Curses!

Marmolejo's mouth opened slightly with a faint popping noise. Fortunately the cigar stub remained pasted to his lower lip.

'And if you put it all together,” Gideon continued, “I don't think it leaves a lot of room for coincidence. We've got a white male here, around fifty, righthanded, about six-one, who's played woodwind for ten years at least...all of which also happens to fit Howard Bennett perfectly. And since Howard was last seen right here, at just about the time this skeleton was deposited, I don't think there's much doubt—'

Marmolejo found his voice. 'How do you know he played the clarinet?” It wasn't quite a squeak, but it was as close as he was likely to come.

Gideon made it simple. The tubercles, of course. The other time he'd come across them, as he'd finally remembered, it had been during an examination of the scant remains of a firebombing victim in Pittsburgh. The man, a clarinetist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, had been tentatively identified by the police before Gideon was shown the bones, and Gideon, knowing nothing about him, had wowed the homicide detective in charge by casually asking what woodwind instrument he'd played.

But, really, it hadn't been a wildly difficult deduction once it occurred to him that the frequent, strong thrusting forward of the lower jaw might be connected to something other than eating. Playing a woodwind, for example. Perhaps there were also other possible causes for the tubercles, but he had yet to find one.

Marmolejo took this with better grace and more credulity than Gideon had expected. “All right,” he conceded, “who am I to argue with the Skeleton Detective?” He made a clicking sound, tongue against teeth. “But where are our fine theories now? Who killed Ard, if Dr. Bennett didn't? Who attacked you?” He paused and laid his hand on Gideon's arm. “I don't want anyone on the crew to know this. Let them think we still believe it's Avelino Canul.'

'That makes sense.'

'And I'm afraid it would be inadvisable for anyone to leave after all,” Marmolejo added to himself. “Mr. Partridge's permission will have to be revoked. I hope he's not too disturbed about it.'

Worthy would never trust another small person, Gideon thought.

Marmolejo stood for a while, peering down at the earth-stained skull. “Howard Bennett,” he said quietly. “Here all this time with his precious codex, killed trying to remove it by a cave-in he himself caused. I think the gods, of Tlaloc must be laughing.'

'Oh, I'm sure they're laughing,” Gideon said, then pulled his last rabbit out of the hat. “But it wasn't the cave-in that killed him. He was already dead when the roof came down.'

Marmolejo turned slowly to Gideon. “Murdered?'

'Murdered.'

* * * *

'How could you tell?” Julie asked. “Was he shot? With that Smith & Wesson?'

'No,” Gideon said, “clubbed. Probably with the sledgehammer. The left side of his head was knocked in.'

'But all that rubble caved in on him. How do you know that isn't what did it?'

'Because he was on his left side, and the damage to the rest of his body shows the debris landed on his right side. In other words, he was already lying there, in that position, when it hit.'

'Oh.” She pulled the toothpick from a quarter of the chicken-salad sandwich before her and thoughtfully sucked the pickled onion from it.

They were on their balcony. Neither of them had been particularly hungry when he had gotten back from the site, and they had had sandwiches and milk sent up. Abe and the rest of the crew were in the restaurant, celebrating the finding of the codex with a champagne dinner insisted on and paid for by Dr. Villanueva, who had arrived at the Chichen Itza airstrip with several other Institute officials about an hour earlier. In the morning there would be a group breakfast, with speeches and congratulations, and then the codex would be borne in pomp to Mexico City for years of study and an eventual place of honor in the Museum of Anthropology.

'Now wait a minute,” Julie said, having thought the matter through. “Who's to say the cave-in happened all at once? Maybe he was knocked down by a few falling pieces, and fractured his skull when his head hit the ground— and then the rest of it all fell on him. What's wrong with that?'

'Nothing, but he didn't just fracture it. It wasn't cracked, it was caved in—a depressed fracture. There was a hole in his skull, and some of the bone fragments were actually inside.” No doubt driven into the brain to provide the immediate cause of death, he might have added, but why spoil her appetite? Or his.

'And a fall couldn't do that?'

'Nope. It's an axiom of the trade: When a moving head hits a fixed object hard enough, you get a crack; when a moving object hits a fixed head you get a depressed fracture. No, first he was slugged, then he fell, and then the place came down on him.'

He took a bite of his ham sandwich. “Marmolejo thinks the cave-in was an accident; that Howard came on somebody trying to take the codex and got himself killed for his trouble.'

'No, how could that be? If Howard was the one with the gun and the crowbar, how come he's the one who wound up dead?'

Gideon shrugged. “I doubt if he would have shot a crew member or even pointed the gun at him. Not unless he found him right in the act of taking the codex. He would have assumed there was some other reason for him to be there. It was outsiders he was worried about.'

Julie shook her head. “It's so hard to believe. How could a member of the crew bring himself—'

'For two million dollars? People can bring themselves to do a lot of things for that.'

He took a long swallow of milk. “Anyway, Marmolejo figures that whoever was on the other end of the sledge hit one of the props without meaning to. Howard and the codex fell down the steps, and five tons of rubble landed on top of them. That's his theory.'

'And what's yours?'