The printed sheets had nothing helpful to offer either. On top was the acte de deces, the certificate of death, filled out by the examining physician. The body of Brian Scott, a white male (American) age thirty-eight, had been found by two hikers from New Zealand on October 28, in rugged terrain near the Maoroa River, one kilometer east of Tehiupa on the island of Raiatea. The decedent, dressed in a sleeveless shirt, walking shorts, and socks, had been judged by Dr. Claude Masson to have been dead for seven to ten days. The manner of death was listed as par hasard -accidental; the cause as multiple internal injuries. These injuries had presumably been the result of a fall of some thirty meters from the path along the edge of the bluff immediately above. The remains had been shipped to Therese Druett of Papara, Tahiti, on October 30.
The other sheet was a brief case summary that took less than half the page. The body had been identified from a wallet in the hip pocket of the shorts and from a wristwatch identified by Therese Druett, common-law wife of the decedent. Decedent had been hiking and camping in the area since October 17. No autopsy had been deemed necessary. The decedent's remains and possessions, including a pair of walking sandals found near the body, had been crated and shipped to Therese Druett at her request. The report was signed by Alphonse Didier, brigadier-chef.
Nothing. Nothing unexpected, nothing unusual, nothing suspicious.
Gideon put the papers aside and returned with reluctance to the photographs for a more thorough examination. For a forensic anthropologist, he was downright squeamish, and a dead human body that had been lying outdoors for seven to ten days in warm, humid conditions is not a sight to appeal even to the strong-stomached.
Still he felt that he owed it to John to do what he could. He went back to his cottage to get a magnifying glass from his equipment case, sat down again to the photos, steeled himself, and began.
Corpses left outside in the summertime often lost ninety percent of their weight in a week or less, and Brian was no exception. Withered, much dwindled from what he had been as a living man, he lay on his back in a blood-caked T-shirt and shorts. There was no indication that carnivores had been at work, but that wasn't surprising in Polynesia, where the only native animals aside from birds were bats and rats, and not very many of those, and anyway, the rats had become rather delicate in their appetites, preferring young coconuts to everything else.
But even Polynesia had plenty of insects, and as usual they had concentrated heavily on Brian's face, assuming this was Brian. Maggots swarmed in frothy mounds, spilling from mouth, nasal aperture, and ruined eye sockets. The beetles had made their arrival too-scarabs, dermestids, carrion beetles-to feed and rear their young on what remained of the soft tissue and on the maggot masses. They were all there and hard at work, all the merry members of what is called, in the neighborly graveyard language of forensics, the host corpse community.
He shivered suddenly and raised his eyes to take in the healthy green guava leaves and the deep, clean blue of the sky beyond, then returned to the photo. The left arm appeared to be dislocated at the shoulder, and perhaps broken, but that was hardly remarkable in a fall of any distance. No picnic to go through, not that Brian was likely to have noticed, but once again nothing to excite suspicion.
He set the close-ups of the head on the flat arm of the chair and peered at them for some minutes, again learning little more. The hair was light, the teeth that were visible were unbroken and seemingly well-cared-for, and that was all he had to say. He leaned back in the deep chair and shook his head. That was it, then. The file gave them no grounds to press a murder investigation and no grounds to question the handling of the case. Unless John could get his uncle to change his mind about the exhumation, of which there appeared to be no chance whatever, he was simply going to have to accept the situation as it was.
He looked up to see John returning from the bar, drinks in hand.
"No reason to question the handling of the case?” John exploded. “You're out of your mind!” He leaped from his chair to pace furiously back and forth, his big hands chopping at the air again. “You call ten lousy lines a case summary? Why wasn't there an investigation? Why wasn't there an autopsy?"
"John, calm down, will you?” Gideon said, snatching his carton of Orangina out of the way. “There wasn't any reason for an autopsy; not from Didier's point of view. People fall off those trails all the time."
"Yeah, but he was alone, no one saw it happen-"
"That's not reason enough. Autopsies are expensive, you know that. There aren't enough pathologists in the world to autopsy everybody who gets killed without witnesses. You have any idea what percentage of accident and suicide victims get autopsied in the States?"
"No,” John said grumpily, flopping into the other chair, “but I've got a hunch you're gonna tell me."
"Twenty percent,” Gideon said. “One in five. You don't call for an autopsy unless there's valid reason to presuppose-"
Wearily, John flapped his hand. “Ah, forget it, what difference does it make anyhow? Thanks for your help. I appreciate it. Really.” He swigged moodily from his bottle of Hinano and looked out to sea.
Gideon scowled, feeling ill-used. He was accustomed to people asking his professional opinion and then getting annoyed at him when it wasn't the one they wanted, but you'd think John would know better.
"I'm sorry,” he said curtly. “I just haven't seen or heard anything from anybody that makes me think Brian's fall wasn't just what it was supposed to be."
John shrugged and took another swig.
There was a touchy silence while Gideon gathered the pictures together, slipped them into the envelope, and handed them across to John.
He got them halfway there and stopped rock-still, his arm out. The image of the picture on top of the stack was still in his mind's eye and one small peculiarity in it that he hadn't even been aware of noticing had just clicked into sharp, meaningful perspective.
"Holy cow,” he said.
John looked up. “What?"
"John, I owe you an apology.” Gideon tore open the envelope, pulled out the photograph on top, one of the full-body shots, and stared hard at it. “How could I have missed it?"
"What?” John said, his voice rising.
Gideon gave him the photograph. “Look at this.” He handed across another one. “Here, you can see it in this one too. Damn, it just didn't register. I wasn't looking for it."
John put his beer down on the lawn and studied the picture. “I'm looking. What am I supposed to be seeing?"
"The hand. Look at the hand. He must have been lying on it, or it was in the shade or something, but for whatever reason, the decay process isn't quite as advanced, and there's still a fair amount of flesh left. If you look at the hand-"
"The hand, the hand….John cut in impatiently. "Which hand, goddammit?"
Gideon leaned across to tap the picture. “The right hand, goddammit. Don't you see?"
"See what?" John cried. “All I see is a bunch of maggots."
"No, you don't. You see a line of maggots, not a bunch. Can't you see what that means?"
"No, I can't see what it means,” John shot back. “Hell, it took you long enough to figure it out and you're a big-time Ph. D. I'm just a poor, dumb cop, remember? I have to have things explained to me."
They had been glowering at each other, almost nose to nose, and without quite knowing why they burst out laughing.
"John, I'm sorry,” Gideon said. “I'm a little testy too, but it's because I'm mad at myself, not you. I can't believe I almost didn't pick this up."
He got out of his chair to stand beside John's so that they were both looking at the pictures right side up.
"Now look at this.” With his forefinger he traced a column of maggots that ran diagonally from the web of the right thumb, across the palm, and onto the lowest joint of the little finger.
"It's a defense wound,” he said.
"Defense wound?” John murmured with interest, peering at the photos.
"It couldn't be anything else. From a blade; a knife, probably. Brian tried to fight somebody off and this is where he caught hold of the blade."
John took Gideon's magnifying glass, leaned over the pictures, and shook his head. “I can't see any wound at all. Just the maggots."
"If there are maggots there, there's an opening underneath,” Gideon said. “And an opening in the palm of the hand is a wound."
As he had frequently told John and told him now again, he was no forensic pathologist; the less he had to do with bodily fluids, soft tissues, and nasty secretions, the happier he was. But he had been involved in enough cases by this time to know that the insects that help decomposition along do it in a systematic and predictable manner. Within minutes of death the Calliphoridae-the blowflies arrive, soon to be followed by their many cousins. These insects head directly for the natural openings-in a clothed body, the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears; in and around these moist, dark recesses they lay their eggs in yellowish white masses easily visible to the naked eye (and looking for all the world like wads of grated Parmesan cheese, as an entomologist had once pointed out to him, thereby permanently changing his attitude toward that formerly relished cheese). Within a day, in warm weather, the eggs have hatched into great, wriggling clumps of the blind, wormlike creatures known as larvae or maggots, which then begin their allotted task of consuming the body's soft tissues.
And if there are open wounds, the same process occurs there. Eventually, the larvae spread out from these initial sites, but for a while they remain busily clumped around the body's orifices, natural and otherwise. Thus the maggots on Brian's face.
Thus too, the diagonal, linear column of maggots on his right palm; they implied a diagonal, linear wound beneath.
"Okay, I can buy all that,” John said, “but why defense wounds? Why couldn't he have cut his hand in the fall?"
"Pretty unlikely. First, I can't see any scrapes or bruises anywhere else on his right arm; just this one clear cut on his right hand. And second, it is a cut-not an abrasion, not a tear, not a puncture. Look how neatly lined up the maggots are. One long, straight, slicing cut. What but a blade would be likely to do that? Not to mention that it's precisely where you'd expect a defense wound to be."
Gideon didn't expect John to take much convincing, and he didn't.
"Doc, you're right,” he shouted, clambering up out of his chair. “See, did I tell you or didn't I tell you?” There went the arms again. “Come on, let's go see Bertaud. There's no way he can argue with this."
"John, it's going on six o'clock. He's not going to be in his office."
"Wherever he is, then,” John said righteously. “He's the head man. He's always supposed to be available."
"Maybe so,” Gideon said tactfully, “but do you suppose maybe he's seen enough of us for one day?"
John laughed; the sudden, burbling, babylike explosion that never failed to make Gideon laugh along with him “Of me, you mean. Yeah, you're right about that. Okay, tomorrow morning then. Nick's expecting us up at the house for dinner about now anyway."
They looked at each other, an unspoken question in the warm air.
"I say we don't mention this to Nick right now,” John said after a moment. “Let's find out what Bertaud says first. Besides, Nick's the one who didn't want anything about it mentioned at dinner, right?"
"I agree, but you know you're going to wind up in the doghouse with him when he finds out we went to Bertaud behind his back, don't you?"
John shrugged this off. “It won't be the first time. He always gets over it fine. Come on, time to go up and meet the family."
Gideon looked down at the dusty clothes he'd been wearing all day; in Papeete, on le truck, and at the plantation. “Give me a minute, I'm a little travel-stained for dining. I ought to change first."
John guffawed. “Forget it, come-as-you-are is the order of the day. Dining at Nick's is like dining at Chucko's All-You-Can-Eat, except the food's better."