Déjà Dead

by Kathy Reichs

  According to CUM police, there were no signs of forced entry, and it is unclear how her attacker gained access to the home. An autopsy was performed at the Laboratoire de Médecine Légale by Dr. Pierre LaManche. Dr. Temperance Brennan, an American forensic anthropologist and expert in skeletal trauma, is examining the bones of the victim for indications of knife marks.…

  The story continued with a patchwork of speculations on the victim’s final comings and goings, a synopsis of her life, a heartrending account of the reaction of her family, and promises that the police were doing everything possible to apprehend the killer.

  Several photos accompanied the article, depicting the grizzly drama and its cast of characters. There, in shades of gray, were the apartment and its staircase, the police, the morgue attendants pushing the gurney with its sealed body bag. A scattering of neighbors lined the sidewalk, held back by crime scene tape, their curiosity frozen in grainy black and white. Among the figures inside the tape I recognized Claudel, his right arm raised like the conductor of a high school band. A circular inset presented a close-up of Margaret Adkins, a blurred but happier version of the face I’d seen on the autopsy table.

  A second photograph showed an older woman with bleached hair curled tightly around her head, and a young boy in shorts and an Expos T-shirt. A bearded man in wire-rimmed glasses had one arm placed protectively around the shoulders of each. All three stared from the page with grief and puzzlement, the expression common to those left in the wake of violent crime, a look with which I’ve become all too familiar. The caption identified them as the mother, son, and common-law husband of the victim.

  I was dismayed to see the third photo: a shot of me at a disinterment. I was familiar with it. Taken in 1992 and kept on file, it was frequently exhumed and reprinted. I was, as usual, identified as “… une anthropologiste américaine.”

  “Damn!”

  Birdie flicked his tail and looked disapproving. I didn’t care. My vow to banish the murders from my mind for the entire holiday weekend had been short-lived. I should have known the story was going to be in today’s paper. I finished the last, cold dregs of my coffee and tried Gabby’s number. No answer. Though there could be a million explanations, that, too, made me cranky.

  I went to the bedroom to dress for Tai Chi. The class normally met on Tuesday nights, but since no one was working, they’d voted to hold a special session today. I hadn’t been sure I wanted to go, but the article and the unanswered phone settled it. At least for an hour or two my mind would be clear.

  • • •

  Again, I was wrong. Ninety minutes of “stroking the bird,” “waving hands like clouds,” and “needle at the bottom of the sea” did nothing to put me in a holiday mood. I was so distracted that I was out of sync the entire workout, and came away more aggravated than before.

  Driving home, I turned on the radio, bent on herding my thoughts like a shepherd tends his flock, nurturing the frivolous and driving off the macabre. I was determined that the weekend could still be salvaged.

  “… was killed sometime around noon yesterday. Mme. Adkins was expected by her sister, but did not keep the appointment. The body was discovered at 1327 Desjardins. Police could find no evidence of a break-in, and suspect Mme. Adkins may have known her assailant.”

  I knew I should change the station. Instead, I let the voice suck me in. It stirred what was simmering on my mental back burner, bringing my frustrations to the surface and demolishing with finality any possibility of a weekend furlough.

  “… the results of an autopsy have not been released. Police are scouring east end Montreal, questioning everyone who knew the victim. The incident is the twenty-sixth homicide this year in the CUM. Police are asking anyone with information to call the homicide squad at 555-2052.”

  Without making a conscious decision, I did an about-face and headed toward the lab. My hands steered and my feet worked the pedals. Within twenty minutes I was there, determined to accomplish something, but unsure what.

  The SQ building was quiet, the usual tumult hushed by the desertion of all but an unlucky few. The lobby guards eyed me suspiciously, but said nothing. It may have been the ponytail and spandex, or it may have been a general surliness at having drawn holiday duty. I didn’t care.

  The LML and LSJ wings were completely abandoned. The empty offices and labs seemed to lie in repose, regrouping for the aftermath of a long, hot weekend. My office was as I’d left it, the pens and markers still scattered across the desktop. As I picked them up I looked around, my eyes roving over unfinished reports, uncataloged slides, and an ongoing project on maxillary sutures. The empty orbits of my reference skulls regarded me blankly.

  I still wasn’t sure why I was there or what I planned to do. I felt tense and out of sorts. Again I thought of Dr. Lentz. She’d led me to recognize my alcohol addiction, to face my growing alienation from Pete. Gently but relentlessly her words had picked at the scabs that covered my emotions. “Tempe,” she’d say, “must you always be in control? Can no one else be trusted?”

  Maybe she was right. Perhaps I was just trying to escape the guilt that always plagued me when I couldn’t resolve a problem. Maybe I was simply evading inactivity and the feeling of inadequacy that accompanied it. I told myself the murder investigation really wasn’t my responsibility, that the homicide detectives had that duty, and my job was to assist them with complete and accurate technical support. I chided myself for being there simply for lack of alternative invitations. It didn’t work.

  Although I recognized the logic of my own arguments by the time the pencil clean-up was complete, I still couldn’t escape the feeling that there was something I needed to do. It gnawed at me, like a hamster with a carrot. I couldn’t shake the nagging sensation that I was missing some tiny element that was important to these cases in a way I didn’t yet understand. I needed to do something.

  I pulled a file jacket from the cabinet where I keep old case reports, and another from my current case pile, and laid them beside the Adkins dossier. Three yellow folders. Three women yanked from their surroundings and slaughtered with psychopathic malevolence. Trottier. Gagnon. Adkins. The victims lived miles apart and were dissimilar in background, age, and physical characteristics, yet I couldn’t shake the conviction that the same hand had butchered all three. Claudel could see only the differences. I needed to find the link that would convince him otherwise.

  Tearing off a sheet of lined paper, I constructed a crude chart, heading the columns with categories I thought might be relevant. Age. Race. Hair color/length. Eye color. Height. Weight. Clothing when last seen. Marital status. Language. Ethnic group/religion. Place/type of residence. Place/type of employment. Cause of death. Date and time of death. Postmortem body treatment. Location of body.

  I started with Chantale Trottier, but realized quickly that my files wouldn’t contain all the information I needed. I wanted to see the full police reports and scene photos. I looked at my watch—1:45 P.M. Trottier had been an SQ case, so I decided to drop down to the first floor. I doubted there would be much activity in the homicide squad room, so it might be a good time to request what I wanted.

  I was right. The huge room was almost empty, its colony of regulation gray metal desks largely uninhabited. Three men clustered together in the far corner of the room. Two occupied adjoining desks, facing each other across stacks of file folders and overflowing in-baskets.

  A tall, lanky man with hollow cheeks and hair the color of hand-rubbed pewter sat with his chair tipped back, feet propped high and ankles crossed. His name was Andrew Ryan. He spoke in the hard, flat French of an anglophone, stabbing the air with a ballpoint pen. His jacket hung from the chair back, its empty arms swinging in rhythm to the pen thrusts. The tableau reminded me of firemen at a firehouse, relaxed but ready at a moment’s notice.

  Ryan’s partner watched him from across the desk, head tilted to one side, like a canary inspecting a face outside its cage. He was short and muscular, though his body
was beginning to take on the bulges of middle age. He had the unlined tan of a bronzing salon, and his thick black hair was styled and perfectly combed. He looked like a would-be actor in a promo shot. I suspected even his mustache was professionally coifed. A wooden plaque on his desk said Jean Bertrand.

  The third man perched on the edge of Bertrand’s desk, listening to the banter and inspecting the tassles on his Italian loafers. When I saw him my spirits dropped like an elevator.

  “… like a goat shitting cinders.”

  They laughed simultaneously, with the throaty sound men seem to share when enjoying a joke at the expense of women. Claudel looked at his watch.

  You’re being paranoid, Brennan, I told myself. Get a grip. I cleared my throat and began weaving my way through the labyrinth of desks. The trio fell silent and turned in my direction. Recognizing me, the SQ detectives smiled and rose. Claudel did not. Making no attempt to mask his disapproval, he flexed and lowered his feet, and resumed his tassle inspection, abandoning it only to consult his watch.

  “Dr. Brennan. How are you?” Ryan asked, switching to English and extending his hand in my direction. “You been home lately?”

  “Not for several months.” His grip was firm.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you, do you pack an AK-47 when you go out down there?”

  “No, we keep those mostly for home use. Mounted.”

  I was used to their quips about American violence.

  “They got indoor toilets down there yet?” asked Bertrand. His topic of choice was the South.

  “In some of the bigger hotels,” I responded.

  Of the three men, only Ryan looked embarrassed.

  Andrew Ryan was an unlikely candidate for an SQ homicide detective. Born in Nova Scotia, he was the only son of Irish parents. Both were physicians who trained in London, arriving in Canada with English as their sole language. They expected their son to follow into the professional ranks, and, having chafed under the confines of their own unilingualism, vowed to ensure his fluency in French.

  It was during his junior year at St. Francis Xavier that things began to go bad. Enticed by the thrill of life on the edge, Ryan got into trouble with booze and pills. Eventually, he was spending little time on campus, preferring the dark, stale beer-smelling haunts of dopers and drunks. He became known to the local police, his benders frequently concluding on the floor of a cell, his finales played facedown in vomit. He ended up one night in St. Martha’s Hospital, a cokehead’s blade having pierced his neck, nearly severing his carotid artery.

  As with a born-again Christian, his conversion was swift and total. Still drawn to life in the underbelly, Ryan merely changed sides. He finished his undergraduate studies in criminology, applied for and got a job with the SQ, eventually rising to the rank of detective lieutenant.

  His time on the streets served him well. Though usually polite and soft-spoken, Ryan had the reputation of a brawler who could take the lowlifes on their own terms and match them trick for trick. I’d never worked with him. All this had come to me through the squad room grapevine. I’d never heard a negative comment about Andrew Ryan.

  “What are you doing here today?” he asked. He swept his long arm toward the window. “You should be out enjoying the party.”

  I could see a thin scar winding out of his collar and up the side of his neck. It looked smooth and shiny, like a latex snake.

  “Lousy social life, I guess. And I don’t know what else to do when the stores are closed.”

  I said it brushing bangs back from my forehead. I remembered my gym gear, and felt a bit intimidated by their impeccable tailoring. The three of them looked like an ad for GQ.

  Bertrand came from behind his desk, and extended his hand, nodding and smiling. I shook it. Claudel continued not to look at me. I needed him here like I needed a yeast infection.

  “I wondered if I could take a look at a file from last year. Chantale Trottier. She was killed in October of ’93. The body was found in St. Jerome.”

  Bertrand snapped his fingers into a pointing gesture, which he aimed at me.

  “Yes. I remember that one. The kid in the dump. We still haven’t nailed the bastard that did that one.”

  From the corner of my eye I saw Claudel’s eyes go to Ryan. Though the movement was almost imperceptible, it triggered my curiosity. I doubted Claudel was there on a social call, was certain they’d talked about yesterday’s murder. I wondered if they’d discussed Trottier or Gagnon.

  “Sure,” said Ryan, his face smiling but impassive. “Whatever you need. You think there’s something in there we missed?”

  He reached for a pack of cigarettes and shook one loose. Placing it in his mouth, he extended the pack toward me. I shook my head.

  “No, no. Nothing like that,” I said. “I’ve got a couple of cases upstairs I’m working on, and they keep making me think of Trottier. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for. I’d just like to go over the scene photos and maybe the incident report.”

  “Yeah, I know the feeling,” he said, blowing a stream of smoke out the side of his mouth. If he knew any of my cases were also Claudel’s, he didn’t let on. “Sometimes you just have to follow a hunch. What do you think you’ve got?”

  “She thinks there’s a psychopath out there responsible for every murder since Cock Robin.”

  Claudel’s voice was flat, and I saw that his eyes were back on the tassles. His mouth barely moved when he spoke. It seemed to me that he did not try to disguise his contempt. I turned away and ignored him.

  Ryan smiled at Claudel. “Come on, Luc, ease back, it never hurts to take another look. We sure aren’t setting any speed records clipping this worm.”

  Claudel snorted and shook his head. Again he consulted his watch.

  Then, to me, “What’ve you got?”

  Before I could answer the door flew open and Michel Charbonneau burst into the far end of the room. He jogged toward us, weaving through the desks and waving a paper in his left hand.

  “We’ve got him,” he said. “We’ve got the sonofabitch.” His face was red and he was breathing hard.

  “About time,” said Claudel. “Let’s see.” He addressed Charbonneau as one would a delivery boy, his impatience obliterating any pretense of courtesy.

  Charbonneau’s brow furrowed, but he handed the paper to Claudel. The three men huddled, their heads bent close, like a team consulting the playbook. Charbonneau spoke to their backs.

  “The dumb fucker used her bank card an hour after he iced her. Apparently he hadn’t had enough fun for the day, so he went to the corner dépanneur to score some change. Only this place don’t cater to the quiche and Brie crowd, so they’ve got a video camera pointed at the money machine. Ident hammered the transaction and, voilà, we’ve got us a Kodak moment.”

  He nodded at the photocopy.

  “He’s a real beauty, eh? I took it by there this morning, but the night clerk didn’t know the guy’s name. Thought he recognized the face. Suggested we talk to the guy comes in after nine. Apparently our boy’s a regular.”

  “Holy shit,” said Bertrand.

  Ryan just stared at the picture, his tall, lean frame hunched over that of his shorter partner.

  “So this is the cocksucker,” said Claudel, scrutinizing the image in his hand. “Let’s get this asshole.”

  “I’d like to ride along.”

  They’d forgotten I was there. All four turned toward me, the SQ detectives half amused and curious as to what would happen next.

  “C’est impossible,” said Claudel, the only one now using French. His jaw muscles bunched and his face went taut. There was no smile in his eyes.

  Showdown.

  “Sergeant Detective Claudel,” I began, returning his French and choosing my words carefully. “I believe I see significant similarities in several homicide victims whom I have been asked to examine. If this is so, there may be one individual, a psychopath as you call him, behind all of their deaths. Maybe I’m right, mayb
e I’m wrong. Do you really want to assume responsibility for ignoring the possibility and risking the lives of more innocent victims?”

  I was polite but unyielding. I, too, was unamused.

  “Oh hell, Luc, let her ride along,” said Charbonneau. “We’re just going to do some interviews.”

  “Go on, this guy’s going down whether you cut her in or not,” said Ryan.

  Claudel said nothing. He took out his keys, stuffed the photo into his pocket, and brushed past me on his way to the door.

  “Let’s boogie,” said Charbonneau.

  I had a hunch yet another day might go into overtime.

  GETTING THERE WAS NO SMALL TASK. AS CHARBONNEAU FOUGHT his way west along De Maisonneuve, I sat in the back, gazing out the window and ignoring the bursts of static that erupted from the radio. The afternoon was sweltering. As we inched along, I watched heat rise from the pavement in undulating waves.

  Montreal was preening itself with patriotic fervor. The fleur-de-lis was everywhere, hung from windows and balconies, worn on T-shirts, hats, and boxer shorts, painted on faces, and waved on flags and placards. From Centre-ville eastward to the Main, sweaty revelers clogged the streets, choking off traffic like plaque in an artery. Thousands of people filled the streets, ebbing and flowing in streams of blue and white. Though seemingly without orientation, the throng oozed generally northward, toward Sherbrooke and the parade, punks moving next to mothers with strollers. The marchers and floats had left St. Urbain at 2 P.M., twirling and high-stepping eastward along Sherbrooke. At that moment they were just above us.

  Over the hum of the air conditioner I could hear a lot of laughter and sporadic bursts of song. Already there was some fighting. As we waited out the light at Amherst, I watched a lummox push his girlfriend against a wall. He had hair the color of unbrushed teeth, burred on top and long in the back. His chicken-white skin was moving toward grenadine. We pulled away before the scene could play itself out, leaving me with an image of the girl’s startled face superimposed on the breasts of a naked woman. Eyes squinting and mouth in an O, she was framed by a poster for a Tamara de Lempicka exposition at the Musée des Beaux Arts. “Une femme libre,” it whooped. “A free woman.” Another of life’s ironies. I took some satisfaction in knowing the oaf wouldn’t have a good night. He might even blister.