Julie moved closer to the table, squeezing between the two men. Gideon was aware of the nearness of her hip and of her faint, fresh fragrance as she bent over the drawing.

"I’ve read a lot of Northwest Coast ethnology and archaeology, Dr. Oliver," she said, "and this doesn’t look like an arrow. It looks a lot like the kind of spear point they’ve turned up at the Marmes Rockshelter in eastern Washington."

"Does it?" said Gideon, interested. "Yes, it could be a spear. He changed the drawing a little, sketching in a few lines. "That does look better. The wooden shaft would attach there."

"Hold it now," John said. "Are we saying this guy was killed by a spear-a wooden spear with a bone point? That’s just a little bizarre, to say the least."

Gideon leaned back in his chair and shrugged.

"So what does that add up to?" John asked. "Was he killed by an Indian?"

"With a bone spear?" Julie said. "You’re kidding. The point I was talking about is ten thousand years old. And the local Indians are tribes like the Quileute and the Quinault. They’re busy managing their fish hatcheries and motels. With computers. They don’t go running around with bone spears."

"Do you know anybody who does?" John asked with a shade of temper. He looked at Gideon. "All right, what’s your theory, Doc?"

"Uh-uh," Gideon said. "I’m the anthropologist. I’ve told you these are the remains of a husky white male about twenty-nine and that this is a bone spear point in his spinal column. You’re the one who gets paid to come up with theories. But I agree with Julie; you’re on the wrong track if you think the spear necessarily means Indians."

John shoved his chair back and thrust himself out of it. "All right," he said, pacing, huge and bearlike in the small room, "we find a body in an Indian graveyard. He’s in there with what you tell me are Indian skeletons buried in Indian baskets. He’s got a bone spear that looks just like what the local Indians used to use stuck in him. But," he said, plopping back into his chair, "in no way could it possibly be an Indian who killed him. I don’t follow the logic."