrate with that?"

Joly nodded. "Ballistics has finished with it."

Gideon reached for it. "We're positive this thing isn't loaded, right?"

"Neither loaded nor charged," said Joly. "It's perfectly safe."

"Okay," Gideon said. "As you rightly said, Dr. Roussillot, if I want to kill myself with this, the chances are I'm going to sit down to do it, so-" He pulled a folding chair out from its place along the wall and set it down in an open space on the floor. "Now-" He was seized with a sudden inspiration. "Would you mind being our victim?" he asked, offering both the chair and the weapon to the pathologist.

"Certainly," a beaming Roussillot said, taking the Cobra. "What would you like me to do?"

"Just sit down and… shoot yourself."

"Delighted."

"Lucien, you wouldn't happen to know whether Bousquet was rightor left-handed, would you?" Gideon asked.

"As it happens, I would. We have some examples of his handwriting-receipts and the like-and they all show a backward-leaning slant; quite characteristic and unmistakable."

"Backward leaning-so he was left-handed?"

"Yes."

"I'm right-handed," Roussillot said. "Shall I use my left hand to pull the trigger?"

"No, just do it the most natural way," Gideon said. "We'll extrapolate."

Roussillot, openly enjoying himself, settled his rounded form in the chair, rested the butt of the rifle on the floor in front of him, found that it was too close to allow him to set the other end against his chest, and moved it out another foot. "Like this? Which finger shall I use to pull the trigger?"

Gideon shrugged. "Just do what comes naturally."

Roussillot readjusted the rifle and leaned forward to reach the trigger.

"Wait!" said the keenly watching Joly. "It's upside down."

"Well, yes," Roussillot said defensively, "it's only that it seems more natural that way. The rifle balances itself more comfortably. Also it makes it easier to pull-that is, to push-the trigger-" Abruptly, he realized what Joly was driving at. "The muzzle-stamp on his chest-it's not upside-down, it's right-side-up-the gunsight is above the muzzle!"

"That's right," Gideon said, having scored his first point. "People who shoot other people do it that way, right side up; that's why the sight is where it is. But people who shoot themselves do it this way, the way you're doing it. It's possible to do it the other way, but the odds are against it."

"The odds?" said Joly. "Gideon, if that's what you're basing-"

"Give me a chance to finish," Gideon said. "Would you continue, Dr. Roussillot?"

"Continue what?" said Roussillot, who had begun to get up, thinking the demonstration was done.

"You haven't actually shot yourself yet."

"Yes, please shoot yourself, Roussillot," Joly said.

The pathologist sat down again, rearranged the rifle the way it had been before-upside down, butt on the floor, muzzle against his chest-and once more leaned forward to get to the trigger. It was a longer reach than he'd estimated and he had to shift himself to the front of the seat and hunch over the barrel to make it.

"I find that the most natural way would be to do it with my thumb," he observed, "like this. I place my thumb inside the trigger guard. With my other hand I keep the muzzle against my chest. I lean over still a little more and push-"

"Stop," Gideon said. "Hold that position if you can, just like that."

Roussillot froze, except for his eyes, which he screwed up to look at Gideon.