Déjà Dead

by Kathy Reichs

  Her lenses focused on a row of skulls I keep on the shelf behind my desk.

  “For comparison,” I explained.

  “Are they real?”

  “Yes, they’re real.”

  She shifted her gaze and I could see a distorted version of myself in each pink lens. The corners of her lips jumped and resettled. Her smiles came and went like light from a bulb with a bad connection. Reminded me of my flashlight in the woods.

  I explained what I wanted. When I’d finished, she tipped her head and stared upward, as if the answer might be on the ceiling. Taking her time. I listened to the whir of a printer somewhere down the hall.

  “There won’t be anything before 1985, I know that.” Facial flicker. On. Off.

  “I realize it’s a bit unusual, but see what you can do.”

  “Quebec City, also?”

  “No, just the LML cases for now.”

  She nodded, smiled, and left. As if on cue, the phone rang. Ryan.

  “How about someone younger?”

  “How much younger?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe someone with some sort of—”

  “No.”

  Silence.

  “I’ve got one sixty-seven.”

  “Ryan, this woman belongs neither to the Clearasil nor the Geritol set.”

  He continued with the relentlessness of a busy signal. “What if she had some kind of bone condition or something? I read abou—”

  “Ryan, she was between twenty-five and thirty-five.”

  “Right.”

  “She probably went missing somewhere between ’89 and ’92.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “Oh. One other thing. She probably had kids.”

  “What?”

  “I found pitting on the inside of the pubic bones. You’re looking for someone’s mother.”

  “Thanks.”

  In less time than he could have punched the numbers, the phone rang again.

  “Ryan, I—”

  “It’s me, Mom.”

  “Hi, darlin’, how are you?”

  “Good, Mom.” Pause. “Are you mad about our conversation last night?”

  “Of course not, Katy. I’m just worried about you.”

  Long pause.

  “So. What else is new? We didn’t really talk about what you’ve been up to this summer.” There was so much I wanted to say, but I’d let her take the lead.

  “Not much. Charlotte’s boring as ever. Nothing to do.”

  Good. Another dose of adolescent negativity. Just what I needed. I tried to hold my annoyance in check.

  “How’s the job?”

  “Okay. Tips are good. I made ninety-four dollars last night.”

  “That’s great.”

  “I’m getting a lot of hours.”

  “Terrific.”

  “I want to quit.”

  I waited.

  She waited.

  “Katy, you’re going to need that money for school.” Katy, don’t mess up your life.

  “I told you. I don’t want to go back right away. I’m thinking of taking a year off to work.”

  Here we go again. I had an idea what was coming, and launched my offensive.

  “Honey, we’ve gone over this. If you don’t like the University of Virginia, you could try McGill. Why don’t you take a couple of weeks, come up here, check it out?” Talk fast, Mom. “We could make a vacation of it. I’ll take some time off. Maybe we could drive out to the Maritimes, bum around Nova Scotia for a few days.” God. What was I saying? How could I work that? No matter. My daughter comes first.

  She didn’t answer.

  “It’s not grades, is it?”

  “No, no. They were fine.”

  “Then your credits should transfer. We coul—”

  “I want to go to Europe.”

  “Europe?”

  “Italy.”

  “Italy?”

  I didn’t have to think that one through.

  “Is that where Max is playing?”

  “Yes.” Defensive. “So?”

  “So?”

  “They’re giving him a lot more money than the Hornets.”

  I said nothing.

  “And a house.”

  Nothing.

  “And a car. A Ferrari.”

  Nothing.

  “Tax free.” Her tone was becoming more defiant.

  “That’s great for Max, Katy. He gets to play a sport he loves and gets paid for it. But what about you?”

  “Max wants me to come.”

  “Max is twenty-four and has a degree. You’re nineteen and have one year of college.”

  She heard the irritation in my voice.

  “You got married when you were nineteen.”

  “Married?” My stomach did a triple gainer.

  “Well, you did.”

  She had a point. I held my tongue, anxious with concern for her but knowing I was helpless to do anything.

  “I just said that. We’re not getting married.”

  We sat and listened to the air between Montreal and Charlotte for what seemed like forever.

  “Katy, will you think about coming up here?”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise you won’t do anything without talking to me?”

  More silence.

  “Katy?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “I love you, sweetheart.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Say hi to your dad for me.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll leave something on your e-mail tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I hung up with an unsteady hand. What next? Bones were easier to read than kids. I got a cup of coffee, then dialed.

  “Dr. Calvert, please.”

  “May I ask who’s calling?” I told her. “Just a minute, please.” Put on hold.

  “Tempe, how are you? You spend more time on the phone than an MCI salesman. You surely are hard to reach.” He out-twanged both the day and night shifts.

  “I’m sorry, Aaron. My daughter wants to drop out of school and run off with a basketball player,” I blurted.

  “Can he go to his left or shoot the three?”

  “I guess.”

  “Let her go.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Nothing funny about someone who can go left or shoot from outside the arc. Money in the bank.”

  “Aaron, I’ve got another dismemberment.” I’d called Aaron about cases past. We often bounced ideas off each other.

  I heard him chuckle. “You may not have guns up there, but you sure do like to cut.”

  “Yes. I think this sicko has cut several. They’re all women, otherwise there doesn’t seem to be much linking them. Except the cut marks. They’re going to be critical.”

  “Serial or mass?”

  “Serial.”

  He digested that for a second. “So. Tell me.”

  I described the kerfs and the cut ends of the arm bones. He interrupted occasionally to ask a question, or to slow me down. I could picture him taking notes, his tall, gaunt frame bent over some scrap of discarded paper, finding every usable millimeter of blank space. Though Aaron was forty-two, his somber face and dark, Cherokee eyes made him look about ninety. Always had. His wit was as dry as the Gobi, and his heart about that size.

  “Any really deep false starts?” he asked, all business.

  “No. They’re pretty superficial.”

  “Harmonics are clear?”

  “Very.”

  “You said blade drift in the kerf?”

  “Uh. Huh. Yes.”

  “Are you confident in the tooth distance measures?”

  “Yeah. The scratches were distinct in several places. So were some of the islands.”

  “Otherwise you got pretty flat floors?”

  “Yeah. It’s really obvious on the impressions.”

  “And exit chipping,” he mumbled, more to
himself than me.

  “Lots.”

  A long pause while his mind picked its way through the information I’d given him, sorting the possibilities. I watched people drift past my door. Phones rang. Printers clicked to life, whirred, then rested. I swiveled and gazed out. Traffic rolled across the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, Lilliputian Toyotas and Fords. Minutes ticked by. Finally.

  “I’m kinda workin’ blind here, Tempe. I’m not sure how you get me to do this. But here goes.”

  I swiveled back and leaned my elbows on the desk.

  “I’d bet the farm this isn’t a power saw. Sounds like some kinda specialty handsaw. Probably a kitchen saw of some type.”

  Yes! I slapped my hand on the desktop, raised a clenched fist, and lowered it sharply, like an engineer pulling the whistle cord. Pink slips sailed up, then fluttered down.

  Aaron went on, oblivious to my theatrics. “Kerfs’re too big to be any kinda fine-toothed bow saw, or a serrated knife. Besides, sounds like there’s too much set to the teeth. With those floor shapes I doubt you’re talking about any kinda cross cut. Got to be chisel. All that, ’thout seein’ ’em, of course, tells me chef’s saw or meat saw.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “Kinda like a big hacksaw. Teeth set pretty wide, so as not to bind. That’s why sometimes you get the islands you’re describing in the false starts. Usually there’s a lotta drift, but the blade chisels through bone just fine and cuts real clean. They’re mighty efficient little saws. Cut right through bone, gristle, ligaments, whatever.”

  “Anything else that might be consistent?”

  “Well, there’s always the chance you can get something doesn’t fit the regular pattern. These saws don’t read the books, you know. But right offhand, I can’t think of anything else fits all you’ve told me.”

  “You are fantastic. That’s exactly what I was thinking, but I wanted to hear it from you. Aaron, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your doing this.”

  “Ah.”

  “You want to see the photos and impressions?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll send them out tomorrow.”

  Aaron’s second passion in life was saws. He cataloged written and photographic descriptions of features produced in bone by known saws, and spent hours poring over cases sent to his lab from all over the world.

  A hitch in his breathing told me he had something more to say. As I waited, I gathered pink slips.

  “Did you say the only completely sectioned bones are in the lower arms?”

  “Yep.”

  “Went into the joints for the others?”

  “Yep.”

  “Neat?”

  “Very.”

  “Hm.”

  I stopped gathering. “What?”

  “What?” Innocent.

  “When you say ‘Hm’ like that, it means something.”

  “Just a mighty interesting association.”

  “Which is?”

  “Guy uses a chef’s saw. And he goes about cuttin’ up a body like he knows what he’s doing. Knows what’s where, how to get at it. And does it the same way every time.”

  “Yeah. I thought of that.”

  A few seconds ticked off.

  “But he just whacks off the hands. What about that?”

  “That, Dr. Brennan, is a question for a psychologist, not a saw man.”

  I agreed and changed the subject. “How’re the girls?”

  Aaron had never married, and, though I’d known him for twenty years, I’m not sure I’d ever seen him with a date. His horses were his first passion. From Tulsa to Chicago to Louisville, and back to Oklahoma City, he traveled where the quarter horse circuit took him.

  “Pretty excited. I bid a stallion this past fall and got ’im. The ladies been actin’ like yearlings ever since.”

  We exchanged news of our lives and small talk about mutual friends, and we agreed to get together at the Academy meeting in February.

  “Well, good luck nailin’ this guy, Tempe.”

  “Thanks.”

  My watch read four-forty. Once again the offices and corridors had grown quiet around me. I jumped at the sound of the phone.

  Too much coffee, I thought.

  As I answered, the receiver was still warm against my ear.

  “I saw you last night.”

  “Gabby?”

  “Don’t do that again, Tempe.”

  “Gabby, where are you?”

  “You’re just going to make things worse.”

  “Goddammit, Gabby, don’t play with me! Where are you? What’s going on?”

  “Never mind that. I can’t be seeing you right now.”

  I couldn’t believe she was doing this again. I could feel the anger rising in my chest.

  “Stay away, Tempe. Stay away from me. Stay away from my—”

  Gabby’s self-centered rudeness ignited my pent-up anger. Fueled by Claudel’s arrogance, the inhumanity of a psychopathic killer, and by Katy’s youthful folly, I exploded with the fury of a flash fire, rolling over Gabby and charring her.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” I seethed into the phone, my voice cracking. Squeezing the receiver with enough force to break the plastic, I raved on.

  “I’ll leave you alone! I’ll leave you alone, all right! I don’t know what bugass little game you’re playing, Gabby, but I’m out! Gone! Game, set, match, finished! I’m not buying into your schizophrenia! I’m not buying into your paranoia! And I’m not, repeat not, playing Masked Avenger to your damsel in and out of distress!”

  Every neuron in my body was overcharged, like a 110 appliance in a 220 socket. My chest was heaving, and I could feel tears behind my eyes. Tempe’s temper.

  From Gabby, a dial tone.

  I sat for a moment, doing nothing, thinking nothing. I felt giddy.

  Slowly, I replaced the receiver. I closed my eyes, ran through the sheet music, and made a selection. This one’s going out to me. In a low, throaty voice I hummed the tune:

  Busted flat in Baton Rouge …

  AT 6 A.M. A STEADY RAIN DRUMMED AGAINST MY WINDOWS. AN occasional car made soft shishing sounds as it passed on some predawn journey. For the third time in as many days I saw daybreak, an event I embrace as eagerly as Joe Montana welcomes an all-out blitz. While not a day napper, neither am I an early riser. Yet three mornings this week I’d seen the sun come up, twice as I fell asleep, today as I tossed and turned after eleven hours in bed, feeling neither sleepy nor rested.

  Home after Gabby’s call, I’d gone on an eating binge. Greasy fried chicken, rehydrated mashed potatoes with synthetic gravy, mushy corn on the cob, and soggy apple pie. Merci, Colonel. Then a hot bath and a long pick at the scab on my right cheek. The microsurgery didn’t help. I still looked like I’d been dragged. Around seven I turned on the Expos game, and fell asleep to the play-by-play.

  I switched on my computer—6 A.M. or 6 P.M., it was alert and ready to perform. I had sent a message to Katy, relaying through the e-mail system at McGill to my mail server at UNC-Charlotte. She could access the message with her laptop and modem, and reply right from her bedroom. Yahoo! Hop aboard the Internet.

  The screen’s cursor blinked at me, insisting there was nothing in the document I’d created. It was right. The spreadsheet I had started on paper had only column headings but no content. When had I begun this? The day of the parade. Just one week, but it seemed like years. Today was the thirtieth. Four weeks to the day since Isabelle Gagnon’s body was found, one week since Margaret Adkins had been murdered.

  What had we accomplished since then except discover another body? A stakeout on the Rue Berger apartment confirmed that its occupant had not returned. Big surprise. The bust had turned up nothing useful. We had no leads on the identity of “St. Jacques,” and we hadn’t identified the latest body. Claudel still wouldn’t acknowledge the cases were linked, and Ryan thought of me as a “freelancer.” Happy day.

  Back to the spreadsheet. I expanded the co
lumn headings. Physical characteristics. Geography. Living arrangements. Jobs. Friends. Family members. Dates of birth. Dates of death. Dates of discovery. Times. Places. I entered everything I could think of that might reveal a link. At the far left I entered four row headings: Adkins, Gagnon, Trottier, “Inconnu.” I’d replace the unknown designation when we tied a name to the St. Lambert bones. At seven-thirty I closed the file, packed the laptop, and got ready for work.

  Traffic was clogged, so I cut down to the Ville-Marie tunnel. Full morning, but dark, heavy clouds trapped the city in murky gloom. The streets were covered with a wet sheen that reflected the brake lights of the morning rush hour.

  My wipers beat a monotonous refrain, slapping water from two fan-shaped patches on the windshield. I leaned forward, bobbing my head like a palsied tortoise, searching for clear glass between the streaks. Time for new wipers, I told myself, knowing I wouldn’t get them. It took a good half hour to reach the lab.

  I wanted to get right to the files, to dig out minutiae and enter them into the spreadsheet, but there were two requisitions on my desk. A baby boy had been found in a municipal park, his tiny body wedged in the rocks of a creek bed. According to LaManche’s note, the tissue was desiccated and the internal organs unrecognizable, but otherwise the corpse was well preserved. He wanted an opinion on the infant’s age. That wouldn’t take long.

  I looked at the police report attached to the other form. “Ossements trouvés dans un bois.” Bones found in the woods. My most common case. Could mean anything from a multiple ax murder to a dead cat.

  I called Denis and requested radiographs of the infant, then went downstairs to look at the bones. Lisa brought a cardboard box from the morgue and placed it on the table.

  “C’est tout?”

  “C’est tout.” That’s all.

  She handed me gloves, and I withdrew three clods of hard clay from the box. Bones protruded from each clump. I chipped at the soil, but it was hard as cement.

  “Let’s get photos and radiographs, then put these in a screen and get them soaking. Use dividers to keep the chunks separate. I’ll be back down after the meeting.”

  The four other pathologists at the LML meet with LaManche each morning to review cases and receive autopsy assignments. On the days I’m present, I attend. When I got upstairs LaManche, Natalie Ayers, Jean Pelletier, and Marc Bergeron were already seated around the small conference table in LaManche’s office. From the activity board in the corridor, I knew that Marcel Morin was in court, and Emily Santangelo had taken a personal day.