Free Dying on the Vine by Aaron Elkins

Sheesh, you came up with it, how would
you
explain it?”
    “Yeah, how would you explain it?” John contributed, but then he came up with a question of his own. “What’s that cliff like, Rocco? I mean, is it really, like, a
cliff
—straight up and down—or more like sort of a hill?”
    “Well, I guess it’s not technically a cliff. You can get up it without a rope and pitons, if that’s what you mean, but it sure as hell isn’t what anybody would call a
hill
. I mean, I made it to the top okay myself, but there were some dicey spots along the way. I had to use my hands a lot, and I was breathing pretty hard by the time I got there.”
    “So how likely would it be,” Gideon asked, “that a man of Pietro’s age—”
    “Almost sixty,” said Rocco. “And, from what I understand, he wasn’t in the greatest shape in the world. A whole lot of years working in those damp wine cellars had screwed up his lungs.”
    “So it wouldn’t be too likely, would it, that he’d climb back up a cliff like that unless he had some really good reason? Since he could have just shot himself right down there with her.”
    “That’s the way I see it,” said Rocco.
    They walked a few paces, heads down, thinking, and then Gideon said: “Could there be anything special about that particular cliff? Does it have any kind of history or reputation? You know, is it a place people come to commit suicide? Lovers’ Point, Suicide Mountain, something like that?”
    “Not that I ever heard of.”
    “Well, maybe it had some special significance, some personal significance—emotional, symbolic—to them. Could that be?”
    “Yeah, I suppose so,” Rocco said with a shrug. “I guess that could be.”
    Gideon laughed. He didn’t think much of the idea either. “All right, tell me this: How did you establish that
he
killed
her
? How do you know it wasn’t the other way around? She killed him and then shot herself?”
    “How could she? According to you, she was already dead from the fall when she was shot. Pretty damn hard to shoot yourself in the head when you’re dead.”
    “Never mind ‘according to me.’ How did you establish it in the first place, during the investigation?”
    “Oh God, a lot of things. First, the way she was shot: back of the head, execution style. You saw that in the class. The bullet entered in the lower back part of her skull and then ran slightly upward, hitting the inside of her skull pretty much in the middle of her forehead. Which—as I’m sure I don’t have to tell either of you guys—is the path you get if the victim was kneeling, with her head bowed. Well, how many suicides have you run into where the person shot himself in the back of the head that way? Not many.”
    “No,” Gideon said, “but there are some who do.”
    “That’s true,” John said. “In fact, you can’t come up with any part of the head that some suicide hasn’t shot himself in: the nose, the eye, the ear, the top of the head, the back of the head, the teeth . . . almost any part of the body, in fact: the crotch, the armpit—”
    “Well, you guys are lucky,” Rocco said. “You get to look at a lot more gunshot deaths than we do over here, so I can’t argue with you. But I’ve seen a few suicides and I never saw one that did it back- to-front. I mean, why would they? It’s harder. It can’t happen very often.”
    “Well, yeah,” John agreed, “that’s so . . .”
    “Yes, it is,” said Gideon, “and your execution-style killing idea was pretty good thinking at the time, but—well, sorry, but it’s not correct. She was already dead when she was shot.”
    “Yeah, so you keep saying.” Rocco rolled his eyes. “Jesus, did we get
anything
right?” His hand flew up. “Don’t answer that.”
    “Well, it’s understandable. You didn’t know then what you know now—that she fell off that cliff first, before—”
    “No,
you
know that. I don’t know that, and I’m waiting to hear something that