“ ‘This isn’t a tube,’ Doc says, once again touching the dead man’s stiff right hand with his own finger. ‘This is apincers. Combine that with the grease and those little bits of sand on the palm and the insides of the fingers, and what do you get?’
“I knew, but since George was the law, I let him say it. ‘If he was eatin somethin when he died,’ he says, ‘where the hell is it?’
“Doc pointed to the dead man’s neck—which even Nancy Arnault had noticed, and thought of as puffy—and he says, ‘I’ve got an idea that most of it’s still right in there where he choked on it. Hand me my bag, Vincent.’
“I handed it over. He tried rummaging through it and found he could only do it onehanded and still keep all that meat balanced on his knees: he was a big man, all right, and he needed to keep at least one hand on the ground to keep himself from tipping over. So he hands the bag over to me and says, ‘I’ve got two otoscopes in there, Vincent—which is to say my little examination lights. There’s my everyday and a spare that looks brandnew. We’re going to want both of them.’
“ ‘Now, now, I don’t know about this,’ George says. ‘I thought we were gonna leave all this for Cathcart, on the mainland. He’s the guy the state hired for work like this.’
“ ‘I’ll take the responsibility,’ Doc Robinson said. ‘Curiosity killed the cat, you know, but satisfaction brought him back snapass happy. You got me out here in the cold and damp without my morning tea or even a slice of toast, and I intend to have a little satisfaction if I can. Maybe I won’t be able to. But I have a feeling…Vincent, you take this one. George, you take the new one, and don’t drop it in the sand, please and thank you, that’s a two hundreddollar item. Now, I haven’t been down on all fours like a little kid playin horsie since I was I’m gonna say seven years old, and if I have to hold the position long I’m apt to fall on top of this fella, so you guys be quick and do just what I say. Have you ever seen how the folks in an art museum will train a couple of pinspots on a small painting to make it look all bright and pretty?’
“George hadn’t, so Doc Robinson explained. When he was done (and was sure George Wournos got it), the island’s newspaper editor knelt on one side of that sittinup corpse and the island’s constable knelt on the other, each of us with one of the Doc’s little barrellights in hand. Only instead of lighting up a work of art, we were going to light up the dead man’s throat so Doc could take a look.
“He got himself into position with a fair amount of gruntin and puffing—woulda been funny if the circumstances hadn’t been so strange, and if I hadn’t been sort of afraid the man was going to have a heartattack right there—and then he reached out one hand, slipped it into the guy’s mouth, and hooked down his jaw like it was a hinge. Which, accourse, when you think about it, is just what it is.
“ ‘Now,’ he says. ‘Get in close, boys. I don’t think he’s gonna bite, but if I’m wrong, I’ll be the one who pays for the mistake.’
“We got in close and shone the lights down the dead man’s gullet. It was just red and black in there, except for his tongue, which was pink. I could hear the Doc puffin and grunting and he says, not to us but to himself, ‘A little more,’ and he pulled down the lower jaw a little further. Then, to us, ‘Lift em up, shine em straight down his gullet,’ and we did the best we could. It changed the direction of the light just enough to take the pink off the dead man’s tongue and put it on that hanging thing at the back of his mouth, the whatdoyoucall it—”
“Uvula,” Stephanie and Dave said at the same time.
Vince nodded. “Ayuh, that. And just beyond it, I could see somethin, or the top of somethin, that was a dark gray. It was only for two or three seconds, but it was enough to satisfy Doc Robinson. He took his fingers out of the dead man’s mouth—the lower lip made a kind of plopping sound as it went back against the gum, but the jaw stayed down pretty much where it was—and then he sat back, puffing away six licks to the dozen.
“ ‘You boys are going to have to help me stand up,’ he says when he got enough wind so he could talk. ‘Both my legs are asleep from the knees on down. Damn, but I’m a fool to weigh this much.’
“ ‘I’ll help you up when you tell me,’ George says. ‘Did you see anything? Because I didn’t see anything. What about you, Vincent?’
“ ‘I thought I did,’ I says. The truth is I knew friggin well I did—pardon, Steff—but I didn’t want to show him up.
“ ‘Ayuh, it’s back there, all right,’ Doc says. He still sounded out of breath, but he sounded satisfied, too, like a man who’s scratched a troublesome itch. ‘Cathcart’ll get it out and then we’ll know if it’s a piece of steak or a piece of pork or a piece of something else, but I don’t see that it matters. We know what matters—he came out here with a piece of meat in his hand and sat down to eat it while he watched the moonlight on the reach. Propped his back up against this litter basket. And choked, just like the little Indian in the nursery rhyme. On the last bite of what he brought to snack on? Maybe, but not necessarily.’
“ ‘Once he was dead, a gull could have swooped in and taken what was left right out of his hand,’ George says. ‘Just left the grease.’
“ ‘Correct,’ Doc says. ‘Now are you two gonna help me up, or do I have to crawl back over to George’s car and pull myself up by the doorhandle?’ ”
8
“So what do you think, Steffi?” Vince asked, taking a throatcooling swallow of his Coke. “Mystery solved? Case closed?”
“Not on your granny!” she cried, and barely registered their appreciative laughter. Her eyes were sparkling. “The causeofdeath part, maybe, but…whatwas it, by the way? In his throat? Or would that be getting ahead of the story?”
“Darlin, you can’t get ahead of a story that doesn’t exist,” Vince said, and his eyes were also sparkling. “Ask ahead, behind, or sideways. I’ll answer anything. Same with Dave, I imagine.”
As if to prove this was indeed so,The Weekly Islander ’s managing editor, said: “It was a piece of beef, probably steak, and very likely from one of your better cuts—your tenderloin, sirloin, or filet mignon. It was cooked mediumrare, andasphyxiation due to choking was what went on the death certificate, although the man we have always called the Colorado Kid also had suffered a massive cerebral embolism—your stroke, in other words.