Skeleton Dance

'She wouldn't know what kind it was?'

'No, just that it was made in Korea. She didn't really pay that much attention.'

'Well, well.” Yes, definitely, Gideon thought; that little tremor at the corners of his mouth was Joly's version of a cat-that-gobbled the-canary smile.

They were in the snack room of the mairie—a modest, utilitarian space with a hulking red Coke machine, an old refrigerator, coffee fixings (a simmering glass pot of water on a warmer and a crusted jar of Nescafe), and three small, round plastic tables with two plastic chairs each. Making his statement for the police had taken only twenty minutes with Joly's assistance, and doing his best to help put together a composite sketch of “Roussillot” hadn't taken much longer. (Unfortunately, the result, like most composite sketches, had more in common with composite sketches in general than it did with any recognizable human being.)

Afterward, he and Joly had been shown to the snack room to wait until the statement was typed up for his signature. Gideon had gotten a Coke from the machine; Joly had chosen only to smoke. While they waited Gideon had started filling him in on the highlights of his interviews. The inspector had sat quietly, seemingly not very attentive, and not stirring until the rifle was mentioned.

'You don't sound all that surprised about it,” Gideon said.

'No. I've been devoting quite a bit of thought to Professor Carpenter, as a matter of fact.'

'You don't mean as a murder suspect?'

Joly gave one of his whole-body shrugs.

'Lucien, the fact that he owned an air rifle doesn't mean it was the same one that killed that guy. Other people own air rifles.'

'I have the report from ballistics,” was Joly's answer. “Listen.” He removed a slim wallet from the inside pocket of his suit coat, slipped a folded sheet of paper from it, set a pair of reading glasses on the prominent, angular bridge of his nose, shook out the paper, and read aloud, translating into English as he went.

''The projectile, though deformed, is identifiable as a wasp-waisted .22 caliber, 34-grain ultra-magnum lead alloy air-rifle pellet. This projectile, which is among the world's heaviest commercially available .22-caliber lead pellets, is manufactured especially for the South-Korean-produced'—a ponderously meaningful look at Gideon —'Cobra Magnum F-16 five-shot repeating air rifle, an expensive, compressed-air-powered, high-velocity sporting/hunting weapon charged with pre-compressed air from a standard 3,000 psi diving tank and capable of generating a muzzle velocity of almost 400 meters per second when used in conjunction with this pellet. It is the opinion of the examiner that such a projectile, fired within a range of five meters, could well have caused the injuries previously described.’”

Joly removed his glasses—he wouldn't wear them a fraction of a second longer than he absolutely had to—and slipped the report back into his wallet. “Now, it may be that I'm leaping to conclusions,” he said. “It may be that there are many expensive, high-velocity Cobra Magnum F-16 air rifles firing wasp-waisted .34-grain magnum rounds here in Les Eyzies to choose from; one in every stone cottage, for all we know.'

'Well . . . okay,” Gideon said, “but even if it is the same rifle, that hardly means it was Carpenter who did the killing. Look, what if you found a window broken with a Mesolithic hand chopper, would that mean it had to have been a Neanderthal that did it?'

Joly studied him. “Am I mistaken, or are we a little defensive this afternoon?'

'No, it's just that—Lucien, are you actually, seriously considering the possibility that Ely Carpenter himself committed that murder?'

'Why should I not?'

'Well, because . . . “

Because what? What was he supposed to say, that distinguished archeologists, directors of respected scholarly institutions, didn't go around bumping off people who annoyed them? Maybe they didn't, but they also didn't go around getting themselves involved right up to their eyeballs in outrageous frauds either, did they? So where did that leave him? Of course it might have been Ely. Joly had every right to consider the possibility.

He had, when it came right down to it, more than he knew. “There's something else you need to know,” Gideon said reluctantly. “I just hated to . . . oh, hell, it's just that . . .'

Joly watched him attentively, his eyes narrowed against the cigarette smoke curling from both nostrils and drifting up his cheeks.

'Remember when I told you Ely had gotten pretty paranoid after the hoax broke? Well, it was worse than I realized. Audrey told me he took to keeping a weapon near him whenever he was off in the boondocks working on one of his sites.'

'Oh?” said Joly, his interest quickening.

'And the weapon she remembered seeing was . . . well . . .'

'His favorite Korean air rifle.'

Gideon nodded.

'So,” said Joly with evident satisfaction, and then, after a pause: “I have a little news for you too. I've been in touch with the aviation authorities about Carpenter's death.” He looked levelly at Gideon. “It seems there are some rather dubious aspects to it.'

Gideon frowned. “I don't follow you.'

'Frankly, I'm not convinced that Carpenter's dead.'

'What?” The Coke can smacked down on the table, spattering Gideon's hand with fizz. “That's crazy.'

'Consider the hard facts,” said Joly. “Or rather the lack of them: no corpse, no wreckage—'

'What? But I thought—'