'Keep looking. You haven't found it yet.'
Gideon turned the skull, millimeter by millimeter. He shook his head. “I don't see anything else on the skull.” “Not on the skull.'
'Below the skull?'
Nellie cocked his head. “Is there another way to go from the skull?'
Gideon smiled. “Okay, below the skull.” He lifted the sternum.
Nellie shook his head. “Higher.'
Gideon put down the sternum and picked up the first cervical vertebra, the atlas, so named because the globe of the skull rested on it.
'Lower,” Nellie said.
Gideon put it down. “I'm sure glad you're not giving me any hints.” He moved to the second cervical vertebra.
Nellie shook his head. “Nope, but you're getting warmer.'
Gideon sighed. “Nellie, how about just—all!'
Inconspicuous as it was, it seemed to leap out and catch his eye. On the sixth cervical vertebra, located just below the level of the Adam's apple—a minuscule break zigzagging its way across the front of the right transverse process, one of two small, winglike spurs jutting out from the body of the vertebra.
Gideon leaned closer, nudged the bone with a forefinger. The crack was perhaps a quarter of an inch long. “Hinge fracture,” he said, using the conventional term for a break that went only partway through the bone, something like what happened when you snapped a fresh twig.
'Exactly,” Nellie said with enthusiasm. “Precisely. And you'll also notice, on the posterior root—'
'Another fracture,” Gideon said. “Hairline. And as for the adjacent vertebrae...” One by one he lifted them and carefully examined the convoluted surfaces.
Nellie nodded vigorously, urging him along.
'...nothing,” Gideon said. “No sign of trauma.” Another crisp nod from Nellie. He paused in lighting his pipe. “So? What's your conclusion, doctor?'
Gideon leaned against a lab stool. There wasn't much room for doubt. Injuries like these, in these particular places, meant that enormous squeezing force had been applied to the neck. One saw them in hangings, or even in manual strangulations if the killer happened to be built along the lines of King Kong. But in such cases, the wholesale wrenching of the neck muscles generally produced injuries to more than one vertebra, often to four or five. To have only a single vertebra cracked, and that one in two places, meant that the constriction had been extraordinarily localized.
It wasn't something one came across often; in Gideon's experience only twice. And each time it had been caused by the same thing.
'Garrote,” he said.
'Aye, mate,” Nellie said with satisfaction as he got his pipe going. “The old Spanish windlass.'
The technique dated back at least to the time of Christ. In its basic version a cord—in ancient times it had been made of animal sinew—was looped twice around the neck, and a stick or other firm object inserted between the loops. Rotating the stick would then twist the cord, much like a tourniquet, and create terrific pressure, first closing the windpipe and then, with a few more twists, snapping the spinal column; thus combining the virtues, so to speak, of strangling and hanging. When applied at the level of the sixth cervical vertebra, it would also compress the carotid sheath, thereby shutting off blood flow to and from the brain. Just for good measure.
The Spanish Inquisitors, who used the method as a merciful alternative to the stake, claimed that it was painless, but there was a lack of definitive data on this point. What it demonstrably was, however, was simple, efficient, and silent. And, if the cord was knotted at close intervals, bloodless.
Gideon touched the crack in the skull. “You think he was knocked out by a fall, then garroted?'
'Let's hope so,” Nellie said, “for his sake.'
Gideon hoped so too. He stood looking down at the table in an odd reverie. What an enormous difference there was between the livid, flagrant corpses a pathologist had to work with and this, the anthropologist's quiet and unassuming skeleton. This man's life had ended horrifically, yet the bones gave no signs of upset or fright. Or even of pain. Just two clean, inconsequential-looking little cracks in one tiny, inessential-looking bone. The skull grinned like any other skull, no different from that of a man who had died peacefully in his bed. There were no bulging eyeballs, no purple and protruding tongue, no cruelly bruised and swollen flesh.
A good thing too, or he'd have been out of this business a long time ago.
Nellie smacked his hands together. “Well, then, if that's settled, let's lock up and get out of here. If you've got time, let's stop by Honeyman's office and give him the good news.'
He took off the lab apron he'd been wearing and tossed it onto a coat hook. Today's T-shirt was a bright and cheerful blue. “Our day begins when yours ends,” it said. “Dallas PD, Homicide Unit.'
* * * *
'So,” a sweating, shirt-sleeved Honeyman said bleakly, turning the stub of a pencil end-over-end on the big old desk that took up a full third of his tiny office. “It's definitely homicide. There's no doubt about it anymore.'
'Was there ever?” Nellie asked. “Or did you seriously consider that he might have buried himself?'
Honeyman glared at him, then permitted himself a baggy smile. “I could always hope.'
'What about you?” Gideon asked. “Making any progress?” “Progress!” Honeyman said with a snort. “The budget meeting was a total disaster! They actually expect us—” “I meant on the burial,” Gideon said.
