Julie.
SIX
As mummified remains went, they weren’t that bad.
The body had been out there long enough, and in an environment that was hot enough and dry enough, so that there was nothing anyone would call a stench-just an earthy, musty smell, like decaying bark on the forest floor. And it had dried out enough that the skin-the hide was more like it, at this point-no longer glistened with exuded fat or other nasty effluvia. It had become a stiff, brown parchment-like object whose appearance had more in common with the mummy of Ramses II than with anybody who’d been walking around on two legs six months earlier.
All of this came as a welcome relief to Gideon. Like any forensic anthropologist, he took satisfaction and pleasure in working with skeletons, in reconstructing, at least in part, the living human being-sex, age, habits, appearance, occupation, the whole history of a life, and often the nature of its death-from a pile of bones. But fresh, or rather not-quite-fresh, corpses were another thing. Unlike most of his forensic colleagues, he had never inured himself to the nasty phases that bodies went through on their journey from flesh and blood to bare bones-“decomps,” as they were called in the trade. In what he considered the immortal words of the Munchkin Coroner of Oz, he preferred his corpses “not only really dead, but really most sincerely dead,” the older the better. A decade was usually a safe bet, a millennium better still. He was, in a word, squeamish.
But then he’d never meant to become a forensic anthropologist, had he? A quiet, scholarly career as a professor of physical anthropology was more what he’d had in mind. His doctoral dissertation had been on early Plestocene hominid locomotion, and he had assumed his subsequent teaching and research would keep him immersed in the femurs, pelves, and tibias of that period, a comfortable million or so years back. Indeed, his academic life had done just that. But physical anthropology professors were necessarily expert “bone readers,” and like others in the field, he had been called on to put this expertise to more contemporary uses. And in truth, it had proven fascinating, if sometimes stomach-churning, this scientific detective work. Nowadays, to his own surprise, he felt himself a little at loose ends if he wasn’t involved in some forensic case or another.
And, as Julie suggested, it was never very long before one came and found him. Even in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico.
Sandoval, a small, soft, nervous, harried sort of man who reminded Gideon strongly of someone-he couldn’t put his finger on whom-had filled him in on the finding of the body and on Dr. Bustamente’s conclusions concerning it. Now, gloved hands behind his back-a pair of disposable gloves had been provided for him-Gideon stood looking at it from three or four feet away, the chief fidgeting away at his side. The earthly remains of Manuel Garcia, if that was really his name, were lying mostly on their right side on the chipped, enameled tabletop-a type of embalming table that had been up-to-the-minute a hundred years ago. One knee was drawn up, the other extended. The left arm, twisted so that the palm faced up, was stiffly stretched along the left side and down toward the drawn-up knee, the right arm hidden beneath the body.
Below the waist, the left side-the uppermost side-had rotted away here and there, allowing glimpses of the skeletal underpinnings-the sharp rim of the innominate, the knobby, yellow, lateral condyles of the femur and tibia. A couple of inches above the knee, the bone had once suffered a break, possibly when he’d been a child. It had healed a long time ago, but it had been badly set, or more likely not set at all, so that there was a kink in the bone, an angle that didn’t belong there.
“Healed transverse fracture, distal third of the right femoral shaft,” he murmured automatically, making mental notes for his report. “Fully remodeled
SIX
As mummified remains went, they weren’t that bad.
The body had been out there long enough, and in an environment that was hot enough and dry enough, so that there was nothing anyone would call a stench-just an earthy, musty smell, like decaying bark on the forest floor. And it had dried out enough that the skin-the hide was more like it, at this point-no longer glistened with exuded fat or other nasty effluvia. It had become a stiff, brown parchment-like object whose appearance had more in common with the mummy of Ramses II than with anybody who’d been walking around on two legs six months earlier.
All of this came as a welcome relief to Gideon. Like any forensic anthropologist, he took satisfaction and pleasure in working with skeletons, in reconstructing, at least in part, the living human being-sex, age, habits, appearance, occupation, the whole history of a life, and often the nature of its death-from a pile of bones. But fresh, or rather not-quite-fresh, corpses were another thing. Unlike most of his forensic colleagues, he had never inured himself to the nasty phases that bodies went through on their journey from flesh and blood to bare bones-“decomps,” as they were called in the trade. In what he considered the immortal words of the Munchkin Coroner of Oz, he preferred his corpses “not only really dead, but really most sincerely dead,” the older the better. A decade was usually a safe bet, a millennium better still. He was, in a word, squeamish.
But then he’d never meant to become a forensic anthropologist, had he? A quiet, scholarly career as a professor of physical anthropology was more what he’d had in mind. His doctoral dissertation had been on early Plestocene hominid locomotion, and he had assumed his subsequent teaching and research would keep him immersed in the femurs, pelves, and tibias of that period, a comfortable million or so years back. Indeed, his academic life had done just that. But physical anthropology professors were necessarily expert “bone readers,” and like others in the field, he had been called on to put this expertise to more contemporary uses. And in truth, it had proven fascinating, if sometimes stomach-churning, this scientific detective work. Nowadays, to his own surprise, he felt himself a little at loose ends if he wasn’t involved in some forensic case or another.
And, as Julie suggested, it was never very long before one came and found him. Even in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico.
Sandoval, a small, soft, nervous, harried sort of man who reminded Gideon strongly of someone-he couldn’t put his finger on whom-had filled him in on the finding of the body and on Dr. Bustamente’s conclusions concerning it. Now, gloved hands behind his back-a pair of disposable gloves had been provided for him-Gideon stood looking at it from three or four feet away, the chief fidgeting away at his side. The earthly remains of Manuel Garcia, if that was really his name, were lying mostly on their right side on the chipped, enameled tabletop-a type of embalming table that had been up-to-the-minute a hundred years ago. One knee was drawn up, the other extended. The left arm, twisted so that the palm faced up, was stiffly stretched along the left side and down toward the drawn-up knee, the right arm hidden beneath the body.
Below the waist, the left side-the uppermost side-had rotted away here and there, allowing glimpses of the skeletal underpinnings-the sharp rim of the innominate, the knobby, yellow, lateral condyles of the femur and tibia. A couple of inches above the knee, the bone had once suffered a break, possibly when he’d been a child. It had healed a long time ago, but it had been badly set, or more likely not set at all, so that there was a kink in the bone, an angle that didn’t belong there.
“Healed transverse fracture, distal third of the right femoral shaft,” he murmured automatically, making mental notes for his report. “Fully remodeled
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