Make No Bones

the freeze-frame button on a VCR. For two or three seconds this taut, electrified stillness gripped them, and then Leland snapped it.

'Oh...dear...God,” he whispered, and followed this with a soft, nervous titter.

Gallic jerked convulsively, staring pop-eyed at the reconstruction. Her mouth was working but nothing came out.

Next to her, Nellie mumbled vaguely to himself. He looked stricken, almost as if he might faint. One hand clenched and unclenched.

Only the consistently unflappable Les remained in character. “What,” he murmured with an only slightly incredulous smile, “is wrong with this picture?” John, on the periphery, seemed not to know what was going on, as of course he didn't. Even Miranda seemed stunned by her own handiwork.

And so it looked as if it were going to be up to Gideon to speak the words. A tiny shiver, like the touch of a spider, crawled up between his shoulder blades. He cleared his throat.

'It's Albert Evan Jasper,” he said.

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CHAPTER 13

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But saying it didn't mean he was ready to believe it. And yet, what else was there to believe? So convincing, so utterly inarguable, was the likeness, that it would have been absurd for him to keep telling himself that this couldn't be, that Albert Jasper had been killed in a bus crash, not stealthily buried in the floor of an unused storeroom; that his remains had been identified with absolute certainty by an expert and reputable team of forensic experts—by, in fact, the very people now staring with such seeming perplexity at that unmistakable, bulldog-like face.

Like tumblers clicking in a complex lock, questions, answers, and surmises turned over in Gideon's mind, rearranged themselves, slid smoothly if bewilderingly into new niches. The uppermost uncertainties of the last few days—Was this or wasn't this Special Agent Chuck Salish? Was he actually killed during the first WAFA meeting? Were any of the WAFA members really involved in his murder?—had suddenly become nonquestions.

It wasn't Salish, it was Jasper. And, oh yes, he was killed during that meeting; he'd damn sure never left it alive by bus or any other means. And if the WAFA attendees had been logical suspects from John's point of view before, they were in it up to their eyebrows now. Who else was there to suspect?

A brief exchange of glances with John showed him that the big Hawaiian's thoughts were running in much the same groove. Despite all the professions of astonishment, one of the stupefied expressions in that goggling half circle of anthropologists was a sham. One of them—at least one of them—hadn't been in the least surprised to find out that Jasper's end had come via garrote, not highway disaster. It was Callie whom Gideon naturally found himself studying hardest, but she seemed as genuinely confounded as anyone else. Which didn't mean much when he thought about it.

But, he realized, it wasn't necessarily someone in the room. Where was Harlow Pollard? John had contacted or left messages with everyone about being there. Why had Harlow failed to show up? Harlow...

'Preposterous,” Nellie croaked abruptly, breaking a second lengthy silence. His face, waxy only a moment before, was flooding with a dull red—visibly, from the neck up, like a pitcher being filled. “It can't be Albert and everyone here damn well knows it!” He stared challengingly at them.

They didn't look as if they knew it, Gideon thought, and no wonder. Preposterous as it might seem, no one could seriously doubt whose skull was propped on the table in front of them.

Except Nellie. “Gideon—if this is some—some joke...?” he began, half angrily, half hopefully.

'There's no joke, Nellie.'

But in a way there was. It was on him, and Jasper himself was playing it, so to speak. Here Gideon had made the damn thing, and he'd known Jasper. He'd spent going on twelve hours bent over that skull, memorizing every groove and irregularity; he'd somehow gotten just about everything right in the modeling process—which was amazing in itself—and still, in the end, it was a colossal blunder. He hadn't come close to recognizing who it was and probably never would have, if not for Miranda's sharp eye. Yet now, with just a few swift, superficial changes, there, beyond any possibility of doubt, was Jasper gazing at them through those bland, prosthetic eyes—or did they look just a little more amused than they had before? Surely this was a situation the old man would have relished.

'But how could we have screwed it up so royally?” Callie murmured from a faraway daze—Real? Concocted? Who knew any more?—'We were so positive it was Jasper. We had the teeth, remember?” she asked abstractedly, and then her eyes cleared, her voice firmed. “We had the damn dental report! There was never any question about it.'

'Of course there wasn't,” Nellie said, heartened. “We were right.'

'I don't think so, Nellie,” Gideon said quietly. “I don't know how you all could have made a mistake like this, but there can't be any doubt about this being Jasper's skull. Coincidences like this don't happen.'

Les laughed. “This is fantastic. The guy that was in that drawer for all those years, the guy we all looked at so solemnly in that museum case, the guy somebody stole out of that museum case, wasn't Jasper all along. Can you believe it?'

'This is not funny,” Leland snapped. “It's horrible. We have to try to—to make some sense out of this.'

'Nosir,” Les said. “Yessir.'

Leland turned on him in a shrill little spasm of outrage.

'You—you nitwit! Don't you see what this means? Albert was murdered! We—we—-'

'Goddamn it, Albert was not murdered!” Nellie interrupted hotly. “I don't care who this...this fucking thing looks