by Kathy Reichs
When I entered the conference room, only LaManche and Jean Pelletier were seated at the table. Both did that half-standing thing older men do when women enter a room.
LaManche asked about the Pétit trial. I told him I thought my testimony had gone well.
“And Monday’s recovery?”
“Except for mild hypothermia, and the fact that your animal bones turned out to be three people, that also went well.”
“You will begin your analyses today?” asked LaManche in his Sorbonne French.
“Yes.” I didn’t mention what I thought I already knew based on my cursory examination in the basement. I wanted to be sure.
“Detective Claudel asked me to inform you that he would come today at one-thirty.”
“Detective Claudel will have a long wait. I’ll hardly have begun.”
Hearing Pelletier grunt, I looked in his direction.
Though subordinate to LaManche, Jean Pelletier had been at the lab a full decade when the chief hired on. He was a small, compact man, with thin gray hair and bags under his eyes the size of mackerels.
Pelletier was a devotee of Le Journal. I knew what was coming.
“Oui.” Pelletier’s fingers were permanently yellowed from a half century of smoking Gauloises cigarettes. One of them pointed at me. “Oui. This angle is much more flattering. Highlights your lovely green eyes.”
In answer, I rolled my lovely green eyes.
As I took a chair, Nathalie Ayers, Marcel Morin, and Emily Santangelo joined us. “Bonjour’s” and “Comment ça va’s” were exchanged. Pelletier complimented Santangelo on her haircut. Her look suggested the subject was best left alone. She was right.
After distributing copies of the day’s lineup, LaManche began discussing and assigning cases.
A forty-seven-year-old man had been found hanging from a crossbeam in his garage in Laval.
A fifty-four-year-old man had been stabbed by his son following an argument over leftover sausages. Mama had called the St-Hyacinthe police.
A resident of Longueuil had slammed his all-terrain vehicle into a snowbank on a rural road in the Gatineau. Alcohol was involved.
An estranged couple had been found dead of gunshot wounds in a home in St-Léonard. Two for her, one for him. The ex-to-be went out with a nine-millimeter Glock in his mouth.
“If I can’t have you no one can.” Pelletier’s dentures clacked as he spoke.
“Typical.” Ayers’s voice sounded bitter.
She was right. We’d seen the scenario all too often.
A young woman had been discovered behind a karaoke bar on rue Jean-Talon. A combination of overdose and hypothermia was suspected.
The pizza basement skeletons had been assigned LSJML numbers 38426, 38427, and 38428.
“Detective Claudel feels these skeletons are old and probably of little forensic interest?” LaManche said it more as a question than a statement.
“And how could Monsieur Claudel know that?” Though it was possible this would turn out to be true, it irked me that Claudel would render an opinion entirely outside his expertise.
“Monsieur Claudel is a man of many talents.” Though Pelletier’s expression was deadpan, I wasn’t fooled. The old pathologist knew of the friction between Claudel and me, and loved to tease.
“Claudel has studied archaeology?” I asked.
Pelletier’s brows shot up. “Monsieur Claudel puts in hours examining ancient relics.”
The others remained silent, awaiting the punch line.
“Really?” Why not play straight man?
“Bien sûr. Checks his pecker every morning.”
“Thank you, Dr. Pelletier.” LaManche traded deadpan for deadpan. “Along those lines, would you please take the hanging?”
Ayers got the stabbing. The ATV accident went to Santangelo, the suicide/homicide to Morin. As each case was dispensed, LaManche marked his master sheet with the appropriate initials. Pe. Ay. Sa. Mo.
Br went onto dossiers 38426, 38427, and 38428, the pizza basement bones.
Anticipating a lengthy meeting with the board that reviews infant deaths in the province, LaManche assigned himself no autopsy.
When we dispersed, I returned to my office. LaManche stuck his head in moments later. One of the autopsy technicians was out with bronchitis. With five posts, things would be difficult. Would I mind working alone?
Great.
As I snapped three case forms onto a clipboard, I noticed that the red light on my phone was flashing.
The minutest of flutters. Ryan?
Get over it, Doris.
Responding to the prompts, I entered my mailbox and code numbers.
A journalist from Allô Police.
A journalist from the Gazette.
A journalist from the CTV evening news.
Disappointed, I deleted the messages and hurried to the women’s locker room. After changing into surgical scrubs, I took a side corridor to a single elevator tucked between the secretarial office and the library. Restricted to those with special clearance, this elevator featured buttons allowing only three stops. LSJML. Coroner. Morgue. I pressed M and the doors slid shut.
Downstairs, through another secure door, a long, narrow corridor shoots the length of the building. To the left, an X-ray room and four autopsy suites, three with single tables, one with a pair. To the right, drying racks, computer stations, wheeled tubs and carts for transporting specimens to the histology, pathology, toxicology, DNA, and odontology-anthropology labs upstairs.
Through a small glass window in each door, I could see that Ayers and Morin were beginning their externals in rooms one and two. Each was working with a police photographer and an autopsy technician.
Another tech was arranging instruments in room three. He would be assisting Santangelo.
And I was on my own.
And Claudel would be here in less than four hours.
Having begun the day down, my mood was descending by the moment.
I continued on to room four. My room. A room specially ventilated for decomps, floaters, mummified corpses, and other aromatics.
As do the others, room four has double doors leading to a morgue bay. The bay is lined with refrigerated compartments, each housing a double-decker gurney.
Tossing my clipboard onto the counter, I pulled a plastic apron from one drawer, gloves and mask from another, donned them, snagged a small metal cart from the corridor, and pushed backward through the double doors.
Bed count.
Six white cards. One red sticker.
Six in residence, one HIV positive.
I located those cards with my initials. LSJML-38426. LSJML-38427. LSJML-38428. Ossements. Inconnu. Bones. Unknown.
Normally, I would have taken the cases sequentially, fully analyzing one before beginning another. But Detective Delightful was due at one-thirty. Anticipating Claudel’s impatience, I decided to abandon protocol, and do a quick age-sex assessment of each set of remains.
It was a mistake I would later regret.
Moving from one stainless steel door to a second, then a third, I selected the same bones I’d viewed in the pizza parlor basement, and wheeled them to room four.
After jotting the relevant information onto a case form, I began with 38426, the bones from Dr. Energy’s crate.
First the skull.
Gracile muscle attachments. Rounded occiput. Small mastoids. Smooth supraorbital ridges ending in sharp orbital borders.
I switched to a pelvic bone.
Broad, flaring hip blades. Elongated pubic portion with a tiny, elevated ridge coursing across the belly side. Obtuse subpubic angle. Wide sciatic notch.
I checked off these features on the “gender evaluation” page, and penned my conclusion.
Female.
Flipping to the “age evaluation” section, I noted that the basilar suture, the gap between the occipital and sphenoid bones at the base of the skull, had recently fused. That told me the girl was probably in her mid to late
teens.
Back to the pelvis.
Throughout childhood, each pelvic half is composed of three separate elements, the ilium, the ischium, and the pubis. In early adolescence, these bones fuse within the hip socket.
This pelvis had seen puberty come and go.
I noted furrows running across the pubic symphyses, the faces where the two pelvic halves meet in front. I flipped the bone.
The superior border of the hip blade showed squiggles, indicating the absence of a finishing crescent of bone. Squiggles were also evident on the ischium, near the point at which the body is supported when sitting.
I felt the familiar cold creep into my belly. I would check the teeth and long bones, but all indicators supported my initial impression.
Dr. Energy’s stowaway was a girl who had died in her mid to late teens.
Replacing 38426 on the cart, I turned to the bones I’d selected from 38427. Then 38428.
The world retreated into a different dimension. Phones. Printers. Voices. Carts. All disappeared. Nothing existed but the fragile remains on my table.
I worked straight through lunch, my sense of sadness mounting with each observation.
I am often accused of feeling more warmth toward the dead than toward the living. The charge isn’t true. Yes, I grieve for those on my table. But I am also keenly aware of the sorrow visited on those left behind. This case was no exception. I felt great empathy for the families who had loved and lost these girls.
At exactly one thirty-four the phone shrilled. Lowering my mask, I crossed to the desk.
“Dr. Brennan.”
“You have finished?” Though he did not identify himself, I knew the voice.
“I have some preliminary information. Room four.”
“I am waiting in your office.”
Sure, Claudel. That’s fine with me. Make yourself at home.
“Would you like to observe what I’ve found?”
“That will not be necessary.”
Claudel’s aversion to autopsies is legendary. I used to play on this, think up ruses to force him belowdecks. I no longer bothered.
“I’ll need a few minutes to clean up,” I said.
“This is probably pointless, anyway.”
“I sincerely hope so.” I hung up.
Easy. It’s Claudel. The man is a throwback.
Drawing a sheet over the table, I stripped off my gloves, scrubbed, and headed upstairs, a growing dread hanging heavy on my mind.
I knew my bones. I knew I was right.
Despite his sanctimonious arrogance, I hoped to God Claudel was right, too.
5
CLAUDEL WAS SEATED FACING MY DESK, BROWS, nose, and mouth pointing south. He did not rise or greet me when I entered. I returned his cordiality.
“You have finished?”
“No, Monsieur Claudel. I have not finished. I have hardly begun.” I sat. “But I have made some disturbing observations.”
Claudel curled his fingers in a “give it to me” gesture.
“Based on cranial and pelvic features, I can tell you that skeleton 38426 is that of a female who died in her mid to late teens. Analysis of the long bones will allow me to narrow that age estimate, but it’s obvious that the basilar suture has only recently fused, the iliac crest—”
“I do not need an anatomy lesson.”
How about my heel up your ass?
“The victim is young.” Chilly.
“Go on.”
“They’re all young.”
Claudel’s brows angled up in a question.
“Females. In their teens or barely past.”
“Cause of death?”
“That will require a detailed examination of each skeleton.”
“People die.”
“Not usually as kids.”
“Racial background?”
“Uncertain at this point.” Though I had yet to verify ancestry, cranio-facial details suggested all three were white.
“So it’s possible we’ve dug up Pocahontas and her court.”
I bit back a response. I would not let Claudel goad me into a premature statement.
“While the bones from the crate and those from the northeastern depression retain no soft tissue, those from the bundled burial show traces of adipocere. Grave wax. I am not convinced these deaths took place in the distant past.”
Claudel spread both hands, palms up. “Five years, ten, a century?”
“A determination of time since death will require further study. At this point I would not write these burials off as historic or prehistoric.”
“I do not require instruction on how to prepare my reports. What exactly are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you we just recovered three dead girls from a pizza parlor basement. At this stage of inquiry, it is not appropriate to conclude that the remains are of great antiquity.”
For several seconds Claudel and I glared at each other. Then he reached into a breast pocket, extracted a Ziploc baggie, and tossed it onto the desktop.
Slowly, I dropped my eyes.
The baggie contained three round items.
“Feel free to remove them.”
Unzipping the baggie, I dropped the objects onto my palm. Each was a flat metal disk measuring slightly over an inch in diameter. Though corroded, I could see that each disk had a female silhouette engraved on the front, an eyelet on the back. The initials ST were etched beside each eyelet.
I looked a question at Claudel.
“With some persuasion, the Prince of Pizza admitted to liberating certain items while crating the bones.”
“Buttons?”
Claudel nodded.
“They were buried with the skeleton?”
“The gentleman is a little vague on provenance. But yes, they are buttons. And it’s obvious they are old.”
“How can you be certain they’re old?”
“I can’t. Dr. Antoinette Legault at the McCord could.”
The McCord Museum of Canadian History houses over a million artifacts, with more than sixteen thousand of those belonging to the clothing and apparel collection.
“Legault is a button expert?”
Claudel ignored my question. “The buttons were manufactured in the nineteenth century.”
Before I could reply, Claudel’s cell phone warbled. Without excusing himself, he rose and stepped into the hall.
My eyes went back to the buttons. Did they mean the skeletons had been in the ground a century or more?
In less than a minute, Claudel was back.
“Something important has come up.”
I was being dismissed.
I have a temper. I admit that. Sometimes I lose it. Claudel’s condescension was prodding me toward one of those times. I had rushed through a preliminary evaluation to accommodate his schedule on the assumption that this investigation was of immediate priority, and now he was brushing me aside after a cursory inquiry.
“Meaning this case is not important?”
Claudel lowered his chin and looked at me, a picture of infinitely strained patience.
“I am a police officer, not a historian.”
“And I am a scientist, not a conjecturer.”
“These artifacts”—he flapped a hand at the buttons—“belong to another century.”
“Three dead girls now belong to this one.” I rose abruptly.
Claudel’s body stiffened. His eyes crimped.
“A prostitute has just arrived at l’hôpital Notre-Dame with a fractured skull and a knife in her gut. Her colleague is less fortunate. She is dead. My partner and I are going to arrest a certain pimp to improve other ladies’ odds of surviving.”
Claudel jabbed a finger in my direction.
“That, madame, is important.”
With that he strode out the door.
I stood a moment, face burning with anger. I despise the fact that Claudel has the power to turn me pyrotechnic, sometimes illogically so. But there it was. He’d done it ag
ain.
Dropping into my chair, I swiveled, put my feet on the sill, and leaned my head sideways against the wall. Twelve floors down, the city stretched toward the river. Miniature cars and trucks flowed across the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, motoring toward Île Ste-Hélène, the south shore suburbs, New York State.
I closed my eyes and did some Yogic breathing. Slowly, my anger dissipated. When I opened them, I felt—what?
Flattened.
Confused.
Death investigations are complex enough. Why was it always doubly difficult with Claudel? Why couldn’t he and I enjoy the easy exchange that characterized my professional interactions with other homicide investigators? With Ryan?
Ryan.
Doris tapped on my shoulder for a few frames of Pillow Talk.
Some things were clear. Claudel’s mind was made up. He didn’t like rats. He didn’t like the pizza parlor. He didn’t think these bones were worth his attention. Whatever investigative support I needed I would have to find through other sources.
“OK, you supercilious, knee-jerk skeptic. Scoff at my analysis without trying to understand it. We’ll do this without you.”
Grabbing my clipboard, I headed back downstairs.
* * *
Three hours later I’d finished a skeletal inventory on LSJML-38426. The remains were complete save for the hyoid, a tiny U-shaped bone suspended in the soft tissue of the throat, and several of the smaller hand and foot bones.
Long bones continue to increase in length as long as their epiphyses, the small caps at each end, remain separate from the bone itself. Growth stops when a bone’s epiphyses unite with its shaft. Luckily for the anthropologist, each set of epiphyses marches to its own clock.
By observing the state of development of the arm, leg, and collarbones, I was able to narrow my age estimate. I’d requested dental X-rays so I could observe molar root development, but already I had no doubt. The girl in the crate had died between the ages of sixteen and eighteen.
My case form had a dozen checks in the column indicating European ancestry. Narrow nasal opening. Sharply projecting lower nasal border. Highly angled nasal bridge. Prominent nasal spine. Cheekbones tight to the face. Every feature and measurement placed the skull squarely in the Caucasoid category. I was certain the girl was white.
