Free Skull Duggery by Aaron Elkins Page A

itself, but from the skin’s being scraped raw by whatever it’s impacting against.”
    “And that’s what this is?”
    “I think so.” A shored exit wound, it was called, “shored” in the sense that whatever the skin is pressed against shores up and supports the edges of the opening.
    “And if that’s the case,” he went on, “we have to ask-”
    But Sandoval’s despondency had gotten the better of him. “Entrance wound, exit wound, what difference does it make which way the bullet was going? Murdered is murdered.” He made a hopeless, harassed gesture with both hands and Gideon suddenly realized whom he reminded him of. With his round but pointy-chinned, mobile face and gleaming, bulgy eyes, he was like a Mexican Peter Lorre; Peter Lorre in Casablanca, at his squirrelly, angst-ridden best.
    “Oh, but it makes a big difference,” Gideon said. “Just bear with me now, Chief. Think about it for a minute. If this is an exit wound, then where’s the entrance wound?”
    Sandoval frowned. “If… what?”
    “There’s no other hole of any size anywhere on the torso or abdomen. This is the only one. How can that be? Obviously, you can have an entrance wound with no exit wound, but how can there be an exit wound with no entrance wound?”
    Sandoval jerked his head in frustration. “Please, profesor, have mercy… can’t you just…?”
    “Chief Sandoval,” Gideon said quietly, glad to be able to tell the chief something he so desperately wanted to hear. “I don’t think this is a bullet wound at all.”
    Once again, Sandoval’s eyes lit up, but warily this time. He’d already had his hopes raised once, only to have them promptly dashed. “But what then would it be? You said yourself, there is no entrance wound. How can an object exit from a body if it has never entered it?”
    “It can do it if it’s been inside all along.”
    “If it’s-” Sandoval did a classic double take. “If…”
    “Come on,” Gideon said, “I want to try something.”
    He bent to pick up the slab of all-too-human hide, hesitated as a brief shiver of distaste ran up his spine, then grasped it resolutely by its edges and returned with it to the embalming table, the utterly perplexed Sandoval tagging along a couple of feet behind him. Once there, Gideon held it to the front of the body in about its natural place, although the warping and twisting that went along with mummification made it impossible to do this precisely. Then, grasping the rear portion of the broken sixth rib with his other hand, he tugged it a quarter of an inch upward, which put its front end directly in line with the hole in the chest. A little gentle pressure on the chest, a slight rotation, and the rib’s jagged, broken end pushed through the hole with a fit so tight, so near perfect, that when he let go of both chest and rib, they remained locked together, unmoving.
    Sandoval stared, openmouthed. “A rib?” His plump face crinkled with happiness. He began to laugh. “A rib made this hole? His own rib? From inside?”
    Gideon laughed along with him, pleased for Sandoval’s sake. It had been the form of the wound that had gotten the gears of his mind going: Somewhere between round and oval, but with a little tail hooking out of it. “Comma shaped” was the way he had described it to himself, and the term had rung a bell with him. “Comma shaped” was also the shorthand term he used in describing to his students the shape of the thoracic ribs in cross-section. Comma-shaped hole, comma-shaped shaft of bone… Could it be…? he had wondered.
    It could, and it was.
    “He must have hit on his left side,” he said now. “So that when the broken rib punched through, that side was flush up against a rock, or against the ground, which would have resulted in the abrasion ring.”
    “Then there is no reason to believe he was murdered?” Sandoval said joyously. He had the result he’d wanted but had hardly dared hope for. “A simple fall, no