Aaron Elkins - Curses!

"If it's still wet,” he'd once told the FBI's John Lau, “call somebody else, will you?” Not that the FBI always obliged.

Stan Ard's head was still wet, and while Gideon didn't react the way he had the first time he'd been called in to look at a corpse with a massive cranial wound (he'd thrown up into a stainless-steel sink in San Francisco's Hall of Justice, scandalizing the medical examiner's staff), his stomach did turn queasily over.

"Well, I'm not a pathologist or a medical doctor, you know, Dr. Plumm. I'm an anthropologist. I don't really-"

"But you're the Skeleton Detective,” Plumm replied, as if that said it all. “I've never been called upon to do this before, you see-to be the physician on the scene of a murder-and of course it's terrifically exciting, but I-well, there are more police on their way from Merida, and they've asked for my report, but I'm afraid I may have missed something that would be terribly obvious to someone with experience. I was hoping you might point out any oversights."

He looked hopefully at Gideon with his mild, friendly eyes. His mustache was so meticulously trimmed it might have been two strips of white felt, neatly pasted on. “I should hate to look like a fool before the police."

Gideon relented. “I'd be glad to help if I can, Doctor."

Plumm relaxed visibly. “Well. I've made an examination, of course, although I thought I shouldn't touch anything before the police arrive. That's the proper drill, isn't it?"

"Right."

"Right, then. Of course, with a wound like that there was no question of resuscitation. The man's dead as mutton.” He winced. “Oh, I am sorry. He was a friend of yours, wasn't he?"

"An acquaintance. I barely knew him."

Gideon made himself look at Ard again. Nowadays it wasn't so much the gore, the simple physical nastiness, that made his insides twist. Despite himself, he'd seen enough to get past that. But not enough to do what a seasoned homicide investigator could do: look at murder victims and see nothing but clues, diagnostic indicators, evidential data. For bones, yes; for bodies, no. To Gideon, the overwhelming fact, the only fact for the first few moments, was always that of murder itself; of willful, blood-soaked violence; of one person's actually doing this to another; of the terrible penetrability of skin, the brittleness of bone. It was always pathetic, always sordid, always horrible.

But Plumm had more experience of human penetrability, if not of murder. For him Ard was just another case, but of more than usual interest. “Well,” he said, and rubbed his dry, clean hands together, let me tell you what I've come up with, and you tell me where I've gone wrong, how's that?"

"That's fine,” Gideon said, “but I'm sure you haven't gone wrong."

Overhead a helicopter was clattering its way toward the Chichen Itza landing pad. Plumm peered up at it. “The police."

Together they knelt at the side of the body.

"No toque," growled the guard.

"Gracias, senor, Comprendemos," Plumm replied politely. “Now,” he said, all business, “he must have been killed very shortly before he was found.” He pointed to Ard's poor, beefy, flaccid fingers. “There's no sign of rigor yet. There's no lividity yet, either, and the blood is still quite liquid. Of course, Lord knows evaporation takes forever in this climate, but I feel reasonably safe in saying he hasn't been dead more than two hours. More likely only one."

He looked at Gideon. “Er, what do you think?"

"You're the expert, but it sounds right to me."

Plumm permitted himself a little gratified quirk of the lips. “Well, then, let's get on to the cause of death. Not much doubt as to that, is there, even if no one seems to have heard the report. A gunshot wound to the head."

No, there wasn't much doubt as to that. Ard's forehead had literally exploded. Just below the hairline there was a dreadful, ragged wound nearly in the shape of a star, with curling petals of flesh peeling outward from its red center.

Gideon turned his eyes away with a shudder. Maybe he'd never get used to this.

"Now,” Plumm said with a mixture of reticence and enthusiasm, “what we seem to have here is an exit wound. Classic stellate pattern. The entrance must be in the back of the head, probably near the occiput, where we can't see it. But you can see that quite a bit of blood has soaked into the ground under his neck."

He peeked at Gideon from under a neat white eyebrow. “How am I doing, Professor?"

"Makes sense to me."

Plumm's pink cheeks shone with pleasure. “May I give you my, er, reconstruction of events?"

Gideon nodded. “I'd like to hear it."

"Well, at first I was misled by the subcutaneous hemorrhaging in the orbits.” He pointed to Ard's eyes. The upper lids were blue, swollen sacks, as dark and shiny as little plastic trash bags. “I assumed he'd been confronted here on the path and there'd been a terrific fight; hence the black eyes. But"-he waved at the surrounding ground-"there's no sign at all of a struggle, at least none that I can see. And no other facial damage of the sort you'd expect, although it's impossible to say for sure until he's been cleaned up. So I had to conclude there was no fight, and the orbital hemorrhaging happened when his head hit the ground. He must have struck it quite hard. Does that sound plausible?"

"I guess so,” Gideon said slowly, but something was bothering him now. He made himself look at the bullet wound again, at the curving, yellow plate of frontal bone that was visible through the thickening blood. There was something odd…

"Now, as to what did happen,” Plumm was saying. “I think it's fairly clear. From those marks on the ground you can see where the chair had been standing, and that its back was only a few feet from the fence. He was obviously sitting there and-Do you mind if we stand up? My joints aren't what they were."

Neither were Gideon's. They both rose, snapping and creaking. Plumm rubbed the small of his back. Gideon massaged his ribs.

"At any rate,” Plumm went on, “inasmuch as he was shot in the back of the head, his killer had to have been on the other side of the fence. That would seem to suggest-although hardly prove-that it was an outsider; that is, not a fellow-guest at the hotel, but someone who wished to conceal his presence here.

"I understand,” Gideon said.

After a moment, Plumm continued. “But you know, this raises several intriguing questions: The murderer must have been lying in wait, probably in those bushes. How could he know that Ard would accommodate him by coming this way, sitting down right here? How-"

Hurrying footsteps scraped on the flagstone walk behind them. The young police officer stiffened, and Gideon and Plumm turned. Marmolejo, accompanied by two men in civilian clothes lugging a two-handled metal trunk between them, was rounding a curve in the path.

The homicide scene-of-the-crime crew of the Yucatecan State Judicial Police had arrived.

One of the civilians immediately began taking pictures with an old-fashioned press camera. The other snapped open the metal case and began selecting his tweezers, brushes, and powders. Marmolejo stood looking impassively at the body for a long time, rolling his dead cigar from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue. He looked sidewise at Gideon. “And what might you be doing here, may I ask? Not that I'm anything but delighted to see you."

Plumm replied, “I specifically asked him to assist me. I thought-he's a world-famous homicide authority, you see. Er, Dr. Oliver here is"-Gideon cringed; he knew what was coming.-"the Skeleton Detective."

"Mm,” replied Marmolejo. He held out his hand to Plumm. “I'm Inspector Marmolejo, Doctor. What can you tell us?"