Make No Bones

CHAPTER 4

Gideon was shaving the next morning, listening to Julie tell him from the shower about her plans for the day-she was driving to the Lava Butte Geological Area south of Bend to talk shop with the head ranger-when the telephone rang.

“Gideon, this is Miranda. Something peculiar’s come up. Would you mind skipping the first session today?”

He had glanced at the schedule a few minutes before. The first session was Recent Developments in Quantitative Microradiography and Histomorphometric Analysis.

“Urn, I think I could manage that,” he said. “What’s come up?”

“Albert Evan Jasper’s disappeared.”

It took a second to make any sense at all of this. “I don’t-what did you say?”

“His skeleton-it’s missing.”

“Missing?”

“It’s been stolen.”

“Stolen?”

Miranda’s sigh crackled in his ear. “As wildly enchanting as this conversation is, I need to break it off and make some more calls. I want to get the FMs together. Meet in the lounge in half an hour? I’ll have coffee and stuff sent in.”

“Yes, sure, be there.” He hung up, replaying the brief conversation. Now how the hell could…

“Who was that, Gideon?” Julie called.

“Miranda,” he said, walking abstractedly back to the bathroom. He used a towel to dab shaving cream from under his ear. “Jasper’s skeleton is missing.”

The shower door opened. Julie stuck her head out, looking puzzled.

“Missing?”

“FMs” was shorthand for Founding Members, also sometimes called the Board of Directors, although this last was something of an exaggeration. As scientific organizations went, the Western Association of Forensic Anthropologists was more laid back than most. There were no officers, no formal chair, no standing committees. The people Miranda had gathered were, except for Gideon, simply those ex-students of Albert Evan Jasper who had come together ten years earlier to pay homage to their teacher and talk about their profession. After WAFA had sprouted from this nucleus, what little direction was necessary continued to be handled by this group, largely by default.

There were seven Founding Members. One of the original ones, Ned Ortiz of USC, had died a year earlier and Gideon had accepted an invitation to replace him, but 110 one had bothered to change the FM appellation to something else. Of the six others, only Nellie Hobert, who wouldn’t arrive until that evening, wasn’t there. The rest were all present in the lounge (the Tack Room, according to a tiny brass plate on the door), a roomy, comfortable, seedy place with well-worn chairs and sofas, roughly finished bookshelves stuffed with glittering rows of Reader’s Digest condensed books, and a generally rustic atmosphere (more acres of knotty-pine paneling).

Miranda was in front of the empty fieldstone fireplace, explaining and gesturing. Gideon was in a scarred, cane-backed chair near an open window that let in the piney fragrance that still smelled like perfume to him. Another day, and he wouldn’t smell it anymore. Next to him sat Leland Roach, looking like an undernourished turtle with his thin shoulders hunched up and his head pulled in, and giving off his usual aura of complacent disapproval.

Sitting earnestly-and not many people could sit earnestly-on a table in a corner near the television set was Callie Duffer, smoking furiously. A toothy, big-boned woman in her early forties, with wire-coat hanger shoulders and long, restless hands, she was a full professor at Nevada State University and department chair besides. Fidgeting at Miranda’s eccentric and rambling recitation, she was clicking one lacquered fingernail against another, making fitful, insectlike snapping sounds. These brought pointed little mustache twitches of annoyance from Leland, to which she appeared oblivious.

More relaxed, if not overly attentive, was the youngest member of the board, Les Zenkovich, who had stationed himself on a decaying leather couch within easy reach of the sweet rolls. With a neck like a tree trunk, a stubbly blond beard, and kinky, receding hair tied into a short ponytail, Les looked more like an amiable, over-the-hill linebacker than a scientist, an effect heightened by the loose tank top and flimsy shorts he wore. His arm muscles bulged, his thickening midsection bulged, everything bulged.

When Gideon had left Northern California State for the University of Washington a few years earlier, it had been Les who was hired to fill in behind him, but the appointment had failed to work out. Academic considerations aside, this was no surprise to Gideon. He couldn’t imagine Amanda Righter, the decorous and genteel head of the department, being much taken with Les’s view on academic ceremony (“meaningless bullshit”), or the gold stud he wore in his right ear, or his weekend gigs as bass player with a country-western group in Oakland. Even Les’s bulginess had probably been an affront to Amanda’s well-cultivated sense of proportion. To the relief of all concerned, he had resigned after a year, opening his own consulting business-Golden State Forensic Services-and settling happily into life as an anthropological private eye. He had arrived at the meeting in a red Porsche with a DR BONES license plate.

On the couch next to Les was Harlow Pollard, a fiftyish associate professor from Nevada State. Once he had been Callie’s doctoral committee chairman. Now he was her subordinate. Not a comfortable situation for either of them, Gideon imagined.

A gray-faced man who had stomach problems and looked it, Harlow sat perfectly erect, perfectly still, feet flat on the floor and close to each other, knees pressed together, hands on his knees. His anxious, somewhat vague gaze was fixed on Miranda with his familiar blend of misgiving and incomprehension. The total effect was something like that of a worried squirrel trying to make sense of an unfamiliar sound.

It wasn’t dimness of mind that was Harlow’s problem, or so Gideon had always believed, as much as an almost desperate need to have his facts ordered and classified, with every last ambiguity resolved. When they weren’t, he fretted until he got everything straight, which could take a long time.

And what Miranda was telling them was particularly hard going. Sometime between five o’clock and ten o’clock the previous evening, while the museum was closed to the public for the WAFA dinner and reception, the charred partial skeleton of Albert Evan Jasper had disappeared from its case. On his seven-thirty round, the morning guard had discovered that someone had taken out the eight screws holding on the front of the case and removed the bones; an easy task inasmuch as they were wired to their backing, a breadboard-sized rectangle of white Styrofoam that was not itself firmly attached to anything. The case front had then been replaced and loosely attached with two of the screws.

A quick search of the museum this morning had not turned up anything. A more thorough search was now under way, but without much hope. The bones with their Styrofoam base weighed only a pound or so. Break the plastic in half, and they could have fit into an attache case or a bag and been carted off anywhere.

When she finished, Miranda dropped into a chair. “So, somebody tell me. What’s this all about? Where do we go from here?”

“Miranda,” Gideon said, “if it didn’t get discovered until this morning, how do you know when it happened? Why couldn’t it have been after ten last night?”

“No, impossible. That’s when we locked up the place. I saw to it myself. And we have a good security system on the doors and windows, and a guard with a dog inside. Nobody got in after ten.”

Gideon nodded. “I see. And we know it didn’t happen before five, because that’s when we were all there in the room looking at it.”

“Exactly. It happened between five and ten. Had to.”

“Wait a minute,” Les said. “If your security system is so great, why didn’t the alarm go off when they opened the case?”

“Because there aren’t any alarms on the cases. They’re just on the doors and windows.”

“So, whoever did it, you’re telling me all they had to do was unscrew the front of the case and walk away with the bones? I mean, jeez, Louise.”

“Don’t look so amazed, Les. It’s pretty standard in museum work. In the first place, security costs money, something skeletal collections don’t have, and-”

“And in the second,” Leland interjected, “why worry, right? After all, who would want to steal a bunch of beat-up old bones?”

Miranda nodded with a wry smile. “That’s about it.”

The fingernail-clicking, which had gone on all this time, finally ceased. “If you have a night guard,” Callie said, “why didn’t he notice it was missing last night?”

“Because he didn’t know it was supposed to be there. That case has been sitting empty for almost a week. The exhibit only went into it yesterday morning, and nobody told Security about it.”

“Now wait, Miranda,” Harlow said slowly, “if it happened when you say it did, and the museum was closed to the public, that means that one of us-that is, one of the WAFA people-must be responsible.”

Leland raised his eyebrows at Gideon and tapped the side of his head with a forefinger. “Quick,” he murmured, “the man is quick.”

“Yes, I think we have to accept that, Harlow,” Miranda said patiently. “Any one of us who wanted it had the run of the museum. With everybody wandering around chattering during cocktails, anybody could have disappeared for half an hour without being noticed.”

“Honestly…” Callie uttered a disbelieving and unhumorous laugh. “Now really…I mean, the question is, who would…”

“No, Callie,” Leland interjected. “The question is, why anyone would-”

“No,” Les said, finishing the last of a raspberry Danish and licking his thumb, “the question is, who gives a shit? Oh, hey, sorry, Leland.”

“Really, Les-” Leland began.

Les shrugged him off. “Look, we’re not exactly talking about stealing Peking Man here, you know. What we’ve got here is a prank, no big deal. There was a lot of booze flowing last night. Some of the grad students had a few too many and figured it’d be funny. It is funny, sort of. They’ll give it back, don’t worry.”

“God, I hope you’re right,” Miranda said.

“Well, I can’t agree with Les,” Callie said, jerkily grinding out a half-smoked cigarette. “I don’t think it’s a joke, I think it’s a cry.”

Leland regarded her sadly, emitting a long, audible sigh. “A cry,” he said.

“A cry, a statement. For empowerment, for self-actualization. An appeal to be noticed, to be accepted as whole, valid individuals in their own right, not as, quote, students, end quote.” She pushed herself heatedly up from the table. “Look, I’m not saying that’s what it’s about on a conscious level, but on a deeper level, yes. I see it as an attempt to shake up the existing status-role hierarchy, the distribution of power, or rather the nondistribution of power.”

Empowerment. Self-actualization. Status-role hierarchy. From somewhere-the sociology department at Nevada? The business school?-Callie had appropriated these and similar terms, and made frequent and ardent use of them. She was reputed to run her own department using fearsome-sounding techniques like sociotechnical systems analysis and instrumented team facilitation. At the last WAFA meeting Gideon had attended, she had conducted a session called “Values Clarification for the Forensic Scientist: A Nonevaluative Simulation.” He’d sat through all three hours of it and come away thoroughly baffled.

Generally speaking, he kept well clear of Callie. No matter how impassioned she got, there was always a part of him that hung back, unwilling to buy what she was selling. The jargon might be right, but somehow the behavior didn’t quite jibe. And, genuine or not, all that concentrated earnestness could be overwhelming. After a conversation with her he tended to come away drained, while she seemed to go her way with more energy than ever.

“I believe the woman somehow feeds on one,” Leland had once remarked along similar lines, “like a veritable goddamn vampire.”

Her assessment of the theft left them in silence for several seconds. Harlow blinked nervously at her, one finger digging fitfully at a spot below his sternum. Leland stared out the window looking distantly amused. Les grinned more openly.

“Don’t you just love it?” he said to Gideon.

“Have the police been notified?” Leland asked.

“Well, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you,” Miranda said. She mooched a cigarette from Callie and lit it like someone not overly familiar with the process. A choky little cough when she inhaled confirmed this. “The fact is, I haven’t called them yet, and I’m not sure if I should. I think it’s just a prank too-”

Callie, drawing deeply on a fresh cigarette, shook her head theatrically.

“-and I think the bones will be returned,” Miranda went on. “At least, I’m hoping they are. Well, if that happens, I don’t see the point of a lot of publicity and fuss, maybe even a police record for some of the kids.”

“Call the police, Miranda,” Leland said firmly. “For one thing, they’re not ‘kids’; they’re in their twenties and thirties. For another, putting the fear of God into them just might have a salutary effect, even at this late juncture.” Miranda looked uncomfortable.

“No, I just can’t agree with that, Leland,” Callie said tightly.

“Somehow,” Leland said, “I fail to be astonished.”

Callie flushed but said nothing. Unlike the others, Callie let Leland get under her skin. An ability to take things with a grain of salt was not one of her strong points.

“Come on, give them a chance to return them on their own,” Les said. He scratched his short beard. Biceps bulged. “Come on, guys, let’s be honest: we all did things just as dumb when we were going to school.”

“I most certainly did not,” Leland said.

Les grinned at him. “Hey, I believe you, Leland.”

“Is there any insurance involved?” Gideon asked.

“No,” Miranda said. “Just on the cases, not the contents.”

He nodded, unsurprised. Objets d’anthropologie were not quite the same as objets d’art. What was the market value on a bunch of burned or otherwise mutilated human bones? What was the estimated replacement cost? And if you could arrive at one, just how would you go about replacing them?

“I’ll tell you what’s really worrying me,” Miranda said. “What’s the museum board going to say? And what about Jasper’s family, for God’s sake?”

“Ah,” Leland said, “the estimable Casper Jasper, et al.”

“As long as you’re worrying,” Callie said, “don’t forget about Nellie Hobert. He’ll have kittens when he hears.”

“Gadzooks,” Miranda said. “I hadn’t even thought about Nellie. Here he keeps the bones safe for ten years, gives them to us, and we lose them in exactly one day.”

“Nellie Hobert’s a good guy. He’s not going to make a fuss,” Les said, an assessment with which Gideon agreed. “And he’s not going to blame you, Miranda.” He wiped his fingers on a paper napkin and tossed it on the low table. “Look, why don’t we do this: announce to everyone that a joke’s a joke, but the bones have to come back. Tell them they have, say, two days to get them back to the museum, with no questions asked. If they’re not back by then, the cops get called in.”

After a few minutes’ discussion this sensible recommendation was agreed to by everyone; somewhat reluctantly in Leland’s case.

“All right,” Miranda said, “at the ten-thirty break I’ll make a general announcement about the theft and about what we’ve agreed to here. I just hope it all works out.”

“I was thinking,” Callie said, picking a shred of tobacco from the tip of her tongue. “It might help if I set up some voluntary encounter sessions this afternoon-give them an opportunity for some venting and catharsis. I’ll facilitate,” she added unnecessarily.

“Oh, do,” Leland said. “If that doesn’t do the trick, nothing will.”

“Drop dead, Leland,” Callie said.

John Lau arrived late that afternoon, delighted with the sunshine and glad to be out of Seattle. (“You want to guess what it was doing when I left?”) He had dinner in the lodge dining room with Julie, Gideon, and the founding members, where the talk was mostly about the missing bones. John listened with the look of a man who didn’t quite believe what he was hearing but was willing to be a sport and go along with it.

“Bone-napping,” he mused gravely over apple cobbler. “I’d really like to help out, folks, but I don’t think it’s a federal crime. Unless,” he added, as a smile finally broke through, “they cart the stuff across state lines.”

Les laughed. “Hey, Callie, how’d the encounter group go? Anybody ‘fess up?”

Callie had just lit up. She exhaled noisily, lower lip extended to blow the smoke upward, and shook her head. “How many showed up?”

“Well, there wasn’t much lead time, and people had already made other plans-”

“How many? Three? Four? Anybody?”

“Three,” Callie muttered.

“Plenty of venting and catharsis, though, I bet.”

“No,” she said defensively, “as a matter of fact there wasn’t. You can’t expect miracles at a first session. We’re talking about counterintuitive risk-taking behavior here, and you can’t build a conducive climate for that in a couple of hours. It takes time to establish new interactive norms.”

Leland regarded her with open distaste. “I hate to change the subject,” he said, “but need I remind anyone that the evening is slipping away? Are we going to play poker, or are we not? There are traditions to be upheld here.”

John turned to Gideon, surprised. “You people play poker?”

Gideon laughed. “Do birds eat worms?”

John surveyed the table of academics with undisguised avidity. “For money?”

Miranda, on John’s other side, waggled her eyebrows at him. “Care to join us, young man?”

“I wouldn’t want to horn in.”

“The more the merrier. You too, Julie.”

“Well-sure,” she said, then whispered to Gideon: “Will you make me one of those charts?”

“What charts?”

“You know, that shows which hand beats which hand.” “Why do I foresee disaster here?” Gideon said. “Harlow, we’ll use your cottage,” Leland announced. Harlow hesitated. “I don’t know, Leland. I think I’ll sit this one out.”

“Nonsense,” Leland told him. “We don’t want to keep other people up all night, and you have the most out-of-the-way cottage. Besides, I lust after your money.” Leland had had a few glasses of wine by this time.

Harlow smiled wanly. “Couldn’t I just give you ten dollars right now?”

“That,” said Leland, “wouldn’t be sporting.”