by Kathy Reichs
Using that list, I asked for all cases lacking a skull. That worked for remains received since I’d been at the LML. Prior to that, complete bone inventories hadn’t been done. Skeletal cases were simply designated partial or complete. I highlighted the cases recorded as partial.
Next, using the list of incomplete skeletons analyzed during my tenure, I requested those lacking femora.
No go. The data had been entered as skull present or absent, postcranial remains present or absent, but specific bones had not been recorded. I would have to request the actual files.
Wasting no time, I walked down the hall to the records department. A slim woman in black jeans and a peasant blouse occupied the front desk. She was almost monochromatic, with bleached hair, pale skin, and eyes the shade of old dishwater. Her only signs of color were cherry red streaks around her temples, and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. I was unable to count the number of studs and rings displayed in each of her ears. I’d never seen her before.
“Bonjour. Je m’appelle Tempe Brennan.” I held out my hand, introducing myself.
She nodded, but offered neither a hand nor name.
“Are you new?”
“I’m a temp.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Name’s Jocelyn Dion.” One shoulder shrugged.
O.K. I dropped my hand.
“Jocelyn, this is a list of files I need to review.”
I handed her the printout and indicated the highlighted numbers. When she reached for the paper I could see definition through the gauzy sleeve. Jocelyn spent time at the gym.
“I know there are quite a few, but could you find out where the files are stored and pull them for me as quickly as possible?”
“No problem.”
“I need the full jacket on each one, not just the anthropology report.”
Something crossed her face, just a flicker of change and then it was gone.
“Where would you like them?” she asked, dropping her eyes to the list.
I gave her my office number, then left. Two strides down the corridor I remembered that I hadn’t mentioned pictures. When I turned back I could see Jocelyn’s head bent low over the printout. Her lips moved as a lacquered finger worked its way down each side of the paper. She seemed to be reading every word.
When I mentioned the photos, she started at my voice.
“I’m on it,” she said, sliding from her stool.
Weird one, I thought as I headed back to work on the Gately and Martineau reports.
Jocelyn brought me the dossiers within an hour, and I spent the next three going through them. In all, I’d worked on six headless women. Only two had lacked both thigh bones, and neither was young enough to be the girl in the pit.
From the years before I’d arrived in Montreal, seven female skeletons without crania remained unidentified. Two were young enough, but the descriptions of the remains were vague, and without skeletal inventories there was no way to know what bones had been recovered. Neither folder contained photographs.
I went back to the computer and checked the disposition of the earliest case. The bones had been held five years, rephotographed, then released for burial or destruction.
But the file contained no pictures. That was odd.
I asked for site of recovery. The bones had come in from Salluit, a village around twelve hundred miles north on the tip of the Ungava Peninsula.
I entered the more recent LML number and asked for site of recovery.
Ste-Julie. My pulse quickened. That was not twelve miles from St-Basile-le-Grand.
Back to the folder. Again, no photos.
I checked on the disposition and found nothing to indicate the case had been cleared.
Could I be that lucky?
When I began at the LML, I inherited a collection of skeletal cases. While I’d disposed of some, much of this material remained in my storeroom.
I unlocked the door and dragged a chair to the far end of the small room. Brown cardboard boxes lined both walls, arranged chronologically by LML number. I went to the section containing the oldest codes.
The case was on the top shelf. I climbed onto the chair, lifted it down, and carried it out to my worktable. Brushing off dust, I raised the lid.
To the left lay a mound of vertebrae and ribs, to the right a stack of long bones. Though most joint surfaces had been gnawed by animals, it was clear that both femora were there.
Damn.
I took everything out and checked for inconsistencies, but nothing seemed amiss. Disappointed, I replaced the bones and reshelved the box. After washing my hands I crossed to my office, planning to regroup over a tuna sandwich and carton of Jell-O pudding.
Swiveling my chair, I crossed my feet on the window ledge and peeled the cover from the pudding container. A colleague at UNC-Charlotte had a sticker on her door that read: Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first. I’d always considered that good advice.
Gazing at the river, I slurped butterscotch, my thoughts adrift. Sometimes my mind works better that way, mingling associations freely rather than herding them into the center of my consciousness.
The skull and leg bones we’d found in St-Basile were not the missing parts of a body recovered earlier. That was clear. At least not a body recovered in Quebec.
O.K.
Unless Claudel came up with a name, the next step would be CPIC.
Easy enough.
If that failed, we’d go to NCIC. There was nothing to suggest that the girl was local. She could have traveled north from the States.
Ally McBeal’s therapist was right. I needed a theme song for times when I felt stressed.
Runnin’ down the road tryin’ to loosen my load
Got a world of trouble on my mind . . .
Maybe.
Slow down, you move too fast.
Got to make the morning last . . .
As I reached for the sandwich an image of Saturday night’s grotesque offering flashed across my mind. Again my skin went cold and prickly.
Forget it. It could be a pig’s eye. Your picture was in the paper, and any moron could have stuck it on the car for laughs. If anyone is out there watching, it’s some twisted nitwit without a life.
I am woman watch me—
Definitely no.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood . . .
Oh boy.
Game plan. Finish the reports on Gately and Martineau, finalize those on the Vaillancourt twins. Talk to Claudel. Based on his report, CPIC, then NCIC.
Life is under control. This is my job. There is no reason to feel stressed.
That thought had hardly materialized when the phone rang, destroying the calm I had worked so hard to achieve.
A FEMALE VOICE SAID, “I HAVE A CALL FROM MR. CREASE. HOLD, please.”
Before I could stop her he was on the line.
“I hope you don’t mind my calling you at work.”
I did, but held my tongue.
“I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed Saturday night, and hoped the two of us might get together.”
Original.
“Would you be free to have supper some night this week?”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible right now. I’m really swamped.”
I could be free until the end of the next millennium and I wouldn’t dine with Lyle Crease. The man was too glib for my taste.
“Next week?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“I understand. Can I have your nephew as a consolation prize?”
“What?”
“Kit. He’s a fabulous kid.”
Fabulous?
“I have a friend who owns a motorcycle shop. He must stock five thousand items of Harley-Davidson paraphernalia. I think Kit would find it interesting.”
The last thing I wanted was my impressionable young nephew under the influence of a media smoothie. But I had to agree, Kit would enjoy it.
“I’
m sure he would.”
“Then it’s cool with you if I give him a call?”
“Sure.” Cool as dysentery.
Five minutes after I hung up Quickwater appeared at my door. He gave me his usual stony stare, then flipped a folder onto my desk.
I really needed to settle on a theme song.
“What are these?”
“Forms.”
“For me to fill out?”
Quickwater was preparing to ignore my question when his partner joined us.
“I take it this means you came up empty.”
“As Al Capone’s vault,” Claudel replied. “Not a single match. Not even close.”
He gestured at the packet on my desk.
“If you get the papers filled out, I can access CPIC while Martin does NCIC. Bergeron’s working on the dental descriptors.”
CPIC is the acronym for the Canadian Police Information Centre, NCIC for the National Crime Information Center operated by the FBI. Each is a national electronic database providing quick access to information crucial to law enforcement. Though I’d used CPIC a few times, I was much more familiar with the American system.
NCIC first went on line in 1967 with data on stolen autos, license plates, guns, and property, and on wanted persons and fugitives. Over the years more files were added, and the original ten databases expanded to seventeen, including the interstate identification index, the U.S. Secret Service protective files, the foreign fugitive file, the violent gangs/terrorist file, and files on missing and unidentified persons.
The NCIC computer is located in Clarksburg, West Virginia, with connecting terminals in police departments and sheriffs’ offices throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Entries can be made only by law enforcement personnel. And they definitely make them. In its first year NCIC recorded two million transactions. It currently handles that many each day.
The NCIC missing persons file, created in 1975, is used to locate individuals who are not “wanted,” but whose whereabouts are unknown. A record can be entered for missing juveniles, and for people who are disabled or endangered. Victims of abduction and those who have disappeared following a disaster also qualify. A form is completed by the missing person’s parent or guardian, physician, dentist, and optician, and entered by a local department.
The unidentified persons file was added in 1983 to provide a way to cross-reference recovered remains against missing persons records. Entry into the system is permitted for unidentified bodies and body parts, for living persons, and for catastrophe victims.
It was this packet that Quickwater had tossed onto my desk.
“If you’ll fill out the NCIC form we can work both networks. It’s basically the same data, just different coding systems. How long will you need?”
“Give me an hour.” With only three bones I’d have little to say.
As soon as they left I began working my way through the form, periodically checking the data collection entry guide for codes.
I checked the box for EUD for unidentified deceased.
I placed an “S” in boxes 1, 9, and 10 of the body parts diagram, indicating that a skeletonized head and right and left upper leg bones had been recovered. All others boxes got an “N” for not recovered.
I marked “F” for female, “W” for white, and wrote in the approximate height range. I left empty the space for estimated year of birth and estimated date of death.
In the personal descriptors section I wrote SHUNT CERB, for cerebral ventricular shunt, and checked that item on the supplemental form. That was it. No fractures, deformities, tattoos, moles, or scars.
Since I hadn’t any clothing, jewelry, eyeglasses, fingerprints, blood type, or information as to cause of death, the rest of the document remained blank. All I could add were a few comments about where the body was found.
I was completing the sections on agency name and case number when Quickwater reappeared. I handed him the form. He took it, nodded, and left without a word.
What was it with this guy?
An image flicked through my mind and was gone. A bloated eyeball in a jelly jar.
Quickwater?
No way. Nevertheless, I decided to make no mention of the incident to Claudel or his Carcajou partner. I might have asked Ryan, might have turned to him for advice, but Ryan was gone and I was on my own.
• • •
I completed the Gately and Martineau reports and walked them to the secretarial office. When I returned, Claudel was seated in my office, a computer printout in his hand.
“You were right with the age but a bit off on the date of death. Ten years wasn’t enough.”
I waited for him to go on.
“Her name was Savannah Claire Osprey.”
In French it came out Oh-spree, with the accent on the second syllable. Nevertheless, the name told me that the girl was probably Southern, or at least had been born Southern. Not many people outside the Southeast named their daughters Savannah. I lowered myself into my chair, relieved but curious.
“From?”
“Shallotte, North Carolina. Isn’t that your hometown?”
“I’m from Charlotte.”
Canadians have difficulty with Charlotte, Charlottesville, and the two Charlestons. So do many Americans. I’d given up explaining. But Shallotte was a small coastal town that didn’t qualify to be part of the confusion.
Claudel read from the printout. “She was reported missing in May of 1984, two weeks after her sixteenth birthday.”
“That was a quick turnaround,” I said, digesting the information.
“Oui.”
I waited, but he did not go on. I kept the annoyance from my voice.
“Monsieur Claudel, any information you have will help me confirm this ID.”
A pause. Then, “The shunt and the dentals were unique so the computer spit the name right out. I called the Shalotte PD and actually talked to the reporting officer. According to her, the mother got the case entered, then dropped it cold. There was the usual media frenzy at first, then things died down. The investigation went on for months, but nothing ever turned up.”
“Troubled kid?”
A longer pause.
“There is no history of drug or discipline problems. The hydrocephaly caused some learning disabilities and affected her eyesight, but she wasn’t retarded. She went to a normal high school and did well. She was never considered a potential runaway.
“But the child was hospitalized frequently because of problems with the shunt. Apparently the apparatus would get blocked and they’d have to go in and fix it. These episodes were preceded by periods of lethargy, headache, sometimes mental confusion. One theory is that she became disoriented and wandered off.”
“Off what, the planet? What’s the other theory?”
“The father.”
Claudel flipped open a small spiral notebook.
“Dwayne Allen Osprey. A real charmer with an arrest record longer than the Trans-Siberian Railway. Back then Dwayne’s domestic routine revolved around drinking Jim Beam and beating up his family. According to the mother’s original statement, which she later retracted, her husband always disliked Savannah, and things got worse as the child grew older. It wasn’t beyond him to slam her into a wall. Seems Dwayne found his daughter a disappointment. Called her Water Brain.”
“They think he murdered his own daughter?”
“It’s a possibility. Whiskey and rage are a deadly cocktail. The theory was that things got out of hand, he killed her, then disposed of the body.”
“How did she end up in Quebec?”
“An insightful question, Dr. Brennan.”
With that he rose and shot the cuffs on the crispest, whitest shirt I’d seen in decades. I gave him a drop-dead-peckerhead look, but he was already out the door.
I sighed and leaned back in my chair.
You bet your prim little ass it’s an insightful question, Monsieur Claudel.
And I’m
going to answer it.
I TOOK A DEEP BREATH. AS USUAL, CLAUDEL HAD MADE ME FURIOUS.
When I felt calmer, I looked at my watch. Four-forty. It was late, but maybe I could catch her.
Checking my Rolodex, I dialed SBI Headquarters in Raleigh. Kate Brophy picked up on the first ring.
“Hi, Kate. It’s Tempe.”
“Hey, girl, are you back in Dixie?”
“No. I’m in Montreal.”
“When are you going to get your skinny tail down here so we can tip a few?”
“My tipping days are over, Kate.”
“Oops. Sorry. I know that.”
Kate and I had met at a time when I was as committed to alcohol as a college freshman on spring break. Only I wasn’t eighteen and I wasn’t at the beach. Past thirty, I was then a wife and mother, and a university professor with exhausting teaching and research responsibilities.
I never noticed when I joined the rank of brothers and sisters in denial, but somewhere along the way I became a champion rationalizer. A glass of Merlot at home in the evening. A beer after classes. A weekend party. I didn’t need the booze. I never drank alone. I never missed work. It wasn’t a problem.
But then the glass became a bottle, and the late-night binges required no company. That’s the beguiling thing about Bacchus. He has no entrance fee. No minimum drink order. Before you know it you’re in bed on a sunny Saturday afternoon while your daughter plays soccer and other parents cheer.
That show had closed down, and I wasn’t about to re-raise the curtain.
“It’s funny you called,” said Kate. “I was just talking to one of our investigators about the biker boys you glued together back in the eighties.”
I remembered those cases. Two entrepreneurs had made the mistake of dealing drugs on turf claimed by the Hells Angels. Their body parts were found in plastic bags, and I’d been asked to sort dealer A from dealer B.
That foray into fresh forensics had been a catalyst for me. Until then I’d worked with skeletons unearthed at archaeological sites, examining bones to identify disease patterns and estimate life expectancies in prehistoric times. Fascinating, but minimally pertinent to current events.
