The air went out of Sandoval. “I see,” he said wretchedly. Then, as an apathetic afterthought: “How then was he killed?”
“I need to do a little more work on the body,” Gideon said instead of answering. “Do you think you could find me a screwdriver next door?”
Sandoval stared at him. “A what?”
“A…” Gideon groped for the Spanish word. “Un… un desarmador,” he said, amazing himself by plucking it out of whatever dim neural recess it had been hiding in, patiently waiting to be summoned, probably for the first time since he’d learned it decades ago. A wonderful thing, the human mind.
“Un DESARMADOR?” Sandoval bleated, no less bewildered.
After a couple of frustrated seconds, Gideon realized that this time it wasn’t a question of Sandoval’s not understanding, it was a question of not believing what he was hearing. First a pair of shears, now a screwdriver; what next, a hammer and nails?
Gideon couldn’t help smiling. “Right, can you get me one? Not the flat-bladed kind, the Phillips head. Feeyeeps,” he amended, giving the spelling his best Spanish pronunciation.
“Feeyeeps,” Sandoval echoed robotically. “Si. Un desarmador de cruz.” He turned toward the door.
“And a piece of wood.”
“And a piece of wood,” Sandoval said, beyond astonishment now. “Sure. What kind of wood? How big?”
“It doesn’t matter. Any old piece of scrap lumber. A board.”
His actions, when Sandoval came back and handed the items to him, proved that Sandoval was not beyond astonishment after all. The screwdriver and the board, a foot-long piece of whatever the metric equivalent of a two-by-four was, were taken to the sink, where the board was placed on the sturdy counter beside the basin. Gideon picked up the screwdriver, raised it over his head, and drove it hard into the board. A second time. A third. Sandoval watched, openmouthed.
Gideon held the board up to examine it. “Mm,” he said inscrutably. “Let’s go back to the body now.”
He stood gazing down once more at Manuel Garcia. He had already satisfied himself that there were no other visible perforations in the hide; just the wound in the chest. But the left arm, extending rigidly down and slightly forward along the left side, partially blocked his view of the axilla-the armpit-and the area just below it, and this was a region Gideon particularly wanted to see now. Placing one hand on Garcia’s left shoulder joint to steady the body, he used the other to grasp the left arm just above the elbow and began to pull gingerly.
Nothing happened. Barely any give at all. Cowhide-stiffened cowhide-was in fact very much what the body felt like. He took his stance again, set his feet, grasped the arm more firmly Sandoval flinched and paled. “I think I need to go to the police station for a few minutes now,” he murmured, hurrying the words. “There are things that must be attended to. Would that be all right?” He was already making for the door. “I’ll only be a couple minutes,” he yelled over his shoulder and was gone.
“Take your time,” Gideon said, envying him. He wouldn’t have minded leaving for this part too. The bones in mummified remains had been known to snap when you tried to move the limbs, and he was all set to flinch himself-he was already flinching mentally-if that were to happen. He took in a breath, held it, and pulled harder, steadily and slowly bearing down on the shoulder joint. Something-not bone, thank God-gave, and the arm moved an inch, two inches. Enough. It remained in the position to which he’d pulled it. The humerus hadn’t broken or popped out of its socket.
He let out his breath, wiped off the sheen of sweat that had beaded on his forehead, and bent to see under the arm. The skin there had folded over itself in the process of loosening and mummifying, and it took him a good ten minutes to pry the fold apart with his fingers so that he could see what might be hidden within. He was just straightening up when he heard Sandoval’s car pull up outside the building. The chief, who’d been gone about twenty minutes, came in, preceded by a wintergreen gust of Pepto-Bismol. He had brought two cardboard cups of still-steaming cappuccino, one of which he handed to Gideon, who gratefully gulped half of it down. The Sacred Bean Cafe was the logo on the side.
“Pretty good, huh?” Sandoval said with a reasonable semblance of cheer.
“It sure is. Thanks.”
“See, didn’t I tell you?” The break and the Pepto-Bismol had done him good. While hardly happy with the way things were going, he did seem reconciled to his fate.
For a while they stood beside the table, companionably drinking their coffees.
“So, profesor, he was murdered? That’s it?”
Again, Gideon gave him the short answer. “I believe so. Someone did their best, that’s for sure. But not with a gun.”
“But how? If not by bullet, then by what? Show me.”
Gideon guessed that there was little genuine interest behind the request, that Sandoval was merely playing the role that he thought was expected of him as police chief. But then Gideon wasn’t a man who needed a lot of coaxing when it came to providing skeletal edification. To ask was to receive.
“Sure, I’ll show you. Take a look at this.” He grasped the rear segment of the seventh rib and pulled it slightly forward. “What do you see?”
Sandoval studied it. “A hole,” he replied sensibly.
“But not all the way through.”
“No, not all the way through.”
“But almost through.” Gideon turned on the Maglite and held it behind the rib. “See? Look into the hole. You can see that some light comes through.”
“Ye-es,” Sandoval said slowly, peering hard. Perhaps, thought Gideon, he really has gotten interested, or at any rate curious. “I can see a little point of light, where the bone is just barely broken all the way through.”
“It’s not just a pinpoint, Chief. Use the magnifying glass.” Gideon kept the flashlight steady behind the rib. “What’s it shaped like?”
Sandoval peered through the glass. His eyes widened. “Ah, I see. It’s… I don’t know… it’s like a, like a tiny star… no, like a little equis.”
Equis. The Spanish word for the letter X.
“Yes, that’s one way to describe it,” Gideon said. “Or you could call it a cross?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“And when I asked you for a Phillips-head screwdriver a little while ago, you called it un desarmador de…?”
“De cruz.” Sandoval’s eyes widened. He straightened up. “Cross! A cross-shaped screwdriver!” He bent to stare through the lens again. “Then a screwdriver made this hole?”
For an answer Gideon held up the board for him to see the indentations the screwdriver had made. Each thrust had left a neat little X -shaped dent in the wood, all identical to one another and almost exactly like the one in the rib. The conclusion was inescapable. Garcia had been stabbed, at least once, with a Phillips-head screwdriver, which had penetrated the front of the rib, its tip breaking through the back just enough to leave its X - shaped perforation. The initial X -shaped perforation in front had, of course, been obliterated by the round shaft as the thrust continued.
Sandoval straightened up, his forehead wrinkling. “Stabbed to death by a screwdriver…” He scowled. “But wait-there is no wound in the skin, no entrance wound. How can-?”
“Ah, but there is an entrance wound,” Gideon said. “Three of them, in fact.”
He showed Sandoval what he had found under the arm: a cluster of three tiny black holes in the armpit.
“They’re so small,” Sandoval said.
“They were small enough to start with, so they were able to contract and close up a little afterward,” said Gideon. Whichever one made the hole in the rib would probably have gone through the lungs and the heart and thus killed him. Even if it hadn’t, he could very well have bled to death.
Sandoval still looked puzzled. “But to be stabbed in the, the…” He sought the English word and failed. “En el sobaco.” He indicated his own armpit. “ Three times! Why would… how would…”
“It’s not that uncommon,” Gideon said. “Someone tries to stab you, you throw up your arm to protect yourself-” He demonstrated. “And, ouch, that’s where you wind up getting it.”
“I see. Yes, it’s all very interesting.” He thought for a moment. “Profesor-”
“Please, call me Gideon.”
