Icy Clutches by Aaron Elkins Page B

up with much of anything. He didn't even know how many people were represented on that table.
    He changed his mind about having a donut, went back in, got a paper towel to hold it in, and came back out, munching slowly.
    The scanty results weren't his fault, of course; there simply were no distinctive features, nothing to separate one individual human being from another; no healed fractures, no signs of surgery, no distinctive anomalies or peculiar genetic formations. The only interesting features, really, were those perimortem injuries to the mandible. Funny, when you thought about it, how much they...
    He frowned, finished off the donut with his third bite, and went back inside. He picked up the mandible again, thoughtfully stroking the broken margin with his thumb. Then he fingered the cracked molar, the crushed condyle. Was there something to think about here after all, or was he just—
    The door opened. “Hey, are you still at it?” Parker asked. “You need some more time?” He waited at the door. Behind him Tibbett peered warily over his shoulder.
    Gideon glanced up at the wall clock. They'd been gone almost an hour. It had seemed like fifteen minutes, but he was used to that when he got absorbed in skeletal material. Reluctantly he put the mandible down: He could give it some more thought tomorrow, when he had a decent lens.
    "No, come on in,” he said. “I'm just about finished."
    Parker approached. Tibbett kept pace with him, remaining a gingerly half-step behind.
    Gideon told them as much as he was relatively sure of. The mandible was from a male Caucasian of twenty-five, give or take three years, probably above average size. The femur and the foot were also both adult male, both above average size. No indicators of race, but no reason to think they weren't also Caucasian. That was it. His materializing questions about the mandible he kept to himself for the time being.
    "Well—does that mean they're all from one person?” Tibbett asked.
    Gideon spread his hands. “It could be one person, could be three. There isn't any duplication of parts, so there's no obvious proof that it's more than one, but that doesn't mean it isn't. And the appearance of the bones isn't different enough—or similar enough—to say for sure whether they all belong to the same person. And except for the bones in the boot, none of them are adjacent to each other in the living body, so we can't even put them together to see how well they fit or don't fit."
    Tibbett's eyebrows went up. "That's the way you tell?"
    Gideon smiled. Explaining skeletal analysis was like telling someone how you made a matchstick disappear or plucked a coin out of nowhere. A lot of otherwise intelligent people were disappointed when they found out there wasn't any magic involved.
    "Well,” he said, looking soberly at the assistant superintendent, “I'm thinking of applying the Baker and Newman regression equations for determining bone association from relative weights in ostensibly commingled remains. If I can get an accurate scale."
    "Ah,” Tibbett said, his sense of propriety restored. “We'll certainly see that you get an accurate scale."
    "Well, it's not three people,” Parker said. “I can tell you that right now."
    Gideon looked inquiringly at him.
    "There were three people on that survey team,” Parker said, “but only two of them were men. The other was a woman, Jocelyn Yount. And since these bones are all from men, they can't be her, right? That leaves James Pratt and Steve Fisk."
    "Why, that's right,” Tibbett said appreciatively.
    "But we still don't know for a fact that these are from the survey,” Gideon said.
    Parker shook his head. “Nah, those are the only missing people we've ever had in that section of the bay. Since they started keeping records, anyway. Arthur's right about that."
    "Well, of course I am,” Tibbett agreed.
    And he probably was. Certainly there was nothing about the bones that suggested that they hadn't been there