Déjà Dead

by Kathy Reichs

He opened his mouth, then crimped it shut. I could see a small vein pulsing in his temple. Ryan shot me a look. All right, maybe I was goading him.

  Wordlessly, we moved back down the path. Margot and DeSalvo were off to the left, rustling through the leaves. In less than a minute they came into view. Margot’s body was as tense as a violin string, her shoulder muscles bulging, her chest straining against the leather harness. She held her head high, jerking it from side to side, testing the air in all directions. Her nostrils twitched feverishly.

  Suddenly, she stopped and grew rigid, ears extended, tips trembling. A noise started somewhere deep inside her, faint at first, then building, half growl, half whine, like the keening of a mourner in some primordial ritual. As it grew in intensity, I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck and a chill travel down my body.

  DeSalvo reached down and released the lead. For a moment Margot held her stance, as though confirming her position, recalibrating her heading. Then she bolted.

  “What the fuck …” said Claudel.

  “Where the …” said Ryan.

  “Hot damn!” said Charbonneau.

  We’d expected her to scent on the burial site behind us. Instead, she cut straight across the path and tore into the trees below. We watched in silence.

  Six feet in, she stopped, lowered her snout, and inhaled several times. Exhaling sharply, she moved to her left and repeated the maneuver. Her body was tense, every muscle taut. As I watched her, images formed in my mind. Flight through darkness. A hard fall. A flash of lightning. An empty hole.

  Margot recaptured my attention. She’d stopped at the base of a pine, her whole being focused on the ground in front of her. She lowered her snout and inhaled. Then, as if triggered by some feral instinct, the fur rose along her spine, and her muscles twitched. Margot raised her nose high in the air, blew out one last puff of air, and flew into a frenzy. She lunged forward and jerked back, tail between her legs, snarling and snapping at the ground in front of her.

  “Margot! Ici!” ordered DeSalvo. He plunged through the branches and grabbed her harness, dragging her back from the source of her agitation.

  I didn’t have to look. I knew what she’d found. And what she hadn’t. I remembered staring at the dry earth and the empty hole. Dug with intent to bury or intent to uncover? Now I knew.

  Margot was yapping and growling at the pit I’d fallen into last night. It was still empty, but her nose told me what it had held.

  THE BEACH. ROLLING SURF. SANDPIPERS SKITTERING ON SPINDLY legs. Pelicans gliding like paper airplanes, then folding their wings to plummet into the sea. Gone to Carolina in my mind. I could smell the brackish inland marshes, the ocean’s salt spray, wet sand, beached fish, and drying seaweed. Hatteras, Ocracoke, and Bald Head to the north. Pawley’s, Sullivan’s, and Kiawah to the south. I wanted to be home, and which island didn’t matter. I wanted palmetto palms and shrimp boats, not butchered women and body parts.

  I opened my eyes to pigeons on a statue of Norman Bethune. The sky was graying, yielding pink and yellow remains of a departing sunset to the advance guard of approaching darkness. Streetlights and store signs announced evening’s arrival with neon winks. Cars streamed by on three sides, a four-wheeled motorized herd grudgingly parting for the small triangle of green at Guy and De Maisonneuve.

  I sat sharing a bench with a man in a Canadiens jersey. His hair flowed to his shoulders, neither blond nor white. Backlit by passing cars, it haloed his head like spun glass. His eyes were the color of denim that’s been washed a thousand times, red-rimmed, a yellow crust trickling from each corner. He picked at the crust with pasty, white fingers. From a chain around his neck hung a metal cross the size of my hand.

  I’d gotten home by late afternoon, switched the phone to the answering machine, and slept. Ghosts of people I knew alternated with unrecognized figures in a parade without a theme. Ryan chased Gabby into a boarded building. Pete and Claudel dug a hole in my courtyard. Katy lay on a brown plastic bag on the deck of the beach house, burning her skin and refusing lotion. A menacing figure stalked me on St. Laurent.

  I woke several times, finally rising at 8 P.M., headachy and famished. A reflection on the wall near the phone pulsed red, red, red, dim; red, red, red, dim. Three messages. I stumbled to the machine and hit play.

  Pete was considering an offer with a law firm in San Diego. Terrific. Katy was thinking of dropping out of school. Wonderful. One hang up. At least that wasn’t bad news. Still no word from Gabby. Great.

  Twenty minutes of talking with Katy did little to ease my mind. She was polite, but noncommital. Finally, a long silence, then, “Talk to you later.” Dial tone. I’d closed my eyes and stood very still. An image of Katy at thirteen filled my mind. Ear to ear with her Appaloosa, her blond hair mingled with his dark mane. Pete and I had gone to visit her at camp. On seeing us her face lit up and she’d left the horse to throw her arms around me. We’d been so close then. Where had the intimacy gone? Why was she unhappy? Why did she want to leave school? Was it the separation? Were Pete and I to blame?

  Burning with parental inadequacy, I tried Gabby’s apartment. No answer. I remembered a time Gabby had disappeared for ten days. I was crazy worrying about her. Turned out she’d gone on retreat to discover her inner self. Maybe I couldn’t get in touch with her because she was getting in touch with herself again.

  Two Tylenol relieved my head, and a #4 special at the Singapore sated my hunger. Nothing calmed my discontent. Neither pigeons nor park bench strangers distracted me from the constant themes. Questions crashed and rebounded like bumper cars inside my head. Who was this killer? How did he choose his victims? Did they know him? Did he gain their confidence, worm his way into their homes? Adkins was killed at home. Trottier and Gagnon? Where? At a predesignated place? A place chosen for death and dismemberment? How did the killer get around? Was it St. Jacques?

  I stared at the pigeons without seeing them. I imagined the victims, imagined their fear. Chantale Trottier was only sixteen. Had he forced her at knife point? When had she known she was going to die? Had she begged him not to hurt her? Begged for her life? Another image of Katy. Other people’s Katys. Empathy to the point of pain.

  I focused on the present moment. In the morning, lab work on the recovered bones. Dealing with Claudel. Tending the scabs on my face. So Katy aspired to a career as an NBA groupie, and nothing I said would dissuade her. Pete might split for the Coast. I was horny as Madonna, with no relief in sight. And where the hell was Gabby?

  “That’s it,” I said, startling the pigeons and the man beside me. I knew one thing I could do.

  I walked home, went directly to the garage, and drove to Carré St. Louis. I parked on Henri-Julien and rounded the corner to Gabby’s apartment. Sometimes her building made me think of Barbie’s Dreamhouse. Tonight it was Lewis Carroll. I almost smiled.

  A single bulb lit the lavender porch, casting shadow petunias across the boards. The looking-glass windows stared at me darkly. “Alice isn’t home,” they said.

  I rang the bell to number 3. Nothing. I rang again. Silence. I tried number 1, then 2 and 4. No response. Wonderland had closed for the night.

  Circling the park, I looked for Gabby’s car. Not there. Without plan, I drove south, then east toward the Main.

  After twenty frustrating minutes looking for a parking place, I left the car on one of the unpaved alleys that feed St. Laurent. The alley was remarkable for flattened beer cans and the stink of stale urine. Piles of trash abounded, and I could hear jukebox noise through the brick on the left. It was a setting which called for that popularly advertised auto security device known as the Club. Lacking one, I entrusted the Mazda to the god of parking, and joined the flow on the strip.

  Like a rain forest, the Main is inhabited by sympatric breeds, populations living side by side but occupying different niches. One group is active by day, the other exclusively nocturnal.

  In the hours from dawn to dusk the Main is the realm of deliverymen and shop
keepers, of schoolchildren and housewives. The sounds are those of commerce and play. The smells are clean, and speak of food: fresh fish at Waldman’s, smoked meat at Schwartz’s, apples and strawberries at Warshaw’s, baked goods at La Boulangerie Polonaise.

  As shadows lengthen and streetlamps and bar lights come on, as shops close and taverns and porn mills open, the day crowd surrenders the sidewalks to different creatures. Some are harmless. Tourists and college kids who come for bargain booze and cheap thrills. Others are more toxic. Pimps, dealers, hookers, and crackheads. The users and the used, the predators and prey in a food chain of human misery.

  At eleven-fifteen, the night shift was in full control. The streets were thronged and the low-rent bars and bistros were packed. I walked to Ste. Catherine and stood on the corner, La Belle Province at my back. It seemed a good place to start. Entering, I walked past the pay phone where Gabby had made her panicky call.

  The restaurant smelled of Pine-Sol, grease, and overfried onions. It was too late for dinner and too early for the aprés booze set. Only four booths were occupied.

  A couple with identical Mohawks stared glumly at each other over half-eaten bowls of chili. Their spiny hackles were an identical inky black, as if they’d split the cost of the Clairol. They wore enough studded leather to open a combination kennel and motorcycle outfitter.

  A woman with arms the size of Number 2 pencils and platinum bouffant hair smoked and drank coffee in a booth at the back. She wore a red tube top and what my mother would’ve called capri pants. She’d probably had that look since she dropped out of school to join the war effort.

  As I watched, she drained the last of her coffee, took a long pull on her cigarette, and stubbed the butt into the small metal disk that served as an ashtray. Her painted eyes surveyed the room listlessly, not really expecting to find a mark, but prepared to dance the dance. Her face displayed the joyless look of someone who’d been on the street a long time. No longer able to compete with the young, she probably specialized in alley quickies and backseat blow jobs. Late night bliss at bargain prices. She hiked the tube higher on her bony chest, picked up her bill, and walked to the counter. Rosie the Riveter hitting the streets again.

  Three young men occupied a booth near the door. One lay sprawled across the table, an arm cradling his head, another disappearing limply into his lap. All three wore T-shirts, cutoffs, and baseball caps. Two had their bills turned backward. The third, in a defiant disregard for fashion, wore his brim planted firmly across his forehead. The upright pair downed cheeseburgers, seemingly unconcerned about their companion. They looked about sixteen.

  The only other patron was a nun. No Gabby.

  I left the restaurant and looked up and down Ste. Catherine. The bikers had been drifting in, and Harleys and Yamahas lined both sides of the street to the east. Their owners straddled them, or drank and talked in packs, leathered and booted despite the warm evening.

  Their women sat behind them, or formed conversational clusters of their own. It reminded me of junior high. But these women chose a world of violence and male dominance. Like hamadryas baboons, the females in the troop were herded and controlled. Worse. They were pimped and swapped, tattooed and burned, beaten and killed. And yet they stayed. If this was improvement, it was hard to imagine what they’d left behind.

  I scanned to the west of St. Laurent. Right away I saw what I was looking for. Two hookers lounged outside the Granada, smoking cigarettes and playing the crowd. I recognized Poirette, but wasn’t sure about the other.

  I fought an impulse to give this up and head for home. What if I’d guessed wrong on the dress? I’d chosen a sweatshirt, jeans, and sandals, hoping they’d be nonthreatening, but I didn’t know. I’d never done this kind of fieldwork.

  Cut the crap, Brennan, you’re stalling. Get your sorry butt up there. The worst that can happen is they blow you off. Won’t be the first time.

  I moved up the block and planted myself in front of the two women.

  “Bonjour.” My voice sounded quavery, like a cassette tape stretched and rewound. I was annoyed with myself, and coughed to create a cover.

  The women stopped talking and inspected me much as they would an unusual insect, or something odd found in a nostril. Neither spoke. Their faces were flat and devoid of emotion.

  Poirette shifted her weight, thrusting one hip forward. She was wearing the same black high-tops she’d had on when I first saw her. Wrapping an arm across her waist and resting the opposite elbow on it, she regarded me with veiled eyes. Pulling hard on her cigarette, she breathed the smoke deep into her lungs, then pooched out her lower lip and blew it upward in a stream. The smoke looked like haze in the pulsating neon glow of the hotel sign. The sign’s blinking cast nets of red and blue across her cocoa skin. Wordlessly, her dark eyes left my face and returned to the sidewalk parade.

  “What you wantin’, chère?”

  The street woman’s voice was deep and raspy, as if the words were formed by particles of sound with empty gaps floating among them. She addressed me in English, with a cadence that spoke of hyacinths and cypress swamps, of gumbo and zydeco bands, of cicadas droning on soft summer nights. She was older than Poirette.

  “I’m a friend of Gabrielle Macaulay. I’m trying to find her.”

  She shook her head. I wasn’t sure if she meant she didn’t know Gabby, or was unwilling to answer.

  “She’s an anthropologist? She works down here?”

  “Sugar, we all work down here.”

  Poirette snorted and shifted feet. I looked at her. She was wearing shorts and a bustier made of shiny black vinyl. I was certain she knew Gabby. She’d been one of the women we’d seen that night. Gabby had pointed her out. Up close she looked even younger. I concentrated on her companion.

  “Gabby’s a large woman,” I went on. “About my age. She has”—I groped for a color term—“reddish dreadlocks?”

  Blank indifference.

  “And a nose ring.”

  I was hitting a brick wall.

  “I haven’t been able to reach her for a while. I think her phone’s out of order, and I’m a little worried about her. Surely y’all must know her?”

  I drew out my vowels and emphasized the Southern version of vous. Appeal to regional loyalties. Daughters of Dixie unite.

  Louisiana shrugged, a fluid, Cajun version of the universal French response. More shoulder, less palm.

  So much for the Daughters of Dixie approach. This was going nowhere. I was beginning to understand what Gabby had meant. You don’t ask questions on the Main.

  “If you run into her, will you tell her Tempe’s looking for her?”

  “That a Southern name, chère?”

  She slipped a long, red nail into her hair, and scratched her scalp with the tip. The updo was so lacquered, it would’ve held in a hurricane. It moved as one mass, creating the illusion that her head was changing shape.

  “Not exactly. Can you think of anywhere else I might look?”

  Another shrug. She withdrew her nail and inspected it.

  I pulled a card from my back pocket.

  “If you think of anything, this is where you can get in touch with me.” As I walked away I could see Poirette reaching for the card.

  • • •

  Approaches to several streetwalkers along Ste. Catherine yielded much the same result. Their reactions ranged from indifference to contempt, uniformly leavened by suspicion and distrust. No information. If Gabby had ever existed down here, no one would admit it.

  I went from bar to bar, moving through the seedy haunts of the night people. One was as the next, brainchildren of a single warped decorator. Ceilings were low, and walls cinder block. All painted with Day-Glo murals, or covered with fake bamboo or cheap wood. Dark and dank, they smelled of stale beer, smoke, and human sweat. In the better ones, the floors were dry and the toilets flushed.

  Some bars had raised platforms on which strippers writhed and slithered, their teeth and G-strings glowing pu
rple in the black lights, their faces fixed in boredom. Men in tank tops and five o’clock shadows drank beer from bottles and watched the dancers. Imitation elegant women sipped cheap wine, or nursed soft drinks disguised to look like highballs, rousing themselves to smile at passing men, hoping to lure a trick. Aiming for seductive, they looked mostly tired.

  The saddest were the women at the borders of this flesh trade life, those just crossing the start and finish lines. There were the painfully young, some still flying the colors of puberty. Some were out for fun and a quick buck, others were escaping some private hell at home. Their stories had a central theme. Hustle long enough to make a stake, then on to a respectable life. Adventurers and runaways, they’d arrive by bus from Ste. Thérèse and Val d’Or, from Valleyfield and Pointe-du-Lac. They came with gleaming hair and fresh faces, confident of their immortality, certain of their ability to control the future. The pot and the coke were just a lark. They never recognized them as the first rungs on a ladder of desperation until they were too high up to get off except by falling.

  Then there were those who’d managed to grow old. Only the truly canny and exceptionally strong had prospered and gotten out. The ill and weak were dead. The strong-bodied but weak-willed endured. They saw the future, and accepted it. They would die in the streets because they knew nothing else. Or because they loved or feared some man enough to peddle ass to buy his dope. Or because they needed food to eat and a place to sleep.

  I appealed to those entering or those leaving the sisterhood. I avoided the senior generation, the hardened and street smart, still able to rule their patches just as they in turn were ruled by their pimps. Perhaps the young, naive and defiant, or the old, jaded and spent, might be more open. Wrong. In bar after bar they turned away from me, allowing my questions to dissolve into the smoky air. The code of silence held. No access to strangers.

  By three-fifteen I’d had it. My hair and clothes smelled of tobacco and reefer, and my shoes of beer. I’d downed enough Sprite to reclaim the Kalahari, and my eyes were seeded with gravel. Leaving yet another loony on yet another bar, I gave up.