Death Du Jour tb-2

by Reichs, Kathy

  It took over an hour to do an inventory, identifying each bone and determining if it came from the left or right side. Then I turned my attention to the questions Ryan would ask. Age. Sex. Race. Who is it?

  I picked up the mass that contained the pelvis and thigh bones. The fire had cooked the soft tissue, turning it black and leathery hard. A mixed blessing. The bones had been protected, but it might be a bitch getting them out.

  I rotated the pelvis. The flesh on the left had burned away, causing the femur to split. I could see a perfect cross section of the ball- and-socket hip joint. I measured the diameter of the femoral head. It was tiny, falling on the low end of the female range.

  I studied the internal structure of the head, just below the articular surface. The spicules of bone showed the typical honeycombed pattern of an adult, with no thick line to indicate a recently fused growth cap. That was consistent with the completed molar roots I’d noticed earlier in the jaw. This victim was not a kid.

  I looked at the outer edges of the cup that formed the hip socket, and at the lower border of the femoral head. On both the bone seemed to drip downward, like wax overflowing a candle. Arthritis. The individual was not young.

  I already suspected the victim was a woman. What remained of the long bones were small in diameter, with smooth-muscle attachments. I shifted my attention to the cranial fragments.

  Small mastoids and brow ridges. Sharp orbital borders. The bone was smooth at the back of the skull and in all the places male bone would be rough and bumpy.

  I examined the frontal bone. The upper ends of the two nasal bones were still in place. They met at a high angle along the midline, like a church steeple. I found two pieces of maxilla. The lower border of the nasal opening ended in a sharp ledge with a spike of bone projecting upward at its center. The nose had been narrow and prominent, the face straight when viewed from the side. I located a fragment of temporal bone and shone a flashlight into the ear opening. I could see a tiny round opening, the oval window to the inner ear. All good Caucasoid traits.

  Female. White. Adult. Old.

  I returned to the pelvis, hoping it would allow me to confirm the sex and be more precise about the age. I was particularly interested in the region where the two halves meet in front.

  Gently, I teased away charred tissue, revealing the joint between the pubic bones, the pubic symphysis. The pubes themselves were wide, the angle below them broad. Each had a raised ridge angling across its corner. The lower branch of each pubic bone was gracile and gently recurved. Typical female features. I noted them on my case form and took more Polaroid close-ups.

  The intense heat had shrunk the connective cartilage and pulled the pubic bones apart along the midline. I twisted and turned the charred mass, trying to peer into the gap. It looked like the symphyseal surfaces were intact, but I couldn’t make out any detail.

  “Let’s take the pubes out,” I said to Lisa.

  I smelled burned flesh as the saw buzzed through the wings connecting the pubic bone to the rest of the pelvis. It took just seconds.

  The symphyseal joint was singed, but easily readable. There were no ridges or furrows on either surface. In fact, both faces were porous, their outer edges irregularly lipped. Erratic threads of bone projected from the front of each pubic element, ossifications into the surrounding soft tissue. The lady had lived a long time.

  I turned the pubes over. A deep trench scarred the belly side of each. And she had given birth.

  I reached again for the frontal bone. For a moment I stood there, the fluorescent light showing in harsh detail what I’d first suspected in the basement, and what the metallic scatter on the X-ray had confirmed.

  I’d held my feelings at bay, but now I allowed myself to grieve for the ravaged human being on my table. And to puzzle over what had happened to her.

  The woman had been at least seventy, undoubtedly a mother, probably a grandmother.

  Why had someone shot her in the head and left her to burn in a house in the Laurentians?

  5

  BY NOON ON TUESDAY I WAS FINISHING MY REPORT. I’D WORKED past nine the night before, knowing Ryan would want answers. Surprisingly, I’d yet to see him.

  I read what I’d written, checking for errors. Sometimes I think gender agreements and accent marks are Francophone curses specifically designed for my torment. I try my best, but I always blow a few.

  In addition to a biological profile of the unknown, the report included an analysis of trauma. On dissection I found the radiopaque fragments in the femur were the result of postmortem impact. The small bits of metal were probably blasted into the bone by the explosion of a propane tank. Most of the other damage was also due to the fire.

  Some was not. I read my summary.

  Wound A is a circular defect, of which only the superior half is preserved. It is localized to the midfrontal region, lying approximately 2 centimeters above glabella and 1.2 centimeters to the left of midline. The defect measures 1.4 centimeters in diameter and presents characteristic beveling of the inner table. Charring is present along the margins of the defect. Wound A is consistent with a gunshot entrance wound.

  Wound B is a circular defect with characteristic beveling of the outer table. It measures 1.6 centimeters in diameter endocranially, and 4.8 centimeters in diameter ectocranially. The defect is localized to the occipital bone, 2.6 centimeters superior to opisthion and 0.9 centimeters to the left of the midsagittal line. There is focal charring of the left, right, and inferior margins of the defect. Wound B is consistent with a gunshot exit wound.

  While fire damage made a complete reconstruction impossible, I was able to piece together enough of the vault to interpret the fractures lacing between the exit and entrance holes.

  The pattern was classic. The old woman had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. The bullet entered the middle of her forehead, traversed her brain, and exited at the back. It explained why the skull had not shattered in the flames. A vent for intracranial pressure had been created before heat became a problem.

  I walked the report to the secretarial pool and returned to find Ryan sitting across from my desk, gazing out the window behind my chair. His legs stretched the length of my office.

  “Nice view.” He spoke in English.

  Five floors down the Jacques Cartier Bridge arched across the St. Lawrence River. I could see minuscule cars crawling across its back. It was a nice view.

  “It distracts me from thinking about how small this office is.” I slipped past him, around the desk, and into my chair.

  “A distracted mind can be dangerous.”

  “My bruised shins bring me back to reality.” I swiveled sideways and propped my legs on the ledge below the window, ankles crossed. “It’s an old woman, Ryan. Shot in the head.”

  “How old?”

  “I’d say she was at least seventy. Maybe even seventy-five. Her pubic symphyses have a lot of miles on them, but folks are variable up in that range. She has advanced arthritis and she’s osteoporotic.”

  He dipped his chin and raised his brows. “French or English, Brennan. Not doctor talk.” His eyes were the shade of blue on the Windows 95 screen.

  “Os-te-o-po-ro-sis.” I spoke each syllable slowly. “I can tell from the X-rays that her cortical bone is thin. I can’t see any fractures, but I only had parts of the long bones. The hip is a common site for breaks in older women because a lot of weight is transferred there. Hers were O.K.”

  “Caucasian?”

  I nodded.

  “Anything else.”

  “She probably had several kids.” The laser blues were fixed on my face. “She has a trench the size of the Orinoco on the back of each pubic bone.”

  “Great.”

  “Another thing. I think she was already in the basement when the fire started.”

  “How’s that?”

  “There was absolutely no floor debris below the body. And I found a few tiny scraps of fabric embedded between her and the clay. She must
have been lying directly on the floor.”

  He thought for a moment.

  “So you’re telling me someone shot Granny, dragged her down to the basement, and left her to fry.”

  “No. I’m saying Granny took a bullet in the head. I don’t have a clue who fired it. Maybe she did. That’s your job, Ryan.”

  “Did you find a gun near her?”

  “No.”

  Just then Bertrand appeared in the doorway. While Ryan looked neat and pressed, his partner’s creases were sharp enough to cut precious gems. He wore a mauve shirt keyed to the tones of his floral tie, a lavender and gray tweed jacket, and wool trousers a precise half note down from shade four in the tweed.

  “What have you got?” Ryan asked his partner.

  “Nothing we didn’t already know. It’s like these people were beamed down from space. No one really knows who the hell was living in there. We’re still trying to track down the guy in Europe that owns the house. The neighbors across the road saw the old lady from time to time, but she never spoke to them. They say the couple with the kids had only been there a few months. They rarely saw them, never learned their names. A woman up the road thought they were part of some sort of fundamentalist group.”

  “Brennan says our Doe is a Jane. As in Baby Jane. A septuagenarian.”

  Bertrand looked at him.

  “In her seventies.”

  “An old lady?”

  “With a bullet in her brain.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “Someone shot her and torched the place?”

  “Or Granny pulled the trigger after having lit the barbecue. But, then, where’s the weapon?”

  When they’d gone I checked my consult requests. A jar of ashes had arrived in Quebec City, the cremains of an elderly man who died in Jamaica. The family was accusing the crematory of fraud, and had brought the ashes to the coroner’s office. He wanted to know what I thought.

  A skull was found in a ravine outside the Côte des Neiges Cemetery. It was dry and bleached, and had probably come from an old grave. The coroner needed confirmation.

  Pelletiér wanted me to look at the baby for evidence of starvation. That would require microscopy. Thin sections of bone would have to be ground down, stained, and placed on slides so I could examine the cells under magnification. While high turnover of bone is typical of infants, I’d look for signs of unusual porosity and abnormal remodeling in the microanatomy.

  Samples had been sent to the histology lab. I’d also study the X-rays and the skeleton, but that was still soaking to remove the putrefied flesh. A baby’s bones are too fragile to risk boiling.

  So. Nothing urgent. I could open Élisabeth Nicolet’s coffin.

  After a refrigerated sandwich and a yogurt in the cafeteria, I rode down to the morgue, asked to have the remains brought to room three, then went to change.

  The coffin was smaller than I remembered, measuring less than three feet in length. The left side had rotted, allowing the top to collapse inward. I brushed off loose soil and took photos.

  “Need a crowbar?” Lisa stood in the doorway.

  Since this was not an LML case, I was to work alone, but I was getting a lot of offers. Apparently I was not the only one fascinated by Élisabeth.

  “Please.”

  It took less than a minute to remove the cover. The wood was soft and crumbly, and the nails gave easily. I scooped dirt from the interior to reveal a lead liner containing another wood coffin.

  “Why are they so little?” asked Lisa.

  “This isn’t the original casket. Élisabeth Nicolet was exhumed and reburied around the turn of the century, so they just needed enough space for her bones.”

  “Think it’s her?”

  I drilled a look at her.

  “Let me know if you need anything.”

  I continued scooping dirt until I had cleared the lid of the inner casket. It bore no plaque, but was more ornate than the outer, with an elaborately carved border paralleling the hexagonal outside edge. Like the exterior coffin, the one inside had collapsed and filled with dirt.

  Lisa returned in twenty minutes.

  “I’m free for a while if you need X-rays.”

  “Can’t do it because of the lead liner,” I said. “But I’m ready to open the inner casket.”

  “No problem.”

  Again the wood was soft and the nails slipped right out.

  More dirt. I’d removed only two handfuls when I spotted the skull. Yes! Someone was home!

  Slowly, the skeleton emerged. The bones were not in anatomical order, but lay parallel to one another, as though tightly bound when placed into the coffin. The arrangement reminded me of archaeological sites I’d excavated early in my career. Before Columbus, some aboriginal groups exposed their dead on scaffolds until the bones were clean, then bundled them for burial. Élisabeth had been packed like this.

  I’d loved archaeology. Still did. I regretted doing so little of it, but over the past decade my career had taken a different path. Teaching and forensic casework now occupied all my time. Élisabeth Nicolet was allowing me a brief return to my roots, and I was enjoying the hell out of it.

  I removed and arranged the bones, just as I had the day before. They were dry and fragile, but this person was in much better shape than yesterday’s lady from St-Jovite.

  My skeletal inventory indicated that only a metatarsal and six phalanges were missing. They did not show up when I screened the soil, but I did locate several incisors and a canine, and replaced them in their sockets.

  I followed my regular procedure, filling out a form just as I would for a coroner case. I started with the pelvis. The bones were those of a female. No doubt there. Her pubic symphyses suggested an age of thirty-five to forty-five years. The good sisters would be happy.

  In taking long-bone measurements I noted an unusual flattening on the front of the tibia, just below the knee. I checked the metatarsals. They showed arthritis where the toes join the feet. Yahoo! Repeated patterns of movement leave their marks on the skeleton. Élisabeth was supposed to have spent years in prayer on the stone floor of her convent cell. In kneeling, the combination of pressure on the knees and hyperflexion of the toes creates exactly the pattern I was seeing.

  I remembered something I’d noticed as I removed a tooth from the screen, and picked up the jaw. Each of the lower central incisors had a small but noticeable groove on the biting edge. I found the uppers. Same grooves. When not praying or writing letters, Élisabeth sewed. Her embroidery still hung in the convent at Lac Memphrémagog. Her teeth were notched from years of pulling thread or holding a needle between them. I was loving this.

  Then I turned the skull faceup and did a double take. I was standing there, staring at it, when LaManche entered the room.

  “So, is this the saint?” he asked.

  He came up beside me and looked at the skull.

  “Mon Dieu.”

  “Yes, the analysis is going well.” I was in my office, speaking with Father Ménard. The skull from Memphrémagog sat in a cork ring on my worktable. “The bones are remarkably well preserved.”

  “Will you be able to confirm that it’s Élisabeth? Élisabeth Nicolet?”

  “Father, I wanted to ask you a few more questions.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  Yes. There may be.

  “No, no. I’d just like a little more information.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you have any official document stating who Élisabeth’s parents were?”

  “Her father was Alain Nicolet, and her mother was Eugénie Bélanger, a well-known singer at that time. Her uncle, Louis-Philippe Bélanger, was a city councilman and a very distinguished physician.”

  “Yes. Is there a birth certificate?”

  He was silent. Then,

  “We have not been able to locate a birth certificate.”

  “Do you know where Élisabeth was born?”

  “I think she was
born in Montreal. Her family was here for generations. Élisabeth is a descendant of Michel Bélanger, who came to Canada in 1758, in the last days of New France. The Bélanger family was always prominent in city affairs.”

  “Yes. Is there a hospital record, or a baptismal certificate, or anything that officially records her birth?”

  More silence.

  “She was born more than a century and a half ago.”

  “Were records kept?”

  “Yes. Sister Julienne has searched. But things can be lost over such a long time. Such a long time.”

  “Of course.”

  For a moment we were both silent. I was about to thank him when,

  “Why are you asking these questions, Dr. Brennan?”

  I hesitated. Not yet. I could be wrong. I could be right but it meant nothing.

  “I just wanted a bit more background.”

  I’d hardly replaced the receiver when the phone rang.

  “Oui, Dr. Brennan.”

  “Ryan.” I could hear tension in his voice. “It was arson all right. And whoever planned it made sure the place went up. Simple but effective. They hooked a heat coil to a timer, same kind you use to turn on your lamps when you go off to the spa.”

  “I don’t go to spas, Ryan.”

  “Do you want to hear this?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “The timer turned on the hot plate. That set off a fire which ignited a propane tank. Most of the timers were destroyed, but we recovered a few. Looks like they were set to go off at intervals, but once the fire spread it was bombs away.”

  “How many tanks?”

  “Fourteen. We found one undamaged timer out in the yard. Must have been a dud. It’s the kind you can buy in any hardware store. We’ll try for prints, but it’s a long shot.”

  “The accelerant?”

  “Gasoline, as I suspected.”

  “Why both?”

  “Because someone friggin’ wanted the place destroyed big time and didn’t want a screw-up. Probably figured there wouldn’t be a second chance.”

  “How do you know that?”