The Bone Code

by Kathy Reichs

  But some of the anguish was not so typical. It was apparent that Harmony desperately missed her mother. Bonnie Bird’s name, the only one never abbreviated, appeared often.

  Reference to MMM.com first occurred on March 4, 2017, during a stay at Amity House. Mention of the site continued at irregular intervals thereafter, interspersed with normal day-to-day chatter.

  Occasionally, Harmony described her interactions with other visitors to MMM, the passages sometimes buoyant with hope, sometimes dark with despair. From time to time, she cited specific usernames: kerrydo. maplehope. safarisam. nowimfound.

  maplehope? The Canadian girl?

  maplehope began to appear regularly by late March. Harmony gave little detail, other than to write that maplehope was also searching for her mother.

  The script was small and cramped, the ink faded and smeary. By page forty, my eyes felt like gravel, and my frontal bone was thrumming.

  The clock said 11:50.

  Still no call from Ryan.

  Given my remark to Vislosky about having free time that she didn’t have, no way I could quit.

  I got up, downed two aspirin, then returned to the diary.

  The initials lc first appeared on April 10, 2017. Harmony had gone offline with maplehope, and they’d exchanged names.

  lc?

  Lena C.?

  It took another fifty minutes. Then I sat bolt upright, the ocular gravel and headache forgotten.

  May 14, 2017. Harmony and lc had been texting and emailing regularly for a month. Harmony devoted a full page to her new cyber-friend, lc.

  Lena Chalamet.

  “Holy shitballs!”

  I froze, listening for signs that my outburst had awakened Anne. The house was silent.

  As I read the brief passage, my pulse spiked.

  Lena Chalamet told Harmony that she was eighteen years old. That she lived in Laval, a town not far from Montreal. Lena said that in 2002, when she was two years old, her mother, Mélanie, and her sister, Ella, vanished without a trace. Mélanie was thirty-two, and Ella was ten. Lena had dedicated her life to learning what happened to them.

  On May 27, 2017, Harmony wrote that Lena’s passion was totally wig. Awesome. That she and Lena had made a pact to support each other no matter what. That they’d sworn to maintain secrecy to the death.

  On July 17, 2017, Harmony hinted at a discovery that Lena had made. Apologized that she was not at liberty to share the deets. Details.

  Sweet Jesus in a jumpsuit!

  Everything fit. The ages. The time of disappearance. The location.

  Were Mélanie and Ella Chalamet the vics in the Montreal container? Was Lena Mélanie’s other daughter?

  Were Lena Chalamet and Harmony Boatwright the vics in the Charleston container?

  Was I finally going to put names to their bones?

  It was 2:14 a.m. Way too late to phone anyone.

  I hurried to my laptop and fired off an email to Ryan. Another to Vislosky.

  Then I fell back into bed.

  And lay awake, mind in hyperdrive.

  Polly Beecroft.

  Sybil Bouvier.

  Bouvier had disappeared almost a century ago. Yet Beecroft was still searching for answers.

  Mélanie, Ella, and Lena Chalamet. Harmony Boatwright.

  Why had no one kept searching for them?

  26

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13

  The didgeridoo had to go.

  Before answering, I checked caller ID. And the time: 8:15 a.m.

  “Tell me you found her.” Not bothering to hide my drowsiness.

  “I found her.”

  “Really?” Instantly wide awake.

  “I’m tip-top. How are you this morning, ma chère?”

  “Terrific.” Bunching and leaning against the pillows. “You found Lena Chalamet?”

  “Birdie seems a little under the weather.”

  “Oh, no. What’s wrong with him?”

  “Partly my fault. We walked over to Hurley’s for a beer last night. He knocked back three pints of Guinness before I noticed.”

  “ROFL,” I said, eyes doing a three-sixty. Pointless, since Ryan couldn’t see me.

  “Sorry?”

  “Rolling on the floor laughing.”

  “What are you, twelve?”

  “Tell me about Lena?”

  “The kid had a tough go of it.”

  “Start at the beginning.”

  “I don’t know the beginning.”

  “Ryan, it’s too early—”

  “There’s no birth certificate for a Lena Chalamet in Quebec or in any other province, at least none that I’ve been able to locate. I suspect she may not have been born in Canada.”

  “Any immigration record?”

  “No.”

  “What about Mélanie and Ella?”

  “Same for them. No paper trail at all.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “It is.”

  “So, what do you know?”

  “In 2002, a Lena Chalamet went under the care of Direction de la Protection de la Jeunesse.”

  “Child protective services.”

  “Oui. She was placed in the famille d’accueil system.”

  “Foster care.”

  “Oui, again.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Two.”

  Born in 1999. That tracked with my estimated age for the older vic in Charleston.

  “A quick scan of Lena’s DPJ file—”

  “How did you get access without a warrant?”

  “My charm and boyish good looks.”

  Again, my eyes rolled.

  “Seems the kid was a chronic runaway, bounced from family to family, eventually dropped off the radar.”

  “When?”

  “Around 2015.”

  “DPJ just quit checking on her?”

  “In Quebec, social workers are overwhelmed and underpaid.”

  True everywhere. Still. She was only sixteen.

  I held my tongue.

  “The dossier just stops after that,” Ryan said.

  “Keep digging.”

  “I will.”

  * * *

  The didgeridoo warbled again at 9:07. I was in the kitchen, drinking coffee and toasting a bagel. I assumed Anne was still sleeping.

  Vislosky.

  I briefed her on the diary. On Lena Chalamet.

  She didn’t interrupt. I had to admit, she was an outstanding listener.

  “I submitted France’s swab to the lab,” Vislosky said when I’d finished.

  “Good,” I replied, hoping the process would happen quickly. “I’ve got people working Chalamet on the Montreal end.”

  “The marine biologist at College of Charleston finally sent a report. Not the speediest toad in the pond.”

  “What does it say?”

  “He can’t tell shit.”

  “Shoot it to me?”

  “Will do.”

  * * *

  Ryan called again around ten.

  “Looks like Lena took to living rough, as the Brits say.”

  “Not easy, given Montreal winters.”

  “These street kids aren’t all that obliging, and most weren’t around back then. But one brave little Einstein vaguely recalls a Lena with bad-looking teeth.”

  “Where?”

  “He says she was a regular in Centreville for a while. Rue Crescent, Bishop, Sainte-Catherine, boulevard de Maisonneuve.”

  “The area around Concordia University.”

  “Yes.”

  “When did he last see her?”

  “He thinks it was about three years ago.”

  “What else?”

  “He says she used to sneak into the Concordia library to use the computers.”

  “Don’t they have security to prevent outsiders doing that?”

  “She’d swiped a student ID.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She was really tall.”

  “Sonofabitch!
”

  “Well put.”

  “Did you find any record of Lena entering the U.S. around 2018?”

  “Still working that angle. But I doubt the kid crossed the border legally, since she had no passport.”

  “I really appreciate your help with this, Ryan.”

  “Saint-Anicet was my case, too. Besides, I’ve got some free time right now.”

  Disconnecting, I wondered. Was failure to find closure for the container vics the real explanation? Or did Ryan suspect a link to the hit-and-run on Laurier?

  I returned to the diary.

  Twenty pages in, hit gold.

  Despite her oath of secrecy, Harmony couldn’t contain her elation over a newly acquired deet. Apparently, she considered Di a safe confidante.

  I had to go over the line several times to be sure I was reading it correctly. Once with a magnifying glass.

  WTFH? lc’s mo worked for big pharma???? I can’t even!!! We will def peep that!!!

  The entry was dated August 25, 2017.

  I dialed Ryan.

  He picked up right away.

  I read him the line.

  “She can’t even what?”

  “She’s amazed.”

  “Does peep mean they intended to check the deet out?”

  “I assume so.”

  We both thought about that.

  “When Lena went into DPJ care in 2002, where was she living?” I asked.

  “Hold on.”

  Not sure what Ryan did, but it took him forever.

  “Laval.”

  “Aren’t there scads of biotech firms there?”

  “Indeed, there are.”

  * * *

  Ryan’s next call came around noon. The ringtone was now Unified Theory. Chris Shinn’s “A.M. Radio” definitely beat the didgeridoo.

  “Laval is lousy with biotech and big pharma. Roche. Corealis Pharma. Biodextris. A lot of companies are located in a research-and-development center called La Cité de la Biotech.”

  “Biotech City. Catchy.”

  “Probably paid some marketing prodigy a million bucks for that handle.”

  “What goes on there?”

  “Manufacturing. Testing. R-and-D. Anything health-technology related. Get this. Biotech City covers about a million square meters.”

  “That’s big.”

  “Very big. So big that—”

  “I get the picture.”

  “La Cité is located within the Laval Science and High Technology Park, which opened in ’eighty-six. In—”

  “Do I need the full history?” Grumpy, I know. But I wanted to hear about Lena Chalamet.

  “Stick with me, butter bean. Later came a two-hundred-fifty-million-dollar influx, part from government funding, part from the private sector. The result was major expansion and a surge of new hiring.”

  “Did—”

  “That surge began around 2000, 2001.”

  I realized where Ryan was going.

  “One of those companies hired Mélanie Chalamet,” I guessed.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Which one?”

  “InovoVax.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “They’re not Merck or Pfizer, but they’re big enough.”

  “What do they do?”

  “Manufacture vaccines.” I heard pages flip. “Apparently, they’re testing some newfangled method using mRNA.”

  “Did you say newfangled? Is this 1920?”

  “Cutting-edge.”

  “Better. You found someone who remembers Mélanie?”

  “I found someone willing to pull up old personnel records.”

  “How long was she employed there?”

  “Are you ready for this?”

  I waited.

  “Mélanie Chalamet was terminated less than two years after she was hired.”

  “Why?”

  “The file doesn’t say.”

  “This was in 2002?”

  “It was.”

  “The year Lena went into foster care.”

  “The very one.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “What next?”

  “Monday morning, I head to Laval.”

  “I want to go with you.” The same knee-jerk response that had landed me in Nashville.

  “What about Anne?”

  “I’ll buy her a pricey chardonnay.”

  “Birdie will be delighted to see you.”

  “Where is he?”

  “On the couch with a cold rag on his head.”

  27

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15

  Lying just minutes away from Montreal, across the Rivière des Prairies, Laval is the city’s largest burb. The town occupies the Île Jésus and the Îles Laval. The Rivière des Milles Îles borders it on the north.

  Lots of isles. Lots of rivers.

  Ryan and I rolled into Laval at nine fifteen Monday morning. Were at Biotech City shortly thereafter.

  InovoVax was headquartered in a twelve-story street-facing tower with a low, rectangular wing jutting off in back. The tower involved a lot of glass and steel. The wing was a windowless concrete box. Surrounding the whole was a half acre of thoughtfully landscaped grounds. Probably lovely in summer, the picnic tables were empty now, the trees bare and black, the dead brown lawn coated with frost.

  Walking from Ryan’s Jeep to the building’s entrance, I feared the loss of digits to frostbite. The temperature was a breath-stopping minus fourteen Celsius, and a wet wind coming off all those rivers was scything my skin.

  Ryan had phoned ahead. As per instructions, we passed through security and checked in with reception. After presenting ID and receiving temporary passes, we waited on a green leather sofa flanked by potted palms at one side of the lobby.

  The woman sent to collect us was small and grim. She wore wireless specs, a white lab coat, and eerily quiet crepe-soled shoes. A lanyard-hanging badge gave her name as Mariette Plourde. So did she.

  In the 2016 census, roughly twenty percent of Laval’s population self-classified as Anglophone. English-speaking. Mariette Plourde was not among them. And her French was so strongly accented I barely understood a word she said. I guessed her origins were far upriver.

  Plourde led us past a bank of elevators and down a spotlessly clean first-floor corridor that would have made any OR proud. Twenty yards, then we entered a spacious office, also incandescently pristine. A plaque beside the door said Personnel et resources humaines/Personnel and Human Resources.

  Shiny gray tile winked up from the floor. White vinyl shelves covered three walls, all filled with industry publications. The Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis. BioPharm International. BioWorld. Applied Clinical Trials.

  A blond-oak table-and-chair set filled most of the room’s far end. Scandinavian sleek and angular, the chairs promised unrelenting discomfort. Chosen for that reason? My mind flashed an image of a nervous job applicant trying not to fidget.

  A blond-oak desk occupied space to the left of the door, its design exuding a similar lack of warmth. The woman at it was trying to appear focused on papers she was sorting. With minimal success. An engraved acrylic block introduced her as Dora Eisenberg.

  “Attendez ici.” Plourde gestured to the table. “Docteur Murray sera avec vous dans un instant.” Wait here. Dr. Murray will be with you in a moment. Très efficient. Très cold.

  Ryan and I took side-by-side chairs. Mine faced Dora Eisenberg—I assumed some sort of HR administrative assistant—allowing me to observe her while appearing not to.

  Eisenberg was bosom-heavy, round-shouldered, and upper-arm-jiggly. Her hair was brown and curly, her eyes enormous behind Hubble-thick lenses.

  Perhaps sensing my curiosity, Eisenberg glanced up. Color spread across her cheeks like blood on snow. I smiled. Flushing even more flamboyantly, she finger-waggle-waved and returned to her papers.

  It was a bit longer than un instant until Murray appeared.

  “Please acc
ept my apology for making you wait.” Murray spoke in English while striding across the room, hand extended.

  As Murray closed in, my brain took a snapshot.

  The man wasn’t big, but his body was lean and toned, his spine straight enough to stand in for a flagpole. Though showing some mileage, his jawline was good, his silver-gray hair professionally styled. Colored? A gold chain heavy enough to moor the Queen Mary looped his neck, and a bagel-sized sapphire graced one finger. I put his age at somewhere north of fifty.

  Ryan and I rose and took turns shaking. Murray’s grip was pretentiously heavy-duty.

  “Dr. Arlo Murray.” We knew that. “I’m the director here.” We didn’t know that.

  Ryan and I introduced ourselves.

  “Please.” Murray pulled out a chair. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

  As if.

  “SQ, eh?” To Ryan as we both dropped back into place.

  “Many years.” Leaving out the bit about being retired.

  Murray didn’t ask to see Ryan’s badge or query my credentials. “I understand you have questions about a former employee. May I inquire why?”

  “No,” Ryan said.

  Murray’s brows rose, but he said nothing.

  “Mélanie Chalamet,” Ryan said.

  “So I was told.”

  Noting that Murray had completely ignored Eisenberg—not so much as a nod—I wondered if that was his manner with every subordinate.

  “I did pull her file,” Murray said. “But there’s not much I can tell you. Ms. Chalamet came on board in 2000, stayed with us less than two years.”

  “In what position?”

  “She was just a lab technician.” As if referring to a slug under an upturned rock.

  “What background does that job require?”

  “I think she may have had an undergraduate degree.” Similar tone of disdain.

  “De quel institution?” Ryan, testing.

  “I’m sorry. I do not speak French.”

  “Did Mélanie?” With a sharp edge of disgust. Irritating to Francophones are longtime Quebec residents who haven’t bothered to learn the language.

  “Oui.” Sarcastic.

  “Do you know where she earned her degree?”

  “Some school in the States?” Half question, half statement. “I’m not sure. It’s been so long. And it’s not in her file.”