Aaron Elkins - The Dark Place

Gideon had never thought about it; it was a good question.

Chace didn’t agree. "I don’t see much point in continuing this," he said. "You’ve obviously closed your minds. There’s nothing I can say that would-"

"It’s not a question of say," Gideon said, "it’s a question of show. It’s evidence that’s needed, not argument."

"I have in my home," Chace said slowly, with infinite patience-he was straining the limits of his tolerance to give it one more try-"a glass-walled box in a climate-controlled vault. In that box sits nearly two pounds of fecal matter. I can show you letters from the University of Michigan, the University of Arizona, and Cal Poly, all of which say that those feces cannot be identified as belonging to any scientifically known form of life." He paused to let the weight of his words sink in. "They were found in 1974 in a cave…" When Gideon wearily closed his eyes and shook his head, he stopped. "You don’t believe me?"

"Oh, I believe you," Gideon said wearily, "but I’m sure you know quite well that once feces have dried, a lab analysis usually can’t do more than identify the digested or undigested contents-grass, hairs, bits of bone. Determining species from old fecal matter is impossible except indirectly, through dietary analysis."

"Goddamn it!" Chace exploded. "There is evidence, plenty of evidence! There are bones, tools…whole frozen bodies that have been sent to museums and colleges. They disappear! There have been hundreds of specimens that disappeared in museums, hundreds!"

Chace was on his feet, shouting and waving his arms. "You goddamn so-called scientists look at it for five minutes and you brand it a fake-" His rage choked him, and he turned his back on the others.

It was an argument Gideon had heard before but one which always astounded him: the strange belief that the scientists and academicians of the world had formed a sinister conspiracy to suppress knowledge of Bigfoot, or UFOs, or snaky monsters that lurked in lakes. As if there were a scientist anywhere who wouldn’t give his right arm, both arms, to come up with definitive evidence of any of them.

"Well," said Gideon, "I think maybe we’re beginning to repeat ourselves." He stood up, and Linger arose instantly, still gracious. "Thanks for your hospitality, Mr. Linger. I think we’d better be getting back; I have to be up early." He turned to Chace and forced himself to smile. "Dr. Chace, if you do come up with hard evidence, I assure you I’d be more than glad to look at it."

"Oh, no," said Chace, not bothering to turn around. "No, no. If I find me a Bigfoot, you so-called scientists are gonna be the last ones to ever get your hands on it. I haven’t been killing myself all these years so some cloud-nine Ph. D. with clean fingernails gets all the glory."

"All right," said Gideon, shifting down to turn from Hill Street onto Highway 20, "I came, I listened, I kept an open mind-to a reasonable point. Do I now have your approval to discard the Bigfoot-as-killer hypothesis?"

"You sure do," Abe said. "What a plosher that guy was. That means a phony, a blowhard."

"I wouldn’t have guessed."

"Goniff," Abe mumbled under his breath.

"Crook," Gideon said.

"Crook, you got it. Boy, am I tired. I’m going to grab a little nap." He lowered his chin to his chest, blew out his cheeks, and began at once to snore, or rather to make the small, periodic clucking noises which Gideon knew to be his snores.

Gideon had left Linger’s house disgruntled and annoyed, but the deserted, sweeping bends of the road had relaxed him, and the occasional glimpses through the trees of Discovery Bay, glinting like pewter in the moonlight, had lulled him into a soft reverie. If nothing else, that absurd discussion had killed the notion of Bigfoot as a murder suspect. It was a pleasure to put the lid on that particular box, even if he had no other hypotheses. But then, he didn’t need a hypothesis, he reminded himself. Murder hypotheses were John Lau’s problem. Gideon had done what he’d been asked to do: a skeletal analysis. And he’d delivered good value. The only thing at Lake Quinault that still interested him was a very live, most unskeletal Julie Tendler. And he would be pursuing his investigations in that regard in a very few hours.

Abe clucked away, swaying peacefully from side to side as the car swung smoothly around the big curves that meandered through the endless black forests. Even when they got to Highway 101, with its brightly lit patches and with huge trucks roaring wildly by them, he slept on. In the neat little town of Sequim, where Highway 101 became East Washington Street, Gideon slowed, unsure of where the turnoff to SunLand was.

Abe began to twist and snuffle. "Right turn on Sequim Avenue," he said with his eyes closed. "A Gulf station on the corner." He opened his eyes. "Next block."

As Gideon made the turn, Abe stretched and sighed contentedly. "Listen," Abe said, "could I ask you a question?"

"Could I stop you?"

"What are you being, funny?"

"What do you mean, funny?"

They were both smiling. "Tell me," Gideon said, "why do you people always answer questions with questions?"

"Why shouldn’t we?" It was a very old joke, but it always made them laugh. "You got something against the Socratic method?"

"Should I have?" Gideon asked.

Abe leaned forward and patted Gideon’s arm. "Enough already. Who are you supposed to be, Henny Youngman? Look, you want to hear my question or not?"

"Why not?"

"No, this is serious. And it’s the same old question: If it took this superhuman strength-"

"Let’s say extraordinary," Gideon said.

"-extraordinary strength to kill this Eckert, poor guy, who killed him?"

"I’m starting to think I was wrong," Gideon said. "Maybe a fairly strong person could have done it. John Lau’s having some tests run. They’re throwing spears into pig carcasses or some such thing."

"And what conclusion do you think they’ll come to?"

"I think they’ll conclude it took superhuman strength." Gideon was quiet a moment. "Abe, I guess I’m up a tree on this. I just don’t have any hypotheses."

"Well," Abe said happily, "I got one. I figured it out while you were driving. You probably thought I was sleeping, right?"

"Just because you snored for a solid half hour? Of course not."

"No, I was thinking. And finally I said to myself, what a schlemiel I am. Schlemiel, that means-"

"I know. So why are you a schlemiel?"

"Because anybody who calls himself an anthropologist, it should take him five seconds to figure it out. We’re both schlemiels. Look, remember you called me this afternoon about the dig?"

Gideon nodded.

"And what did you say you found?"

"The distal end of a juvenile humerus."

"And what else?"

Gideon was puzzled. "Nothing. A piece of wood. An arrow straightener, maybe."

Abe waved off the idea as ridiculous. "No, no. Whoever heard of an arrow straightener like that? Look, it had a hole at one end, right? The kind of hole that maybe once had a peg stuck in it?"

"I suppose so."

"And if it did have a peg in it, what would you guess it was?"

Gideon didn’t see why Abe was harping on a twelve-thousand-year-old artifact. "I don’t know, Abe," he said impatiently, a rare way for him to talk to the old man.

Abe took no offense. "So," he said cheerfully, "guess."

"An atlatl?"

"Finally," Abe said, "the light dawns."

"I don’t-" Gideon began, and then the light did dawn. "Atlatl!" he exclaimed. "Of course! An atlatl! My God, I’ve been-"

"A schlemiel," Abe said. He settled back against the seat. "Now that I’ve solved your case for you, Professor Skeleton Detective, I’m going to catch forty winks. Wake me up when we get to Phlegmatic Haven." In an instant he was asleep again. Or thinking.