Where There's a Will (17 page)

“Okay, how do we know the toes just didn’t get lost after he died, like just about every other damn bone in his body?” Fukida finally demanded. “What makes you so sure they were amputated?”

“Because-” Gideon began.

“Because,” John cut in, “when the distal phalanges and a segment of the middle phalanges are removed, the bone that’s left, that is, the, uh, proximal segments of the, of the middle phalanges, undergoes, um, osteoporotic atrophy and becomes resorbed.” He gestured at the bones. “I mean,” he said blandly, “it’s obvious, really.”

“Yes, it seems that way to me, too,” Gideon said, suppressing his smile.

“I’ll be damned.” Fukida wasn’t looking at the bones, he was rocking lightly back and forth in his tilting chair, looking through a window behind them at the compost piles and snapping a rubber band that was around his wrist. The look on his face was part befuddlement, part amusement. “And so that’s how you identified him as Torkel? That’s the whole bit?”

“That was the main thing, yes,” Gideon said. “There were some other things, but… why? What’s the matter? Is there something funny about it?”

“Oh, yeah. Hilarious.” He stopped rocking, gave the rubber band one more vigorous snap, and looked directly at Gideon. “The corpse in the burned building, that’s how they identified him as Torkel. Otherwise, he was unrecognizable.”

“I don’t understand.”

“ He was missing two toes, too. The same two frigging toes, I’m pretty sure.”

“But Magnus didn’t… but Torkel was the one…”

“Right you are, champ,” said Fukida. “And what does that tell us, I asks myself? It tells us, I replies, that we got ourselves one too many Torkels.”

“And not enough Magnuses,” said John after a moment. He rolled his head back, working his neck muscles the way Fukida had. “I could sure use a cup of coffee.”

In the snack room, over cardboard cups of watery vending-machine coffee (“Can you believe it?” Fukida said sourly. “Here we are in the middle of the goddamn Kona Coast, and this is the crap they expect us to drink.”), they talked about what was to be done and agreed that the place to begin would be to do what Gideon had come for: to look at the case’s medical records to see what he could make of them.

“Okay, but between us,” Fukida told them, “the guy who did the autopsy, old Doc Meikeljohn, he’d been having a serious affair with the bottle for a while, so by that time he was maybe, let’s say, a couple of tacos short of a combination plate, you know? What I’m saying is, those two missing toes might have been in his head. I mean, considering the fire and all, the body was in pretty bad shape. Could have just been sloppy work. Or maybe the toes got burned off.”

“But those exact two toes?” John said. “The same ones Torkel was missing? How likely is that?”

“Not very,” Fukida admitted. “But then, the autopsy wasn’t performed for a couple of days. By that time they had the old lady’s deposition and everybody, including Meikeljohn, knew… well, they thought they knew… that it was Torkel. For all I know, he also knew Torkel was missing a couple of toes-he probably did. So, I mean, when you consider the condition of the body, and the fact that Meikeljohn wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer-”

“He jumped to the wrong conclusion,” John finished for him. “He expected amputated toes, and so that’s what he found. Yeah, Doc says that happens to him all the time.”

“John, when did I ever say-” Gideon began, then laughed. “Never mind.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me, Johnny,” Fukida said. “But if you want to know what I think, I think we got ourselves a whole’nother scenario.”

“Which is?” John asked.

“That Torkel Torkelsson-the real Torkel-cut those two toes off his dead brother before he took off so that everybody would think he was the dead one, and the shooters would forget all about him.”

“Yes, we were thinking along the same lines,” said Gideon.

“One thing, though,” John said. “How do we know for sure that the guy you autopsied is really his brother Magnus? Okay, it’s not Torkel-Torkel was in the plane, we agree on that-but this guy here could be just about anybody, couldn’t it? I mean, he was unrecognizable, right?”

“Real doubtful, sport,” Fukida said. “Who else could it be? That was the last night anybody ever saw old Magnus alive. He sure hasn’t been around since, and we don’t have anybody else who’s missing from then. No, I think we can be sure it’s Magnus, all right.”

“Yeah, like until twenty minutes ago you were sure it was Torkel.”

Fukida scowled. “Wise guy. That was because-”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Gideon interjected. “That’s what I’m here to try and clear up. If there are any clear photos of the foot, and there’s not too much damage from the fire, I might be able to tell for sure that the toes were lost after he died. That’d give us a starting point. And who knows, maybe I might come up with something else.”

“Okay, chief,” Fukida agreed with a shrug. “Do your shtick. What do you need?”

“Any pictures you have. The crime scene photos, the pre-autopsy photos, and the photographs from the autopsy itself, if there are any.”

“No problem,” Fukida said.

“And I probably should look at the autopsy report itself, even if you think it’s suspect. The coroner might have noticed something helpful.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.” He stood up and poured most of his coffee into the sink. “Look, I have to run into Kona for a while, but I’ll set you guys up in a quiet room and have Sarah bring it all over to you.”

“How about sending the whole case file while you’re at it?” John said. “I wouldn’t mind looking through it.”

“You’re talking about a lot of paper.”

John shrugged. “It’ll give me something to do.”

“Okay, but I can’t let you guys take anything away with you, you understand that. It all has to stay here.”

“No problem,” John said.

Fifteen minutes later, with Gideon and John deposited in a pleasant conference room with comfortable fauxleather chairs, a dark, gleaming table, and windows whose views artfully managed to avoid the compost heaps and wrecked cars, instead looking over the lava fields, past the Boeing 717s floating down to the nearby airport, and onto the massive, cloud-wreathed hump that was Maui, an affable, carrot-topped clerk lugged in a rolling cart bulging with hanging folders and set it next to the table, between their chairs. A thick, yellow nine-by-twelve clasp envelope was plopped on the table as well.

“There you are, boys. The case file’s in the folders. The envelope has the crime scene photos. If you need anything else, pick up that phone and dial forty-four. I’m Sarah Andersen.”

“Is the autopsy report in with the case file?” Gideon asked.

“No, it wouldn’t be in there. His Majesty didn’t tell me you wanted it. Be back in a sec.”

In the envelope was a stack of black-and-white eight-by-ten photos and a neatly printed log numbering and describing them; a hundred and sixty-five in all, as usual starting with the exterior of the building and working inward, gradually going from long- and intermediate-range shots to close-ups. Gideon was at the hundred and thirtieth before he got to the first relatively close full-length image of the body, which had been found lying half on its side, half on its face.

It made him close his eyes.

Where There's A Will

Aaron Elkins – Gideon Oliver 12 – Where There's A Will

Bones were one thing: smooth, clean, ivory-colored, usually suggesting little that brought one up against agony or violent death. A nick here, a tidy, round hole there, a few harmless-looking cracks. Even when there was more extensive breakage bone seemed to have more in common with broken pottery than with bloody, broken heads and spilled brains. His most timid, queasy students had no trouble glueing together a shattered skull or a crushed pelvis. But horribly maimed bodies like this one… crispy critters, his colleagues called the burned ones, and while Gideon had no quarrel with the use of black humor to distance oneself from horror, for him it didn’t work. Neither did anything else.

“Here’s a picture of him,” he said, sliding it over to John, who had been browsing through the case file.

John put down an open folder. “Jesus, is that after or before they cremated him?”

On the other hand, he had to admit that sometimes black humor did help, and he was grateful for the opportunity to smile. “Before. But you’re right, he was pretty well charred, especially the upper body. Externally, he’s pretty well carbonized from the chest up. Not quite as bad below.”

“Is there one of him face-up? They must have flipped him over.”

Gideon paged through a few more photos. “Yes, here.”

Both men leaned closer to look at it. “Ugh. You can see why they wouldn’t have known who it was from the face,” Gideon said.

“Face, what face? His head looks like a… like a lump of coal, like a… I mean, where are the eyes, where’s the nose?”

Gideon nodded. “Notice the damage is so much more pronounced around the head and shoulders. Interesting.”

“I can tell you why that is,” John said. “I just read the arson investigator’s report. There’s no question at all about it being arson, by the way. They found traces of two different accelerants-paint thinner and diesel fuel oil-and at least five different origin points in the building, one of which was him.”

“Him? You mean they set him on fire?”

“Yeah, pretty much. His face was resting right on a roll of straw matting that’d been soaked in diesel oil.”

Gideon looked at the photographs. “Yes, I guess maybe you can see a few burned chunks of matting-of something, anyway-on the floor there.”

There were six pictures of the body in all, and Gideon fanned them out so they could both look at them. From the chest up, it was barely identifiable as a human form, more like a black, barely started sculpture than the remains of flesh and bone and muscle. Below the chest, the form was recognizably human, but made of charred, piebald skin, split in places like a sausage left too long on the grill. The clothing had been completely burned away except for the residue of a wide belt at the waist-or perhaps it was just the impression the burning belt had left on the burning skin-and the coalesced remnants of cowboy boots on the feet.

“John, I can’t tell anything from this. There’s just nothing distinctive, nothing to say if it’s Magnus or it isn’t Magnus. It’s human, that’s about it. And obviously, the toes aren’t visible. I just hope there’s something more in the autopsy report.”

“Well, I can tell you who Torkel wanted everyone to think it was: himself-Torkel.”

“Sure, but we already figured that out.”

“We thought that. We assumed that. But now there’s proof. Torkel took off his own ring and put it on Magnus’s body.” He leafed through one of the folders until he came to what he wanted. “Here. ‘Also under the decedent’s right hand was a signet ring made of white gold or similar material, with a ruby or similar stone set in a circular, braided border. This ring was subsequently identified by decedent’s family as belonging to him, an heirloom gift from his father when decedent joined the Swedish merchant marine.’”

“So you think Torkel planted it to fake the identification.”

“Sure, Doc, it’s obvious. What else could it be? He wanted everybody to think he was dead.”

Gideon shook his head. “John, I don’t know anymore…” He lifted one of the pictures and gazed at it for a while. “Maybe it is Torkel.”

John had a habit of suddenly flinging out his arms when he was excited, and he did it now. Gideon knew enough to anticipate it and was just able to get his head out of the way of a flailing right hand. “Doc, don’t start with me! Why do you do this? Jesus! First the guy in the plane is Magnus, positively. Then it’s Torkel, absolutely. And now you’re telling me this guy-”

“All I’m telling you is that I concluded the body on the plane was Torkel’s because of the amputated toes-a reasonable conclusion, you’ll agree-but now, according to Fukida, this guy here was missing the same two toes, which I can’t confirm or refute from these pictures. And when you tell me that Torkel’s ring was found with the body, how am I supposed to know what to think? Maybe somebody wanted everyone to think the body in the plane was Torkel’s, when it was really Magnus’s.”

John’s arms, still extended out to the sides, went to his temples. “Please let him tell me he’s joking.”

“I’m joking,” Gideon said. “Well, I think I am.”

“Doc-”

“No, I am, I am,” Gideon said. “Joking. Nobody doctored that foot for effect. Resorption, remember? Osteoporotic atrophy, remember?”

“Right, right,” John said, pacified.

“No, the man in the plane was Torkel Torkelsson, period. We can forget about him. But what we don’t know is who the guy in the fire was. There’s no way I can come up with anything solid from these pictures.”

“It’s Magnus,” John said stolidly. “There’s nobody else it could be. You heard Fukida.”

“So what happened to his toes?” Gideon murmured.

“What happened is what Fukida said. Torkel cut them off himself. Or maybe the guy who did the autopsy let his imagination run away with him. Either or both-probably both, would be my guess.”

“I suppose so,” Gideon said.

John had calmed down enough to go back to leafing through the folders while he was speaking. “Hey, here’s Auntie Dagmar’s statement to the detective working the case. Want to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, ‘Statement of Dagmar Torkelsson, Date November 5, 1994, taken by Detective Paul Webster,’ blah, blah, blah… here we are:

DT: Yes, that’s right. After dinner my brothers went back to the hay barn to do some work.

PW: The hay barn? That’s the building that burned down? DT: Yes, in the old days it was our hay barn, but now it’s just used for storage space and the ranch offices. We still call it the hay barn. That is, we did.