Aaron Elkins - Curses!

Marmolejo's impatience finally got the better of him. “Well, are you able to tell me nothing? Can we say for certain that it's Avelino, or can we not?"

"What?” Gideon surfaced slowly, his mind still on the tubercles. “Uh…no,” he said.

"No, you're unable to say, or no-"

"No, it's not Avelino."

Wrong answer. Marmolejo's half-closed eyes opened briefly, then slitted again. The cigar stub jerked irritably. “Just like that? One look and the answer is no?"

Gideon glared up at him, matching irritation for irritation. If Marmolejo thought it was such a quick look he should have tried it on his elbows and belly. The back of Gideon's neck ached from keeping his head up, his left hand had fallen asleep, and when he lifted his elbows from the pebbly debris, they felt as if a set of tacks were being pushed into them. He stood up, rubbing the numb hand.

These remains, he explained crisply, were assuredly not Avelino Canul's, whatever the inspector wanted to believe. This had been a man anywhere from six feet tall to six-feet-two, judging from the quick-and-dirty measurement of the humerus and femur, and Canul wouldn't have been anywhere near that.

"I will check,” Marmolejo said. “I'm certain I have his height in my files."

Gideon merely looked at the five-foot-tall Marmolejo. What difference did the files make? Couldn't he remember how small Avelino was? Who had ever heard of a six-foot Maya?

Besides, he pointed out, in almost every way the skull was everything that a Mayan skull was not. The cranium wasn't wide and round-the Mayan brachycephalic norm-but long and narrow, a typical northern European dolichocephal. The cheekbones were curving, not squared; the palatal arch was V-shaped, not U-shaped; the orbits squarish and smoothly bordered, not sharp; the face as a whole was rugged and large-featured, not smooth and compact. In all, a classic Caucasoid skull, suitable for an illustration in a textbook.

And there was more-

But Marmolejo withered under the assault and lifted a resigned hand. “I submit,” he said, and even managed a small, not unfriendly smile. “I know when I am beaten.” He stared thoughtfully down at the skeleton.

"Who, then?” he murmured.

Gideon waited until the inspector's wide-set eyes swung up to meet his.

"It's Howard Bennett,” Gideon said.

"What did you say?” Marmolejo asked woodenly.

"It's Howard Bennett."

Marmolejo took the three-inch stub from his mouth and scowled at it as if hoping to draw strength from it. “Do you think it would be all right,” he asked mildly, “if I smoked now?"

"Go ahead.” Earlier, Abe had asked him not to smoke around the codex, but it was gone now, and the flammable celluloid-acetone fumes had been cleared away as well.

The inspector lit up with unusual thoroughness, taking two long pulls while he held the match to the end of the cigar. The first honest-to-God cloud of smoke Gideon had ever known to emerge from his mouth emerged. He waved the match out, put it in a little box, and slipped the box into a pocket of his guayabera.

"That,” he said quietly, “is not possible."

"No, it's true, all right."

"We have had two letters from Howard Bennett,” Marmolejo said patiently, “as you and your colleagues explained to me last night. One in 1982, one last week. Someone has just been murdered with what is almost certainly his revolver, the revolver he took with him five years ago. He was-"

"The fact that some letters were typed on his typewriter hardly proves he typed them.” As Julie had tried to tell them. “And just because a bullet came from his gun doesn't prove he pulled the trigger."

"Of course not, but-"

"And there hasn't been a reliable sighting of the man since this place caved in. Now we know why."

Marmolejo grunted, about a quarter convinced.

"Look, Inspector, there are a lot of indicators here. The size is right. So is the age; Howard was pushing fifty. The race, the big-boned build, those are right too. And then Howard was right-handed, as I remember.” He gestured at the skeleton. “So was this guy, apparently."

Marmolejo frowned at the hand bones and seized on a specific. “How do you know? The right hand is larger than the left?"

"As a matter of fact, no. There are ways to tell, but hand size isn't one of them. For now I'm just going by-"

"The watch,” Marmolejo said. “Obviously, it was on his left wrist. So you conclude that a person who wears a watch on his left wrist must be right-handed?” The cigar end glowed. This was the kind of reasoning he could have confidence in. “I would conclude the same thing."

"Right."

"But I would not trust my conclusion absolutely. There is no law that prohibits a left-handed person from wearing his watch on his left hand."

"Right again. It's a question of probability. But there are some shoulder-girdle measurements that should tell us about handedness for sure, and I'll do them tomorrow."

Marmolejo drew on his cigar and made an annoyed sound at finding that it was out again. A quarter of an inch shorter than it was before, it was rolled out of the way once more into the left corner of his mouth. “Now, look, Dr. Oliver, this is all very well, but it's hardly proof. You also are Caucasian, you also are large-boned and a little over six feet tall, I think. You also are righthanded, you also are the right age-"

"The right age?” Gideon protested. “I'm only forty-one. “

"Close enough,” Marmolejo decided for himself. “And with it all, does it prove that this is you lying here?"

"The age is wrong,” Gideon maintained, “and anyway, I haven't been missing since this place fell in. And…well, there is one other thing."

Marmolejo grinned toothily at him, as if he'd known all along that Gideon was eventually going to pull a three-foot rabbit out of the hat.

As indeed he was. But he wasn't showboating, as the inspector thought; he was following the lessons of past experience. When you're going to present something to a policeman that requires more disposition to believe than he's shown so far, it's best to lead gradually up to it, to ready him for it step by progressive step, before hitting him with the clincher. He hoped Marmolejo was prepared.

"Did you know that Howard was a woodwind player?” he asked.

If he was surprised by the question, the policeman's dark face didn't show it. “No, I didn't know."

"He did, expertly. He used to play jazz clarinet with a group in a Merida nightclub every Saturday."

"Ah. And the fact that Dr. Bennett played a woodwind, this is in some way relevant?"

"Very. This guy"-Gideon indicated the crushed skeleton-"did too. For years."

Marmolejo's mouth opened slightly with a faint popping noise. Fortunately the cigar stub remained pasted to his lower lip.

"And if you put it all together,” Gideon continued, “I don't think it leaves a lot of room for coincidence. We've got a white male here, around fifty, righthanded, about six-one, who's played woodwind for ten years at least…all of which also happens to fit Howard Bennett perfectly. And since Howard was last seen right here, at just about the time this skeleton was deposited, I don't think there's much doubt-"

Marmolejo found his voice. "How do you know he played the clarinet?” It wasn't quite a squeak, but it was as close as he was likely to come.

Gideon made it simple. The tubercles, of course. The other time he'd come across them, as he'd finally remembered, it had been during an examination of the scant remains of a firebombing victim in Pittsburgh. The man, a clarinetist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, had been tentatively identified by the police before Gideon was shown the bones, and Gideon, knowing nothing about him, had wowed the homicide detective in charge by casually asking what woodwind instrument he'd played.