Only Nellie Hobert, Jasper’s first student, had gotten through his apprenticeship with his admiration for the old anthropologist intact. Maybe it was because Jasper had been kinder in those days, or maybe it was because Nellie had been the best as well as the first. Either way, Nellie had never, in Gideon’s hearing at least, expressed the hard feelings the others had.
But seen from another angle, it was Nellie who’d had the best reason for wanting him dead. Not out of revenge or bitterness, which had never been high on John’s list of homicidal motives anyway, but from personal ambition, a much more likely incentive. For it had been on the older man’s death that Nellie’s own career had bloomed. He had, as everyone had expected him to, succeeded his mentor as Distinguished Services Professor of Human Biology at Northern New Mexico, as president of the National Society of Forensic Anthropology, and, in effect, as top gun in his field.
So none of them could be ruled out. Not on grounds of motive. Not by a long shot.
He upended the paperweight one more time and set it swirling back on the table. The one bright spot in all this was that nice, tight little time range; one hour, from four to five o’clock Wednesday afternoon. A little checking on who was where at that time was going to narrow things down, speed things up.
And speeding up was in order. Applewhite had given him until Monday, three more days, to do what he could to help Honeywell. After that, the case would be handed back to the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office. John wasn’t going to solve it for them in three days, but it’d be nice to tie things up a little more for Farrell, who would still have another week to go before his sergeant of detectives got back.
He stood up, yawning, and slid his papers into his folder. Jasper’s telephone bill caught his eye again. That unexplained call to Harlow was interesting too, a link between two men murdered a decade apart. He needed to call Julian Minor and pass on what little Callie had told him about it, then let Julian run with it. The guy was amazing. You never knew what he’d turn up.
Mrs. Gelbert, the resort manager, tapped on the doorjamb. “Mr. Lau, telephone. Gideon Oliver. You can take it up front.”
CHAPTER 19
“Hi, Doc, whatchagot?”
Gideon took the receiver from the crook of his shoulder, where he’d wedged it while pouring himself a cup of coffee and waiting for John to come on the line.
“It checks out, John. It’s Jasper, all right. No surprises this time.”
He had spent the last two hours in the Justice Building’s small conference room, scraping the clay from Jasper’s skull, comparing the dentition against the newly received chart (and x-rays) from Dr. MacFadden, and going over the skeleton as a whole.
“Good,” John said. “I’ve had enough surprises for a while.” “And Nellie’s report is fine, as expected. I agree with everything in it.”
“Glad to hear it. All the same, I’d appreciate it if you’d do one up yourself.”
“Why? It’d say just what his says.”
“Yeah, but we better have it anyway. I mean, what if Honeyman winds up charging him? Is he supposed to use the guy’s own report as evidence? Does he call him as an expert witness to describe those broken neck bones? It wouldn’t work.”
“Okay,” Gideon said resignedly. It would mean getting the bones back out of the evidence room, out of the labeled paper sacks in which he’d put them, laying them out on the table again, and going over them one more time. “I’ll take care of it. I just wish you’d told me before.”
“I wish I’d thought of it before. Thanks, Doc. See you later.”
When Gideon brought the first armful of sacks back to the conference room, he found Nellie sitting at the table dressed relatively conservatively-in full-length trousers and a red T-shirt with nothing written on it but “Go, Broncos!”-and looking subdued.
“I was driving around in the rain, thinking about things,” he said, “and decided to stop in. I thought you might be working on the bones.”
Gideon felt himself flushing. He understood perfectly well why John had wanted him and not Nellie to complete the skeletal analysis, but it didn’t stop him from feeling rotten about it. He had planned to use the drive back to the lodge to think up some way of broaching it tactfully with the older man, but Nellie had beaten him to the punch.
“Uh, Nellie, actually, the reason I’m doing this is-well, I’m sure you know it’s not a question of trust, or of-of competence. I mean, there’s certainly no question, no question at all-”
With a wave of his hand, Nellie put a merciful end to his babbling. “Don’t worry about it. Of course I understand. I’m a potential suspect; how can I have anything to do with the investigation? I approve completely.”
Gideon was happy to see that he gave every sign of meaning it. “Thanks, Nellie.”
“My boy, don’t give it another thought.” He sobered when he looked at the sacks in Gideon’s arms. “Is that Albert?”
“Yes.” Gideon laid them on the table, then looked up sharply. “You mean you agree it’s him now?”
A rare sheepish look dragged Nellie’s features down. “Yes, yes, you were right about it, of course. You all were. It just took a while for me to admit it. I can, on occasion,” he said dryly, “be a wee bit stubborn. Or maybe we’d better make that ‘pigheaded.’ I simply wouldn’t accept having made so colossal an error.”
Gideon was more relieved than he showed. Nellie had seemed more than pigheaded to him; he’d seemed fixated, almost fanatical.
“That’s really what I came to say,” Nellie said. “I wanted to apologize for being so obstinate.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“I assume you’ve made the identification definite by now.” Gideon nodded.
“Simply astounding,” Nellie said, shaking his head. “I still can’t conceive of how we came to make such a botch of it, can you? It’s not as if-” One wiry eyebrow went up. “Or do you know how it came to happen?”
“Well, I think so, yes-“
Nellie held up a hand. “But you can’t tell me. Of course not. Tell me this much, though. Was it simple error or were we bamboozled?”
“You were bamboozled.”
Nellie banged his palm softly on the table. “That’s what I thought. It makes me feel a little better, if you want to know. But by whom, do you know that? Do you know if poor Harlow’s death is related to it somehow? It is, isn’t it?” The hand shot up again before Gideon could say anything. “No, I’m putting you in a difficult position. Never mind, I can wait to find out along with everyone else.”
He stood up. “Look, I’ve said what I had to say, and I want to thank you for being so damned decent about all this. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d accused me of something worse than sloppiness.”
Gideon didn’t feel so damned decent. And although he hadn’t accused Nellie of anything, had never suspected him of anything really, there were still unanswered questions, a remaining reservoir of doubt and uncertainty.
“Can I ask you something, Nellie?”
Nellie looked amiably down at him. “All right.” “Why did you make such a secret of the roast?” “Apparently it isn’t much of a secret anymore. It seems to be all over the place.”
“But why did you try so hard all these years to keep it one? Why did you shut Leland up the way you did yesterday?”
“Well, you have to understand-until yesterday we thought we’d caused his death. We thought he’d gotten on that bus because we’d driven him to it. We were-we were ashamed of ourselves. So we talked it out, and we agreed that no purpose would be served by telling anyone else about it. And we haven’t. Childish, perhaps, but that’s the way we saw it.”
Gideon shook his head. “Nellie, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t ring true. I can see some of the others going along with covering it up, but it just doesn’t sound like you. I mean you, personally. It’s not your style.”
“I suppose I should take that as a compliment,” Nellie said gruffly. “Well, damn it, you’re right, it’s not my style.” He slid back down into the chair. The pipe came out of his pocket, and the Latakia, but once they were in his hands he seemed to forget about them. “Do you know what it was, really? It’s not very deep.” He looked up at Gideon from under his eyebrows. “You know what happened at the roast, I gather?”