Aaron Elkins - Dying on the Vine

Cippollini was quite proud of the totality of his efforts and even more of the quality of the coffin. Gideon couldn’t follow it all, but he understood enough to learn that the exterior wood was ebony, the interior wood was mahogany, the soft interior fabric was arranged and sewn in a French-fold design, and the mattress was his own patented invention, the Eternal Rest Adaptable Couch.

“Well, next time I need a coffin I’ll sure know where to come,” John said, but of course he said it in English and with a smile, so Cippollini happily nodded along with him. Encouraged, he began to get into the finer points of the wood molding, but Gideon politely told him that they were pressed for time and needed to get on with it.

“Once again, for the sake of decency, I have cleaned the bones,” Cippollini told him. “Would you like me to take them out of the casket for you?”

“No, thank you.”

“If you let me know when you’re done, I will put them back.”

“I can do that for you,” Gideon said.

“No, signore, I want to be positive that they are in their natural order, as close as possible to the way God made them.”

“Well, then, you better let him do it,” John said to Gideon. “You might not get ’em right.”

When Cippollini left, they stood looking at the remains. Gideon found the whole thing creepy, and not only because of the misplaced bones. He’d looked at his share of newly exhumed burials, and many of them had been skeletonized, but always before: the coffin fabric on which they lay had been gray and mottled with age, and stained with the effluents of decomposing tissue. It was anything but pretty, but it was as it should be. But Pietro’s bones lay on brilliantly white bedding—French folded, no less—and while it made things less nasty (as did the pre-cleaning), it just didn’t seem right. It was as if he were looking at a wax museum exhibit or a dubious reliquary purportedly containing the toe bones of an obscure saint, and not at what was left of a once-living human being

“Well, let’s get them laid out on the table,” he said. “Forget about the order for now. We’ll just—hey, wait a minute . . .” He was doing a double take at the bone he’d just picked up; the third rib on the right-hand side. “Damn, now that’s really funny. . . .”

“Well, that didn’t take you long,” John said casually, transferring a hip bone to the zinc work table. “So, what’d you find?”

Gideon gave him the rib. “Anything about it catch your eye? Any difference from what we found with Nola?”

“Not really. It’s kind of chewed up.”

“Bingo. It’s very chewed up. Animals have been all over it. All those scratches and these conical indentations—gnaw marks, mostly from canid teeth.”

“Okay, if you say so, but what’s the big deal? Nola’s bones were plenty chewed up too. Why wouldn’t they be? There’d be plenty of forest critters up there. Ferrets, weasels, wolves—”

“John, would you do me a favor, please? Get Rocco on the phone?”

He took Rocco’s card out of his wallet and handed it over. While John made the call, Gideon did a quick examination of the rest of the skeleton. He was puzzled by the absence of cranial fragments, which Rocco said had been recovered from the top of the cliff and along the route the bodies had taken down it, but then under the pillow he found a red velvet sack tied with a golden cord, like some top-of-the-line old cognac, except for the tape label, which read Frammenti di calotta cranica —skull fragments. He began to untie the cord but was interrupted by John’s proffering the telephone.

“Got him. Here he is.”

“Thanks, John. Rocco? Hi. Listen, you told me they were both—”

“Who were both?”

“Nola and Pietro, of course.”

“What do you mean, of course ? What do you think, I’m a TV detective or something? I only work one case at a time? Hell, I’m not working that case at all, remember? That case is over and done. And I’m sitting here looking at a goddamn desk full of—”

“Not having such a good morning, huh?”

Rocco laughed, and Gideon heard some rustling that suggested he was settling back in his chair. “Sorry. Okay, I told you they were both what?”

“Both wearing leather jackets.”

“Umm . . . yeah, they were. Matching ones. Good ones. From Forzieri. I wish I could afford one.”

“What kind of condition were they in, the jackets?”

“Condition? They were fine.”

“Not torn up at all?”

“No. I mean, they didn’t look like anything you’d want to slip into, but no, no holes, no rips. Their pants had some holes in ’em. Not too surprising, after all that time outside. But the jackets, they were good, thick leather; they held up. I mean, there might have been some pinprick or crack that I missed somewhere or other, but—”

“They must have been wearing shirts or something under the jackets. What about them?”

“Uh, that I don’t know. I don’t really think anybody paid attention. Everything was pretty ratty and moldy and all. They just cut the clothes off them for the autopsy, and as far as I knew they just threw them away. Is that bad?”

“Rocco, could you possibly get away for a while? We’re down here in Figline, at your cousin’s funeral home, and we’re looking at Pietro’s remains.”

“You’re looking at his ashes ?”

“No, his bones.”

“But I thought he was—”

“Well, he wasn’t. He’s lying here right in front of me.”

“Huh. I thought . . . I guess I just assumed . . . So you’re asking me to come there? Right now?”

“I am, yes. I think I’m onto something.”

“Gid, how important is this? Because I got a lot of stuff that needs doing, and Captain Conforti is breathing down my neck.”

“It’s important. I think.”

A hesitation, a sigh, and then: “Half an hour. Ciao.”

“What’s up?” John asked. “What’s so special about this rib? Why shouldn’t it be chewed up?”

“John, it’s not that I want to keep you in suspense—”

“No, of course not. Why would I think that?”

“—but Rocco’s on his way, and I want to get my act together before he gets here, so give me a few minutes, okay?”

“Sure. Far be it from me to interrupt the Skeleton Detective when he’s communing with a skeleton.” He pulled up a stool and leaned over to watch, his elbows on the table.

“And no offense, but maybe you could give me a little breathing room?”

“Jeez, talk about prima donnas. Okay, I can take a hint. There was a café up the block. How about I go away and come back in a little while with a couple of cappuccinos?”

“Good, great, thank you. I’ll have a latte, though. Give me ten minutes. Make that twenty,” he yelled as John went through the door.

Left alone, Gideon went back to his examination of the bones, most of which were still in the casket. Opening the velvet sack that held the cranial fragments, he separated one that was actually a curved chunk of scapula, spread the rest out on the table, and fitted some of them together. They represented much of the right half of the cranium, and they held no surprises. Entrance wound in the left temple, much larger exit wound in the right temple, exactly as described in the autopsy report.

Overall, the postcranial trauma were also as reported: fractures of most of the ribs on the left side, the left scapula and left arm bones, the sacrum, and many of the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae. But while Dr. Bosco had done an accurate enough job of listing them, that was where he’d stopped. No detailed descriptions, no analyses, no conclusions derived from them. But for Gideon, when it came to bones, the devil lay in the details, and ten minutes spent examining them and comparing them in his mind to Nola’s injuries made him even more certain he was onto something.