Death Du Jour tb-2

by Reichs, Kathy

  A porous ice shell crumbled to the steps as I gripped the handle to Birks Hall. The building was empty, abandoned by occupants fearing the storm. No raincoats on hooks, no boots melting along walls. The printers and copy machines were still, the only sound the tick of raindrops high above on leaded glass.

  My steps echoed hollowly as I climbed to the third floor. From the main corridor I could see that Jeannotte’s door was closed. I didn’t really think she’d be here, but had decided it was worth a try. She didn’t expect me, and people say odd things when caught outside their normal routines.

  When I turned the corner I saw yellow light spilling from below the door. I knocked, unsure what to expect.

  When the door opened my jaw dropped in amazement.

  30

  HER EYES WERE RED ALONG THE RIMS, HER SKIN PALE AND DRAWN. She tensed when she recognized me, but said nothing.

  “How are you, Anna?”

  “O.K.” She blinked and her lids made the bangs hop.

  “I’m Dr. Brennan. We met several weeks ago.”

  “I know.”

  “When I returned they told me you were ill.”

  “I’m fine. I was gone for a while.”

  I wanted to ask her where she’d been, but held back. “Is Dr. Jeannotte here?”

  Anna shook her head. She did a slow-motion hair tuck, absently circling her ear.

  “Your mother was worried about you.”

  She shrugged, the movement sluggish and barely noticeable. She didn’t question my knowledge of her home life.

  “I’ve been working on a project with your aunt. She was also concerned.”

  “Oh.” She looked down so I couldn’t see her face.

  Hit her with it.

  “Your friend said you might be involved with something that’s upsetting you.”

  Her eyes came back to mine. “I have no friends. Who are you talking about?” Her voice was small and flat.

  “Sandy O’Reilly. She was replacing you that day.”

  “Sandy wants my hours. Why are you here?”

  Good question.

  “I wanted to talk to you and to Dr. Jeannotte.”

  “She’s not in.”

  “Could you and I talk?”

  “There’s nothing you can do for me. My life is my own business.” The listlessness chilled me.

  “I appreciate that. But, actually, I thought you might be able to help me.”

  Her glance slid down the corridor then back to me.

  “Help you how?”

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “No.”

  “Could we go somewhere else?”

  She looked at me a long time, her eyes flat and empty. Then she nodded, took a parka from the hall tree, and guided me down the stairs and out a back door. Bending into the frigid rain we trudged uphill to the center of campus, and circled to the back of the Redpath Museum. Anna took a key from her pocket, opened a door, and led me into a dim corridor. The air smelled faintly of mildew and decay.

  We climbed to the second floor and sat on a long wooden bench, surrounded by the bones of creatures long dead. Above us hung a beluga whale, casualty of some Pleistocene misfortune. Dust motes drifted in the fluorescent light.

  “I don’t work in the museum anymore, but I still come here to think.” She gazed at the Irish elk. “These creatures lived millions of years and thousands of miles apart and now they’re fixed at this one point in the universe, forever motionless in time and place. I like that.”

  “Yes.” That was one way to view extinction. “Stability is a rare thing in today’s world.”

  She gave me an odd look, then turned back to the skeletons. I watched her profile as she studied the collection.

  “Sandy talked about you, but I didn’t really listen.” She spoke without turning to face me. “I’m not sure who you are or what you want.”

  “I’m a friend of your aunt.”

  “My aunt is a nice person.”

  “Yes. Your mother thought you might be in trouble.”

  She gave a wry smile. Obviously this was not a happy subject for her.

  “Why do you care what my mother thinks?”

  “I care that Sister Julienne was distressed by your disappearance. Your aunt is not aware that you’ve taken off before.”

  Her eyes left the vertebrates and swung to me. “What else do you know about me?” She flicked her hair. Perhaps the cold had revived her. Perhaps escape from her mentor’s presence. She seemed slightly more animated than she’d been in Birks.

  “Anna, your aunt begged me to find you. She didn’t want to pry, she simply wanted to reassure your mother.”

  She looked uncertain. “Since you seem to have made me your pet project, you must also know that my mother is crazy. If I’m ten minutes late she calls the cops.”

  “According to the police your absences lasted a bit longer than ten minutes.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly.

  Good, Brennan. Put her on the defensive.

  “Look, Anna, I don’t want to meddle. But if there’s anything I can do to help you, I’m more than willing to try.”

  I waited but she said nothing.

  Turn it around. Maybe she’ll open up.

  “Perhaps you can help me. As you know I work with the coroner, and some recent cases really have us baffled. A young woman named Jennifer Cannon vanished from Montreal several years ago. Her body was found last week in South Carolina. She was a McGill student.”

  Anna’s expression did not change.

  “Did you know her?”

  She was as silent as the bones around us.

  “On March seventeenth a woman named Carole Comptois was murdered and dumped on Île des S?urs. She was eighteen.”

  A hand slid to her hair.

  “Jennifer Cannon wasn’t alone.” The hand dropped to her lap, floated back to her ear. “We haven’t identified the person buried with her.”

  I withdrew the composite sketch and held it out. She took it, her eyes avoiding mine.

  The paper trembled slightly as she stared at the face I’d created.

  “Is this for real?”

  “Facial approximation is an art, not a science. One can never be certain about the accuracy.”

  “You did this from a skull?” There was a tremor in her voice.

  “Yes.”

  “The hair is wrong.” Barely audible.

  “You recognize the face?”

  “Amalie Provencher.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “She works in the counseling center.” She kept her eyes averted.

  “When did you last see her?”

  “It’s been a couple of weeks. Maybe longer, I’m not sure. I was gone.”

  “Is she a student?”

  “What did they do to her?”

  I hesitated, uncertain how much to reveal. Anna’s mood swings made me suspect she was either unstable or taking drugs. She didn’t wait for my answer.

  “Did they murder her?”

  “Who, Anna? Who are ‘they’?”

  Finally, she looked at me. Her pupils glistened in the artificial light.

  “Sandy told me about your conversation. She was right, and she was wrong. There is a group here on campus, but they have nothing to do with Satan. And I have nothing to do with them. Amalie did. She got the job in the counseling center because they told her to.”

  “Is that where you met?”

  She nodded, ran a knuckle under each eye, and wiped them on her pants.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Awhile back. I was pretty bummed, so I thought I’d try counseling. When I went to the center Amalie always made a point of chatting with me, acting really concerned. She’d never talk about herself or her problems. She really listened to what I had to say. We had a lot in common, so we became friends.”

  I remembered Red’s words. Recruiters are instructed to learn about potential members, to convince them of their common ground and
earn their trust.

  “She’d talk about this group she belonged to, said it turned her life around. I finally went to one of the meetings. It was O.K.” She shrugged. “Someone spoke and we ate and did breathing exercises and stuff. It didn’t really grab me, but I went back a couple of times because everyone acted as if they really liked me.”

  Love bombing.

  “Then they invited me to the country. That sounded cool, so I went. We played games and listened to lectures and chanted and did exercises. Amalie loved it, but it wasn’t for me. I thought it was a lot of gobbledygook, but you couldn’t disagree. Plus they never left me alone. I wasn’t allowed a minute to myself.

  “They wanted me to stay for a longer workshop, and when I said no, they got kind of huffy. I had to get pretty bitchy to get a ride back to town. I avoid Amalie now, but I see her from time to time.”

  “What’s this group called?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Do you think they killed Amalie?”

  She wiped her palms on the sides of her thighs.

  “There was a guy I met out there. He signed up through a course someplace else. Anyway, after I left he stayed, so I didn’t see him for a long time. Maybe a year. Then I ran into him at a concert on Île Notre Dame. We saw each other for a while, but that didn’t work out.” Another shrug. “By then he’d left the group, but he had some spooky stories about what went on. Mostly, he wouldn’t talk about it, though. He was pretty freaked.”

  “What was his name?”

  “John something.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know. I think he moved away.” She wiped tears from her lower lashes.

  “Anna, is Dr. Jeannotte connected with this group?”

  “Why do you ask that?” Her voice broke on the last word. I could see a small blue vein pulsing in her neck.

  “When I first met you, in her office, you seemed very nervous around Dr. Jeannotte.”

  “She’s been wonderful to me. She’s a lot better for my head than meditation and heavy breathing.” She snorted. “But she’s also demanding, and I worry all the time that I’ll mess up.”

  “I understand you spend a lot of time with her.”

  Her eyes went back to the skeletons. “I thought you were concerned about Amalie and these dead people.”

  “Anna, would you be willing to talk to someone else? What you’ve told me is important, and the police will definitely want to follow up on it. A detective named Andrew Ryan is investigating these homicides. He’s a very kind man, and I think you’ll like him.”

  She gave me a confused look and whipped hair behind both ears.

  “There’s nothing I can tell you. John could, but I really don’t know where he’s gone.”

  “Do you remember where this seminar took place?”

  “Some kind of farm. I rode in a van and didn’t pay much attention because they had us playing games. Coming back, I just slept. They kept us up a lot and I was exhausted. Except for John and Amalie, I never saw any of them again. And now you say she’s—”

  Downstairs a door opened, then a voice rolled up the stairs.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Great. Now I’ll lose the key,” Anna whispered.

  “Are we not supposed to be here?”

  “Not exactly. When I stopped working in the museum I just sort of kept the key.”

  Terrific.

  “Go along with me,” I said, rising from the bench.

  “Is someone there?” I called out. “We’re here.”

  Footfalls on the stairs, then a security guard appeared in the doorway. His knitted cap stopped just above his eyes, and a water-soaked parka barely covered his paunch. He was breathing hard, and his teeth looked yellow in the violet light.

  “Oh, God, are we glad to see you.” I overacted. “We were sketching Odocoileus virginianus and lost track of time. Everyone left early because of the ice, and I guess they forgot about us. We got locked in.” I gave a silly-me smile. “I was about to call security.”

  “You can’t be in here now. The museum’s closed,” he rasped.

  Obviously my performance had been wasted.

  “Of course. We really need to be on our way. Her husband will be crazy wondering where she is.” I gestured at Anna, who was nodding like a box turtle.

  The guard shifted watery eyes from Anna to me, then tipped his head toward the stairs.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  We wasted no time.

  Outside, rain was still falling. The drops were thicker now, like the Slushes my sister and I had bought from summer vendors. Her face rose from a niche in my mind. Where are you, Harry?

  At Birks Hall Anna gave me a funny look.

  “Odocoileus virginianus?”

  “It popped into my head.”

  “There is no white-tailed deer in the museum.”

  Did the corners of her mouth pucker, or was it merely the cold? I shrugged.

  Reluctantly, Anna gave me her home number and address. We parted, and I assured her that Ryan would call soon. As I hurried down University something made me turn back. Anna stood in the archway of the Gothic old building, motionless, like her Cenozoic comrades.

  When I got home I dialed Ryan’s pager. Minutes later the phone rang. I told him that Anna had surfaced and outlined our conversation. He promised to inform the coroner so a search could begin for Amalie Provencher’s medical and dental records. He rang off quickly, intending to contact Anna before she left Jeannotte’s office. He would phone later to fill me in on what he’d learned during the day.

  I ate a supper of salad niçoise and croissants, took a long bath, and slipped into an old sweat suit. I still felt chilled, and decided to light a fire. I’d used the last of my starter logs so I wadded newspaper into balls and overlaid them with kindling. Ice was ticking against the windows as I lit the pile and watched it catch.

  Eight-forty. I got the Bélanger journals and turned on “Seinfeld,” hoping the rhythm of the dialogue and laughter would have a soothing effect. Left on their own I knew my thoughts would run like cats in the night, rooting and snarling, and raising my anxiety to a level where sleep would be impossible.

  No go. Jerry and Kramer did their best, but I couldn’t concentrate.

  My eyes drifted to the fire. The flames had dwindled to a few sparse tongues curving around the bottom log. I went to the hearth, separated a section of paper, tore and balled up several pages, and stuffed them into the embers.

  I was poking the logs when recall kicked in.

  Newspapers!

  I’d forgotten about the microfilm!

  I went to the bedroom, pulled out the pages I’d copied at McGill, and took them back to the sofa. It took only a moment to locate the article in La Presse.

  The story was as brief as I remembered it. April 20, 1845. Eugénie Nicolet was sailing for France. She would sing in Paris and Brussels, summer in the south of France, and return to Montreal in July. The members of her entourage were listed, as were her upcoming concert dates. There was also a brief summary of her career, and comments as to how she would be missed.

  My coins had taken me through April 26. I skimmed everything I’d printed, but Eugénie’s name did not reappear. Then I went back through, strip-searching every story and announcement.

  The article appeared on April 22.

  Someone else would appear in Paris. This gentleman’s talent lay not in music, but in oratory. He was on a speaking tour, denouncing the selling of human beings and encouraging commerce with West Africa. Born in the Gold Coast, he’d been educated in Germany and held a professorship in philosophy at the University of Halle. He’d just completed a series of lectures at the McGill School of Divinity.

  I backpedaled through history. Eighteen forty-five. Slavery was in full swing in the United States, but had been banned in France and England. Canada was still a British colony. Church and missionary groups were begging Africans to stop exporting their brothers and si
sters, and encouraging Europeans to engage in legal commerce with West Africa as an alternative. What did they call it? The “legitimate trade.”

  I read the passenger’s name with growing excitement.

  And the name of the vessel.

  Eugénie Nicolet and Abo Gabassa had made the crossing on the same ship.

  I got up to poke the fire.

  Was that it? Had I stumbled on the secret hidden for a century and a half? Eugénie Nicolet and Abo Gabassa? An affair?

  I slipped on shoes, went to the French doors, flipped the handle, and pushed. The door was frozen shut. I leaned hard with my hip and the seal cracked.

  My woodpile was frozen, and it took me some time to hack a log free with a garden trowel. When I finally got back inside I was shivering and covered with tiny pellets. A sound stopped me dead as I crossed to the hearth.

  My doorbell doesn’t ring, it twitters. It did so now, then stopped abruptly, as if someone had given up.

  I dropped the log, raced to the security box, and hit the video button. On the screen I saw a familiar figure disappearing through the front door.

  I grabbed my keys, ran to the lobby, and opened the door to the vestibule. The outer door was settling into place. I depressed the tongue and pulled it wide.

  Daisy Jeannotte lay sprawled across my steps.

  31

  BEFORE I COULD REACH HER, SHE MOVED. SLOWLY, SHE DREW IN her hands, rolled, and pushed to a sitting position, her back to me.

  “Are you hurt?” My throat was so dry my words came out high and stretched.

  She flinched at the sound of my voice, then turned.

  “The ice is treacherous. I slipped, but I’m quite fine.”

  I reached out and she allowed me to help her up. She was trembling, and didn’t look fine at all.

  “Please, come inside and I’ll make some tea.”

  “No. I can’t stay. There’s someone waiting for me. I shouldn’t be out on such a dreadful night but I had to speak to you.”

  “Please come in where it’s warmer.”

  “No. Thank you.” Her tone was as cold as the air.