Twenty Blue Devils (28 page)
"My dear man,” Viennot said, laughing, “I may no longer be practicing in Lyons, but give me some credit. The brain has been partially dissected. The path of the bullet is perfectly straight, perfectly true."
"Then the most likely reason is that that side of Tari's head was against some solid object or surface when the gun was fired—"
Viennot's lively eyes lit up. “Ha, exactly as I surmised. I thought as much!"
"—and that it was hard enough and firm enough to keep the slug from completely shattering the bone and exploding out."
'Viennot raised a finger as if he himself had made a telling point. “Ah,” he said quietly and cocked an eyebrow, “but exactly what was it, this object or surface?"
"Oh, well, you know, it could easily have been...’ He stopped. “Son of a gun,” he murmured. “I see what you mean.” Here he'd been airily treating Viennot to a chowder-head version of Forensic Anthro 101, and Viennot had been three steps ahead of him the whole time. It was only now, thanks to Viennot's persistence, that it struck Gideon that there was a serious inconsistency in Rudy's version of events. Rudy had said that he had grabbed Tari's arm while Tari had been rummaging in a drawer for the gun, and that the gun had gone off instantly.
So how could Tari's head have been leaning against anything?
"Rudy was pretty excited,” Gideon said, thinking out loud. “He'd been stunned a moment before. He might have wrestled Tari against the wall without knowing it. The whole thing was over in a second. In the shock of the moment it would have been easy to forget exactly what happened."
Viennot shook his head. “I think not. Once shot in this manner, the man would have dropped like a stone—as he did, striking his head upon the hearth. His feet, in such circumstances, would naturally have remained in approximately the location that they'd been in when he was shot. But in this case, they were over a meter from the nearest wall."
"Ah,” said Gideon appreciatively. Now he was the one getting the chowderhead forensics course. Turnabout time again, and richly deserved. “Then that settles it,” he said slowly. “Rudy didn't quite tell it the way it was, did he?"
"Indeed not,” Viennot said, twirling his cigar for emphasis. “And I think we can hypothesize with some confidence as to what his reason was, don't you, colleague?...Colleague?"
Gideon had taken the skull into his hands while Viennot was speaking and had turned it around to take his first careful look at the other side, the right side, the one with both the round entrance wound and the depressed fracture suffered when Tari struck his head on the hearth in falling. He traced his fingers over the network of cracks between them. Well, well...
"Colleague?"
"Hm?” Gideon surfaced. “Oh, I'm sorry. You were saying... ?"
"That we might hypothesize with some confidence as to what actually happened."
"I don't think there'd be any point in that, sir."
The physician's mobile features contracted into a scowl. “No point?"
"In hypothesizing.” Gideon replaced the skull on the butcher paper. “I
know
what actually happened,” he said with perhaps a little more panache than was strictly required; it was a common failing with him at such moments.
It takes a ham to appreciate a ham, and, as Gideon thought he might be, Viennot was delighted. After an astounded silence during which the cigar stub hung pasted to his lower lip he barked with laughter. “You
know!"
he cried happily. “
How
do you know?” He chomped down on the cigar and leaned expectantly forward, elbows on the table, his nose no more than a foot from the bone. Like every true man of science he was at his happiest when about to be instructed.
"I know,” Gideon said, “because cracks don't cross cracks."
Cracks don't cross cracks.
Once a year Gideon taught part of a week-long forensic seminar that the Smithsonian put on for law enforcement personnel from across the country. And one of the first tests of scientific observation that his students were faced with came in the form of a hard-boiled egg that had been briskly tapped in three places with the underside of a tablespoon, so that at the site of each stroke was a small indentation in the shell (not at all unlike a depressed fracture), with a network of hairline cracks radiating from it.
"Pretend,” Gideon would say, handing it over for their inspection, “that this is a human skull fractured in three places by blows from a blunt instrument. What I want you to tell me is, which is the first blow that was struck, which is the second, and which is the third?"
Sometimes they would figure it out on their own. More often they would be stymied. “How the hell are we supposed to know that?” some grumpy sergeant who hadn't wanted to be there in the first place could be depended on to mutter.
Which is when Gideon would say: “Cracks don't cross cracks."
Once that was understood, which never took long, it was a simple matter. One of the dents in the shell would have a network of cracks that was unimpeded; the spidery, radiating lines would extend until they simply ran out of steam and petered out on their own. That was the site of the first blow. The cracks emanating from another one of the dents would also run to their natural limits—except for those that ran into
already
existing cracks from the first one and were stopped dead by them. That was the second blow. And the cracks from the third dent would stop every time they came to a crack from either of the other two. That, necessarily, was the third blow.
What was true of eggshells was true of skulls. A crack could not leap across open space to the far side of an aperture and continue, no matter how narrow the cleft. And in the skull before them, as he now pointed out to the enchanted Viennot, two of the cracks coming from the bullet hole were clearly cut off by cracks radiating from the depressed fracture. Therefore, the depressed fracture already existed when the bullet entered; the crushing blow to Tari's head had come
before
he was shot, not after.
"Before
he was shot, yes,” echoed Viennot, nodding. “And that means..."
That meant that Rudy had not merely been forgetful, or unobservant, or overexcited in reporting what had happened. Rudy, seemingly so helpless and distraught, had been lying through his teeth, coolly and calculatingly.
"This explains the incomplete exit wound on the other side too,” Gideon said, reconstructing the scene in his mind (minus the blood and brains). “Tari already had his skull cracked open before he was shot. He must have been lying on the floor unconscious or maybe barely conscious. Rudy bent down, put the gun next to Tari's right temple—"
"Yes, that's right, a point-blank wound."
"—and pulled the trigger. The pressure of the floor kept the bullet from exiting completely from the other side of his head."
He had been staring at the skullcap all the time he spoke, but now he looked up to meet Viennot's eyes. “He murdered him,” he said with the dreamy satisfaction of a man who had put in a hell of a good morning's work. Not that it wasn't about time he'd done something useful.
"Colleague,” said Viennot, leaning back in his chair, “I salute you."
Colonel Bertaud contained his admiration more successfully than Dr. Viennot had ("You're certainly full of surprises this morning."), but he quickly grasped the significance of the new information that Gideon had brought him, which was all that Gideon was really interested in.
"Thibault, call the hospital,” he said into his telephone in rapid French. “Find out what room Mr. Rudolph Druett is in. And bring my car around."
"I do see one difficulty, however,” he told Gideon in that silky voice. “Not insurmountable but a difficulty all the same.” He turned his swivel chair so that he could look out on the avenue Bruat. It was a little after 9 A.M. Papeete's rush-hour traffic, such as it was, was settling down. Only a few motor scooters and bicycles were on the street. “How do you propose that we should account,” he asked thoughtfully, “for Tari's having struck his head on the hearth in the first place? Tari was a giant, yes? Rudy is a slight man, no more than half his weight. Is it conceivable that he could knock him down or throw him to the floor?"
"I don't think he did. My guess is Tari never did hit his head on the hearth; that the wound was caused by something else."
The colonel swiveled back to face Gideon. “But we have his blood, his hair, on the hearth. Our laboratory confirms it."
"Here's what I think happened, Colonel: I think Rudy clubbed Tari with something—maybe with a poker from the fireplace. Maybe it was premeditated, or maybe there was an argument, I don't know. Something. Anyway, Rudy hit him over the head from behind, then shot him to make sure he was dead,
then
smeared his head against the hearth—and banged his own head against the wall a little too—to back up his story about Tari's trying to kill him and how the whole thing was an accident, and so on."
He glanced at the skullcap on Bertaud's desk (Gideon had carried it from the hospital in a paper sack). “If you think about the placement of the fracture—high up, back, and on the right side—you'll see it's just where you'd expect it to be if Tari had been crept up on from behind by a right-handed assailant."
"Ah, is that so?"
"Definitely.” Then after a moment: “Well, it's also where you'd expect it to be if Tari had hit his head on the hearth in falling, so it's hardly proof of anything, but at least it fits. But you know,” he added as the thought occurred to him, “if I could have a look at that hearth and the poker and anything else along those lines, I just might be able to match one of them to the fracture in the skull. If nothing else, I ought to be able to rule some things out. Do you—"
Bertaud's telephone buzzed. Bertaud picked it up, listened with the faintest
tck
of irritation, and replaced it in its cradle.
"He's not there,” he said to Gideon. “He was released this morning."
Clearly, Nelson Lau was on pins and needles. “I suppose you're wondering why I asked you to come and see me,” he said, twiddling with his ballpoint pen.
"Kind of,” John said.
"I trust it wasn't any trouble.” He turned the pen with his fingers, round and round, tapping it on the desk at each half-rotation.
"Nope."
"It's just that I thought it would be better to talk here at the Papeete office, rather than back at the Hut. It's more private.” Round and round went the pen.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
“Don't you agree?”
Tap.
"Nelson,” John said, “how about just telling me what you want to tell me? Also, if you don't stop fooling with that pen I'm gonna rip your arm off."
"Oh. Yes. Well.” He laid the pen down. Now his upper lip began to pulse with tiny puffs of air. The finicky little mustache twitched along with it. John tried looking out the window. Nelson's office had an expansive view of the busy quays and docks of Papeete Harbor.
"Let me give you some figures,” Nelson said, twitching away. “Mostly through our American operation we sell about six hundred thousand pounds of roasted beans a year in the form of our several coffees. Now, inasmuch as it takes a hundred pounds of green beans to make sixty pounds roasted, that means that we have either to harvest or to buy a total of a million pounds of green beans a year. Are you following me so far?"
"I think I'm managing to hang in there,” John said.
"Now then,” Nelson continued uneasily, “we can harvest only about two hundred thousand pounds a year here, from which it follows that we have to buy an additional eight hundred thousand pounds a year from other growers around the world. Now, of those eight hundred thousand—"
"Nelson, this is really interesting, but how about getting to the point? I've got a lot on my plate today."
"The point is—” said Nelson with heat, but then seemed to lose impetus. He sagged in his high-backed leather chair and crossly mumbled something.
John turned from the window. “What?"
"I said—I said I need your advice."
John forgot all about Nelson's mustache. He stared at him, amazed. “You
what?"
He hadn't meant to say it out loud, but these were words he had never in his life expected to hear from his older brother. No wonder the poor guy was looking so uncomfortable.
"As an FBI agent. You know about these things."
"What things, Nelson? What are you talking about?"
Nelson started fiddling with his pen again.
Tap, tap, tap.
“The thing is, I had it backward. We all had it backward. Tari wasn't stealing from us at all. Tari was
right.” Tap, tap—
John took the pen out of Nelson's hand and placed it firmly in the pen-and-pencil caddy on the desk. “About what?"
"About our paying too much—ten times too much—in some cases
twenty
times too much—for some of the beans we buy from other suppliers."
"Is that right?” John murmured. Wheels began to turn. “Are you sure?"
Of course he was sure, Nelson said. He had spent the last two days poring over the books, and he was certain of his facts. Of the 800,000 pounds of beans purchased annually, 300,000 pounds came from two growers—about 100,000 from Java Green Mountain in Indonesia, and about 200,000 from the Colombian firm of Calvo Hermanos. And in virtually every order from these two suppliers, Paradise had been paying at least ten times the market value. Beans that should have cost $1.50 a pound had been ordered—and paid for—at $15 a pound. Beans that were bringing $2 on the international market had been entered on Paradise's books at $20. Paradise had been buying virtually the cheapest
arabica
beans available and paying the world's highest prices.
What's more, this had been going on for almost five years. The result was that they had been overpaying these two suppliers by about—Nelson had to swallow before he could get it out—$6 million a year.
"Six—!” John looked at him. “You're saying that in the last five years Paradise has overpaid something like thirty million bucks for its beans?"