"Look," Gideon said, "I didn’t mean it couldn’t be an Indian. It could be anyone. I meant don’t assume the circumstances point to an Indian."

Julie moved away from his shoulder and swung around to sit on the table, disturbingly near. He could have rested an arm on her thigh without moving from his chair. "I’m not sure about your logic either," she said, looking down at him.

Your logic? He was aware of an absurd letdown feeling. He had expected her support. "What exactly bothers you?" he asked.

"In the first place, how do you know without doing any lab tests that the skeleton hasn’t been in the ground twenty years, or a hundred? I know you’re not familiar with the soil or the climate…" She paused to let him answer.

"I just know," he said, telling the truth. "You get a feel for it, even if you can’t quantify your methods. Color of the bone…weight…density…" He picked up the vertebra. "Five years at least, ten years at most." He turned to John. "Have you ever known me to guess wrong?"

"Lots of times. What about those hand bones in the Reilly case, or the arm bone you said was sharpened when a dog had just chewed it up?"

"Those were different. That humerus had been sharpened, only it was a dog that-" He stopped and joined John in easy laughter. John had earned the right to be critical.

He wasn’t so sure about Julie, however. "What bothers you in the second place?" he said to her.

She picked up one of the baskets. "These," she said. "I’ll check my texts later, but I’m sure these weren’t made by any recent Washington Indians. The form is wrong, and the way the decoration is overlaid. The twining itself doesn’t look right. At least I don’t think so."