High in the ink-black sky over the South Pacific, sprawled at his ease in a roomy Air New Zealand first-class seat, with a first-class meal of duckling with orange sauce comfortably inside him and a stemmed crystal glass of Courvoisier at his elbow, Gideon Oliver was having second thoughts.
He didn't like exhumations. And not merely on aesthetic grounds; that went without saying. More important, exhumations were traumatic experiences for family and friends; especially for family. Digging a corpse out of its grave for a belated postmortem was a sure way to rip open the wounds that had begun to heal when the body was laid down in the first place. And that never failed to make him uncomfortable.
Besides, he had a hard-to-shake conviction that it was all going to be in aid of nothing. The string of accidents Brian Scott had gotten caught in might make one wonder, but accidents did frequently happen. In strings. And what credible reason was there to think they weren't accidents? Would anyone in his right mind try to murder someone by knocking down a shed in a windstorm?
On top of that, John's faith in Gideon's ability to find signs of murder, if murder there was, was flattering but overblown.
There were a lot of things that could kill you without leaving a road map on the skeleton. Most things, actually. The chances were good he would come away from the analysis shaking his head, with nothing to say one way or the other about the cause of death. Or let's say that there were indications that it had been due to a fall, which seemed the most likely thing he would find; a fractured skull or pelvis or some crushed vertebrae. Fine, but what would that prove about murder or the absence of it?
And on top of that he and John were on their way to a foreign country with the sole and express purpose of second-guessing its official law enforcement authorities. This, he had learned long ago, was unlikely to be a rewarding experience.
And finally, on top of everything else—or maybe underlying everything else—he was going to be away from Julie for almost a week and already he missed her
John, untroubled by morbid doubts, was stretched out in the seat next to him, headphones on, contentedly watching the end of the new James Bond movie on the screen. As the closing credits began to roll, he took off the headphones and smiled at Gideon. “Good show. You should have watched."
"I've been thinking."
"Worrying,” John said. “Okay, what's bothering you now?"
"A lot. How did you talk me into this anyhow?"
But they both knew the answer to that. John had called and asked him on the previous Wednesday, the day after the news about Brian's death had come. Gideon had promptly ticked off his reservations and John had listened patiently.
When Gideon had finished, John had finally spoken.
"I'm asking you as a favor, Doc,” he said simply. “This is my family."
That had been enough; he and John were old, good friends. They had worked on a lot of cases together and had been in some difficult situations together. They had saved each other's lives.
"I can't get away till the end of next week,” Gideon had grumbled for form's sake. “I have a seminar I can't palm off on anybody else."
"Is that gonna hurt the bones? A week or two one way or the other?"
No, Gideon had admitted, it wasn't likely to hurt the bones. Speaking personally, the older the better, as far as he was concerned. He would have preferred them about ten thousand years older, in fact, brown and dry and clean. Still, the air of Oceania was notoriously warm and humid, and a week or ten days out-of-doors there might already have done a pretty good job of getting down to the bare bones of things, so to speak. And the additional time in the ground wouldn't hurt either. Or so he hoped.
Well, then, there wasn't any problem, John had pointed out. Moreover, Nick Druett had offered to pay Gideon's top consulting fees (Gideon had refused) and to fly them out first-class, put them up at the Shangri-La, a nearby beach resort, and pick up all expenses (Gideon had accepted).
The flight attendant came down the darkened aisle with the cognac bottle, paused attentively beside them, and at their nods topped off the glasses. The flight had left Los Angeles forty-five minutes late and the attendant, apparently taking personal responsibility for the delay, had been extraordinarily solicitous of the few first-class passengers ever since.
"Ahh.” John resettled himself luxuriously, sipped from the brandy glass, and smacked his lips. “Does this beat the hell out of government travel, or what? Listen, I've been doing a little digging. I found out some interesting stuff."
Gideon turned toward him.
"Remember I told you Nick wasn't the only guy to file a deposition with the U.S. attorney at that first kickback trial? Two other growers had the guts to do it too?"
Gideon nodded.
"Well, one was from Java, the other one was from the Kona Coast. And they're both out of business now. The Hawaiian guy died falling mysteriously out of a hotel window in Honolulu and what used to be his coffee farm is now the King Kamehameha Shopping Village. The Javanese guy just threw in the towel after three fires on his farm. The place is up for sale.” He raised his eyebrows.
"And you think the Mob's behind it all?” Gideon asked.
The question made him feel faintly ridiculous. Most of the six or seven forensic cases he took on in a typical year were everyday, garden-variety murders, sordid and simple: the prostitute's body dragged out into the woods and hurriedly covered with leaves and dirt; the drug dealer cut down in some deserted, filthy house and left where he fell; the victim of revenge or jealousy or domestic rage tossed into the Dumpster in a black plastic garbage bag—or in three or four plastic bags. Only once had he been involved with organized crime, and then from a distance. “The Mob” was something melodramatic and unreal, a million miles away from his everyday professorly concerns with Pleistocene Man and hominid locomotion.
Besides, could anyone be expected to take seriously three guys named Nutso, Zorro, and Nate the Schlepper?
John shrugged. “I just think it's interesting. Something to be considered."
"All right, tell me this: Here was Brian on this ten-day camping trip on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific. How would Nutso and the boys know where to find him? How would anybody know where to find him?"
"Good question,” John said amiably as he finished his brandy.
The attendant, as sensitive to every movement of his charges as an auctioneer watching for bidding signals, was back with the cognac bottle. Gideon shook his head; John accepted a refill.
"You know,” Gideon said after a few minutes of near-dozing, “now that I think about it, I think I remember reading about that kickback case. Didn't one of their goons turn state's evidence? Bingo...Bongo..."
"Klingo Bozzuto,” John said, laughing. “They called him that because one of the bosses thought he looked like a Klingon.” Reflectively, he rolled some brandy around his mouth. “He did too, sort of. But he wasn't a goon, exactly, he was a Mob accountant. Way handier for state's evidence than some gorilla who could barely write his name."
"Are you serious? An accountant named Klingo Bozzuto?"
"Yeah, it'd look great on a business card, wouldn't it? Klingo Bozzuto, CPA: a name you can trust."
"Well, tell me this. What happened to old Klingo? Did the bad guys go after him? Because if they didn't bother with the guy who broke the case—their own stooge—I don't see them hunting down your cousin."
"No, they didn't go after him,” John said.
"All right, then—"
"They didn't go after him because they couldn't. The Bureau got him into a witness protection program. That was part of the deal. Changed his name, resettled him in the Midwest somewhere, and found him some kind of job with the railroads. As far as I know, he's still at it."
"Mm,” Gideon said.
"Listen, Doc,” John said earnestly, “I'm not saying the Mob had anything to do with this. How would I know? I just don't want to rule anything out. Right now, all I want is for you to look at what there is. After you see Brian's body we'll worry about who did what to who."
And that was another thing that was bothering Gideon. “If it is Brian,” he said, knowing it would set John off.
It did. John's eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “Doc, he had his wallet on him His watch was lying a few feet away, busted. His wife identified it. Only about six people live on the goddamn island, who else could it be?"
They had been through this more than once, and Gideon was no more convinced than he'd been before. “But his wife didn't identify him,” he pointed out.
"Well, how could she? He was lying out in the sun for a week. They shipped him back to Tahiti in a body bag inside a box. Therese wouldn't even open it."
Gideon shuddered with real empathy. “Who would? But it still means he's never been positively identified."
"So who's arguing with you, but who else could it be?” he demanded again. “It's common sense, that's all. Brian went there and he never came back, right? They found his body right under the, what do you call it, the plateau where he was camping, right?” John's arms had begun to flail dangerously near his brandy glass. “The local police say nobody else is missing, right?"
"Right, don't get so excited. It probably is Brian. But ‘probably’ and ‘definitely’ are qualitative distinctions—"
"Doc, Doc, don't do this to me. You know what Charlie says about you?"
Charlie was Charlie Applewhite, John's boss, and Gideon knew exactly what the special agent in charge of the FBI's Seattle office said about him. Applewhite had said it to his face not long ago after reading a report that Gideon had turned in.
"Dr. Oliver,” he had said matter-of-factly, his small, square hands folded on the gleaming surface of his desk, “I have often wondered why it is that whenever we call you in on what gives every indication of being a simple and straightforward case, it always seems to end up being such a wondrously, stupendously, mind-bogglingly, screwed-up mess."
It had pricked Gideon's temper. If the FBI wanted a cursory analysis from him the next time, he had replied, one in which he accepted things on their surface and told them what they wanted to hear, just let him know and he would oblige. He would even adjust his fees downward.
"Look, John,” he said now, “the only way I can work is to start with what I know and go from there. I'm not going to accept something as a given because it's common sense. You ought to know that. What do you want me to do, base my findings on what people think?"
"Hell, I don't know what I want,” John said, yawning. “I just want you to find out what there is to find out, okay? I'm sorry I said anything. Whatever you come up with is fine with me."
"Fine. That's what I want too."
"Fine. Great.” He tipped his seat all the way back and settled down, then cocked one eye open. “Just keep it simple, will you?"
And with that he was asleep, not a man to give a second thought a second thought. Gideon sighed, turned off the overhead light, kicked off his shoes and lay back for a couple of hours of sleep too.
"Good news, everybody,” he was informed by the pilot's folksy voice as he began to drift off. “We seem to have picked up a tailwind, so it looks as if we might be arriving in Papeete at a pretty reasonable hour after all."