Twenty Blue Devils (15 page)
He looked up to see John returning from the bar, drinks in hand.
"No reason to question the handling of the case?” John exploded. “You're out of your mind!” He leaped from his chair to pace furiously back and forth, his big hands chopping at the air again. “You call ten lousy lines a case summary? Why wasn't there an investigation? Why wasn't there an autopsy?"
"John, calm down, will you?” Gideon said, snatching his carton of Orangina out of the way. “There wasn't any reason for an autopsy; not from Didier's point of view. People fall off those trails all the time."
"Yeah, but he was alone, no one saw it happen—"
"That's not reason enough. Autopsies are expensive, you know that. There aren't enough pathologists in the world to autopsy everybody who gets killed without witnesses. You have any idea what percentage of accident and suicide victims get autopsied in the States?"
"No,” John said grumpily, flopping into the other chair, “but I've got a hunch you're gonna tell me."
"Twenty percent,” Gideon said. “One in five. You don't call for an autopsy unless there's valid reason to presuppose—"
Wearily, John flapped his hand. “Ah, forget it, what difference does it make anyhow? Thanks for your help. I appreciate it. Really.” He swigged moodily from his bottle of Hinano and looked out to sea.
Gideon scowled, feeling ill-used. He was accustomed to people asking his professional opinion and then getting annoyed at him when it wasn't the one they wanted, but you'd think John would know better.
"I'm sorry,” he said curtly. “I just haven't seen or heard anything from anybody that makes me think Brian's fall wasn't just what it was supposed to be."
John shrugged and took another swig.
There was a touchy silence while Gideon gathered the pictures together, slipped them into the envelope, and handed them across to John.
He got them halfway there and stopped rock-still, his arm out. The image of the picture on top of the stack was still in his mind's eye and one small peculiarity in it that he hadn't even been aware of noticing had just clicked into sharp, meaningful perspective.
"Holy cow,” he said.
John looked up. “What?"
"John, I owe you an apology.” Gideon tore open the envelope, pulled out the photograph on top, one of the full-body shots, and stared hard at it. “How could I have missed it?"
"What?” John said, his voice rising.
Gideon gave him the photograph. “Look at this.” He handed across another one. “Here, you can see it in this one too. Damn, it just didn't register. I wasn't looking for it."
John put his beer down on the lawn and studied the picture. “I'm looking. What am I supposed to be seeing?"
"The hand. Look at the hand. He must have been lying on it, or it was in the shade or something, but for whatever reason, the decay process isn't quite as advanced, and there's still a fair amount of flesh left. If you look at the hand—"
"The hand, the hand.....John cut in impatiently.
"Which
hand, goddammit?"
Gideon leaned across to tap the picture. “The
right
hand, goddammit. Don't you see?"
"See
what?"
John cried. “All I see is a bunch of maggots."
"No, you don't. You see a
line
of maggots, not a bunch. Can't you see what that means?"
"No, I can't see what it means,” John shot back. “Hell, it took
you
long enough to figure it out and you're a big-time Ph.D. I'm just a poor, dumb cop, remember? I have to have things explained to me."
They had been glowering at each other, almost nose to nose, and without quite knowing why they burst out laughing.
"John, I'm sorry,” Gideon said. “I'm a little testy too, but it's because I'm mad at myself, not you. I can't believe I almost didn't pick this up."
He got out of his chair to stand beside John's so that they were both looking at the pictures right side up.
"Now look at this.” With his forefinger he traced a column of maggots that ran diagonally from the web of the right thumb, across the palm, and onto the lowest joint of the little finger.
"It's a defense wound,” he said.
"Defense wound?” John murmured with interest, peering at the photos.
"It couldn't be anything else. From a blade; a knife, probably. Brian tried to fight somebody off and this is where he caught hold of the blade."
John took Gideon's magnifying glass, leaned over the pictures, and shook his head. “I can't see any wound at all. Just the maggots."
"If there are maggots there, there's an opening underneath,” Gideon said. “And an opening in the palm of the hand is a wound."
As he had frequently told John and told him now again, he was no forensic pathologist; the less he had to do with bodily fluids, soft tissues, and nasty secretions, the happier he was. But he had been involved in enough cases by this time to know that the insects that help decomposition along do it in a systematic and predictable manner. Within minutes of death the Calliphoridae—the blowflies arrive, soon to be followed by their many cousins. These insects head directly for the natural openings—in a clothed body, the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears; in and around these moist, dark recesses they lay their eggs in yellowish white masses easily visible to the naked eye (and looking for all the world like wads of grated Parmesan cheese, as an entomologist had once pointed out to him, thereby permanently changing his attitude toward that formerly relished cheese). Within a day, in warm weather, the eggs have hatched into great, wriggling clumps of the blind, wormlike creatures known as larvae or maggots, which then begin their allotted task of consuming the body's soft tissues.
And if there are open wounds, the same process occurs there. Eventually, the larvae spread out from these initial sites, but for a while they remain busily clumped around the body's orifices, natural and otherwise. Thus the maggots on Brian's face.
Thus too, the diagonal, linear column of maggots on his right palm; they implied a diagonal, linear wound beneath.
"Okay, I can buy all that,” John said, “but why defense wounds? Why couldn't he have cut his hand in the fall?"
"Pretty unlikely. First, I can't see any scrapes or bruises anywhere else on his right arm; just this one clear cut on his right hand. And second, it
is
a cut—not an abrasion, not a tear, not a puncture. Look how neatly lined up the maggots are. One long, straight, slicing cut. What but a blade would be likely to do that? Not to mention that it's precisely where you'd expect a defense wound to be."
Gideon didn't expect John to take much convincing, and he didn't.
"Doc, you're
right
,” he shouted, clambering up out of his chair. “See, did I tell you or didn't I tell you?” There went the arms again. “Come on, let's go see Bertaud. There's no way he can argue with this."
"John, it's going on six o'clock. He's not going to be in his office."
"Wherever he is, then,” John said righteously. “He's the head man. He's always supposed to be available."
"Maybe so,” Gideon said tactfully, “but do you suppose maybe he's seen enough of us for one day?"
John laughed; the sudden, burbling, babylike explosion that never failed to make Gideon laugh along with him “Of me, you mean. Yeah, you're right about that. Okay, tomorrow morning then. Nick's expecting us up at the house for dinner about now anyway."
They looked at each other, an unspoken question in the warm air.
"I say we don't mention this to Nick right now,” John said after a moment. “Let's find out what Bertaud says first. Besides, Nick's the one who didn't want anything about it mentioned at dinner, right?"
"I agree, but you know you're going to wind up in the doghouse with him when he finds out we went to Bertaud behind his back, don't you?"
John shrugged this off. “It won't be the first time. He always gets over it fine. Come on, time to go up and meet the family."
Gideon looked down at the dusty clothes he'd been wearing all day; in Papeete, on
le truck
, and at the plantation. “Give me a minute, I'm a little travel-stained for dining. I ought to change first."
John guffawed. “Forget it, come-as-you-are is the order of the day. Dining at Nick's is like dining at Chucko's All-You-Can-Eat, except the food's better."
The setting was better too. Dinner was
al fresco
, on a lush, rolling lawn that formed a promontory extending two hundred feet seaward from the house, hanging ten feet above the beach and reminding Gideon of nothing so much as a gigantic seaside golf green. Along one side, a stand of coconut palms and elegant, gray-green mape trees had been thinned out to make a pleasant, shaded grove, and there, just out of range of falling coconuts, the Polynesian feast that Nick had promised was being prepared by a busy team of Tahitians in tank top shirts, shorts, and baseball caps. Driftwood fires smoldered in two longitudinally split fifty-gallon oil drums set on pipe-metal frameworks, and mahimahi steaks, sliced pork, and huge Taravao Bay prawns were just beginning to sizzle on the grills atop them.
A few feet away, fresh palm fronds had been laid over a twelve-foot-long table to serve as a base for trays of fruit— neatly sliced papaya, watermelon, pineapple, and coconut—and a variety of native goods:
poisson cru
, the lime-marinated tuna salad that was Tahiti's version of sashimi;
fafa
, a dish of taro greens, chopped chicken, and coconut milk that would have passed muster in a soul-food restaurant; and a few other fruit, vegetable, and seafood combinations that Gideon couldn't name. About the only nod in the direction of Europe was the substitution for taro root and breadfruit of thin loaves of crusty, flaky French bread, which the bakers of Papeete had long ago learned to make almost as well as their counterparts in Paris. That and the well-stocked bar.
By the time that Gideon and John arrived, it was plain that the bartender, a coffee-guzzling Tahitian who contributed the sole touch of formality by wearing a waiter's white jacket over his shorts and Bart Simpson T-shirt (
"Don't have a cow, man"
), had been keeping busy. The Druett clan, nibbling
crudites
and sipping their drinks at a large, round table, gave every appearance of being well-oiled. The laughter, loud talk, and heated debate were audible from a hundred feet away, and when the two men came into sight they were warmly greeted by Nick—warmly enough for Gideon to feel a few pangs of guilt about not being forthcoming with him—steered to the bar, and then hauled off to be welcomed by, and in Gideon's case introduced to, the others at the table.
There were six of them altogether: the three that Gideon had already met—Celine, Maggie, and Nick himself—along with Nick's other daughter, the beautiful Therese; John's older brother, the imperious Nelson Lau; and John's deadpan, ironic cousin, Rudy Druett, the roastmaster at Whidbey Island, who was in Tahiti for the time being, holding down some of Brian's old responsibilities and helping to prepare Tari Terui to shoulder them on his own when the time came.
Playing in the grass in the care of a nanny a few yards away were the Twin Terrors, Claudette and Claudine, Therese's daughters, two mumpish, fat-cheeked, un-terrible-looking little girls in pink-and-white frocks who refused outright, despite their grandfather's urging, to address Gideon as Uncle Giddie, which suited Gideon just fine.
He was accepted more readily by the adults, but naturally enough it was John who got most of the attention. Therese, every bit as meltingly lovely as John had told him she was, hugged him for a long time, bowing her slender neck to press her face sweetly into his shoulder before she let him go. John, embarrassed but pleased, clumsily stroked her hair and murmured a few words. But the brotherly embrace with Nelson, Gideon couldn't help noticing, was less spontaneous, a mere momentary resting of the fingertips on each other's upper arms, with a good foot and a half of open space between the two men.
Their greeting was equally restrained:
"John,” Nelson said, his cool tone rising slightly.
"Nelson,” John replied in kind.
When everyone was seated again, with Gideon tucked between Celine and Rudy, there were a lot of questions for John—about his job, about Marti, about when they were going to start having a few little Laus—and from there the conversation turned to general family reminiscences and eventually to stories about Brian. It had been a week now since the news of his death, and enough alcohol had been consumed so far tonight to make the atmosphere more jolly than mournful, more like a wake than a funeral.
Nick, dressed in the work-stained shorts he had been wearing that afternoon, plus a striped tank top and a faded, curly-brimmed Boston Red Sox baseball cap, basked in his dual role of paterfamilias and number-one storyteller. Gideon, with little to contribute, sat back and sipped his Scotch-and-soda, put the reason that he was in Tahiti more or less out of his mind, and gave himself over to enjoying the anecdotes, the shared affection that flowed around him, and the people themselves. Interesting people, wonderfully different from the quiet, undemonstrative uncles and aunts that had made the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners of his childhood such excruciating ordeals to a boy of eleven or twelve; he could still remember entire meals, or so it seemed to him now, when the only sounds from a dozen diners had been the steady, private clicking of forks and scraping of knives on the plates.
Not so the Druetts and the Laus, who were animated and spontaneous enough for three families. True, they had their idiosyncrasies—maybe Nelson was a little too self-important, and Maggie was a little too brusque, and Rudy a little too vinegarish, and Celine a little too self-absorbed...but they were a lively, entertaining bunch—and they all seemed genuinely fond of John (even Nelson, in his own superior way) and for that alone he liked them.
This relaxed and pleasant interlude went on until a private dispute between Maggie and Nelson grew too loud to be ignored. They were arguing about Tari Terui, and Maggie was flushed with anger.
