Julie raised her eyes to the rough-beamed ceiling. “I'm going to kill him. All right, tell me what you found.'
'I already told you. I spent fifteen minutes telling you.'
'I was in the shower washing my hair. And you were yelling from the other room. I missed a word here and there. Tell me again.'
'All right, I found—'
'It might help if you kept it to words that a simple, unsophisticated park ranger is capable of understanding this time.'
'Such as yourself?'
'Such as myself.'
'A park ranger who minored in anthropology.'
'Nevertheless.'
'Uh-huh.” Gideon took a few kernels of popcorn from the bowl on the table. “All right, I found that the mandible was broken off on the right side, a sharp, vertical break, and the broken margin was beveled, not jagged. And the fracture lines were what we call ‘stepped.’ That means, well...stepped. Like stairs. Okay?'
'Okay.'
'I also found that the left M3 mesiolingual cusp had a menisciform fracture.'
She eyed him over the rim of her wineglass.
'The left third molar had a sort of crescent-shaped crack,” he explained.
'That I can handle.'
'And, finally, there were signs of pressure damage on the posterior surface of the left mandibular condyle, which is—'
'The little round thingy on the hack of the jawbone, that fits in that socket on the skull. Right?'
He sipped his Scotch and soda. “Not bad for a simple park ranger.'
'Watch it, don't press your luck. And in your mind all this adds up to what? In a nutshell, please.'
Gideon helped himself to a handful of popcorn while he put what it all added up to in a nutshell. “If that mandible had been found in a shallow grave near Green Lake, and I'd been asked for my opinion—my
She nodded soberly. “Sounds like you, all right.” Gideon let it pass. “An extremely strong blow to the point of the chin. The living chin.'
'All right, I'm with you so far. Where you lose me is when you say it wasn't caused by the avalanche.'
'I'm not saying it wasn't, Julie. I'm just saying that every time I've ever run into that particular combination of injuries up to now, it was the result of one human being hitting another human being. Either with his fist, if he happened to have a fist like a gorilla's, or more likely with some heavy object, like a rock, or maybe a bat or a hammer. It just makes me wonder, that's all. Which is what they're paying me to do. Or would be, if they were paying me. Want another drink?'
'Nope.” She munched popcorn for a while. “Would a blow like that have killed him?'
'Impossible to say. The specific injuries to his jaw, no. But he was hit
'So you're saying this may have been a murder.'
He spread his hands. “I'm saying that just before he died, this guy—either James Pratt or Steven Fisk—was hit in the face with tremendous force.'
'But how can you be so sure it was before? How do you know his jaw wasn't damaged long after he was killed, even years later, by pressures in the glacier itself?” She shook her head. “We sure have the damndest discussions.'
'I know for several reasons. First, the collagen fibers in the bone tissue were intact at the time—which I know because the distortion of the trabeculae—'
She held up her hand. “I'm convinced. All right, then, why—dare I ask—was it ‘just’ before? Why not a week before, two weeks before? A separate accident, a separate fight?'
'Again, several reasons. No signs of healing. No signs of treatment—and that jaw would have needed wiring. Also, for what it's worth, Tremaine and Henckel don't remember either of the men having anything wrong with his jaw.'
'What did Arthur say when you told him all this?'
'Are you serious? Just having the bones turn up is about all the poor guy can handle right now. I'm not telling him we might be dealing with a murder until I have more than this to go on.'
She ate some more popcorn, kernel by kernel. “Look,” she said reasonably, “you've never examined anyone who died in an avalanche before, have you?'
'No.'
'So you don't really know firsthand what avalanche injuries look like.'
'Well, no, not firsthand.'
