Aaron Elkins - Fellowship Of Fear

When he came back, he said, "They’ve got the car."

"Who? What car?"

"The guys who ambushed you. They found their car on the road to Taormina, near Mangano."

"How do they know it’s the right car? I couldn’t describe it to the shore patrol."

"No, but they analyzed some paint they found on the bumper where you rammed it; it matches the paint on your car. There isn’t any question about it."

"Great. What else?"

"Not much. Apparently it was doing about a hundred, ran off the road, exploded, and burned so badly you could hardly tell it was a car. They pieced together enough to identify it as a Lancia that was stolen from a garage in Catania on Thursday, but that’s about it. Somebody was still in it, but burnt to a crisp. The carabinieri flew out an expert, a forensic pathologist from Rome. All he could say was that it was definitely human. He couldn’t even tell for sure if it was a man or a woman. There’s nothing but a few bones."

"Bones?" Gideon was suddenly excited. "Damn it, John, I don’t care what shape they’re in I could tell more than that from them. I’ve got to see them."

"Believe me, you couldn’t-"

"John, you seem utterly determined to forget that I am a physical anthropologist by profession." In response to John’s tolerant smile, he went on. "And a damned good one."

"Relax, Doc, relax. I’ve seen the stuff. A few finger bones and stuff, all cracked and burned. You could put them all in a coffee cup and still have room for a cup of coffee."

"You’ve seen them? And you didn’t tell me? I thought they just found it!"

"No, they found it Friday, the day after the ambush."

"Well, why the hell didn’t you tell me before?"

"Will you calm down? I didn’t know for sure it was the right car till just now."

"Yes, but-"

"And you didn’t look that terrific yesterday. It didn’t seem like such a great idea to mention it."

"Sure, but-"

"Hey, Doc!" John’s tone had changed. He was getting angry. Gideon closed his mouth in mid-sentence and sank back against his chair, exasperated.

John glowered and stabbed a forefinger at him. "You don’t have to be told everything, you know. I’m the cop. All you are is the lousy victim." Then his frown dissolved into merry creases as he burst into his sudden child’s laugh.

"All right," Gideon said, "but I’d still like to see those bones, Mr. Cop, sir."

"That’s better. They’re at police headquarters in Catania. I’ll drive you over later, if you want. Hey, how about some lunch? I’m starving."

John had wanted to go to the base cafeteria for hamburgers, but Gideon, trading on his weakened condition, talked him into going to a clean, modest little trattoria a few miles down the road. There John ordered a full meal; Gideon had soup and pasta with fresh sardines and a little butter.

"You know," John said-and then had to stop while he chewed the last chunk of a thin, tough steak pizzaiola, which he had ordered contrary to Gideon’s advice and was consuming with evident relish-"you know-" a gulp of red wine sent the mouthful down-"you know, I’m not so sure that the two attacks are related after all."

"Come on, John," said Gideon, "you said yourself it would be a pretty wild coincidence for two things like that to just happen."

"Right, but wild coincidences do happen. The situations are too different. In Heidelberg you were assaulted and searched by two guys who knew exactly what they were looking for. Here in Sicily they were trying to kill you outright-no more, no less."

"How can you know that for sure? How do we know they weren’t looking for it, too-whatever it is-and that killing me wasn’t just the easy way to get it?"

"Because they put a car in your way across a fast road on a dark night. The chances were damn good they’d blow you and your car to shreds. So what were they going to search? Uh uh, they wanted you dead."

Gideon poked morosely at his last sardine and pushed the plate away. "I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense either way."

When the waiter brought the fruit and cheese, Gideon took only a little Bel Paese; his mouth didn’t feel up to dealing with apples or pears. John reached for the largest, reddest apple and bit into it with powerful incisors.

Suddenly an image came back to Gideon. "Hey! The guy on the bridge. I remember him! I saw him in a restaurant, in Aci Trezza! He was watching me! He was eating an apple!"

"What did he look like?" John was excited.

"I don’t remember. Tough-looking. He was with another guy. But he was eating an apple-with his mouth."

"What apple?" shouted John. "What do you mean, with his mouth? Who gives a shit about an apple?" He had half-risen from his chair.

"The way he was eating it-it means he was an American."

"Oh God," John said, falling back into his chair, his enthusiasm gone. "Another anthropology theory." He bit into the apple again with a resounding crunch.

"No, John, now listen. "You just took a bite of it, right? Europeans don’t do that, you know that-especially Italians. They peel it with a knife, and they cut it into little pieces, and they eat them with a fork."

"Oh, come on, Doc."

Gideon glanced around the crowded little restaurant. "Look over there, for example." Two tables away, a solemn, bespectacled man in a black suit was surgically incising the skin of a banana, preparing to remove its contents with his fork. "See?"

"I know, I know; Europeans mostly eat fruit that way, Americans mostly don’t. Doc, mostly isn’t always. It’s not exactly proof."

Gideon was a little piqued. It had been a first-rate deduction, he thought. "At this point we don’t need proof; we need some clues. Don’t forget I thought he sounded like an American when he yelled at them to drop their guns."

"All right, let’s say you’re right. What does that tell us that we didn’t know before?"

"Hell, I don’t know. You’re the cop; I’m just the lousy victim. Aren’t you supposed to put it all together?"

"Oh oh, now I’ve made him mad. All I meant was, I thought you had some theory about it."

Gideon’s energy seemed suddenly exhausted. His ankle had begun to throb. It would be good to lie down and get his foot raised. Maybe three hours out were enough for the first day.

"No theory, John," he said, "I don’t know what it proves. I think you’re right; it’s probably not important."

There was silence for a while. Gideon rolled a little cheese into a ball between his thumb and forefinger. "I think maybe I ought to get back to the hospital."

"All right, you want to let the bones go till tomorrow? Or just forget about them?"

The bones. He’d forgotten. His ankle stopped aching, and his energy came back with a rush.

In the basement laboratory of police headquarters in Catania, they waited at a table covered with a large piece of butcher paper. John’s pidgin-English conversation with a portly police captain had been comical and confused, and Gideon had only been able to help a little with his rudimentary Italian. At first the captain, with lavish gestures, had refused them entrance to the laboratory. Then he had told John they could come in now but that they couldn’t see the remains. "No, no, no, no, no. Impossible, signore. Lei scherza!

In the end, without the use of a single word, but with the most extraordinary series of gestures Gideon had ever seen-involving individually raised eyebrows, pursed lips, cocked head, and a wonderful accompaniment of arm, hand, and finger motions-he had managed to communicate, with almost word-for-word exactitude: Ah, but I did not understand! If you are the Americans we have been expecting, then of course-of course -you may see them. My apologies; I am so stupid."