The chair was stacked with medical journals so I perched on the edge, grateful Dr. Yee was willing to trust me. Dr. Yee was never careless with information, but he wasn't as paranoid as the police detectives. He returned with a file folder and a manila envelope and took his seat in the swivel chair, tossing both on the desk beside me.
"Are those the photographs? Can I see?"
"Sure, but they won't tell you much." He reached for the envelope and extracted a set of color photographs, eight-by-ten prints showing various views of the scene where Alfie Toth had been found. The terrain was clearly rugged: boulders, chaparral, an ancient live oak. "Toth was identified through his skeletal remains, largely dental work. Percy Ritter's body in Nota Lake was found in much the same circumstances; same MO and a similar remote locale. In both cases, it took a while before anyone stumbled across the remains."
I paused, staring at one close-up view with perplexity, not quite sure what I was looking at; probably the lower half of Alfie Toth's body crumpled on the ground. The pelvic bones appeared to be still joined, but the femur, tibia, and fibulas were tangled together in a heap, like bleached kindling. The haphazard skeletal assortment looked like a Halloween decoration badly in need of assembly.
Dr. Yee was saying, "Ritter's mummified body was found fully clothed with various personal items in his pockets… expired California driver's license, credit cards. Identification was confirmed by his fingerprints, which had to be reconstituted. Must have been dry out there because bacterial growth and putrefaction are halted when the body moisture diminishes below fifty percent. Ritter's flesh was as stiff as leather, but Kirchner managed to retrieve all but the right-hand thumb and ring finger. Ritter'd had his prints in the system since 1972. What a bad ass. Real scum."
"I didn't know you could salvage prints like that."
He shrugged. "You sometimes have to sever the fingers first. To rehydrate, you can soak 'em in a three percent lye solution or a one percent solution of Eastman Kodak Photo-Flo 200 for a day or two. Another method is to use successive alcohol solutions, starting at ninety percent and gradually decreasing. With Ritter, the first presumption was of suicide, though Kirchner said he had big doubts and the county sheriff did, too. Keep in mind, there wasn't any suicide note at the scene, but there was also no environmental disorder and no signs of trauma on the body. No fractured hyoid to suggest cervical compression, no evidence of knife wounds, skull fractures, gunshot-"
"In other words, no signs of foul play."
"Right. Which is not to say he couldn't have been subdued in some way. Same thing with Toth, except there was no personal ID. Sheriff's department went back through months' worth of missing-persons reports, contacting relatives. They made the initial match that way."
"So what are we looking at?" I asked, turning the photograph so he could see.
"To all appearances, both guys tied a rope around a boulder, put a noose around their necks, pushed the rock through the Y of a tree limb, and hung themselves. It wasn't until later that the similarities came to light."
I stared at him. "That's odd." I glanced down at a photograph, in which I could now see the crisscross of rope circling the circumference of a rock about the size of a large watermelon. Toth's torso and extremities had separated, falling in a tumble on one side of the tree while the upper half of his body, pulled by the weight of the boulder, had fallen on the other still attached by the length of rope.
"Nothing remarkable about the rope, in case you're wondering. Garden variety clothes line available at any supermarket or hardware store," he said. Dr. Yee watched my face. "Not to be racist about it, but the method's more compatible with an Asian sensibility. Some dude out in Nota County, how'd it even occur to him? And then a second one here? I mean, it's possible Toth heard about his pal's alleged suicide and imitated his methodology, but even so, it seems off. As far as I know, the Nota Lake cops kept the specifics to themselves. That was information only shared between agencies."
"Really. If Alfie Toth wanted to kill himself, you'd think he'd blow his brains out; something simple and straightforward, more in keeping with his lifestyle."
Dr. Yee shifted back in his chair with a squeak. "A more plausible explanation is that both victims were killed by the same party. The reason the cops are so paranoid is to avoid all the kooks and the copycats. Someone ups and confesses, you don't want anyone other than the killer in possession of the details. So far the papers haven't gotten wind of it. They know a body was found here, but that's about the extent of it. I'm not sure reporters have put two and two together with the deceased in Nota Lake. That didn't get any play here."