Old Bones

John shook his head. “Not with my French, it wouldn't. I think I'll stay down here with the doc. Maybe I'll learn something.” He laughed suddenly, and a hundred little wrinkles folded into well-used laughter creases around his black eyes. “I might have missed a few points during the session today.'

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SEVEN

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WITH his head cocked, John watched the two of them mount the steps. Then he looked at Gideon. “He doesn't like me.'

'Oh, he likes you, all right. But you were crowding him on digging up the floor.'

'Yeah, I probably was, but, holy cow—'

'And he probably thinks you're a little frivolous for a cop.'

'Me?” John said with genuine surprise. “Frivolous?” He shook his head. “Nah, he just doesn't like me. I can't understand it.'

'I admit, it staggers the imagination,” Gideon agreed, and began to lay out the bones in roughly their anatomical relationship, to see just what he had. Ribcage first. Everything was there: twelve pairs of ribs, sternum, both scapulas, both clavicles, seventeen vertebrae from the fifth cervical through the second lumbar. The highest and lowest vertebrae were scarred with crude gouges; in cutting up the body, someone had hacked his way through the obvious places—through the throat just under the jaw (that is, between the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae), and through the fleshy waist just above the hip bones (between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae).

He picked up a loose vertebra, the first lumbar, and ran his thumb over the bottom edge of it, then did the same with the second. “Ah, here's something. Look, there's just the start of some osteophytosis, here on the synarthrodial aspect of the centrum—'

'Doc...!” As far as Gideon knew, there was only one circumstance that ever brought a whine to John Lau's voice.

'Oops, sorry,” Gideon said quickly. “I meant this lipping around the rim, can you see? This sort of rampart.'

'Well, why didn't you say it in English in the first place?” John grumbled, as he had many times before. He looked hard at the bone and brushed his fingers along the rim. “Okay, I feel it...Yeah, right there,” he said with pleasure. Intolerant of scientific jargon he might be, and not at his best during long lectures, but he was an eager learner, always interested. “What is it, arthritis?'

'That's right; the kind of wear-and-tear arthritis that gets us all in time. Part of the normal ageing process. Most people show it pretty distinctly in the lower back by the time they hit forty, and it gets to be more noticeable —and more troublesome—as they get older.'

'Forty,” said John solemnly, as one hand crept around to his lower spine. “Jesus.” He was forty-one, six months older than Gideon.

Gideon put the bone back down. “Since the lipping's just started, I'd say he's under forty and over thirty. Maybe thirty-two, thirty-three. That ought to please Joly.” He grinned. “I'm not sure the inspector's too happy with me either.'

John nodded. “Yeah, well, you're pretty frivolous for a professor. He probably doesn't like it when you sit up on the desk while you lecture. Hey, did you say ‘he'?'

'That's right. It's a male.'

'So how come you told Joly you didn't know the sex? And—” His eyes narrowed, “—didn't you say today you couldn't be positive about the sex unless you had the pelvis, or the skull, or what was it, the head of the femur...?'

'That's right,” Gideon said, surprised. “I'm impressed.'

John shrugged modestly. “Something must have woke me up for a minute. So why is it a male?'

A reasonable question, but difficult to answer. The problem was that it was hard to explain, other than to say that after almost fifteen years of dealing with the human skeleton, his eyes and fingertips simply told him so; this sad litter of bones had supported the body of a man, not a woman. But he couldn't quite face telling Joly—who had been so resolutely attentive at the conference, and who had asked such laboriously penetrating questions, and who had taken such regular notes in a no-doubt tidy and meticulous hand—that he just knew; it was a matter of intuitive, unquantifiable feel.

John, yes, but not Joly.

'I just know,” he said.

John nodded his acceptance. Once, a long time ago, he had been in the snake-oil camp, but he'd learned to trust Gideon's judgment on skeletons almost as much as Gideon did.

Most of the time.

'Doc?” he said half an hour later, while Gideon was pondering the meaning of the beadlike nodules on the ends of the ribs. They rang a bell, but he wasn't sure what kind of a bell. They were something he'd seen in textbooks. What was it they were called? Prayer beads, was it? That didn't sound right.

'Hm?'

'You done with this part?” He pointed to an oblong, ridged plate at the front of the chest cavity.

'Uh-huh. For the moment.'