“Enough! Shoot him. Next!”
Actually, Investigator Onisimov didn't see anything yet; the expression was a linguistic hangover from better days. He had tried to break himself of the habit, but couldn't. Besides that, Matvei Apollonovich was preoccupied and very upset by such a turn of events. A half hour before the call from the Institute of Systemology, Zubato, the medical examiner on duty with him that night, had been called to a highway accident outside of town. Onisimov had to go to the institute alone. And he ended up with a skeleton instead of a warm corpse. Nothing like this had ever been encountered in criminology. Nobody would believe that the body turned into a skeleton on its own — he'd be a laughing stock. The ambulance had left already, and so they couldn't back him up. And he hadn't had time to photograph the body.
In a word, what had happened seemed like nothing more than a series of serious oversights in the investigation. That's why he made sure he had written statements from Prakhov, the technician, and academician Azarov before he left the institute grounds.
The electrical technician Georgii Danilovich Prakhov, twenty years old, Russian, unmarried, draftable, and not a Party member, wrote:
“When I entered the laboratory, the overhead light was on; only the power network was disrupted. The stench in the room was so bad that I almost threw up — it was like a hospital. The first thing that I noticed was a naked man lying in an overturned tank, his head and arms dangling, with a metallic contraption on his head. Something was leaking out of the tub; it looked like a thick ichor. The other one, a new student (I've seen him around), was lying nearby, face up, his arms outspread. I rushed over to the one in the tub and pulled him out. He was still warm and very slippery, so that I couldn't get a good grip on him. I tried to awaken him, but he seemed dead. I recognized him. It was Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein. I had run into him often at the institute. We always said hello. The student was breathing, but remained unconscious. Since there is no one at the institute except for the outside guards, I called an ambulance and the police on the laboratory phone.
“The temporary short circuit had occurred in the power cable that goes to the laboratory electroshield along the wall in an aluminum pipe. The tub broke a bottle that apparently contained acid which ate through in that spot and the cable shorted out like a second — class conductor.”
Zhora wisely left out the fact that he did not investigate the scene of the accident until an hour after the alarm had gone off.
Arkady Arkadievich Azarov, the director of the institute, a doctor of physics and mathematics, and an active member of the Academy of Sciences, fifty — eight, Russian, married, not subject to the draft, and a member of the CPSU, corroborated the fact that he recognized the features of the body shown to him at the scene of the accident by Investigator Onisimov, M.A., as belonging to Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein, acting director of the New Systems Laboratory, and besides that, with the scientific objectivity characteristic of an academician noted that he “had been amazed by the abnormal emaciation of the deceased, the abnormal physical state which did not correspond to his usual appearance.”
At 10:30 in the morning Onisimov returned to headquarters and his office on the first floor, where his windows, hatched with the vertical bars, opened onto Marx Prospect, which was busy at almost any hour of day or night. Matvei Apollonovich gave a brief account of the events to Major Rabinovich, sent a test tube with the liquid to the medical examiner, and called up the emergency room to find out the condition of the only eyewitness. They replied that the lab assistant felt fine and asked to be released.
“Fine, go ahead, I'll send a car for him,” Onisimov said.
No sooner had he arranged for the car than Zubato, the medical examiner, rushed into his office. He was a red — blooded, loud man with hairy arms.
“Matvei, what did you bring me?” He sank into a chair with emphatic disgust. “Some practical joke! How am I supposed to determine the cause of death on a skeleton?”
“I brought you what was left,” Onisimov explained, shrugging. “I'm glad you showed up. I want to know, off the top of your head, how does a body turn into a skeleton?”
“Off the top of my head, as a result of the deterioration of tissues, which under normal circumstances takes weeks and even months. That's all that the body can do about it.”
“All right… then how can you turn a body into a skeleton?”
“Skin the body, cut off the soft tissues, and boil it in water until the bones are completely exposed. It is recommended to change the water. Can you tell me clearly what happened?”
Onisimov told him.
“That's something! I'm really sorry I missed it!” He slapped his knee.
“What happened on the highway?”
“A drunk cyclist hit a cow. Both survived. So you say your body melted?” The expert squinted skeptically and brought his face closer to Onisimov. “Matvei, that doesn't ring true. It just doesn't happen, I can tell you for sure. A man is no icicle, even if he is dead. They didn't trick you?”
“How?”
“You know, switch the body for a skeleton while you were out… and discard the evidence.”
“What are you blabbering about? You mean while an academician stood guard for them? Come on, here's his deposition.” Onisimov fretted as he looked for Azarov's statement.
“Ahh, now they'll show you! The people there….” Zubato wriggled his hairy fingers. “Remember, when that student was exposed to radiation, how the head of the lab tried to blame it all on science, how he said that it was a little — studied phenomenon, that the gamma rays destroyed the crystal cells of the dosimeter. And when we checked, it turned out the students were signed up to work on isotopes without reading about them! Nobody wants to take responsibility, even academicians, if it's a fishy situation. Try to think: did you leave them alone with the body?”
“I did,” the detective's voice fell. “Twice.”
“And that's when your body melted!” Zubato broke out in the hearty laugh of a man who knows that disaster has not struck him.
The detective thought about it and then shook his head.
“Now, you're not going to throw me off the track here. I saw for myself… but what are we going to do with this skeleton now?”
“The hell with it. Wait, here's an idea. Send it over to the city sculpture studio. Let them reconstruct the face according to Professor Gerasimov's method; they are familiar with it. If it's him, you'll have the crime sensation of the century on your hands. If not — “Zubato gave Matvei Apollonovich a sympathetic look. “I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when you talk with Aleksei Ignatievich. All right, I'll send it over there myself. So be it.” He rose. “And while I'm at it, I'll do the death certificate. I'll settle for a skeleton, if you can't come up with a body.”
Zubato left.
“What if they did trick me?” Onisimov recalled the academician's hostility, Assistant Professor Hilobok's flattery, and he shuddered. “I lost the body, the most important thing. Good show there!”
He dialed the chemistry lab.
“Viktoriya Stepanovna, this is Onisimov. Did you analyze the liquid?”
“Yes, Matvei Apollonovich. The report is being typed, but I'll read you the conclusion. “Water — 85 percent, protein — 13 percent, amino acids — 0.5 percent, fatty acids — 0.4 percent and so on. In other words, it's human blood plasma. According to the hemoglutins, it's classified as type A, with lowered water content.”
“Yes, I see. Could it be toxic?”
“I doubt it.”
“Even, if say, you bathed in it?”
“Well, you could swallow some and drown. Does that help?”
“Thank you!” Matvei Apollonovich slammed down the phone. “Wise ass! But I guess that means accidental death is ruled out. Could the assistant have drowned him in the tub? No, it doesn't look like a drowning.”
Onisimov liked the entire business less and less with every passing minute. He spread out the documents he got at the institute's personnel department and at the laboratory and lost himself in their study. He was distracted by the phone.
