Twenty Blue Devils by Aaron Elkins Read Free Book Online Page B

barrel. Nick hadn't done much more than sign it when it was finished. And it had been that affidavit more than anything else, so they understood, that had sunk the notorious three G-men all over again.
    "Yeah, but if Nick was the one who signed it,” John pointed out, “how would they even know Brian had anything to do with it?"
    "I'm not arguing the point, John,” Nelson said. “I just thought it ought to be mentioned. You're the one who said you think there's something fishy."
    Another leaden silence dropped onto them. Cups clicked in saucers. Chairs creaked.
    "I'll tell you what I think,” John said at last. “I think we ought to have his body exhumed and then get it examined by somebody who knows what he's doing. Then let's see where we are."
    "Oh, my Lord, that's horrible!” said Maggie. “It'd just about kill Therese."
    "It wouldn't kill her,” John said patiently. “If somebody murdered Brian, she'd want to know."
    "So would we all,” Nick said; his first words in a long time.
    "But if he was out there in the heat for a week, there's not going to be much left, John. Some bones, maybe."
    "I know. It'd take a forensic anthropologist."
    Nelson snorted. “Of which there are dozens in Papeete."
    "I was thinking of bringing somebody in from the States."
    "You know somebody?” Nick asked.
    "Yeah, I do. The best there is."
    Nick took a while to reply. He sat rotating his cup in its saucer and staring down at its untouched contents: Tahitian Blue Devil, the highest-priced coffee in the world, bar none. At last he looked up and spoke.
    "Do it,” he said softly.
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    Chapter 8
    * * * *
    High in the ink-black sky over the South Pacific, sprawled at his ease in a roomy Air New Zealand first-class seat, with a first-class meal of duckling with orange sauce comfortably inside him and a stemmed crystal glass of Courvoisier at his elbow, Gideon Oliver was having second thoughts.
    He didn't like exhumations. And not merely on aesthetic grounds; that went without saying. More important, exhumations were traumatic experiences for family and friends; especially for family. Digging a corpse out of its grave for a belated postmortem was a sure way to rip open the wounds that had begun to heal when the body was laid down in the first place. And that never failed to make him uncomfortable.
    Besides, he had a hard-to-shake conviction that it was all going to be in aid of nothing. The string of accidents Brian Scott had gotten caught in might make one wonder, but accidents did frequently happen. In strings. And what credible reason was there to think they weren't accidents? Would anyone in his right mind try to murder someone by knocking down a shed in a windstorm?
    On top of that, John's faith in Gideon's ability to find signs of murder, if murder there was, was flattering but overblown.
    There were a lot of things that could kill you without leaving a road map on the skeleton. Most things, actually. The chances were good he would come away from the analysis shaking his head, with nothing to say one way or the other about the cause of death. Or let's say that there were indications that it had been due to a fall, which seemed the most likely thing he would find; a fractured skull or pelvis or some crushed vertebrae. Fine, but what would that prove about murder or the absence of it?
    And on top of that he and John were on their way to a foreign country with the sole and express purpose of second-guessing its official law enforcement authorities. This, he had learned long ago, was unlikely to be a rewarding experience.
    And finally, on top of everything else—or maybe underlying everything else—he was going to be away from Julie for almost a week and already he missed her
    John, untroubled by morbid doubts, was stretched out in the seat next to him, headphones on, contentedly watching the end of the new James Bond movie on the screen. As the closing credits began to roll, he took off the headphones