Skull Duggery (12 page)

“You don’t think so? If all my leads had a sixty or seventy percent chance of proving accurate, I would be a happy man. And a far more successful policeman.”

“Not when it comes to sexing a skeleton. Look at it this way. sixty percent right means forty percent wrong. But there are only two sexes to begin with, so you can do damn near as well flipping a coin, and it’s a whole lot less work.”

“Yes, I see your point.” Marmolejo considered. “This interests me. Would you be interested in seeing the report for yourself?”

“If you think I might be able to help, sure.” Or even if not.

“Good.” Marmolejo went to the door. “Alejandro, can you put aside what you’re doing and translate something for Professor Oliver, please? The forensic report on the unidentified child from Teotitlan del Valle. And bring me the entire file.”

As he returned, Gideon was struck all over again by what a truly tiny man Marmolejo was. Standing no more than five-two in his ridiculously small, well-cared-for oxfords, and dressed in guayabera and neatly pressed, light blue trousers, he seemed as improbable a cop as Sandoval. But Gideon knew better. Marmolejo was quick-witted, astute, and thorough, with an enviable intuitiveness, a kind of outside-the-box sixth sense that Gideon liked to think had something to do with the mystical teachings of his Mayan heritage-or rather that he would have thought, had he not been the thoroughgoing rational empiricist that of course he was.

“The new case you’ve brought is interesting too,” Marmolejo said, sitting down. His toes-but not his heels-touched the floor. “A Phillips-head screwdriver? An unusual weapon, wouldn’t you say?”

“First time I’ve ever run into it myself. But there was a report on something similar in one of the journals not long ago. Otherwise, I’m not sure I would have realized what I was looking at.”

“And what do you surmise from it?”

“From the fact that it was a Phillips-head screwdriver? Nothing. Well, no, not quite nothing. I think we can assume that it was unpremeditated, a crime of passion, a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“On the grounds that a killer planning murder would hardly bring along a screwdriver as his weapon of choice?”

“Right. Listen, Javier, do you think there might be a connection between the two killings? I mean, two dead bodies found in the space of a year near a town that hadn’t had a murder in fifty years…”

“Oh, no, I shouldn’t think so. I understand the man, Garcia, was killed only six months ago. The little girl was found a year ago, and it was estimated that her body had been there for five years.”

“Ah, I didn’t know that either.”

Corporal Vela returned with the translated report and handed it to Gideon. “I’m sorry, this was not easy for me. English to Spanish, I can do this. Spanish to English-not so good. Also, there was some words, scientific words I did not know to translate. I leave them in Spanish.”

“I’m sure it’ll be okay; a lot better than I could do,” Gideon said. It was the syntax of the original, not the technical vocabulary, that would have been likely to give Vela trouble. Scientific terms, inasmuch as they were mostly Latin or derived from Latin, were pretty interchangeable from language to language. While Marmolejo began to go through the case file, he settled back to read. There was only three-quarters of a page, not much more than he had written on Garcia.

Examination of skeleton remains, Case Number 08-Teo dVl, conducted 23 May 2008, by Dr. Gerardo Puente Orihuela, forensic physician, Oaxaca ministerial police. These remains was previously examined by Dr. Bustamente, medico legista, Tlacolula District. Remains are very partial and was too much chewing by animales.

Bones Present:

The craneo and the mandibula, the right clavicula, the right pelvis bone, the left leg bones, numerous bones of the hands or feet, and some tooths.

Time Since the Death:

I estimate that these bones are since five years exposed.

Condiciones patologicas:

None

Trauma:

The craneo is muchly broken into pieces. Frontal bone, zigomatico, maxilar bone all are broke. My conclusion is these breakings are from the fuerza despuntada at the time of the death and that they directly caused or contributed to the death.

Gideon looked up. “ Fuerza despuntada -that would be ‘blunt force’?”

“Blunt force,” Marmolejo agreed.

Gideon nodded. It was impossible to say without more detail, or without having seen the bones for himself, whether or not the doctor’s conclusion was accurate. Conceivably, the damage could have occurred through some kind of accident after death, or could have been due to carnivore foraging. But on the face of it, perimortem blunt force trauma as the cause of death-murder, in other words-certainly seemed like a good bet when you took the context (a body presumably flung down a mine shaft) into consideration. So far, he had no dispute with Dr. Orihuela.

Years:

Was determined from the status of epifisis closings as well as erupcion of the tooths. The second muelas was present, but not the third, indicating the age of more than twelve years.

“ Muelas?” Gideon asked. “Molars?”

“Molar teeth, yes,” said Marmolejo.

“Mm.” Gideon went back to reading.

Certain epifisis of the bones has begun to connect but not yet completed. Other ones are completed. This condition indicates the presence of more than twelve years but not so many as sixteen years. Therefore, I estimate this individual person had thirteen to fifteen years.

Thirteen to fifteen seemed perhaps a little overly specific coming from someone not trained in physical anthropology, but it was also evident that the doctor had some grounding in developmental osteology and dentition, so one could probably assume that he was at least roughly in the ballpark. But the next entry, the last, gave him pause.

Genero:

The skeleton is a female. This is showed from the shape of the pelvis and certain other factors.

“Now there I do have a problem,” he said aloud. “Sex.”

“Indeed, a problem for us all,” Marmolejo murmured without looking up.

“Sex determination,” Gideon amended with a smile.

Now Marmolejo looked up, frowning. “A mistake? It’s not a female?”

Gideon was pleased at the colonel’s ready acceptance of his judgment; back in Yucatan, it had taken a while to win him over. All the same, a little backing off was required. “No, I wouldn’t go that far. It’s just that Dr. Orihuela didn’t give any details. ‘Shape of the pelvis and certain other factors’-well yeah, sure, the pelvis would be your best bet, but it’s full of shapes; there are all kinds of curves and angles and measurements. Some are reliable, others aren’t. Which did he mean? Did he use more than one? In any case, whatever he did use, it’s hard to see how he could have been that sure of himself; not with a thirteen- to fifteen-year-old. Now if he said, ‘This skeleton would appear to be that of a female,’ okay. Or ‘in my opinion, the skeleton is probably that of a female.’ Or ‘most sexual indicators suggest the sex is female.’ But just a flat-out ‘the skeleton is a female’? Sorry, I have to have my doubts.”

Marmolejo stroked the corners of his lips. “So it might be the skeleton of a boy and not a girl?”

Gideon understood why this was of concern. If the police had been operating on the assumption that the remains were those of a female and they were actually those of a male, they would have been looking in all the wrong places. The entire investigation would have been thrown off track.

“I don’t like second-guessing your pathologist,” he said, “but… well, let me just say I have to wonder about his being that cut-and-dried about it. Yes, sometimes children’s bones do sexually differentiate at an early age-these are quantitative criteria we’re dealing with, after all, continuous variables ranging from no visible development at all to completely developed, so some kids are going to be ahead of other kids, ahead of the crowd, the same as they are in height, or weight, or mental development. I’ve seen kids myself, almost that young, with enough skeletal sexual differentiation to definitively mark them as boys or girls… but I haven’t seen them very often, and that’s what’s worrying me. It’s possible, of course, that this just happens to be one of them, but…”

He trailed off, thinking. “You know, there’s another possibility, Javier,” he said after a moment. “It’s probably more likely, now that I think of it-and that is that it’s the age he was mistaken about. Determining age is a lot harder than figuring out the sex.”

“Of course. With sex one has two possible choices. With age, there are many.”

“Yes, that’s part of it, but it’s also that the criteria are more complex. You have to know a lot more about skeletal development to read those epiphyseal unions than you do to evaluate the sex indicators.”

“So now you are suggesting that we may be dealing with a female after all, but an adult female?”

“Right. If she were an adult there wouldn’t have been much problem in properly determining the sex. Of course, if that’s true, then the police would still have gone off entirely in the wrong direction. They would have been investigating the murder of a child, when in reality it had been an adult.”

Marmolejo sighed, but he did it with a smile. “Gideon, I already begin to regret bringing you into it. Before, we were faced with trying to identify a female child. Now that you have looked into it, it seems we may be trying to identify a female child or a male child or a female adult. How is it,” he mused, probably thinking about the Yucatan case he had earlier been involved in with Gideon, “that the more information your expertise provides, the less information we seem to have?”

“Interestingly enough,” Gideon said, laughing, “you’re not the first person to make that observation. Well, look at it this way: at least I’ve eliminated the one remaining age-sex possibility. Assuming that Orihuela had any idea of what he was doing, which seems likely, you can forget about the category of adult male. You won’t have to waste any time exploring that particular avenue.”

“No,” Marmolejo said dryly. “Merely the other three.”

“What can I say?” Gideon said. “I sure wish I could have seen those bones myself.”

Marmolejo emitted a mild, interested “Ah?”

It seemed to Gideon that the colonel had something up his sleeve. “There wouldn’t be any photos in the file, would there?” he asked hopefully. “I might be able to tell something from them.”

“Unfortunately, there are none.”

Gideon spread his hands. “Well, then, I don’t know what else-”

“No, no photos were taken, alas. All we have are the bones themselves.”

Gideon blinked. “You still have them?”

“According to this file, we do.” He tapped a page in it. “Until this moment I was unaware of it myself.”

“And I could see them?”

Marmolejo smiled. “I suspect I can arrange it. When would you like to do it?”

“How about now? Who knows, I might be able to come up with something else as well.” He was three-quarters out of his chair.

“No, my friend, not so fast. They’re not here. According to this, they’re in a government warehouse in Xochimilco, north of the city. I can have them brought here on tomorrow’s morning run, which generally arrives in the early afternoon. Would you be free then? Say two o’clock, to be on the safe side? I have no doubt you will continue to astound and confound me with more of the wonderful osteological rabbits that you pull from your hat with such seeming ease.”

“I don’t know about the osteological rabbits,” Gideon said with a smile, “but yes, tomorrow afternoon is fine. Javier, why was the case closed after only a month? That’s pretty short for giving up on a murder investigation, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would.” He clapped his small, clean hands together soundlessly. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

He went to the door and opened it. “Alejandro, will you ask Sergeant Nava and Chief Sandoval if they would be kind enough to join us? Tell them I would like to talk about the young girl’s skeleton that was discovered last year near Teotitlan. Oh, and coffee for all, if you please. Espresso, I think.” To Gideon he said, “You will forgive me if I speak spanish. Nava has no English.”

“I’m sure I’ll be able to follow most of it.”

When the two entered a few moments later it was hard to tell who was more scared, Nava or Sandoval. Both seemed surprised when they were motioned to the armchair area and not the visitor’s chairs at the desk. Nava no longer had a gun stuck in his belt. Sandoval wouldn’t sit down until he was specifically asked to, and when the coffee arrived, he couldn’t quite make himself believe it was meant for him until Marmolejo personally poured it and slid a demitasse cup and saucer toward him.

“Chief Sandoval,” a smiling Marmolejo said, as Sandoval tremblingly lifted the cup to his lips, “I’ve been looking at the file concerning the case you were involved in last year. Perhaps you can tell us a little more about the circumstances under which the girl’s remains were found. You would know more about that than anyone else.”

With a visible effort, Sandoval managed to set the cup back on its saucer with only a minimum of clatter. “Well, there’s not much to tell, Sir. They were discovered when a Canadian tourist fell into an old mine in the hills about three kilometers east of my village.”

“And what type of mine was it? Copper? Silver? Gold?”

“It was an old silver mine, Colonel. They say it’s a thousand years old.” He paused. “La Mina de los Muertos.”

“The Mine of the Dead?” Marmolejo repeated in Spanish. “And why was it called that, do you happen to know?” Gideon could see that he was trying to set Sandoval at ease, asking questions he thought the man could answer.

“Oh, that’s not its real name,” said Sandoval, who did indeed seem to be growing more confident with this line of questioning. “I don’t think it has a name. People started calling it that maybe ten years ago, when someone found an old skeleton in it, in another passage.”