Icy Clutches

Chapter 23

"It's 9:00 A.M.,” Julie said in his ear. “Do you really want to get up, or would you rather sleep some more?"

"Up,” Gideon mumbled into the pillow. “If I sleep any more, I won't be able to move at all."

Softly she stroked the side of his head with the back of her fingers. “How's your jaw?"

Gideon gave the question some thought. “My jaw's okay,” he said finally. “The rest of me feels like hell."

I know, I know, he told his cerebral cortex. Generalized malaise and stiffness went along with postconcussive trauma reactions. Big deal.

"Nothing to worry about,” he said. “I'm just a little achy.” He opened his eyes. Julie, already dressed, was sitting in an armchair she'd pulled to the side of the bed.

"Coffee's on,” she said. “Want some?"

"Uh-huh. Maybe a couple of aspirin, too."

While she got them he worked up to a sitting position against the headboard and checked himself over more thoroughly. His shoulder and arm were all right. The scrape on his jaw was not much worse than a razor burn. Only the area on his left side, at the base of his ribs-where he'd bounced off the counter-was truly sore, and that wasn't as bad as it would have been had Julie not made him press some towel-wrapped ice to it when he'd gotten back to the room. He probed it with his fingers, flinching when he pressed too hard. It didn't feel as if anything were broken, but maybe he'd cracked that twelfth rib. Best to have it x-rayed when he got back home. Not that there was anything to do about a cracked twelfth rib anyway, other than wrapping it with one of those awkward canvas belts for a month. He leaned against the headboard, tipping his head back, muttering to himself. God, he was getting just a little old for this.

He made himself get out of bed-otherwise he'd really stiffen up-got into his bathrobe, groaning under his breath, and shuffled carefully to the table and chairs near the window. It was a pearly, northern kind of day, gray but drenched with light. He grasped the arms of a chair and lowered himself slowly into it.

Julie poured the coffee, watching him settle creakily down. “Gideon, does it ever occur to you that for a scholarly type you lead a-well, a rather physical sort of life?"

"Yes, it does. I was just thinking about that myself. I don't know why it is. It's not as if I invite it."

"Mm,” she said noncommittally, watching him down the aspirin and start on the coffee. “John stopped in about twenty minutes ago. He's been talking to all of them."

He looked up from the cup. “Has he gotten anywhere? Does he know-"

She shook her head. “No more than he did last night."

Which wasn't much. The three of them had sat around the room for almost two hours trying to make sense of things. John had briefly considered a late-night search of the Tremaine party's rooms (on a voluntary basis; they had no warrants), but they had agreed there was no point. What would he be looking for? The chance that the person who had taken the hones had brought them back to his or her room was nil. They had probably been tossed into the thick woods, or buried under some brush or in a rotted log, or thrown into the cove itself.

So Gideon had lain back on the bed, holding the ice to his ribs, while John, with an attention to detail that was new to Gideon, had him describe three separate times what had happened in the shack. Then they had fruitlessly tossed around ideas on what anyone could have wanted with the bones. At midnight Julie finally threw John out, settled Gideon down, and turned out the lights.

Now she poured some coffee for herself and sat down next to him at the table, pursing her lips, frowning into her cup.

"Okay, let's hear it,” he said brightly. Making it to the chair without hurting anything had cheered him up.

She looked at him. “Hear what?"

"Your new theory."

"What makes you-"

"Your expression. When you purse your lips like that it means something is being hatched:.

She eyed him, her head cocked. “We've been married too long."

"Not hardly. Come on, let's hear it."

"Well…” She hesitated. “I keep coming back to Jocelyn and whether or not she's dead."

He smiled at her. “No one's ever going to accuse you of prematurely giving up on a hypothesis. How can she not be dead? We've finally gotten ourselves a female femur-or at least we had a female femur. Whose else could it be?"

"No, I was looking at it differently this time; the other way around. That femur is the only real evidence that Jocelyn is dead, right? Maybe somebody took it to get rid of that evidence."

"To get rid of the evidence that she was killed? What for?"

"I don't know, but why else would anyone take it? There wasn't anything special about it, was there? Just that it was female."

"Yes, but nobody knew that except you and me. Remember, at the press conference I told them I hadn't sexed it yet."

"All right, then, maybe they were trying to keep you from finding out. Maybe-"

"Julie, how would they know it was female?"

"Well, then…” She stretched and laughed. “You sure take all the fun out of it. Okay, what's your theory?"

"Oh, no, I'm not even trying to come up with a theory. I'll just stick to what I'm good at: pointing out the flaws in yours. You know what? I'm hungry."

"Good. John went to the dining room to get us all some breakfast. I could tell you'd be waking up in a few minutes, and I knew some food would do you good."

"How could you tell I'd be waking up in a few minutes?"

"Oh, you make these noises when you're starting to wake up."

"Like what?"

"Snork, unk, mrmp. Like that."

He made a face. “You're right; we've been married too long."

He had just finished getting into his loosest shirt and trousers when John got back.

"Hey, Doc, you look great; halfway human again. Breakfast is on the way. Ham and eggs okay?"

"Ham and eggs sounds wonderful.” Gideon lowered himself into the chair again, somewhat less stiffly than the first time. The aspirins were working, and moving around had loosened him up. “Julie says you haven't been getting much of anywhere."

"Not so's you'd notice. But I'm starting to get some ideas. That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

He had barely sat down when there was a double tap on the door. He got up to admit Cheri, the sunny, skinny waitress who'd been serving them at dinner.

"You guys must rate,” she said. “We don't usually do room service.” She edged in sideways to clear the big metal tray on her shoulder, then stooped in a fluid, practiced movement, to put it on the table as smoothly and noiselessly as a professional bowler lays down a ball.

"Ham and eggs, ham and eggs, ham and eggs,” she said, pulling the covers off the plates and setting them out. “OJ. all around. Sourdough toast. Coffee. That do it?"

"Looks great,” John said. “Thanks, Cheri.” He rummaged in his wallet and came up with two dollar bills. “Wait a second. Doc, you got another couple of bucks? All I have is a twenty."

But Gideon was sitting as if suddenly turned to stone, staring hard at nothing, and it was Julie who had to supply the bills. “He's oblivious again,” she said matter-of-factly to John. “Can't you tell from his eyes?"

And he was. When Cheri had come in lugging that heavy tray, something in his mind had popped open like a box. Theories, and hypotheses, and guesses all spilled out at the same time and fell into new niches. He'd had it all wrong. He'd been miles from the right questions, let alone the right answers. If not for Cheri he'd still be miles away.

He'd made a mistake, a bad one; he and Dr. Worriner both. They had failed to follow the advice they'd given hundreds of students. Don't jump to conclusions. Never assign sex, age, or anything else on the basis of a single indicator. Well, they'd jumped. Worriner had shown him two partial left humeri in Juneau, both identified as male, and Gideon had agreed with the identification. He had also agreed with the conclusion: The bones belonged to Steven Fisk and James Pratt, the only two males caught in the landslide.

Wrong. Wrong because one of those arm bones wasn't male at all. That piece with the prominent, rugged, oh-so-obviously masculine deltoid tuberosity…was female. He was ready to bet on that now, thanks to Cheri. Because-how had he allowed himself to forget?-there was one kind of habitual activity that could do that to a woman's humerus. Oh, there were plenty of things that would develop the bone overall, but just one, as far as he knew, that would exaggerate only the deltoid tuberosity without also developing the other muscle insertion points.

Waiting tables. Lifting trays, year after year, with the time-honored technique Cheri had been using all week. Male or female, anyone who hefted those thirty-pound trays five days a week was eventually going to come out of it with a hell of a deltoid tuberosity on the weight-bearing arm. If an anthropologist wasn't careful, if he relied on that criterion alone, he could easily misidentify the humerus of a hardworking waitress as that of a man.

Which is just what he'd done, and what Worriner had done before him. But at least Worriner had an excuse; anthropologists hadn't known about the “waitress tuberosity” in 1964. Gideon, however, had no excuse but carelessness; carelessness and wanting the old man to have done it right. The fact that the rest of Worriner's work had been competent, that the other identifiable bones had all been male, that the humeral fragment had simply given him nothing else to go on, all had led him into being sloppy and acquiescent.

My God, where had his brain been? What was it Cheri had said a couple of days ago at dinner? I got muscles on my muscles. And how could he have forgotten what Shirley Yount had been shouting at Elliott Fisk the day Gideon had gone up to talk with them all about the bones? She was killing herself taking classes full time and still working in a goddamn Chinese restaurant, humping dishes every night. And hadn't Elliott countered with something about her having been a waitress since she'd been fifteen? How could Gideon have failed to remember that? How much more obvious could things be?

That was Jocelyn's humerus, he was positive.

Well, ninety-nine-percent positive.

"I made a mistake,” he said aloud.

"A mistake?” John said lazily. He and Julie had begun their breakfasts.

"On the bones."

Julie put down her fork. “You made a mistake on the bones?"

"Is that so amazing?"

"It's just nice to be reassured that you're human once in a while."

"Come on, Julie, that's not fair. I never said I was infall-"

"Take my word for it,” she interrupted in her gruff, funny imitation of his voice, “I've looked at ten zillion bones-"

"One zillion,” he said, laughing along with them. “Not enough, I guess. Remember those two left humeri of Worriner's in Juneau?"

"Sure. Both male. That's how you knew there were parts of at least two bodies: Pratt's and Fisk's."

"Right. Only I was wrong. We were both wrong. One of them wasn't male."

He explained about deltoid tuberosities and waitressing. This took some time, and when he was done, John and Julie were still looking at him with something less than total comprehension.

"Okay,” John said a little suspiciously, “so it's Jocelyn's humerus; so what does that tell us?” He spread his big hands, knife in one, fork in the other. “What's the big deal? We already knew she was dead."

"Don't look at me,” Julie said, chewing. “I seem to be missing something too."

"The big deal is this,” Gideon said. “When we came up with that female femur yesterday-the one that got stolen last night-we concluded that we finally had parts of all three skeletons, right?"

John chewed slowly. “Umm…"

"Sure we did. We already had parts of two males, or so we thought, and now here was a female femur. That makes three."

"I guess so,” John said.

"But if that's Jocelyn's humerus down in Juneau, then we don't; at least not for sure."

"We don't?” John said.

"We don't?” Julie said.

Gideon restrained his impatience. It had taken him long enough to put two and two together, and he was supposed to be an expert. “Look,” he said, “we know we have some of Steve Fisk, all right; no question about it. That jaw was positively identified by the dental work, and then we matched the ramus and the punctured cranial fragment to it."

"Okay,” they both said.

"Okay. And we have some of Jocelyn: the female femur they found yesterday and now that misidentified humerus I've been talking about."

Two cautious nods this time.

"But now-with that humerus reassigned from James Pratt to Jocelyn-it's possible that all the male fragments belong to Steve Fisk, since there aren't any other duplications. And that means, or it could mean, or it's at least conceivable-"

"Gideon, dear,” Julie murmured, “I don't mean to press you, but you do have a way-"

He sat back in his chair and put his hands flat on the table. “I think I know who killed Tremaine, and why. And who clobbered me,” he added with satisfaction. He drew a breath. “I think it's-"

"Gerald Pratt,” John said.

Gideon looked at him. “John, you have to stop doing that. It's really irritating."

John laughed. “Is that who you're talking about? Pratt?"

"Yeah, that's who I'm talking about,” Gideon said grudgingly.

John slapped the table and stood up. “I'm gonna pick up Julian and go have a talk with Pratt right now. Owen too,” he added. “He's got proprietary jurisdiction. If there's an arrest, he oughta be the one to make it.” He headed for the door.

"You're going to arrest him right now?” Gideon asked. “This minute?"

"I'm not sure.” He paused, musing, with his hand on the doorknob. “Doc, how the hell did you figure out it was Pratt? Even with that stuff about the bones."

"How the hell did you figure it out?” Gideon responded.

But John was already gone. Julie stared after him at the closing door. “How the hell did anybody figure it out?” she muttered. She leaned toward Gideon, frowning.

"Figure what out?” she said.

Gerald Pratt was sitting by himself at one of the tables that looked out over the cove, a half-empty cup of coffee before him. He was wearing his orange coveralls; already looking like a prisoner, John thought.

"Mr. Pratt?” he said.

Pratt, caught predictably in the act of tamping his pipe, looked up from under his eyebrows to take in the three men. “Hm?"

"Could we speak with you, please:"

"Sure,” Pratt said, and pointed with the pipe. “Have a seat.” If he was made uneasy when none of them moved, he didn't show it. The pipe went into his mouth and was laboriously lit. “What about?” he said through the resulting fug.

"I think it'd be better if we talked in private.” Around the room, a few other solitary members of Tremaine's group had looked up from their breakfasts to watch.

Pratt took the pipe from his mouth. He probed a cheek with his tongue. “They're warming up one of those jelly donuts for me. Kind of hate to pass that up. Why don't I look you up in ten minutes or so?"

"I'm sorry, that won't do,” Minor said.

Pratt sat up straight. His long jaw tightened. A ropy tendon stood out on either side of his throat. “Well, sir. I'm afraid it'll have to do. I don't see that I have to sit here and be, well-” He looked directly into John's eyes. “Mister, are you standing there and telling me I'm under arrest?"

"I tell you what,” John said, “why don't we just say-"

"Why don't we just say what you've got on your mind?"

John exhaled, then nodded, not at Pratt but at Owen. “All right, do it,” he said quietly.

Owen took a laminated plastic card from his shirt pocket. “James Pratt,” he said in a tight, unfamiliar voice, “you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right at this-"

"Wrong,” Pratt said.

Owen faltered.

"You people ought to get your facts straight,” Pratt said, looking from Owen, to Minor, to John. “James Pratt's been dead for thirty years. My name's Gerald Pratt. Gerald Harley Pratt."

John waited for what seemed like a long time before answering.

"No,” he said, “I don't think so."

They had finally gotten out to sit on the end of the pier; to lie, rather, looking up at the thin, luminous cloud sheet, Julie directly on the planks, Gideon with his head propped on her belly.

"I understand,” Julie said lazily, her fingers in his hair, “about deltoid tuberosities and waitresses. I understand that you and Worriner misidentified that humerus as male when it was actually Jocelyn's. What I don't understand is how you get from there to Pratt's being guilty."

Gideon covered a relaxed yawn with his hand. The effects of the aspirin were well along and, even with the cloud layer, enough sunlight was getting through to put a comfortable glow on his forehead. “Well, I just started wondering if it was simply a matter of chance that we never found any of James Pratt's bones-or if maybe he hadn't been killed after all."

"Hey-” Julie said.

"Which started me thinking about Gerald Pratt. Wasn't it conceivable-barely-that Gerald Pratt wasn't Gerald Pratt?"

"Hey-"

"That he was really James Pratt? After thirty years, with his hair thinning, and his nose broken, and a mustache, who was going to recognize him? He was claiming to be James's brother, after all, so it'd be perfectly natural for them to look a lot alike."

"Hey, wait a minute!” She sat up. His head, so tenderly looked after a few minutes ago, bounced from her abdomen to her lap. “That's my theory."

"Your theory?” Squinting against the bright gray sky, he peered innocently up at her face. “What do you mean, your theory? You thought it was Shirley."

"I know, but you just took my theory and-and applied it to Gerald. I was the one who thought it was funny that we only had bones from two people. I was the one who-"

Laughing, he reached up to grab one of her gesticulating hands. “Of course it's your theory, Julie. I realized you were on to something the minute you brought it up. It just needed-"

"You did not. You told me it wouldn't fly, and then you changed the subject. To my infraclavicular fossae."

"Well, who could blame me for that? But on sober reflection I came around. You had it figured out long ago. You just had the wrong person.” He smiled. “One of those little details."

"Well, I was sure doing better than anyone else,” she said spiritedly. “In case you forget, I was also the one who pointed out-to universal derision-that Tremaine didn't actually see James Pratt killed, and for all we knew he was still alive. At which point I was sneeringly encouraged to leave it to the pros. Or am I remembering it wrong?"

"No,” Gideon said ruefully, “you're remembering right. Had we but known."

There was a thin, fluttery buzzing in the southeast. They looked up to see a pontooned airplane dropping out of the cloud sheet over Icy Strait and making for Bartlett Cove. It looked like the same cheerful blue-and-white Cessna that had brought Dr. Wu and taken away Tremaine's body. This time it had come for Pratt, who was going to be turned over to the state for prosecution.

"Anyway,” Gideon went on, as she settled back on her elbows, “I realized that if this guy really was James Pratt, it gave him a reason for getting rid of the femur. He didn't know I'd already sexed it, and he didn't want me to find out it was Jocelyn's."

"Why not? If-wait a minute, how could he possibly know it was female?” She cocked her head at him. “As I recall, you were raising the same objection when I was suggesting this, all of two hours ago."

"Yeah, but I forgot about one thing: I pretty much told him myself. When I met with Tremaine's group last Tuesday I told them the right femur they'd brought back from Tirku was male. Pratt knew it had to be Fisk's, because it damn sure couldn't have been his. Now we come up with another right femur. He'd know right away-and only he would know-that it was Jocelyn's, because who else was there?"

"Okay, I see that. Now go back for a minute. Why should he care whether you found out it was Jocelyn's? I mean, nobody aside from me ever doubted that she was dead in the first place. What was he worried about?"

"I guess he was worried about us putting it all together, which is just what we did. See, before this, only one person had been positively ID'd, and that was Steven Fisk. But now, with a female femur in hand, we'd have to know we had Jocelyn Yount too. That leaves only one person not positively dead: James Pratt. And that made him nervous. He didn't want people thinking too much about that."

"So he gets rid of the femur before it's sexed,” Julie murmured, “or, rather, before he thinks it's been sexed.” She lay slowly back down, her fingers laced behind her neck, Gideon resettled his head on her belly.

"Not only sexed,” he said. “At the press conference Arthur very helpfully announced to the world that he was giving me a scale that would allow me to determine which bones belonged to whom, which Pratt couldn't have been too happy with, because none of them were going to belong to James."

"Obviously."

"Obviously to Pratt. He didn't want it to be so obvious to John."

"Now that I think about it,” Julie said, “Arthur also told everyone where the bones were-at the contact station."

"The dark, isolated, unguarded contact station, yes. Pratt really wasn't taking much of a risk going there, you know. It was just luck that I came back when he was there."

"Yes, you've always been lucky that way,” she said dryly. The little airplane was already on its way back out. They both sat, arms around their knees, and watched it skim over the water, pick up speed, and finally lift off, beelike, to quickly disappear against the flat sky. Nearer, only a few yards away, a line of small, stubby-winged birds shot over the surface of the water like so many black bullets in pursuit of it.

"Pigeon guillemots,” Julie said absently. “Gideon, why did Pratt have to kill Tremaine? Why did he steal the manuscript? What difference did it make if-"

Gideon held up his hands. “Hey, lady, all I know is bones. Ask John about the rest."

"And-now wait a minute, how did he get off the glacier?” She turned to him, eyes narrowed. “When it was my theory we were talking about, you said it was impossible. And where has he been all these years? And-"

"Bones,” Gideon said. “That's all I know."