Aaron Elkins - Dying on the Vine

His excitement building, he took a break to refresh his thinking. Going out to the rear parking lot, he put two one-euro coins into the vending machine for a nougat candy bar, sat down on one of the nearby benches, leaned against the wall, and—slowly, thoughtfully chewing—gazed eastward across the valley to the gentle, green foothills of the Apennines and the pretty little puffballs of clouds that clustered around their tops.

“Whew,” he said aloud. “It’s going to take me a while to get my head around this .”

• • •

HEwas finishing the candy bar when he heard the front door to the workroom open and close. “I’m out in back, John,” he called, and a second later, out came John with Rocco trailing a couple of steps behind. “Hey, Doc, look who I found loitering on the street out there.”

“Hey, Gid,” Rocco said. Again, he was in his splendid, tailored uniform, billed cap and all.

John handed Gideon a typically capacious bowl-shaped cup, kept one for himself, and sat down on the other bench. Rocco, with an espresso cup of his own, sat beside him. “I ran into him right outside the café,” John said. “Lucky for us. They don’t do takeaway, but when the generalissimo here walked in, they decided to make an exception. Anyway, don’t let me forget, we gotta bring the cups back.”

Rocco looked harried. “So, what have you got?” he asked, with an unsaid This better be good in its wake.

Gideon smiled and reached for his latte. “It’s going to knock your socks off. Let’s go inside.”

FIFTEEN

“TO start with,” he said, “take a look at the bones of the torso and the arms as a whole. Anything strike you?”

Rocco tossed his cap onto a chair and studied the bones for a minute, hands clasped behind him. “Well, as far as fracturing goes—”

“We’ll get to the fracture patterns in a minute, but for now, does anything else catch your eye?”

“Not really, no. What else is there?”

John sent the same message, along with a shrug. “What are we supposed to be looking for?”

“Compare them in your mind to what Nola’s upper body looked like,” Gideon suggested. “How are these different? Anything pop out at you?”

Rocco began to shake his head no, but suddenly stopped. “These have been chewed on!”

Gideon nodded. “Exactly.”

“So?” John said. “Nola’s were chewed on too.”

“Not the ribs, not the arms,” Rocco exclaimed, his interest growing. “But these , they’re all . . . but how the hell could that be?”

“That,” said Gideon, “is the question.”

“ What is the question?” John demanded. “How could what be?”

Rocco answered. “He was wearing a leather jacket, John. They both were. Down to the waist, with long sleeves. Good, thick jackets. And there weren’t any holes or tears in them. So naturally, the animals couldn’t get their teeth into Nola’s upper body. But they did plenty of chewing on this one, on Pietro’s. So . . . how come? That’s the question.”

“Well, what’s the answer? If his jacket wasn’t torn, how could the animals get to the bones under it?”

“Indeed,” said Gideon with a more or less inscrutable smile. “And the answer is: they didn’t.” Fun time again for the hardworking anthropologist.

“They didn’t . . . ?” Rocco echoed, brows knit.

“’Splain yourself, Lucy,” John growled.

“There weren’t any holes in the jacket because he wasn’t wearing it at the time.”

The other two stared at him. Rocco spoke. “What did you say?”

“I said there weren’t any—”

“We heard what you said. Are you telling us the jacket was put on him later —after he was dead? After the bugs and animals got to him? I’m sorry, Gid, but—”

“That’s what I’m telling you, Rocco.”

They waited for him to explain while he waited for what he’d said so far to sink in. “Consider. In Nola’s case, although her skull and lower body were gnawed, and her hands were gone, nothing that would have been covered by her jacket was touched by animals. Not so with Pietro. Logical explanation: Nola was wearing the jacket from the beginning; Pietro wasn’t—and it didn’t go on him until some time after he was killed—time enough for the animals to get in there and chew him up the way they did.”

“Which would be how long?” Rocco asked. “Are we talking hours? Days?”

“In this particular case, I’d say weeks.”

“Weeks!” Rocco shouted. The creases on his forehead got deeper. “Christ, it’s not enough that Nola was shot after she was dead, but now you’re saying someone changed Pietro’s clothes weeks after he was dead? Why? What for?”

“Hey, I’m just an anthropologist. I don’t deal with the why s. Why s are your problem, Tenente .”

“Yeah, but . . . “Rocco scowled. “Aw, this is nuts, Gid.”

John was laughing. “Good old Skeleton Detective. Does it every time.” He sipped some of his cappuccino and licked foam from his lips. “Okay, guys, let’s think this through. To start with, we’ve established where he was killed—the top of the cliff. We know that because that’s where you found the skull fragments, Rocco.”

“Yeah, there and some more of them along the way down the cliff wall, so we know . . . well, unless somebody scattered them there to make us think—”

“No-o,” Gideon said, “there’s such a thing as too weird, and that’s what that is. I think we can safely assume that that the top of the cliff is where he was shot.”

“All right, scratch that idea,” Rocco said. “So, now what’s our scenario? We’re up at the top of the cliff. Nola’s already been pushed off—”

“How do we know that again?” John asked.

“Because she was found up against this big rock, and he was found up against her , so she had to have gone first.”

“Oh, right—but hang on, how do we know someone didn’t arrange the bodies that way later? Or do you figure that’s too weird too?”

The three of them agreed that, while it might be weird, it was by no means too weird. It was something to be considered.

“Well, whatever,” Rocco said. “Thanks to you, at least we know that he was killed up there—”

“No, you said that. I didn’t say that,” said Gideon.

“The hell you didn’t.”

“Yeah, you did, Doc,” John said. “You said—”

“I said that he was shot up there.”

“And we can’t say for sure that a .32 slug that blows away half his head didn’t kill him?” John said, his voice rising. He was starting to wave his arms around, the way he did when he got excited. Then, suddenly, he sagged. “Oh no, what are you telling us? He was shot after he was already dead too? Like Nola? I think I saw this movie before. Come on, man, you gotta be kidding us.”

“Almost like Nola, but not quite,” Gideon said. “You’re forgetting. Nola was alive when she fell, and shot only afterwards . . . down at the bottom. Pietro was shot—not killed, because he was already dead—but shot —up at the top. Before he fell.”

“I’m starting to get a neck ache here,” Rocco said warningly. “Every time we think we figured out what you’re saying, you shake your head and say, ‘No, that’s not what I said.’” He turned abruptly to John. “Is he always like this?”

Gideon was all innocence. “Hey, I just figured it was better to explain things step by step. You know, build a foundation to establish that the underlying premises are valid before attempting to demonstrate that the ensuing deductions necessarily follow from them.” He smiled sweetly.