by Kathy Reichs
Nothing.
“Let’s get cutting.”
Downstairs, the Oka bones were as I’d left them.
The clock said ten past ten. Normally, I’d have begun with a full skeletal inventory. Since Hubert would be phoning soon, I decided to jump protocol and go straight to ID. Completion of the bone count could wait.
To avoid the influence of preconceived bias, I perform my analyses prior to viewing documentation. I see working in the dark as a sort of double-blind check.
Setting the antemortem records aside, I began to construct a biological profile.
By noon I’d determined that the skeleton was, in fact, that of a white female in excess of sixty-five years of age. Though I’d noted widespread osteoarthritis, advanced periostitis, and significant tooth loss, I’d found nothing sufficiently unique to positively establish ID.
I was sliding Christelle Villejoin’s medical records from their envelope when I heard the anteroom door open. Seconds later, Briel appeared.
Though the frown lines were present, she made a lip gesture I chose to interpret as a grin.
“Taking a break?” I asked.
“Bones interest me. May I watch while you work?”
I matched her nonanswer with one of my own.
“I apologize for knowing so little about you. I’m away so much. You come to us from where?”
She misinterpreted my meaning. “My father was a diplomat. We moved a great deal.”
OK. That explained the accent.
“Where was home before Montreal?”
“Montpellier, France.”
“Ooh, climate shock.” I laughed.
She did not. “My husband is from here.”
“Still. In winter.” I pantomimed weighing two objects, one in each hand. “South of France? Quebec? That’s devotion above and beyond.”
The perpetual frown never faltered.
“What does your husband do?”
“He is in private business.”
Conversation was like pulling impacted molars. I remembered why I’d given up in the past. Nevertheless, I soldiered on.
“Do you live in the city?”
“We have a condo on Fullum.”
“Handy. You can walk here.”
“Yes. May I observe you?”
When working, there are things I avoid like a case of the drips. Cops trying to rush me. Prosecutors trying to sway me. Anyone trying to look over my shoulder.
I started to dodge her request. As I had previous ones.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve explained. I don’t—”
“It’s my lunch hour. My own time.”
“I’m really humping to get this one done.” I smiled modestly. “Besides, most of what I do is flat-out boring.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
I was framing a firmer refusal when the door opened again. My second visitor was Ryan. His expression told me something was very wrong.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Ryan chin-cocked the remains. “Is it Villejoin?”
“I haven’t finished.”
Ryan nodded to Briel, then spoke to me. “The situation could be nastier than we thought.”
16
RYAN’S FINGERS RAKED HIS HAIR. TOUCHED HIS mouth. Drummed his belt.
“We may have a serial.”
Beside me, Briel went very still.
“In Montreal?”
“No. In Saskatoon.”
“Hardy friggin’ har.”
“I ran into your pal Claudel this morning.”
Sergeant-détective Luc Claudel, SPVM. A city cop. Claudel and I were pals in the sense Hatfields and McCoys were buds.
“He’s working an MP.”
Ryan referred to a missing person case.
“Ten days ago a landlord named Mathieu Baudry dropped in on one of his tenants, Marilyn Keiser, a seventy-two-year-old widow living alone. Baudry was pissed about unpaid rent.”
“Where’s the apartment?”
“Édouard-Montpetit. The place looked abandoned. Unopened mail. Dead plants. Spoiled food in the refrigerator. The usual. Baudry asked around the building. None of the neighbors had seen or talked to Keiser in months. One suggested she might have gone south for the winter.”
“Was that her pattern?”
“No. Keiser wasn’t a snowbird. She drove, occasionally made short trips. Quebec City. Ottawa. Charlevoix. That was about it.”
“Her car is also missing?”
Ryan nodded.
“Family?”
“Two kids, both married and living in Alberta. The only local relative is a stepson named Myron Pinsker. Baudry phoned Pinsker repeatedly. After a week of no contact and no returned calls he gave up and dialed nine-one-one.
“Claudel caught the case, did some digging, learned that since October Marilyn Keiser has missed medical appointments, book club meetings, a sit-down with her rabbi, and about a zillion other engagements. No apologies, no explanations.”
“That’s out of character?”
“Definitely. The stepson is a forty-four-year-old grounds worker at a West Island golf course. Beaconsfield, I think. Told Claudel he was unaware Keiser was missing.”
“Maybe they aren’t close.”
“Maybe not. But someone cashed Keiser’s last three old age insurance pension checks.”
“Crap.”
“Claudel learned that late yesterday. This morning he hauled Pinsker’s ass to the bag.”
“Detective Claudel thinks Madame Keiser is dead?”
Ryan and I glanced at Briel in surprise. She’d been so still, I think we’d both forgotten she was there.
“Doesn’t look good,” Ryan said.
“He suspects the stepson?”
“Pinsker better have a good explanation for those checks.”
Ryan turned to me.
“Four elderly women in two years.”
Three, yes. But four? I must have looked confused.
“Keiser. Anne-Isabelle Villejoin. This one.” Ryan jabbed a thumb toward the bones behind me. “Jurmain.”
“Rose Jurmain was hardly elderly,” I said.
“But she looked old. Remember Janice Spitz’s photos, the ones taken shortly before Jurmain’s death?”
I nodded understanding. Maybe the drugs. Maybe the booze. Rose had looked decades beyond her fifty-nine years.
Again, Ryan gestured at the table. “Keiser’s disappearance throws a whole new wrinkle into this ID.”
I remembered Hubert’s rhetorical question at graveside. How many grannies go missing around here?
Too many, I thought.
“I’ll know within the hour if it’s Christelle Villejoin,” I said.
“Gotta roll. Claudel’s interrogating Pinsker now.”
With that, Ryan was gone.
A greedy relative? Or an anonymous predator targeting the weak?
I felt the usual riot of emotions. Anger. Outrage. Sorrow.
I needed a break.
Excusing myself to Briel, I stripped off my gloves and headed upstairs.
* * *
Thirty minutes later I was back in the basement. Coming down the corridor, I noticed Briel through the little window in the door to the large autopsy suite. She was speaking to Joe Bonnet while removing the brain from one of the Baie-Comeau corpses.
I paused briefly, wondering how the two new hires meshed. Joe was prickly, quick to take offense. Briel was as amiable as a statue in the park.
Briel said something. Joe listened, hair doing a latter-day Ric Flair in the fluorescent light.
Briel touched Joe’s hand. He smiled. Actually laughed.
I continued on to Salle 4.
Taking the envelope that Morin had delivered to me from the Bureau du coroner, I spread the contents on the anteroom desk.
My pessimism was justified. There was little to spread.
Entries only went back to 1987. Nothing sinister there. Space in medical offices is limited, and paperwork is often destroyed when legally
permissible.
For the past two decades, Christelle Villejoin had used a GP named Sylvain Rayner. Sparingly.
In 1989 she’d been diagnosed with shingles. In 1994 it was mild bronchitis.
The most recent entries dated to 1997.
On April 24 Christelle had complained of constipation. Rayner prescribed a laxative. On April 26 the problem was diarrhea.
Good job, Doc.
Christelle had no history of any bone-altering disease. No stents, pins, rods, or artificial joints had been placed in her body. She’d suffered no fractures. She’d undergone no surgeries of any kind.
No X-rays.
Nothing dental.
Christelle’s chart was useless to me.
But there was a number for Rayner’s office.
When I phoned, a robotic voice told me to take a hike. I’m paraphrasing.
On a hunch, I returned to the twelfth floor and tried Google on my laptop.
Sylvain Alexandre Rayner had earned his MD at McGill in 1952, retired from practice in 1998. A little more searching and I had a home number and directions to Rayner’s residence in Côte Saint-Luc.
God bless the Internet.
My call went unanswered. I left a message and headed back downstairs.
I’d barely entered Salle 4 when the anteroom phone shrilled.
“Dr. Temperance Brennan, s’il vous plaît,” a male voice said.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Sylvain Rayner.”
“The Sylvain Rayner who treated Christelle Villejoin?” I spoke loudly and slowly, a well-intentioned reaction based on a common and often false assumption. Rayner is elderly, therefore hard of hearing, perhaps dull-witted.
“Oui.”
“Dr. Sylvain Rayner?” I repeated the name, upping the volume and emphasizing the title.
“I can hear you, miss.” The man had switched to English. “Yes. This is Sylvain Rayner. I’m returning your call.”
Clearly, the good doctor had excellent ears. Or a dandy of a hearing aid. He’d even caught my Anglophone accent.
“Sorry, sir. Occasionally this phone distorts sound levels,” I lied.
“How may I help you?”
“As I said in my message, my name is Temperance Brennan. I’m the forensic anthropologist with the coroner in Montreal. I have some questions concerning a former patient.”
I expected the usual rebuff based on confidentiality. That’s not what I got.
“You’ve found Christelle Villejoin,” Rayner said.
“Perhaps.” Careful. “Remains have come into the morgue. I’ve determined the bones are those of an elderly white female, but I’ve found nothing sufficiently unique to permit positive identification. The medical file I have is quite limited.”
“I’m not surprised. The Villejoin sisters were blessed with remarkable genes. I saw both of them from the mid-seventies until my retirement in ’ninety-eight. They rarely had an ailment. Oh, a bellyache now and then. Common cold. Maybe a rash. Anne-Isabelle and Christelle may have been the two healthiest patients I treated in my entire forty-six years of practice. Never smoked, never drank. Took only drugstore vitamins, an aspirin now and then. No magic potions or lifestyle secrets. Just whoppin’ good DNA.”
“The coroner provided no dental records.”
“The girls weren’t so lucky there. Brushed and flossed like the devil, but still lost their teeth. Didn’t matter how much I scolded. Both hated dentists. Got it from their mama, I think.”
“I see.” Discouraged, I slumped back in my chair.
“Fact is, they distrusted medicine in general. As far as I know, they gave up on doctors altogether when I retired. I referred their files to the young fellow who took over my practice, but he once told me he never laid eyes on either. Funny, them working all their lives at the hospital.”
Is it? I thought. Maybe they’d seen too much.
“I remember the attack,” Rayner said. “Poor Anne-Isabelle. I suppose the same demented animal also killed Christelle that day?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t discuss an open investigation.”
Rayner wasn’t fooled.
“It’s a harsh world we live in.”
I couldn’t disagree with that.
“Dr. Rayner, can you think of anything that might help me determine if this skeleton is Christelle’s? Perhaps something you noticed while examining her? Something she told you? Something you spotted in older records that no longer exist?”
Down the hall I heard a door open, close. Footsteps. The pause continued so long I thought we’d been disconnected.
“Sir?”
“Actually, there was something.”
Sitting upright, I said, “Tell me about it.”
“Christelle had a ninety-degree flexion contracture in the proximal interphalangeal joint of her right little finger. When I asked about it she said her pinky had been crooked since birth.”
“What about the other joints in that finger?” I grabbed pen and paper.
“They were fine. At first. Whenever I saw Christelle I checked her hand. Over the years compensatory deformity developed in the metacarpo-phalangeal and distal interphalangeal joints.”
“Camptodactyly?” I guessed.
“I think so.”
“Congenital?”
“Yes.”
“Bilateral or just on the right?”
“Just the one hand was affected.”
“Did you take X-rays?”
“I offered repeatedly. Christelle always refused. Said the thing never caused her any pain. The finger wasn’t a complaint, and there was never any treatment, so I didn’t chart it. Didn’t seem important.”
Suddenly, I was in a froth to get back to the bones.
“Thank you so much, doctor. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Call if you need anything further.”
Though an affected finger may look painfully distorted, camptodactyly is usually asymptomatic. And, like Christelle, many with the condition seek no medical attention.
Not particularly useful from an antemortem records perspective.
But two things were very useful.
Camptodactyly occurs in less than one percent of the population.
Camptodactyly leaves its mark on the joints.
After disconnecting, I shot upstairs, grabbed a Diet Coke, then practically danced back down to Salle 4.
Scooping the unsorted phalanges, I began to triage.
Row: Proximal. Middle. Distal.
Digit: Thumb. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Side: Left. Right.
Done.
I stared in disbelief.
17
IMPOSSIBLE.
Joe and I had recovered all fifty-six.
I checked every inch of the autopsy table. The entire skeleton. The gurney. The body bag. The floor. The counter. The sink. The plastic sheet I’d used to cover the remains.
I had no distal phalange from the right third finger and none of the three from the right fifth finger.
I checked again.
Nope.
Phalanges are small, often lost from corpses left out in the elements. Had the missing bones been carried from the grave by rodents? Wood rats are known to collect body parts in their nests. Had they been washed away by percolating ground water?
Or had I screwed up?
The skeleton had darkened to the same deep brown as the soil. Had I failed to spot the phalanges in the pit? Missed them in the screen? I’d dug an extra six inches below the skeleton. Had burrowing roots or insects dragged the little buggers deeper than that?
Was it something more sinister? Had Christelle’s little finger been severed before she was placed in the earth? If so, what had happened to her middle finger tip?
And, more important, why? Did removal of the pinky imply a killer who knew his victim, a killer savvy to the forensic value of a finger deformity?
Sweet Jesus, this couldn’t be happening. The camptodactyly was all I had.
Hubert would be calling soon.
Wrong.
Hearing footsteps, I whirled.
Hubert’s belly was rolling through the door. The rest of the coroner was right behind.
“Dr. Brennan.” Cheek-popping grin. “What have you got for me?”
“Actually, I haven’t quite finished.”
Hubert retracted a cuff and checked his watch.
“I have no X-rays, dental records, or adequate medical history. With this other elderly lady gone missing—”
Hubert frowned. “What other elderly lady?”
I summarized Ryan’s account of Marilyn Keiser.
“Eh, misère.”
“But I may have found something.”
Hubert sighed through his nose. It whistled. “How long?”
“Soon.”
“I’ll be in my office.”
When Hubert had gone, I made another sweep of the autopsy room. The phalanges were definitely not there.
I stood a moment, arms wrapping my waist.
Skeletal inventory sheet?
I checked.
At graveside, I’d indicated recovery of fifty-six phalanges. Beyond that, the information was useless. After identifying carpals, metacarpals, tarsals, and metatarsals, I’d merely tallied phalange totals, then bagged the hands and feet. Had I miscounted? Mistaken twigs for middles? Pebbles for distals?
Joe?
Thinking the tech might remember what we’d gotten, I hurried down the hall. The large autopsy suite was deserted. I called upstairs, got Joe’s voice mail. Of course. Lunchtime.
Morgue photos?
It had been a Saturday. I’d worked alone. The bones had required no cleaning, so there’d been no risk of unintentional modification. Other than overview shots documenting condition upon arrival, I’d decided to delay photography until the skeleton was reassembled.
Scene photos?
Though a long shot, the right little finger might be visible in close-ups.
Climbing the back stairs to the main level, I exited to the lobby and took an unrestricted elevator to the second floor. A guy named Pellerin greeted me in the Service de l’identité judiciaire.
I requested the scene shots from the Oka recovery. Pellerin asked me to wait and disappeared into the back. After a short delay, he reappeared with a thick brown envelope. I thanked him and went back downstairs.
Sliding a spiral-bound album from the envelope, I started flipping through 5 by 7 color prints.
