Aaron Elkins - Curses!

With a nervous look at Gideon, the physician began a hesitant, near-verbatim repetition of his analysis, gaining confidence as Marmolejo listened intently, head down, staring hard at the body.

"Thank you,” Marmolejo said at the conclusion. “That's very helpful."

"Would you like me to put my, er, findings in a written report? I'd be delighted, if it would be of service."

"Very good. The sooner the better. Could you write it now? Officer Hernandez will give you a form."

When the excited Plumm had gone off, Marmolejo remained where he was, studying Ard. One of the two men in civilian clothes was now sketching in a pad; the other was on his knees, burrowing beetlelike under the fallen leaves, and now and again putting invisible things in plastic envelopes or paper sacks that he handed to the uniformed officer.

Gideon waited until he was sure that Plumm was out of earshot. “Uh, Inspector, this really isn't my field-"

"Very true, very true."

He was decidedly less warm than usual, and Gideon couldn't blame him. World-famous experts were well and good in their place, but who really liked them horning in uninvited? Or even invited?

"Still,” Gideon said carefully, “there are some things I'd like to point out."

"Dr. Oliver, I'm going to be very busy here for a while, so perhaps you would be good enough to put your conclusions in a report too? I'll look forward to reading it.” His expression didn't suggest much enthusiasm over the prospect. He was looking at Gideon with his eyebrows lifted and his eyelids lowered, almost closed. His long mouth was turned down, with the cigar deep in one corner. “Will that be satisfactory?"

Gideon was being dismissed, and none too subtly.

"Look, Inspector,” he snapped, “you don't have to worry about satisfying me. You want to do it all by yourself, do it all by yourself. The hell with it."

Before Marmolejo could respond he had turned and walked-strode, he hoped-away down the path.

He was thoroughly embarrassed before he'd gone ten steps. Was this the way world-famous authorities acted? Since when did the Skeleton Detective resort to childish snits when his vanity was pricked?

No, he would repent and humbly-well, dispassionately-submit the report that Marmolejo had asked for. The fact that the inspector happened to be irritable this morning was no reason for Gideon to shirk what was, in a sense, a duty.

Because, except for the time of death, Dr. Plumm had gotten it all wrong. Every bit of it.

It wasn't that Javier Marmolejo didn't like Gideon Oliver. Far from it. Oliver was a very likeable man. In 1982, when the naive, semihysterical norteamericanos had threatened to turn the Tlaloc investigation into a farce, it had been his good-humored common sense that had saved the day. More than once, too, but of course he hadn't been el detective de equalities then, and that was the difference.

He was, as Dr. Plumm had pointed out, a famous forensic expert now, not just another harmless anthropologist fooling around in the old cities, and Marmolejo had little patience with famous forensic experts. Oh, he'd learned at the academy about all the wonderful assistance they could provide, these pathologists and toxicologists, anthropologists and odontologists, and he had even seen them prove useful once or twice. All right, more than once or twice. But more often than not, things were more confusing when they got through than when they'd started. Especially with homicides. If someone gave him the choice, he'd throw them all out and make them earn an honest living in the universities.

For Marmolejo, like most policemen, knew that murders didn't get solved in laboratories or under microscopes. When they got solved at all, they solved themselves. The killer confessed or inadvertently pointed the finger at himself, or else one of his friends crawled out from under a rock and did it for him.

It wasn't “clues” that solved murders, it was informants. And the way to flush the bastards out was with old-fashioned police work-methodical, repetitive, and hard on the seat of the pants.

He leaned forward in the thronelike old swivel chair he'd inherited from Colonel Ornelas in 1984, when the crooked old voluptuary had taken the money and run, only days before the well-deserved purge would have caught up with him. With his small brown hands clasped on his lap, Marmolejo looked down at the gleaming wooden desk in front of him.

Inspector Marmolejo was an extremely tidy man. He took pride in the appearance of his desk. There were no notes, or reminders, or lists of telephone numbers slipped under the desk's thick glass top. And on the glass itself, no stacks of files, no manuals, no piles of unread reports. Nothing but whatever he was thinking about at the moment. And at this moment there were two handwritten sheets of business-size Hotel Mayaland stationery perfectly aligned with the front edge of the desk.

He sighed, worked the unlit cigar a little deeper into the corner of his mouth, and slid the sheets closer to him. Gideon Oliver again. A memorandum. He read it for the second time.

To: Inspector Marmolejo

From: Gideon Oliver

Subject: Stanley Ard-Circumstances of Death

I'm afraid Dr. Plumm made a few understandable errors in his analysis of the shooting. This by no means reflects on his general competence, but only on his unfamiliarity with homicides.

Here are my own conclusions:

1. The wound in Ard's forehead is not an exit wound but an entrance wound. Although a gaping hole like this is usually caused by a slug's wobble on the way out, it can also happen once in a while in the case of a contact entrance wound-that is, when the gun is held against the skin as it's fired. What happens is that the muzzle gases have no chance to dissipate in the air, and instead expand immediately under the skin. And when there is bone directly under the skin-the skull, for instance-the gases are forced back against the underside of the skin with great force, often bursting through it and producing a jagged, stellate wound easily confused with an exit wound. (However, laboratory examination of the surrounding skin will usually show some powder residue and burning.)

Sometimes some of the gases make it through the bone to the inside of the skull and expand there, blowing out the weakest parts of the cranium, which are the supraorbital plates, and filling the upper eyelids with blood. Almost certainly, this is what caused Ard's black eyes.

As you know, this is not a typical situation. I misinterpreted it myself until I caught a glimpse of the bone beneath, and saw that the hole in the skull itself was an unmistakable entrance wound-small, round, and neat, with the outer table of the bone quite intact around the rim.

2. If what I'm saying is correct, the interpretation of what happened has to be modified: a) Ard was shot from in front, not from behind. b) The killer was not lying in wait outside the fence, but on the hotel grounds with Ard. There's no reason to think he'd been trying to keep his presence here a secret from Ard or anyone else. c) Because the wound is a contact wound, requiring the killer to have been within arm's length, the killer may well have been someone Ard knew; very possibly someone he was friendly with.

I'm sure you and your staff have reached these conclusions on your own by now, but I thought it would be best to submit something for the record. As to what it all adds up to, that's your job. If I can be of any help, I'd be glad to.

If not, that's fine too.

Marmolejo smiled thinly. Prickly, this Oliver. Well, at least you could understand what he wrote; not like some of them.

He slid the sheets away with a grunt of annoyance. Whoever heard of this expansion-of-gas thing? This was Marmolejo's eighteenth homicide, and he'd never run into it before. And they'd certainly never mentioned it at the academy. As a result he'd initially accepted Plumm's findings. So had Dr. Lopez, the police pathologist, when he'd finally arrived. But that afternoon, after the autopsy, Lopez changed his tune.