Grave Secrets

by Kathy Reichs

  “And what the hell’s she doing here.” She jerked an elbow in my direction.

  Mrs. Specter jumped in before I could answer.

  “We’re all concerned, darling. If you’re having a problem with drugs, we want to find the best solution for you. Dr. Brennan might be able to help with that.”

  “You want to lock me away somewhere so I won’t embarrass you.” She kicked at a table leg, and the blazing eyes went back to her boots.

  “Chant—”

  Lywyckij placed a hand on Mrs. Specter’s shoulder, raised his other to quiet her.

  “What is it you want, Chantale?”

  “I want to get out of here.”

  “I will arrange that.”

  “You will?” For the first time her voice seemed to match her age.

  “You have no prior convictions in Canada, and shoplifting is a minor offense. Given the circumstances, I’m sure I can persuade the judge to release you into your mother’s care if you promise to abide by his, and her, conditions.”

  Chantale said nothing.

  “Do you understand what that means?”

  No response.

  “If you disobey your mother, you’ll be in violation.”

  Another chop to the table leg.

  “Do you understand, Chantale?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Can you comply with the conditions that will be imposed?”

  “I’m not a fucking moron.”

  Mrs. Specter flinched but held her tongue.

  “What about Lucy?”

  Lywyckij lowered his palm and brushed nonexistent dust from the tabletop.

  “Miss Gerardi’s situation is more problematical. Your friend is here illegally. She has no papers permitting her to be in Canada. That issue will need to be addressed.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without Lucy.”

  “We will work something out.”

  Lywyckij laced his fingers. They looked like intertwined pink sausages.

  For a few moments no one spoke. Chantale continued to whack the table leg.

  “Now.” Lywyckij leaned onto his forearms. “Perhaps we should talk about the drug problem.”

  Silence.

  “Chantale, darling, you mus—”

  Again Lywyckij hushed his client with a raised hand.

  More silence. More table whacking.

  I shifted my gaze between mother and daughter. It was like moving from Glamour to Metal Edge. Finally, another elbow in my direction.

  “She some kind of social worker?”

  “The lady is a friend of your moth—” Lywyckij began.

  “I asked my mother.”

  “Dr. Brennan accompanied me from Guatemala City.” Mrs. Specter’s voice sounded small.

  “She help you blow your nose on liftoff?”

  I had promised myself I wouldn’t let Chantale get under my skin, but by now I was fighting the urge to reach across the table and grab the little demon by the throat. The hell with kid gloves.

  “I work with the police here.”

  Chantale didn’t let that pass.

  “What police?”

  “All of them. And your street act won’t impress anyone.”

  Chantale shrugged.

  “Your lawyer is giving you good advice.” I didn’t attempt to pronounce the man’s name.

  “My mother’s lawyer has the IQ of a turnip.”

  Lywyckij’s face darkened until it looked like a large, ripe plum.

  “You’re riding for a fall, Chantale,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, it’s my ticket.”

  “I must have full knowledge of—” Lywyckij began.

  Chantale cut him off again.

  “What do you mean, ‘work with the police’?” My vague allusion hadn’t escaped her. The ambassador’s daughter wasn’t stupid.

  “I’m with the medico-legal lab,” I said.

  “The coroner?”

  “That works.”

  “They do stiffs in G City?”

  “I was invited into a murder investigation down there.”

  I debated leaving it at that, decided on a dose of reality.

  “Both victims were women your age.”

  At last the vampire eyes met mine.

  “Claudia de la Alda,” I said.

  I watched for signs of recognition. Nothing.

  “Her home was not far from yours.”

  “Ain’t coincidence grand.”

  “Claudia worked at the Ixchel Museum.”

  Another shrug.

  “The second victim hasn’t been identified. We found her in a septic tank in Zone One.”

  “Rough neighborhood.”

  Chantale and I were in a stare-off now, testing wills.

  “Let’s try another name,” I said.

  “Tinkerbell?”

  “Patricia Eduardo.”

  Corneal hardball. Her eyes didn’t waver.

  “Patricia worked at the Hospital Centro Médico.”

  “Bedpan bingo. Not my game.”

  “She’s been missing since last October.”

  “People take off.”

  “They do.”

  Whack. The table jumped.

  “Your name came up in the investigation.”

  “No way,” she snorted.

  Whack.

  “Like, why?”

  “Too many grand coincidences.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  Chantale’s eyes flicked to Lywyckij. He turned his palms up. They came back to me.

  “This is bullshit.”

  “The Guatemalan police don’t think so. They want information.”

  “I don’t care if they want a cure for the clap. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was staring at me with high beams.

  “You’re the same age, lived blocks apart, hung out in the same neighborhoods. They find one link, one ladies’ room where you and Claudia de la Alda both took a pee, they can have you hauled back down there and put through a grinder.”

  Not true, of course, and Lywyckij knew it. The lawyer said nothing.

  “There’s no way you can force me to go back to Guatemala.” Chantale’s voice sounded a little less confident.

  “You’re seventeen. That makes you a minor.”

  “We won’t let that happen.” Lywyckij jumped aboard as Nice Cop.

  “You may have no choice.” I continued as Mean Cop.

  Chantale wasn’t buying the act. She pulled her hands from her pockets and held them up, wrists pressed together.

  “O.K. It was me. I killed them. And I’m dealing heroin at the junior high.”

  “No one is accusing you of murder,” I said.

  “I know. It’s a reality bite for a wayward teen.” She shot forward, widened her eyes, and waggled her head like a dashboard dog. “Bad things happen to bad girls.”

  “Something like that,” I replied evenly. “You know, of course, that nothing will prevent Lucy’s return to Guatemala.”

  Chantale stood so suddenly her chair crashed to the floor.

  Mrs. Specter’s hand flew to her chest.

  The guard shot through the door, hand on the butt of his gun. “Everything all right?”

  Lywyckij lumbered to his feet. “We’re finished.” He turned to Chantale. “Your mother has brought something for you to wear when you appear before the judge.”

  Chantale rolled her eyes. Globs of mascara clung to the lashes, like raindrops on a spiderweb.

  “We should have you out of here in two or three hours,” he continued. “We will deal with the drug issue later.”

  When the guard had escorted Chantale from the room, Lywyckij turned to Mrs. Specter.

  “Do you think you can control her?”

  “Of course.”

  “She might take off.”

  “These dreadful surroundings make Chantale defensive. She’ll be fine once she’s home with her father and me.”

  I could see Lywyckij had his doubts. I
definitely had mine.

  “When is the ambassador arriving?” “Just as soon as he can.” The plastic smile slipped into place.

  Lyrics popped into my head. A song about a handy smile. We’d sung it in Brownies when I was eight years old.

  I have something in my pocket that belongs across my face

  I keep it very close to me in a most convenient place . . .

  “What of Miss Gerardi?” Lywyckij’s question snapped me back.

  “What of her?” A return question from the ambassador’s wife, not indicating great concern.

  “Will I be representing her?”

  “Chantale’s difficulties probably stem from that girl’s influence. Obtaining documents. Hitchhiking with strangers. Crossing the continent on buses. My daughter would never do those things on her own.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I said.

  The emerald eyes swung to me, surprised.

  “How could you know such a thing?”

  “Call it gut instinct.” Not backing off.

  A pause by Mrs. Specter, then a pronouncement.

  “In any event, it is best that we not meddle in the affairs of Guatemalan citizens. Lucy’s father is a wealthy man. He will take care of her.”

  That wealthy man was now here in Montreal and trailing a guard as we entered the corridor. His companion was outfitted like Lywyckij in expensive suit, Italian shoes, leather briefcase.

  Gerardi turned as we passed, and his eyes met mine.

  I’d empathized with the little girl at the school-yard fence. That reaction was nothing compared with the pity I now felt for Lucy Gerardi. Whatever had brought her to Canada was not about to be forgiven.

  17

  FORTY MINUTES LATER I WAS PASSING BETWEEN SHOULDER-high hedges on a walkway leading to double glass doors. A logo was centered in each pane, with company information printed below. French on top, English underneath in smaller font. Very québécois.

  It had taken thirty minutes to drive, another thirty to find the address. The RP Corporation was one of a half dozen enterprises housed in two-story concrete boxes in a light-industrial park in St-Hubert. Each structure was gray, but expressed its individuality with a painted stripe circling the building like a gift ribbon. RP’s bow was red.

  The lobby had the glossiest floor I’ve ever tread. I crossed it to an office to the left of the main entrance. When I peeked in, an Asian woman greeted me in French. She had shiny black hair cut blunt at the ears and straight across her forehead. Her broad cheekbones reminded me of Chantale Specter, which reminded me of the girl in the septic tank. I felt the familiar cringe of self-blame.

  “Je m’appelle Tempe Brennan,” I said.

  Hearing my accent, she switched to English.

  “How may I help you?”

  “I have a three o’clock appointment with Susanne Jean.”

  “Please have a seat. It won’t be a moment.” She picked up and spoke into a receiver.

  In less than a minute Susanne appeared and crooked a finger at me. She was about my weight, but stood a full head taller. Her skin was eggplant, her hair plaited into a trellis pattern for three inches around her face. In back it hung in long, black cornrows, bundled together with a tangerine binder. As usual, Susanne looked more like a fashion model than an industrial engineer.

  I followed her back into the lobby, then through a second set of double doors opposite the main entrance. We crossed a room filled with machines. Several white-coated workers adjusted dials, studied monitors, or stood watching the technology do whatever it did. The air was packed with muted whirs, hums, and clicks.

  Susanne’s office was as sleek as the rest of the plant, with bare white walls and straight teak lines. A single watercolor hung behind her desk. One orchid in a crystal bud vase. One detached petal. One perfect water droplet.

  Susanne liked things clean. Like me, she held title to a messy past. Like me she’d done serious tidying up.

  While my drug of choice had been alcohol, Susanne’s was coke. Though neither of us belonged to the organization, we’d met through a mutual friend who was an AA zealot. That was six years ago. We’d kept in touch, periodically attending a meeting with our common link, or getting together on our own for dinner or tennis. I knew little about her world, she less about mine, but somehow we clicked.

  Susanne lowered herself onto one end of an apricot couch, and crossed legs that were at least twelve yards long. I took the other end.

  “What do you do for Bombardier?” I asked.

  “We’re prototyping plastic parts.”

  “Volvo?”

  “Metal bearings.”

  Manufacturing is as mysterious to me as the Okeefenokee. Raw materials go in. Weedwhackers, Q-tips, or Buicks come out. What happens in between, I haven’t a clue.

  “I know you take CAD data and create solid objects, but I’ve never really known what kinds of objects,” I said.

  “Functional plastic and metal parts, casting patterns, and durable metal mold inserts.”

  “Oh.”

  “Did you bring the CT scans?”

  I handed her Fereira’s envelope. She withdrew the contents and began going through the films, holding them up as Fereira had done. Now and then a film bent, making a sound like distant thunder.

  “This should be fun.”

  “Without getting technical, what will you do?”

  “We’ll make an STL file of your 3-D CAD data, then—”

  “STL?”

  “Stereolithography. Then we’ll enter the STL file into our system.”

  “One of those machines out there?”

  “Right. The machine will spread a thin layer of powdered material across a build platform. Using data from the STL file, a CO2 laser will draw a cross-section of the object, in your case a skull, on the layer of powder, then sinter—”

  “Sinter?”

  “Selectively heat and fuse it. That will create a solid mass representing one cross-section of the skull. The system will spread and sinter, layer after layer, until the skull is complete.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Pretty much. When the skull is done, we’ll take it out of the build chamber and blow away any loose powder. You’ll be able to use it as is, or it can be sanded, annealed, coated, or painted.”

  I was right. Stuff in. Stuff out. In this case what would go in was information taken from Fereira’s CT scan. What would come out was a cast of the Paraíso skull. I hoped.

  “The technology’s called SLS, Selective Laser Sintering.”

  “Besides metal bearings and plastic parts, what else do you make?”

  “Pump impellers, electrical connectors, halogen lamp housings, automotive turbocharger housing units, brake fluid reservoir parts—”

  “O-rings for the Orion nebula.”

  We both laughed.

  “How long will it take?”

  She shrugged. “Two, maybe three hours to convert the CT scan to an STL file, maybe a day to cast the skull. How about late Monday?”

  “Fantastic.”

  “You look shocked.”

  I was. “I thought you’d say a week or two.”

  “This project sounds more interesting than hearing aid housings.”

  “And the Guatemalan police will be eternally grateful.”

  “Any cute ones down there?”

  I pictured Galiano’s lopsided face.

  “There is one.”

  “What about the caballero you’re seeing up here?”

  I pictured Ryan.

  “Pecos Bill’s been keeping a low profile.”

  “Anyway, I’ll do your skull myself.” She held up a long, slender finger. “On one condition.”

  “Dinner and drinks on me.” I laughed. “Tomorrow night?”

  “Sounds good. Be warned, girlfriend. I’m gonna hit you up for the priciest mineral water on the menu.”

  * * *

  I entered my lobby to the sight of the caballero supine on its leather love seat, head pro
pped on one arm, lower legs dangling over the other.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “It’s O.K. I’m a cop.”

  I set down my cases and grocery bags.

  “All right. Let’s go with why.”

  “It’s hot outside.”

  I waited.

  Ryan sat up and swung his size twelves to the floor.

  “These things aren’t designed for beings over six foot two.”

  “It’s a decorative piece.”

  “Would be hell for watching the Stanley Cup finals.”

  “It’s not intended for lounging.”

  “What’s it good for?”

  “Collecting mislabeled mail, drugstore circulars, and back issues of the newspaper.”

  “This lobby isn’t exactly visitor friendly.” Ryan rubbed the back of his neck.

  “There are the potted palms.”

  He gave me his forty-something schoolboy grin. “Missed you.”

  “I got in yesterday.”

  “I’ve been on a stakeout.”

  “Oh?”

  “Drummondville.”

  Through the door I heard muted beeps and engine revs. Friday evening rush hour was winding down.

  “Owner of a dive called Les Deux Orignals decided to expand into the small-arms business. Guess the two moose made him nervous.”

  “You never told me you speak Spanish.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  I picked up my parcels.

  “It’s been a long day, Ryan.”

  “How about dinner tomorrow night?”

  “I’ve made plans.”

  “Change them.”

  “That would be rude.”

  “How about dinner tonight?”

  “I just bought shrimp and veggies.”

  “I know a scampi recipe that’s illegal in four Italian cities.”

  I’d bought enough food for two. Actually, I’d bought enough for twelve. I never again wanted a cupboard as bare as the one I’d faced last night.

  Ryan stood, spread his hands palms out, and broke into another grin. He was tanned from hours of outdoor surveillance, and the tawny skin made his eyes appear more vivid than usual, a blue beyond the blue human cells can produce.

  Normally, with time, even the most stunning beauty grows familiar. It’s like watching Olympic figure skating. We grow jaded and forget how extraordinary the grace and beauty truly are. Such was the case with Susanne. I was aware of her elegance, but it no longer surprised me when she entered a room.