Aaron Elkins: The Dark Place

He put down the magnifying glass and the charred heel bone he’d been holding and rubbed the back of his neck.

"John, I’m not doing you any good. Why don’t I just go on back up to Dungeness and get back to my dig?"

"I guess you can if you want to, Doc, but why not relax and spend the night at the lodge? The Bureau’ll pick up your tab, and we’ll get you on a plane tomorrow."

"The food’s quite good at the lodge, if that’s any incentive," said Julie, then added, as if she’d been addressing John all along, "Professor Oliver would be a help at the press conference tomorrow."

"In that case, I’ll stay," Gideon said, smiling.

Late that afternoon, John had flown back to Seattle, saying that he hoped to be back for the press conference. If not, Gideon was perfectly free to talk as an anthropologist about anything he had found but was not to speak for John or the FBI.

"Also," John said with a smile, "please try not to engage, like, in any elaborate hypothesizing in advance of the facts."

Gideon promised he wouldn’t, and he and Julie saw John off from the foot of the dock on the sunny blue lake. It seemed perfectly natural, then, to ask her if she was free for dinner, and he nonchalantly did so. She accepted equally matter-of-factly, and they agreed to meet in the lobby of the lodge in an hour and a half.

Gideon did not often think about his appearance; not for the past few years, at any rate. He knew that he was not a conventionally handsome man; his nose, broken twice in college boxing matches, had long ago taken care of that. But he also knew his soft brown eyes combined with that mashed, crooked nose, heavy brow, and cleanly masculine jaw in a look of gentle ruggedness that many women found attractive. Whether the recent appearance of gray at his temples made him more attractive it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder.

So why was he wondering now, standing in front of the mirror in the old-fashioned bathroom of his cottage? The reason was Julie, of course. She had reached him somehow, had stirred him in a way he hadn’t been stirred in a long time. During an unhurried, relaxing session in the old-fashioned, marvelously comfortable six-foot tub-there was no shower-he had found himself thinking and feeling things he’d almost been ready to put in his past.

He was not on the prowl by any means, not the sort of man whose antennae were always quivering and alert. For nine years he had lived with Nora and had loved her as deeply and unreservedly as a man can love. There had been no one to compare with her when she was alive, and none since she’d been killed three years ago. Still, once in a long while a woman would come along who would rouse him and kindle the old feelings.

At first, when he’d self-consciously begun to date again at thirty-seven, they’d all been intent on "significant emotional relationships"; all he’d been after was some straightforward, uncomplicated sex. More recently, as his own thoughts had begun to turn to significant emotional relationships, the women he seemed to meet just wanted to get laid and be done with it.

He had no idea what Julie was after, doubted that she was after anything from him. She wasn’t even the kind of woman he usually found physically attractive, not blond and long-limbed and svelte, as Nora had been. Julie was black-haired, with slightly slanting jet-black eyes that seemed perpetually on the verge of laughter. She was round, and even a little plump-in a definitely pleasing way-and she lacked Nora’s cool elegance. Nora had looked wonderfully at home in a museum or a fine restaurant. Julie looked like she belonged in a kibbutz, standing in the sunlight with a hoe in her hand and white shorts on those provocative, curvy hips. He wondered what her legs looked like bare. Probably firm and tan and smooth. God knows they seemed attractive enough in those tight ranger pants.

She was waiting for him when he got to the restaurant, and they ordered martinis before dinner. Gideon told her about the dig he was working on at Dungeness Bay during his fall teaching recess.

"It’s a fabulous site. I turned up a scraper and some worked caribou bone inside of a week, and some charcoal, and then finally some human skeletal material-a male and a female-just a few days ago. It’s all stratigraphically dated at twelve to thirteen thousand years. That makes it at least as old as the Manis Mastodon site near Sequim, maybe older."

The waitress brought their martinis. "My name is Eleanor," she said, putting them on the table. "Enjoy."

They touched glasses. Julie was smiling. "It’s nice to see a man so enthusiastic about his work."

"It’s not just the work; it’s the site itself and the fact that I’m working it alone. The cave’s in the side of a cliff right on the edge of Dungeness Bay, looking across those magnificent straits. The digging itself is mostly a kind of mindless, easy work, you know, more dental pick than spade. And so you poke away and dream, and think, and every now and then you look up and there’s that blue water and the gulls…"

Julie was looking at him over the rim of her glass, her black eyes twinkling. "I get the feeling you like being alone."

Gideon frowned slightly. Was he sounding eccentric? Reclusive? "Well, sometimes, maybe, but it’s not as remote as I’ve made it sound. I spend a few evenings a week with an old professor of mine, and the site is right below a main road. When I finish up I just climb a few feet to the top of the cliff and walk across the road to my motel. TV, fridge, all the modern conveniences. If you’ve never been up that way you ought to come on up. It can’t be more than a three-hour drive. I’ll show you around."

"Did I just get an invitation to your motel, Professor?"

Gideon laughed. "Tell me something about you. How long have you been with the Park Service?"

She told him she had been a ranger-naturalist for six years, first at Mesa Verde for a summer, then at Lassen, and now in the Olympics for the past two years. She had a master’s degree in ecology, with an anthropology minor, and a B.A. in psychology.

Gideon sipped his martini, a good one, sharp and stony and ice-cold, and looked at her as much as listened. She had changed to a tailored beige pants suit that made her eyes and hair even blacker. And she didn’t look at all out of place in a fine restaurant, he decided, and would no doubt look splendid in a museum. When she bent her head to drink, her hair fell forward around her face in soft, dark swirls, as in a slow-motion television advertisement. Once, when they both leaned forward over the table, he smelled her hair’s clean, woodsy fragrance.

Somehow, she began to talk about her personal life. She’d been married at eighteen in her hometown of Denver, but her young husband had had problems with drugs, and she’d divorced him after a few months. Then she’d gone into the Army and served as an MP in Germany.

"That was an interesting experience. I learned to shoot; got pretty good at judo and karate too."

"I think I’d better withdraw that invitation to my motel," Gideon said.

When the waitress returned for their order, he hadn’t yet looked at the menu.

"They’re famous for their grilled salmon here, Professor," Julie said.

"She’s sure right about that, Professor," the waitress agreed, writing down the order with evident satisfaction when Gideon nodded his agreement.

"Julie," Gideon said, "I’m the last person in the world to refuse a little respect, but I’d prefer ‘Gideon’ to ‘Professor,’ if that’s all right with you."

"That’s fine; I just noticed that John calls you ‘Doc,’ so I thought you liked that sort of thing."

"I told him long ago to call me by my first name, so he started calling me ‘Gid.’ ‘Doc’ is a compromise."