"The Dark Place" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elkins Aaron)

Chapter 3

* * * *

From the air the lake was beautiful, deep blue in the warm sunlight, and dotted with white sailboats. Their occupants waved as the pilot dropped the little Cessna 210 smoothly toward the water, its engine rackety and echoing. The dense woods that began at the shore and stretched many miles to the northwest were the rain forest, Gideon knew. He studied them curiously, just a little disappointed to find them pleasant and cool-looking, not in the least sinister.

The plane landed on the water not far from what he knew must be Lake Quinault Lodge, a set of big, rambling buildings set comfortably at the back of a huge, lush lawn that sloped down a good two hundred feet to the lakeshore. Turning, the blue and white Cessna, rocking gently in its own wake, taxied slowly toward the dock at the foot of the lawn.

He spotted John at once among the two dozen people lounging on the dock. One of the many things he enjoyed about him was how genuinely pleased the big Hawaiian always seemed to see him and there he was, steady and solid-looking in his denim shirt and jeans, grinning happily at Gideon through the airplane window.

When Gideon jumped down from the Cessna's doorway, there were a few moments of handshaking and back-clapping, and finally a powerful hug. Not for the first time, it occurred to him that of all the men he knew, John Lau was the only one he could comfortably and unselfconsciously embrace.

With a final thump on Gideon's shoulder, John turned to a black-haired woman of about thirty in the gray shirt and olive pants of the National Park Service. “This is Julie Tendler. She's the chief ranger. Been a hell of a lot of help."

"Hi, Professor,” she said. “I really enjoyed your book. I was an anthro minor,” she added by way of explanation.

"I'm glad you liked it,” he said with the tolerant smile of a gracious celebrity. Actually, he was delighted. As the author of A Structuro-Functional Approach to Pleistocene Hominid Phylogeny, he'd yet to become jaded by the approbation of the masses.

Gideon swung his suit bag over his shoulder and they walked up the sloping lawn to the main hotel building. On the way, John explained about the three missing persons. Two had disappeared six years before on the then new but since closed Matheny trail between the Queets and Quinault rain forests. The third, Claire Hornick, had vanished only a few days ago, about eight miles from there. The search for her had turned up the bones, and that's when the FBI had been called in.

Gideon checked into the lodge and left his bag at the registration desk. They walked across the grand old lobby with its ancient, wicker furniture, old-fashioned and comfortable.

"I haven't seen wicker writing desks in an American hotel for a long time,” Gideon said. “Or a parrot in the lobby."

"Yes,” Julie said, “it's a great old place."

John held open the door, and Gideon awkwardly bowed Julie through, not at all sure if she would like the gesture. She went through with a pleasant smile, and they stepped out into the town of Quinault. It was a shock. They had entered the hotel building from a spacious, sunny lawn peopled with sunbathers and laughing volleyball players, and with ten square miles of open lake at their backs. When they walked out through the rear entrance, no more than forty feet away, they stepped into a sunless shadowy world of almost solid green, hushed and perceptibly cooler and more moist than the lawn.

The “town,” invisible from the air, consisted of several buildings out of the nineteenth century along either side of a narrow road. On the right was an old post office and a weathered, rustic general store—"Lake Quinault Merc,” the sign said—with a wooden porch complete with an old dog sprawled drowsily on it. On the left was the Quinault Ranger Station, a group of small frame houses. Everything was dwarfed and hemmed in by towering walls of cedar and spruce, so tall and close together that the sky was visible only as a narrow slit high above the road. The road itself gave the illusion of being cut off at either end by more tree walls, and the overall effect was like being at the bottom of a sunken corridor, a narrow, gravelike canyon cut deep into the living mass of trees.

It was in its own way extraordinarily beautiful, but the impact on Gideon, used to the scrub oak and open hillsides of California, was so oppressive that he unconsciously moved his hand to his already open collar to get more air.

"This is fascinating,” he said. “I've never been in a rain forest before."

Julie laughed. “Oh, this isn't the rain forest,” she said, her eyes looking down the road beyond the barrier of trees. “The rain forest's in there. This is just regular woods."

The ranger station complex was better. The growth had been cut away to provide an open space, probably by some early, claustrophobic chief ranger, and Gideon breathed more easily as he stepped into it.

In the workroom at the rear of the main building, the burials were neatly arranged on a scarred oak table, each one consisting of a pitifully few fragments in front of a numbered paper bag. Four of the groupings sat next to frayed, soiled baskets with red and black designs. On the table, in front of the one chair with arms, were the magnifying glass and calipers that Gideon had requested on the telephone.

Gideon quickly identified five of the six, including all those that had been in baskets, as Indian burials that had been in the ground at least twenty years.

John nodded disappointedly. “That's what Fenster told us."

"I don't think there's any doubt about it,” Gideon said. “The baskets, the fact that the bodies were cremated, the fact that some of them have been buried a lot longer than others—a hundred years at least, I'd say, for that one there—it all suggests an old, established burial ground."

Julie was frowning. “I don't know. I think I know the history of this rain forest as well as anyone does, and I never heard of any Indians who ever lived here. And I don't remember cremated burials in baskets being very common among North American Indians."

"Maybe not. I'm not an ethnologist, but I know the practice exists, or existed. Some of the central California peoples used to do it."

When Julie continued to frown he said firmly, “Trust me, I'm a world-renowned authority."

John laughed but Julie looked at him curiously. “Joke,” Gideon said. “Now, let's have a look at this last one. Fenster thinks this might be one of the hikers?"

"Right, Doc,” John said. “You want their descriptions?"

"No, let's do it the usual way. Let me see what I can find out on my own. I wouldn't want to bias my judgment with any preconceived ideas,” he explained for Julie's benefit, looking at the small pile of brown bones.

"Quite proper for a world-renowned authority,” Julie said.

Gideon looked up quickly.

"Joke,” she said. “Honest.” She smiled, and Gideon realized suddenly that she was very pretty.

He returned his attention to the bones. “There's not much here,” he said. “It's been partially burned, and it looks like some animal's gotten in and made off with most of it. Look, you can see where something's been gnawing on the edge of the scapula."

Julie shivered suddenly and apologized. “Sorry, I guess I'm not used to this."

"There's no need for you to be here,” John said gently. “If you want—"

"No, I'm intrigued. Don't pay any attention to me. If I faint, just go on without me."

Gideon leaned forward, studying the fragments intently: fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae, held together by a few shreds of brown, dried ligament; third and fourth thoracic vertebrae; left scapula, whole except for some gnawing and breakage along the rim.

He shook his head. “It's going to be hard: There's no way I can tell the race from these, but I'm pretty sure it's male."

John jotted something in his notebook, looking less than hopeful, but Julie was eager.

"How can you tell it's a male?"

"The scapula. See the rough, ridged areas on the extension?” He handed the bone to her. She hesitated momentarily, then took it. “That's where the deltoid and the trapezius muscles...Do you remember your anatomy?"

"Not much,” Julie said.

"Okay, that's where the large shoulder muscles attach,” Gideon said, careful not to sound patronizing. “The ruggedness of the bone shows the muscles were heavy, powerful. A female would have smaller shoulder muscles, and you'd barely see any ridges."

"But what if it was a woman with large muscles?” Julie asked. “Women are a lot more athletic than they used to be."

"Well, if the female heavyweight weight-lifting champion of the world is missing, maybe we've found her, but I don't think so. It's much more than a question of athletics. If a man and a woman exercise the same amount, the man will still have a lot heavier, denser muscles and thicker, rougher bones. A woman would have to exercise a great deal more even to come close."

The corners of Julie's mouth turned down.

"I'm sorry if it offends you,” Gideon went on, “but there really are some differences between men and women that are genetically determined, and muscularity happens to be one of them. I'm speaking statistically, of course; there's no way I can be completely certain on this particular bone."

"I'm not sure if I agree,” Julie said.

Gideon, slightly annoyed, was about to reply when she suddenly added, “But who am I to disagree with a world-renowned authority?” and broke into another warm smile. She really was extraordinarily attractive, Gideon thought, even beautiful.

"Male,” said John flatly, writing. “Okay. Anything else you can tell us?"

He looked so dejected that Gideon laughed. “You mean anything to justify my fee? Yes, I think so.” He picked up the scapula and turned it slowly in his large hands. “He's over twenty-three,” he said after a while. “All the epiphyses are fused."

Gideon put the bone on the table and leaned close to it, using the magnifying glass like a jeweler's lens. “And he's definitely under forty. “No sigh of atrophic spots."

"Of what spots?” asked John dully, writing.

"Atrophic. As you get into middle age, the supply of blood to the scapula decreases, and the bone atrophies in places.” When John winced, he added, “Don't worry, it's harmless."

Gideon turned the bone over several times more, still peering through the magnifying glass. “Ah!” he said, “Look at this. Just the tiniest bit of lipping on the circumferential margin of the glenoid fossa—"

"Doc,” said John, “you're going to have to go a little slower or else speak English."

"Don't worry, I'll write it up for you. The important thing is that lipping starts about thirty. I'd say he's twenty-nine, or maybe just turned thirty, considering that the epiphyses look as if they've been fused six or seven years."

John put down his pad and looked squarely at Gideon. “Doc, is this on the level? Eckert was twenty-nine. Did you know that before?"

"I don't play games like that, John, you know that."

"No,” said John, “you don't.” He wrote some more on his pad.

"Was he muscular, five-ten or six feet, a hundred and ninety pounds?” Gideon asked.

John scrambled through the file. “Height five-eleven,” he said with something uncharacteristically like awe in his voice, “weight one eighty-five. I didn't think even you could tell that from a single bone, let alone a shoulder blade."

Gideon shrugged offhandedly but glanced at Julie. She seemed, he was gratified to see, as impressed as John. “Just educated guesses,” he said. “We can apply some height formulas to the vertebrae and see if we come up with the same thing.” He picked up a vertebra. “There's a shadow of osteophytosis here; bears out the age estimate of around thirty. What the heck is this?” he said, fingering the strange protuberance.

"Fenster wasn't sure. He thought maybe"—John flipped through his notes—"some sort of bone disease...exostosis..."

"I don't think so,” Gideon said, excitement rising in his voice. He held the bone in his hand and leaned over it, the magnifying glass practically touching it, his eye an inch behind the glass.

"You look like Sherlock Holmes,” Julie said.

"Hmm,” Gideon said after a while. “Definitely."

"You sound like Sherlock Holmes,” she said. “I'm dying of suspense. What is it?"

"It's not a growth,” Gideon said, handing the bone to her. “I think it's an arrow point that penetrated the vertebra and broke off, so the tip is still embedded, and that rough projection is the surface of the broken part."

"An arrow point?” John cried, rocking forward in his chair and extending his hand for the vertebra. He picked gently at the projection with his fingertips. “It sure looks like bone to me."

"It is bone,” Gideon said. “Eckert—if that's who it was—was shot by a bone arrow."

"But people haven't used bone arrows for centuries,” Julie said. “Even the most primitive groups in the world use metal points now."

"Yes,” said Gideon quietly, “astounding, isn't it? But I really think there isn't any doubt. There's no periosteum."

"Doc—” John began exasperatedly.

Gideon smiled. “All right, I'll speak English.” He slid the magnifying glass along the table to John. “The outer layer of bone is the periosteum. It stays on the bone even when it's been buried for hundreds of years; thousands, for that matter. But when you make a bone implement, and shape and smooth it, you invariably scrape it off. If you look carefully, you'll see that outer layer all over the vertebra, except for that projection."

John held the glass and bone out in front of him like a farsighted man trying to read a menu. “I don't—"

"Okay, never mind that,” said Gideon. “Look at the bone around the base of the projection. You can see it's crushed inward, obviously by the force of the arrow entering the—"

"I see!” John cried. “It's as if...it's all..."

Julie had risen and looked over his shoulder through the glass. “All mushed in,” she said.

"Right,” Gideon said. “All mushed in.” He took back the bone, grasped the projecting part tightly, and wiggled it.

The point came out at once, noiselessly, without disturbing the crushed rim of bone surrounding it. A faint odor of decay came from the hole in the vertebra. Julie moved back, wrinkling her nose.

"It's a projectile point, all right,” Gideon said.

"It sure is,” John said. “Goddamn."

Gideon laid the point on the table. It was a triangular piece of ivory-colored bone a little over an inch long, its base rough and jagged. “It was in there deeper than I thought,” he said, “about an inch. It almost went clean through."

He placed the point on a white sheet of paper and traced its outline with a pen. Then with dotted lines he extended the shape. “It's hard to say, but I'd guess this is what it must have looked like complete.” He had drawn a tapering form about three inches long and an inch and a half wide at its base.

Julie moved closer to the table, squeezing between the two men. Gideon was aware of the nearness of her hip and of her faint, fresh fragrance as she bent over the drawing.

"I've read a lot of Northwest Coast ethnology and archaeology, Dr. Oliver,” she said, “and this doesn't look like an arrow. It looks a lot like the kind of spear point they've turned up at the Marmes Rockshelter in eastern Washington."

"Does it?” said Gideon, interested. “Yes, it could be a spear. He changed the drawing a little, sketching in a few lines. “That does look better. The wooden shaft would attach there."

"Hold it now,” John said. “Are we saying this guy was killed by a spear—a wooden spear with a bone point? That's just a little bizarre, to say the least."

Gideon leaned back in his chair and shrugged.

"So what does that add up to?” John asked. “Was he killed by an Indian?"

"With a bone spear?” Julie said. “You're kidding. The point I was talking about is ten thousand years old. And the local Indians are tribes like the Quileute and the Quinault. They're busy managing their fish hatcheries and motels. With computers. They don't go running around with bone spears."

"Do you know anybody who does?” John asked with a shade of temper. He looked at Gideon. “All right, what's your theory, Doc?"

"Uh-uh,” Gideon said. “I'm the anthropologist. I've told you these are the remains of a husky white male about twenty-nine and that this is a bone spear point in his spinal column. You're the one who gets paid to come up with theories. But I agree with Julie; you're on the wrong track if you think the spear necessarily means Indians."

John shoved his chair back and thrust himself out of it. “All right,” he said, pacing, huge and bearlike in the small room, “we find a body in an Indian graveyard. He's in there with what you tell me are Indian skeletons buried in Indian baskets. He's got a bone spear that looks just like what the local Indians used to use stuck in him. But,” he said, plopping back into his chair, “in no way could it possibly be an Indian who killed him. I don't follow the logic."

"Look,” Gideon said, “I didn't mean it couldn't be an Indian. It could be anyone. I meant don't assume the circumstances point to an Indian."

Julie moved away from his shoulder and swung around to sit on the table, disturbingly near. He could have rested an arm on her thigh without moving from his chair. “I'm not sure about your logic either,” she said, looking down at him.

Your logic? He was aware of an absurd letdown feeling. He had expected her support. “What exactly bothers you?” he asked.

"In the first place, how do you know without doing any lab tests that the skeleton hasn't been in the ground twenty years, or a hundred? I know you're not familiar with the soil or the climate...” She paused to let him answer.

"I just know,” he said, telling the truth. “You get a feel for it, even if you can't quantify your methods. Color of the bone...weight...density...” He picked up the vertebra. “Five years at least, ten years at most.” He turned to John. “Have you ever known me to guess wrong?"

"Lots of times. What about those hand bones in the Reilly case, or the arm bone you said was sharpened when a dog had just chewed it up?"

"Those were different. That humerus had been sharpened, only it was a dog that—” He stopped and joined John in easy laughter. John had earned the right to be critical.

He wasn't so sure about Julie, however. “What bothers you in the second place?” he said to her.

She picked up one of the baskets. “These,” she said. “I'll check my texts later, but I'm sure these weren't made by any recent Washington Indians. The form is wrong, and the way the decoration is overlaid. The twining itself doesn't look right. At least I don't think so."

Here she might have a point. Gideon knew little about basketry. “You could be right,” he said, not sorry about the opportunity to agree with her.

Julie put the basket back on the table. “Besides that, there aren't any Indians who live in the rain forest itself, and there never were, not on a steady enough basis to have graveyards."

"Doc,” John said impatiently, “is this point well made? I mean, was it carved by someone who knew what he was doing?"

Gideon took the fragment in both hands, running his fingers along the facets. “It's crude,” he said, “but whoever made it had plenty of experience. Why? Were you thinking someone might have been trying to make it look like an Indian killing?"

"Yeah,” John said.

"Then why bury the corpse? It was just by luck you found it at all."

John nodded soberly. “I know. I'm just trying to cover all the angles.” He looked down at the desk, suddenly uncomfortable. “Look,” he said, “I've gone out of my way not to tell you about the Bigfoot tracks they found near the body—"

"Bigfoot!” Gideon said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “Come on, John, you've got a perfectly solvable crime here with a rational explanation. I'm not even going to discuss a creature for which there isn't a sliver of physical evidence—no live specimens, no skeletal material, no fossils, no carcasses, not even a reliable photograph. The very notion that a giant anthropoid could exist unseen...” He looked suddenly at John. “What do you mean, you've gone out of your way not to tell me?"

John's eyes twinkled, but his mouth kept its serious line. “I thought you might give me a lecture if I mentioned it."

Gideon laughed. “See? That confirms your good sense. So no more talk of Bigfoot.” But then he said, “There were tracks?"

"Yes,” John said, “but definitely made yesterday, after we found the first skeleton, so there's no direct connection. The local Sasquatch Society got all excited and made casts, and our people made some to send to headquarters. Fenster wouldn't have anything to do with them. Said they were pranks."

"He's right. Forget about Bigfoot, John. You'll make yourself and the FBI look ridiculous. And I'm sure as hell not going to get involved."

"Look,” John said, “I'm not stupid. I think it was a prank, too. But I'm not forgetting about anything that might be connected.” After a moment he added, “You could at least look at the tracks."

"It wasn't Bigfoot, John, and I'm not spending my time giving credibility to a set of joke footprints."

John was up again, thrashing the air with his hands the way he did when he was excited. “It wasn't an Indian! It wasn't Bigfoot! What was it, your average, everyday John Q. Citizen who walks around with a bone spear and kills people and buries them in the forest? Or maybe Eckert speared himself to death?"

* * * *

After a lunch of ham sandwiches and chocolate milk from Lake Quinault Merc, Gideon aged and sexed the Indian burials, explaining to Julie and John as he went along: a man in his forties, another man of about eighty, two elderly women, and two infants, possibly twins, who had been buried in one grave and misclassified by Fenster as a single burial. He had identified a horrendous abscess in the upper jaw of the old man as a probable cause of death, but there wasn't enough left of the others to provide any more information.

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."

Gideon noted that she didn't ask him any personal questions and knew that John had told her about Nora. That pleased him; it meant that Julie had been interested enough to ask questions.

When the salmon came, along with a bottle of Gamay Beaujolais that Gideon had ordered over Eleanor's injunction that white wine went with fish, it was placed before them worshipfully.

"Enjoy,” said Eleanor again, her voice husky with reverence.

The fish was indeed extraordinarily good, with pink, firm flesh that tasted like fine veal.

"It's called blueback salmon,” Julie said. “The Quinault Indians have rearing pens on the lake, and they're the only ones who can get them. The lodge has a special contract with them."

"It's superb."

"They catch them with bone-tipped spears,” said Julie, blandly chewing.

Gideon put down his fork. “They what?"

Julie laughed. “Joke. They use only the most modern methods, I assure you."

"I'm glad to hear it,” Gideon said, returning to the fish, but his thoughts had gone back to that triangular point on the workroom table. He sipped the beaujolais abstractedly.

"Uh-oh,” Julie said, “I've started him thinking serious things.” She drained her glass and held it out to him to be refilled. “Let's go back to us."

Gideon slowly shook his head. “There's something that bothers me..."

"What?"

"I don't know, but something's wrong. Or not wrong, just not right.” He refilled her glass and his own. “The hell with it. Intuition is a sidewise kind of thing, and you can't push it; at least not mine."

They clicked glasses again and made small talk through the rest of the main course. When Gideon asked for the bill, Eleanor told them they couldn't think of leaving without ordering the house specialty, a creamy chocolate cheesecake, with their coffee.

"If she says ‘enjoy’ when she brings it, I'll scream,” Julie said.

"So help me, I'll kill her myself."

"Enjoy,” Eleanor said heartily when she placed the cake before them and was greeted by a burst of laughter that sent her away baffled but beaming.

In the final ruddy afterglow of the day they walked down the deserted, cool lawn to the shore and listened to the gentle, steady lapping of the tiny waves against the gravel.

"You're going to throw a stone in the water,” Julie said.

"Why would I want to do that?” It had been just what he was going to do.

"Inborn male trait. Genetic. Haven't you noticed? From the age of three on, no boy or man can pass a body of water without tossing in a stone. That's why our lakes are silting up."

"Ah, but I'm no ordinary tosser. I'm a world-class skimmer, silver medal, ought-four Olympics. Give me some room, now."

He sidearmed a pebble out into the darkening lake. Together they counted the soft splashes as it hopped over the water, leaving spreading circles on the smooth surface. “Two, three, four...five."

"A new world's record,” Gideon said, “and you were there."

"Let me try,” Julie said. “Here goes."

"You're holding it too high. You have to do it underhand."

"Oh, yeah?” She threw the stone. There was a heavy plunk.

"One,” they said.

"See?"

Julie shook her head. “Nope. I think it's something men can do and women can't, that's all."

"You might be right, actually. Women do throw differently than men; they have different shoulder girdles. In a male, the top of the sternum is on a level with the third thoracic vertebra—” He stopped when Julie laughed. “John's right, you see,” he said, smiling. “I do tend to give lectures."

"I like it,” she said. “You're a professor. That's the way you're supposed to be. Are you absentminded, too?"

"Well, actually, you know, that depends more or less on the nature of... What was the question again?"

She laughed again, and they stood silent for a while, listening to the water and smelling the clean breeze coming off the lake. Gideon began to think about putting his arm around her. Did people still do that on first dates? Or did they run right off to bed, and only put their arms over each other's shoulders when they were better acquainted?

"Chilly?” he asked when he saw her shiver. “Would you like to get a nightcap at the bar?"

"I don't like bars very much."

"I don't either,” he said with sincerity. “I have some Scotch in my cottage, though, right across the lawn."

She looked at him for a long second. “I think maybe the bar would be better this time."

As they turned from the lake, she smiled and took his arm. “I need a chance to practice up on my karate."

After the soft, cool lakefront, the bar was a shock, full of happy, noisy people, mostly in their fifties and sixties. Even the walls were crowded: elk, antelope, and deer heads peered down from every flat space with lustrous, ruminant eyes. There was a monstrous salmon over the bar and even a small bear, seemingly frozen in midstep with one foot raised as it was padding over the top of the upright piano.

They found a free table in a corner and sat down. The laughter and closeness had made them suddenly shy with each other, and they were still searching for something to talk about when Gideon's brandy and Julie's Grand Marnier came.

"I'm going to practice, you know,” Julie said. “I intend to beat your rock-skimming record, even if my vertebrae are funny."

"It's not that they're funny,” Gideon said brightly, working hard to reawaken the conversation, “it's just that their relationship to the sternum...” He put down his brandy snifter abruptly. “Holy cow, do you know where your seventh thoracic vertebra is?"

"I'm not sure. Have I lost it?"

"No, I'm serious,” he said. “It's just about the middle of the back, at the thickest part of the rib cage."

"That's fascinating, but I have the feeling I'm missing something."

"Julie, the seventh thoracic—the one the spear point was in—it's here...” He groped over his right shoulder with his left hand, and under his left arm with his right hand, but he couldn't reach it. “Let me palpate yours,” he said, leaning toward her.

"Professor Oliver! Is that legal in a public place?"

"Damn it, Julie—"

"Yes, sir,” she said quickly, putting down the liqueur and turning so he could reach her back.

His sure fingers quickly found the familiar prominence of the lowest cervical vertebra at the base of her neck, then the first thoracic, and the second. After that the back muscles made the spines harder to feel, but he worked his way carefully down, counting aloud, until he pressed the seventh.

"There!"

"Ouch."

"You see, it's right in the middle of your thorax."

He took his hand from her spine and leaned back in his chair. “In order for a spear to penetrate the front of the seventh thoracic vertebra, it would have to enter here.” He placed his middle finger in the center of his chest.

"That would smart, all right."

"Not for long. I'd be dead at once. But that's not what I'm thinking of,” he said, his eyes thoughtful.

She pushed his brandy across the table to him and waited for him to go on, her own eyes more serious now.

"Look,” he said, his hand at his chest again, “that spear would have had to go through the thickest part of the sternum and probably cut through a couple of sternocostal ligaments. And that would have been after severing the pectoralis tendons."

He sipped his brandy without tasting it. His eyes looked inward, seeing the chest cavity behind his hand. “Then it would have gone through the middle of the heart, clean through the whole thing—and the heart is one hell of a tough hunk of muscle. And then after that—we won't even consider the veins and nerves and esophagus—it penetrated nearly an inch into a living vertebra."

"That's a lot of work for a bone spear point to do,” she said.

He nodded. “And remember, Eckert was a big guy, with thick bones and muscles. Julie, I don't see how anyone could throw a spear with that much force. A razor-sharp, perfectly balanced metal spear, maybe, but not that crude bone point."

"How about if it was an arrow after all? Would it have more power if it had been shot from a bow?"

"Yes, but it's too big for an arrow point. The shaft would have to be five feet long, and thick, to balance it."

"What about a crossbow?"

Gideon brightened momentarily, then shook his head. “That might give it the necessary force, but I think the point's too big for a crossbow, too. But I don't know anything about them; we can ask John."

"Ugh,” Julie said, and shivered suddenly.

"What is it?"

"I just had an image of somebody sneaking through that dark rain forest with a crossbow, stalking human beings."

Her hand lay on the table at the base of her glass. He covered her hand with his. “Yes, that's creepy,” he said. “But if you rule out the crossbow, the alternatives are even creepier."

"Like what?"

"Like somebody getting Eckert down on his back and then using a mallet to pound a spear through his heart. That might do it."

"Boy, when you say creepy, you mean creepy. Why would anyone do that? I mean, aside from the possibility that Eckert was a vampire.” When he didn't smile, she went on: “Gideon, do you think it was one of those weird cults? Or are you joking?"

He patted her hand. “No, I'm not joking, but I don't really think that's what happened. The trouble is,” he said, and paused to finish his brandy, “the trouble is, the only other conclusion I can come up with is even more weird."

He sat silent and staring at the empty glass on the table through two long, deep breaths.

"Dr. Oliver,” Julie said finally, “has anyone ever told you that you can sometimes be just a teeny weeny bit irritatingly slow in coming to your point?"

"Frequently,” he said with a smile. “I'm just trying to figure out a way of saying it so that I don't sound like a character in a 1930s horror movie."

He put his hands flat on the table and looked directly at her. “All right, Frau Burgermeister, the conclusion that I am forced to reach is that Eckert was killed by someone—something—with superhuman strength."

Julie's eyes were wide. Someone behind Gideon struck a match, and they shone briefly in the dim light, like a cat's. “Gideon, you're not suggesting, not implying...?"

"Bigfoot? Absolutely not. Superhuman doesn't necessarily mean supernatural, Julie. Bigfoot doesn't exist; it can't."

"But then what did kill him?"

Gideon slowly shook his head. “It beats the hell out of me."

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