Bones to Ashes

by Kathy Reichs

  LaManche raised, dropped both shoulders. Life is hard. What can you do?

  Back in my lab, Hippo’s bag was still on my desk. A lone pink doughnut remained. Pink? There’s something wrong there.

  I looked at the clock: 1:46 P.M.

  The sheet with Hippo’s coroner contact information caught my eye. Grabbing it, I crossed to my office.

  The mound of papers hadn’t diminished. The wastebasket and plants hadn’t relocated themselves to the floor. The CSU supplies hadn’t disappeared, neatly folded, into a locker.

  Screw housekeeping. Sliding into my chair, I dialed Yves Bradette.

  His answering service picked up. I left my name and number.

  A stomach growl warned that doughnuts hadn’t sufficed.

  Quick lunch. Chicken salad in the first-floor cafeteria.

  When I returned, my red message light was flashing. Yves Bradette had phoned.

  Again, I dialed Rimouski. This time Bradette answered.

  “What can I do for you, Dr. Brennan?” Nasal. A bit whiny.

  “Thanks for returning my call so quickly.”

  “Of course.”

  I relayed Hippo’s story, mentioning no names.

  “May I ask how you came to know of this?” A cool and very formal vous.

  “A police officer brought the situation to my attention.”

  Bradette said nothing. I wondered if he was trying to recall Gaston’s report of the bones, or formulating a justification for his failure to seize them.

  “I think it’s worth a look,” I added.

  “I have investigated this matter.” Even cooler.

  “You examined the skeleton?”

  “Cursorily.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I went to SQ headquarters. I concluded these bones are old. Perhaps ancient.”

  “That’s it?”

  “In my judgment, the remains are those of a female adolescent.”

  Easy, Brennan.

  A coroner or pathologist orders a textbook or takes a short course, and Sha-zam! He or she is a forensic anthropologist! Why not score a copy of Operative Cardiac Surgery, hang a shingle, and start opening chests? Though it’s rare that an underqualified person attempts to practice my profession, when it happens on my turf, I am far from pleased.

  “I see.” I matched Bradette’s cool with arctic.

  “Under questioning, the officer admitted to having had these bones for many years. Furthermore, he stated that they originated in New Brunswick. New Brunswick is outside the scope of my authority.”

  Months, perhaps years pass with no thought of Évangéline Landry. Then, unexpectedly, a synapse will flash. I never know what the trigger will be. A forgotten snapshot curling in the bottom of a box. Words spoken with a certain intonation. A song. A line from a poem.

  Hippo’s chiac accent. New Brunswick. The skeleton of a girl, dead many years.

  Neurons fired.

  Irrationally, my fingers tightened on the receiver.

  5

  “I WANT THOSE BONES CONFISCATED AND SENT TO MY LAB.” MY voice could have carved marble.

  “In my professional opinion, this is a waste of—”

  “Tomorrow.” Granite.

  “Pierre LaManche must submit an official request form.”

  “Give me your fax number, please.”

  He did.

  I wrote it down.

  “You will have the paperwork within the hour.”

  After completing the form I went in search of a signature.

  LaManche was now at a side counter in the pathology lab, masked and wearing a plastic apron tied behind his neck and back. A sliced pancreas lay on a corkboard before him. Hearing footsteps, he turned.

  I told him about Gaston’s skeleton. I didn’t mention Évangéline Landry or her disappearance from my life almost four decades earlier as something that was prodding me to look more closely at adolescent remains from New Brunswick. I didn’t really believe there could be any connection, but somehow I felt I owed it to Évangéline to explore the identity of the New Brunswick skeleton.

  Yet the tightness in my chest.

  “Nouveau-Brunswick?” LaManche asked.

  “The remains are currently in Quebec.”

  “Might they have come from an old cemetery?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will be very busy this month.”

  Spring to early summer is high season in my business in Quebec. Rivers thaw. Snow melts. Hikers, campers, and picnickers sally forth. Tada! Rotting corpses are found. LaManche was gently reminding me of this fact.

  “The construction site bones are nonhuman. I’ll begin Dr. Santangelo’s case now. Then do your Lac des Deux Montagnes vic.”

  LaManche gave a tight head shake. “Old bones kept as a souvenir.”

  “PMI is unclear.”

  LaManche said nothing.

  “Dr. Bradette’s attitude offends me. A skeleton is lying ignored within our jurisdiction. No human being should be treated with such cavalier disregard.”

  LaManche gazed at me over his mask. Then he shrugged. “If you think you will have time.”

  “I’ll make time.”

  I lay the form on the counter. LaManche stripped off a glove and signed it.

  Thanking him, I hurried to the fax machine.

  I spent the rest of that afternoon with Santangelo’s fire victim, a ninety-three-year-old man known to smoke in bed before removing his dentures and turning off his bedside lamp each night. The kids and grandkids had repeatedly warned, but the old geezer had ignored their advice.

  Gramps wasn’t smoking now. He lay on stainless steel in autopsy room four.

  If it was Gramps.

  The skull consisted of charred fragments collected in a brown paper bag. The torso was an amorphous black mass with upper arms and legs raised due to contraction of the flexor muscles. The lower limbs were shriveled stumps. The hands and feet were missing.

  No fingers, no prints. No teeth, no dentals. And the false choppers looked like a blob of Bazooka.

  But one thing simplified my task. In 1988, the presumed vic had treated himself to a brand-new hip. Antemortem X-rays now covered the light boxes previously occupied by Geneviève Doucet.

  Gramps’s prosthesis glowed white in his upper right femur. Postmortem X-rays showed a similar neon mushroom positioned identically within the burned right leg.

  Making an incision along the outer pelvic edge, I peeled back charred muscle and tendon, manipulated the device from the hip socket, then buzzed through the proximal third of the bone with an autopsy saw.

  Further cleaning revealed the serial number. Crossing to the counter, I checked the antemortem orthopedic records.

  Bonjour, Gramps!

  I photographed, bagged, and tagged the specimen, then returned to the body for a full skeletal exam. Although the implant made the ID a slam dunk, anthropological data would provide useful backup.

  Cranial fragments showed large brow ridges and mastoid processes, and an occipital muscle attachment the size of my sneaker.

  Male. I made notes and moved on to the pelvis.

  Short, chunky pubic bone. V-shaped subpubic angle. Narrow sciatic notch.

  Male. I was recording my observations when the outer door clicked open then shut.

  I glanced up.

  A tall, sandy-haired man stood in the anteroom. He wore a tweed jacket, tan slacks, and a shirt the exact startling blue of his eyes. Burberry. I knew. I’d given it to him.

  Time to discuss lieutenant-détective Andrew Ryan, Section des crimes contre la personne, Sûreté du Québec.

  Ryan works homicide for the provincial police. I work corpses for the provincial coroner. No-brainer how we met. For years I tried maintaining professional distance, but Ryan played by different rules. Libertine rules. Knowing his reputation, I didn’t sign on.

  Then my marriage imploded, and Ryan high-geared the legendary charm. What the hell? I gave dating a whirl. Things went well for a while.
Very well.

  Then fate played the family obligation card. A newfound daughter barreled into Ryan’s life. My estranged husband, Pete, was shot by the village idiot in Isle of Palms, South Carolina. Duty didn’t call. It pounded on the door in full battle gear.

  To add further complication, Pete’s brush with death resurrected feelings I’d thought long dead. They didn’t look dead to Ryan. He withdrew.

  Was the lieutenant-detective still leading-man material? Definitely. But the casting couch had grown a bit crowded. Ryan and I hadn’t spoken since parting the previous month.

  “Hey,” I said. Southern for “hi” or bonjour.

  “Car fire?” Ryan pointed at Gramps.

  “Smoking in bed.”

  “A sign of our increasingly complacent society.”

  I gave Ryan a questioning look.

  “No one bothers with labels.”

  The look held.

  “Big bold font on every pack. ‘Cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health.’”

  My eyes rolled skyward.

  “How are you?” Ryan’s tone went softer. Or did I imagine it?

  “I’m good. You?”

  “All good.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  The dialogue of middle-schoolers, not former lovers. Were we? I wondered. Former?

  “When did you arrive?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Good flight?”

  “Landed on time.”

  “Better than early and sudden.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re working late.”

  I looked at the clock. Isolated in room four with its special ventilation, I hadn’t heard the autopsy techs depart. It was now six-fifteen.

  “Indeed.” God, this was strained. “How’s Charlie?”

  “Bawdy as ever.”

  Charlie is a cockatiel whose early years were spent in a brothel. A Christmas gift from Ryan, we share joint custody of the bird.

  “Birdie’s been asking about him.” I wondered if Ryan was there to see me, or to talk about LaManche’s Lac des Deux Montagnes case. I didn’t wonder long.

  “Had time to look at my floater?”

  “Not yet.” I kept the disappointment from my voice. “What’s the story?”

  “Fisherman was trolling off L’Île-Bizard yesterday. Thought he’d snagged the big one, reeled in a body instead. Guy probably has his bass boat on eBay right now.”

  “I haven’t gotten to it yet.”

  “The vic is female. LaManche thought he spotted some unusual patterning around the neck, wasn’t sure because of the severe bloating and discoloration. No signs of gunshot on the body or the X-rays. No hyoid fracture. LaManche has requested a tox screen.”

  “Has Bergeron charted the teeth?” Marc Bergeron is the lab’s consulting odontologist.

  Ryan nodded. “I entered her dental descriptors into CPIC, got zip. The odds may improve if you nail age and race.”

  “She’s next on the docket.”

  Ryan hesitated a beat. “We’re looking at some MP’s and DOA’s that may be connected.”

  “How many?”

  “Three missing persons. Two bodies, both unknown.”

  “You’re thinking serial?”

  “We’re considering the possibility.”

  “Time frame?”

  “Ten years.”

  “Vic profile?”

  “Female. Early to late teens.”

  I felt the usual anger and sadness. Fear? Could some predator be using Quebec as his killing field?

  “You suspect the Lac des Deux Montagnes woman could be vic number six?”

  “Maybe.”

  “First thing tomorrow?”

  “Thanks.”

  Ryan started to leave, turned back at the door.

  “How’s Pete?”

  “Recovering nicely. Thanks for asking. Lily?”

  “Good.”

  “Good.” God. We were doing it again. “I’ll pick Charlie up,” I said.

  “No need. I’ll deliver him.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Serve and protect.” Ryan snapped a salute. “I’ll give you a call.”

  “Thanks, Ryan.”

  After rewrapping the burned nonagenarian, and rolling his gurney into its bay, I cleaned up and headed home. Birdie met me at the door.

  While changing to shorts I explained that Charlie would be joining us soon. Bird was thrilled. Or bored. With cats it’s hard to be sure.

  Following dinner, Birdie and I watched a Sopranos rerun, the one in which Adriana gets whacked. Throughout, I kept picking up the land phone. Checking for a dial tone. Tossing the thing back onto the couch.

  Ryan didn’t phone. Nor did he appear at my condo that night.

  Though Birdie and I were in bed by eleven, sleep didn’t come for a very long time. Thinking back on our exchange in autopsy room four, I realized what was bothering me. Ryan had scarcely smiled or joked. It wasn’t like him.

  Don’t act like an insecure adolescent, I told myself. Ryan’s busy. Concerned about his daughter. About a serial killer. About ear wax buildup. About the mustard spot on his tie.

  I didn’t buy it.

  6

  I USE A HOME-RIGGED SYSTEM FOR CLEANING CADAVERS. ORIGINALLY designed for institutional cooking, the apparatus consists of water intake and discharge pipes, grease filtration gear, a compartmentalized boiling tank, and submersion baskets, the kind used to deep-fry potatoes or fish.

  In the square baskets I simmer small body parts—dissected jaws, hands, feet, maybe a skull. In the large, rectangular ones I reduce the big stuff—long bones, rib cages, pelves—once defleshing has been done by morgue technicians. Heat water to just below boiling, add enzyme detergent to minimize grease, stir. The recipe’s a hit every time.

  Unless the bones are too fragile, of course. Then it’s hand laundry all the way.

  That morning the “cooker” was full to capacity. The Lac des Deux Montagnes corpse. Parts of Santangelo’s charred bed smoker. Geneviève Doucet.

  Putrid, sodden flesh means quicker turn-around time. And Ryan’s floater had gone in first. Denis was removing those bones when I arrived following the morning staff meeting.

  First, I opened the brown envelopes containing the Lac des Deux Montagnes scene and autopsy photos. One by one I worked from recovery through autopsy completion.

  It was obvious why LaManche needed help. When dragged from the river, the body looked like a marionette wrapped in moss-colored Spam. No hair. No features. Large areas of flesh devoured by crabs and fish. I noted that the woman wore only one red sock.

  I began constructing the requested portions of the biological profile. It took all morning. Though I’d left word to call the minute anything arrived from Rimouski, no one phoned or popped into my lab.

  That no one included Ryan.

  At lunch, I told LaManche what I was finding out about the Lac des Deux Montagnes woman. He told me that Théodore Doucet had undergone the first in his series of psychiatric interviews.

  According to the doctor, Doucet was oblivious to the deaths of his wife and daughter. Delusional, he believed Dorothée and Geneviève had gone to church and would be home shortly to prepare supper. Doucet was being held at the Institut Philippe-Pinel, Montreal’s main legal psychiatric hospital.

  Back in my lab, I found the fire victim’s pelvis and upper arm and leg bones spread out on a counter. Gloving, I transferred the remains to a second worktable and began my exam.

  Though severely damaged, sufficient structure remained to confirm the gender as male. The pubic symphysis, coupled with advanced arthritis, suggested a skeletal age consistent with ninety-three.

  Age and sex consistent. Orthopedic implant serial number a match. Known resident at the address. Known bed smoker. Good enough for me. Now it was up to the coroner. By three I’d completed my report and delivered it to the secretarial office for typing.

  It isn’t protoco
l to notify me of a skeleton’s arrival. Normally, a case goes to one of the lab’s five pathologists, and via him or her, to me. But I’d asked for a heads-up on the bones Bradette was sending from Rimouski. On the chance they’d forgotten, I checked with morgue intake.

  Nothing.

  Geneviève Doucet’s were the third set of remains that had simmered overnight. Using long-handled tongs, I fished out her skull, pelvis, and several long bones, then spent an hour teasing off flesh. The stuff was resilient as gator hide, so I accomplished very little.

  I was lowering Geneviève’s basket back into its compartment when my lab door opened. I turned.

  Of course. Ryan has a knack for showing up when I’m looking bad. I waited for a crack about steam-lank hair and eau de poached flesh. He made none.

  “Sorry I didn’t bring Charlie last night.”

  “No problem.” I settled the stainless steel cover over the well and checked the temperature gage.

  “Lily,” Ryan sort of explained.

  “Nothing serious, I hope.” Backhanding hair from my face with a lab coat sleeve.

  “I’ll come by tonight.” Ryan jabbed a thumb at the skeleton laid out behind me. “That my floater?”

  “Yes.” I stepped to the table, holding wet, greasy gloves away from my body. “She’s young. Fifteen to eighteen. Mixed racial background.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “Except for the front teeth, I’d have said she was white. Nasal opening is narrow and spiked at the bottom, nasal bridge is high, cheekbones aren’t especially flaring. But all eight incisors are shoveled.”

  “Meaning?”

  “There’s a high probability she’s part Asian or Native American.”

  “First Nations?”

  “Or Japanese, Chinese, Korean. You know, Asian?”

  Ryan ignored the dig. “Show me.”

  I rotated the woman’s skull so her upper dentition was visible. “Each of the four flat teeth in front has a raised border around its outer perimeter on the tongue surface.” Picking up the jaw, I indicated a similar raised ridge. “Same with the lowers.”

  I set down the jaw.

  “I took cranial measurements and ran them through Fordisc 3.0. Metrically she falls in the overlap region for Caucasoid and Mongoloid.”