Aaron Elkins: Skeleton dance

Julie and Gideon got their bottles of Evian and spent most of the break chatting somewhat awkwardly with Audrey, whose eyeglasses were still patched with Scotch tape, but who was otherwise more her old self, although stiff and formal in her unaccustomed black skirt-suit; and with a remote, brusque Michel Montfort, no hand at social amenities even at the best of times.

As they took their seats again, Julie put her hand on Gideon's arm. "Tom Cabell!"

"Pardon?"

"Tom Cabell, your friend from Calgary, the medical examiner, the one with the squinchy little mustache-"

"Julie, I know who Tom Cabell is. What about him?"

"It was when the AAFS convention was in Seattle, remember? And we all went out to dinner in the Space Needle. That's when I heard about it."

"I suppose," Gideon said mildly, "that if I wait patiently, you'll eventually let me in on this."

"Gideon, I'm trying to tell you that I remember the case I was trying to think of-the one like Bousquet, where the different indicators didn't match and they had all that trouble coming up with the time of death? I thought it was one of yours, but it was one of his. Don't you remember? He was going on and on about it over the veal scallopine and I was doing my best not listen, but I couldn't help hearing."

"Julie, I honestly don't-"

It hit him like an electric shock. "I remember!" he said, sitting bolt upright. "You're right! I wasn't thinking of it because it wasn't a murder at all, or even a forensic case, it was just a hiker who got-who got…" He stared at her as the full impact hit him. "Julie, do you realize-"

"S-s-s-t," Emile hissed from behind them. Audrey had begun her address.

Gideon didn't hear two words of it. He was scowling out the windows and into space, not thinking as much as simply sitting there, barely breathing, letting things fall into place as if by gravity. They'd been wrong about everything-everything. It was as they'd been trying to play some gigantic, frustrating pinball game, only without their being aware of it the game board had been upside down from the beginning. Now, in a single instant it had been turned right side up, and the little steel balls were rolling merrily about, bumping into flippers, setting off lights and buzzers, and plunking neatly and satisfyingly, one after another, into their cups.

"Christ, could it really be true?" he murmured, bringing an inquisitive arching of her eyebrows from Julie and another reproving s-s-s-t from Emile.

Gideon patted Julie's knee and broke from his chair. A few seconds later he was at the telephone in the reception area, calling Joly's office in Perigueux and being told that the inspector had gone to Les Eyzies. A second call to the local mairie brought Sergeant Peyrol to the phone to explain that Inspector Joly was conducting an important investigation and couldn't be disturbed.

"Disturb him, Sergeant. He'll thank you, take my word for it."

"Lucien," he said when Joly picked up the receiver, "we've been on one hell of a wild goose-chase."

"No," said Joly crossly, "you don't tell me."

"Listen, when you read that description of Bousquet to us yesterday, the one that was filed when he disappeared, the one that mentioned the ring-"

"Gideon, I'm in the middle of something. Can't this wait?"

"I don't think so, no. The description-it said what he was wearing, didn't it? What exactly did it say?"

"About what he was wearing three years ago? Why in the name of God do you-"

"Just find it, will you, please? Humor me, okay?"

Joly muttered resignedly into the telephone. Papers were shuffled, probably more noisily than was strictly necessary. "All right, I have it here. ' Green-and-white plaid shirt with short sleeves, workman's blue trousers, moccasin-type shoes with no stockings.' All right?"

"And what-" He licked dry lips. Here came the crucial question. "-what was he wearing when you found him yesterday?"

"Yesterday?" Joly cried incredulously. "What was he wearing yesterday? What possible… what possible…"

The astonished silence told Gideon he'd guessed right. His chest expanded with the first deep, full breath he'd taken in the last five minutes. "He was wearing the same clothes, wasn't he?" he asked quietly.

"I… yes, that's right, the same clothes, but… Gideon, what's this about?"

"Things are even weirder than we thought, Lucien-look, I'm at the new institute headquarters up on the hill. Could you come on up here? I think you might be wanting to make an arrest. I'll meet you out front."

"He was what?" Joly exclaimed a few minutes later, as they stood near the stone parapet that ran along the edge of the cliffside terrace.

"Frozen," Gideon repeated.

Joly was huffing, as was Sergeant Peyrol, both of them having tramped up the steep road from the main street, and while he caught his breath he glowered at Gideon almost accusingly. "Frozen," he said again, as if trying out something unappetizing on his tongue.

"Yes, I think so," Gideon said, treading softly; he was verging on snake-oil territory here. "My guess is he's been sitting in a freezer somewhere for the last three years."

Joly reflected for a moment, his lips slightly pursed. "Dead, we may assume?"

"I'd have to say that's a pretty safe guess, yes."

"Yesterday, if I'm not mistaken, you said he'd been dead three days."

"I was a little off," Gideon admitted.

Peyrol, who didn't speak English but could understand some, laughed, converted it to a polite cough, and resumed his stiff military posture.

"Gideon," Joly said, leaning on the parapet and looking out over the trim tile roofs of the village, "how certain of this are you?"

"Pretty positive. I should have realized it right away; I just wasn't thinking along the right track."

It was the peculiar way the body had begun to decompose that should have told him, he explained as concisely as he could. Under ordinary circumstances, large-scale decomposition would begin in the dark, moist interior of the body, with rapid growth of bacteria in the lower intestines, resulting in the all-too-familiar bloating, discharges, and putrid smells. From there, the putrefaction would work its way outward while maggots and the like attacked the outside at a slower rate and worked inward.

But Bousquet's body showed the reverse: the internal organs were fresher than the skin. That was what happened when a body was frozen; the freezing killed off all the intestinal bacteria. But later, when it was unfrozen, it would be the surface that naturally thawed first and was therefore the first to be available to new bacteria and other organisms. So decomposition proceeded from outside in-as it had in Bousquet's case. The skin was discolored, withered, sloughing off; the insides of the body had barely begun to break down.

Joly, having lit a Gitane, pondered this, continuing to stare across the Vezere valley. "Not all of the insides. I looked at Roussillot's report. It says the brain was considerably decomposed."

"The head is smaller than the body. It thaws faster."

"Ah."

"And don't forget the clothes, Lucien-the very same clothes he had on the day he disappeared. How else do you explain that? I'm telling you, the guy's been in cold storage for the last three years, right up until you found him yesterday."

Joly made a decisive movement with his head, turned from the parapet, dropped his cigarette, and ground it out with his heel. He briskly straightened his jacket, buttoned both buttons, and tugged on his cuff-linked sleeves. "Shall we go in? I believe it's time to make that arrest."

"Don't you want to know who did it first?"

It was an uncharacteristically smug remark, and Gideon got what he deserved. "Oh, I know who did it," Joly said casually. "What I didn't know was how."

Inside, most of the crowd was milling about near the reopened bar. Audrey, who had finished her presentation a few moments earlier, was accepting congratulations and good wishes. Montfort was berating a small, miserable-looking man about some abstruse archaeological point. Julie was talking to Pru, Emile to one of the people from the foundation. With a quick glance around the room, Joly spotted his quarry. He strode purposefully over the wooden floor, his thin lips set, and waited until he was recognized.