by Kathy Reichs
Jake spread his feet. Frowned his frown.
“But we have new information,” Ryan said.
“You’ve found her?”
“We haven’t determined her exact location. Yet.”
Bernadette’s knuckles blanched as her fingers tightened again.
Ryan leaned toward her. “I promise you, Mrs. Kezerian. We are closing in.”
“Closing in?” Jake snorted. “You make it sound like the play-offs.”
“I apologize for my poor choice of words.”
It struck me. Unlike the Violettes, the Kezerians were asking no questions about the nature of the “new information.” Or about Pomerleau’s movements over the last decade.
Jake pinched the bridge of his nose. Again crossed his arms. “If you have nothing to tell us, why are you here?”
“We were hoping Tawny might agree to an interview.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath. Looked at Bernadette. Her face had gone as white as the walls around us.
In my peripheral vision, Jake’s arms dropped to his sides. I ignored him and focused on his wife. Bernadette was trying to speak but managing only to swallow and clear her throat.
I reached out and took her hands in mine. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I thought you’d come to tell me you’d located Tawny.” More swallowing. “One way or the other.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.” I didn’t.
“Who we talking about here?” Jake demanded. “Who is it you’re tracking?”
“Anique Pomerleau,” Ryan said.
“Sonofabitch.”
“Tawny’s not here with you?” I asked Bernadette.
“I haven’t seen my daughter in almost eight years.”
CHAPTER 19
“OH, GOD.” A tiny sob bubbled from Bernadette’s throat.
“I am so sorry,” I said. “Obviously, Detective Ryan and I were unclear.”
“You’re here about the woman who kidnapped my child?”
“Yes,” I said. “Anique Pomerleau.”
Bernadette slipped her hands free of mine and extended one back toward Jake. He made no move to take it. “You came to question Tawny?” she asked.
“To talk to her.”
Bernadette brought the unclaimed hand forward onto the armrest. It trembled.
“We were hoping—” I began.
“She’s not here.” Bernadette’s voice was flat, as though a door had slammed shut somewhere inside her. She began picking at a thread poking from the piping.
“Where is she?”
“Tawny left home in 2006.”
“Do you know where she’s living?”
“No.”
I glanced at Ryan. Tight nod that I should continue.
“You haven’t heard from your daughter in all that time?”
“She called once. Several months after she moved out. To say she was well.”
“She didn’t tell you where she was?”
“No.”
“Did you ask?”
Bernadette kept working the errant strand. Which had doubled in length.
“Did you file a missing persons report?”
“Tawny was almost twenty. The police said she was an adult. Free to do what she wanted.”
Thus nothing in the file. I waited for Bernadette to continue.
“It’s crazy, I know. But I figured that was the reason you’d come. To tell me you’d found her.”
“Why did she leave?”
“Because she’s nuts.”
Ryan and I looked past Bernadette toward her husband. He opened his mouth to continue, but something on our faces made him shut it again.
Bernadette spoke without taking her eyes from the thread she was twisting and retwisting around one finger. “Tawny endured a five-year nightmare. Anyone would have issues.”
My gaze slid to Ryan. He did a subtle “Take it away” lift of one palm.
“Can you talk about that?” I urged gently.
“About what?”
“Tawny’s issues.”
Bernadette hesitated, either reluctant to share or unsure how to put it. “She came back to me changed.”
Sweet Jesus! Of course she did. The child was raped and tortured her entire adolescence.
“Changed how?”
“She was overly fearful.”
“Of?”
“Life.”
“For Christ’s sake, Bee.” Jake threw up his hands.
Bernadette rounded on her husband. “Well, aren’t you Mr. Compassionate.” Then to me, “Tawny had what they called body-image issues.”
“What do you mean?”
“My baby lived in conditions you wouldn’t wish on a dog. No sunlight. No decent food. It all took a toll.”
I pictured Tawny in my office, overwhelmed by a trench coat cinched at the waist.
“She didn’t grow properly. Never went through puberty.”
“That’s understandable,” I said.
“But then her body, I don’t know, started playing some kind of high-speed catch-up. She grew very fast. Developed large breasts.” Bernadette shrugged one shoulder. “She was uncomfortable with herself.”
“She was irrational.” Jake.
“Really?” Bernadette snapped. “Because she didn’t like to be seen naked? News flash. Most kids don’t.”
“Most kids don’t go batshit if their mother accidentally peeps them in the crapper.”
“She was making progress.” Cold.
“You see what I’m dealing with?” Jake directed this comment to Ryan.
“You knew about Tawny from the day we met.” Bernadette’s tone toward her husband was acid.
“Oh, you’ve got that right. And we haven’t stopped talking about the kid since.”
“She was seeing a therapist.”
“That asshole was part of the problem.”
Bernadette snorted. “My husband, expert on psychology.”
“The quack took her to the cellar where they caged her. In my book, that’s over-the-top fucked up.”
That surprised me. “Tawny and her therapist visited the house on de Sébastopol?”
“Perhaps the treatment was a bit harsh.” Softer, almost pleading. “But Tawny was doing well. She was attending community college. She wanted to help people. To heal the whole world. When she called that one time, she said she was back in school.”
“But she didn’t say where.”
“No.”
I glanced at Ryan. He was studying Jake.
“How did you two get along?” he asked.
“What? Me and Tawny?”
Ryan nodded.
Jake’s voice remained even, but the set of his jaw suggested his annoyance was no longer just with his wife. “We had our spats. The kid wasn’t easy.”
“Spats?” Bernadette snarled. “You two hated each other.”
Jake sighed, impatient with accusations clearly aired more than once. “I did not hate Tawny. I tried to help her. To make her understand that life involves boundaries.”
“Be honest, Jake. She left because of you.”
“She never embraced me as a father, if that’s what you mean.”
“You drove her away.”
The Kezerians exchanged a glance boiling with anger. Then Bernadette turned back to me. “Tawny moved out after a blowup with my husband. Stormed upstairs, packed her things, and left.”
“When was that?”
“August 2006.”
“What did you argue about?”
“Does it matter?” Jake’s voice remained level, but something unreadable flickered in his eyes.
“Where do you think she went?” I asked Bernadette.
“She often spoke of California. And Australia. And Florida, especially the Keys.”
“She could have gone anywhere she wanted, right, Bee?” Jake’s mouth pursed up in a humorless smile.
A flush climbed Bernadette’s throat, splotchy red against the colorless skin. S
he said nothing.
“As a final adios, Tawny helped herself to the stash my wife kept in her closet.”
“How much did she take?” Not sure why I asked.
“Almost three thousand dollars.” Jake flicked two fingers off his forehead in a goodbye salute. “Adios and fuck you.”
Ryan asked a series of questions. Did Tawny ever mention Anique Pomerleau? Did she make friends during the two years she lived in Montreal? Was there a person at the college in whom she might have confided? Did they have any names or numbers of anyone with whom she worked, attended class, or interacted in any way? Might it be helpful to speak with her sister, Sandra? Was Tawny’s room intact enough to warrant a visit? The answer to each was a definite no.
Ryan concluded by asking them to phone him if Tawny contacted them. If they remembered anything she’d said about her captor or captivity. The usual.
Then, placing our cards on the coffee table, we rose to leave.
Mrs. Kezerian escorted us. Mr. Kezerian did not.
At the door, we assured Bernadette that we were doing everything possible to find her daughter’s abductor.
And Tawny? she asked.
Ryan promised to send out queries.
Not a single question about Pomerleau. About where she was. About how or why she’d surfaced.
And that was it.
I’d never felt more discouraged in my life.
It was four-thirty by the time we wound our way out of Dollard-des-Ormeaux. Lights were on in most of the homes we passed, yellow rectangles warm against the thickening darkness. Here and there, electric icicles or colored bulbs heralded the coming of a season that would bring joy for some, a reminder of loneliness for others.
Traffic on the Metropolitan was heavy and slow. We crept east, taillights ahead, double beams behind, through cones of illumination thrown by halogens arching over the highway.
Like frames on an old movie reel, Ryan’s silhouette flashed into focus, receded into shadow. He offered nothing. The silence in the Jeep grew deeper and deeper.
“Not exactly Happy Days.” When I could take it no longer.
“If I was the kid, I’d have left, too.”
“Do you think Jake could be physically abusive?”
“The guy’s an arrogant bastard.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I think it’s conceivable.”
So did I. And another unpleasant possibility had crossed my mind. “Do you suppose he came on to Tawny?”
“Speculation is pointless.”
“Will you try to find her?”
“Yes. But she’s not my priority.”
“You don’t feel she can help us?”
Ryan glanced my way, then back to the road. “At what cost?” The bitterness in his voice was so tangible, I could feel it on my skin.
Several long moments passed.
“Did you find it odd that the Kezerians showed no interest in Pomerleau?” I asked.
“No.”
“No?”
“They’re too focused on their own soap opera.”
“Yes, but—”
“We weren’t what they expected.”
I leaned into the seat back. Beyond the windshield, the day’s clear sky had lost out to dense cloud cover. Overhead, nothing twinkled. Ahead, brake lights smeared crimson across the top of our hood.
Beside us, a yellow Mini lurched and braked in tandem with our Jeep. The driver steered with one elbow while thumb-tapping a mobile phone. Texting. Emailing. Tweeting about the burger he’d have for dinner. Impressive. A multitasker.
I closed my eyes. Pictured a girl with bitter white skin, haggard eyes, and a braid snaking down vertebrae sharpened by years of deprivation. That image yielded to one of a small dark-haired girl in a trench coat and beret. To a young woman on a boat in a windswept harbor.
Tawny McGee was seventeen when she was finally set free. I imagined her somewhere in the sun, laughing over lunch with women her age. Pushing a stroller. Walking a golden retriever or a Saint Bernard. Free of the rancor we’d just witnessed. The constant bickering.
Was Bernadette correct in her optimism? That her daughter was doing well? Or did Jake have it right in viewing Tawny as permanently broken?
I understood Ryan’s desire to focus on the hunt for which I’d dragged him from Costa Rica. Pomerleau had scripted the nightmare that had robbed Tawny of her childhood. Perhaps her sanity.
Still. I wondered where Tawny was and what she was doing.
Ryan dropped me at my condo. No goodbye. Just a promise to call in the morning.
I phoned Angela’s and ordered a small pizza with everything but onions. Then I walked to the corner dépanneur for coffee and a few breakfast items. No point in provisioning when I’d be returning south soon. Groceries in hand, I picked up the pizza and headed home.
I ate with Wolf in the Situation Room. The pizza was good. The conversation did nothing to brighten my mood.
Then, all of a sudden, I was exhausted. The grueling trip to Costa Rica, followed by draining days in Charlotte. The long hours yesterday, then the late-night flight. Today the disturbing file review, then ping-ponging across the island to visit people not happy to see us.
Had we learned a single useful fact? Or simply wasted our time?
I stretched out on the couch and replayed each interview in my mind.
The Violettes had been a bust. Fair enough. We’d anticipated little from them.
Ditto for Pomerleau. Barely lucid. What was the one thing she’d said? That her daughter was in the cimetière Saint-Jean-Baptiste. Marie-Joëlle Bastien was buried there, not Anique. Anique was alive.
Tawny McGee was the only person I’d thought might prove helpful, but we hadn’t laid eyes on her. Bernadette and Jake were clueless concerning her whereabouts. They themselves were pathetic.
Maybe the therapist? Had we gotten her name? Easy enough. But Tawny wasn’t dead. The woman would invoke doctor-patient privilege. If they were still in contact, might she deliver a message to Tawny?
Wolf reported that the fires in Australia were worsening.
Ryan said that Pomerleau was in Vermont. Jake Kezerian strode toward him, angry. Thrust a paper in his face. Ryan took the paper and placed it in a bright yellow folder.
Wolf said something about economic indicators.
Kezerian crossed his arms on his chest. Spread his feet. “Grand-mère and Grand-père.”
The sky behind Ryan transformed into a green floral web. Ivy, twining nothing, meandering free-form in space.
Ryan opened the file.
The ivy snaked and twisted.
Ryan looked up. Slowly, his face morphed to that of Nurse Smiley. Simone.
“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?” Kezerian asked. What do you want? “Saint John,” Simone said.
This was backward. The nurse was speaking English, Kezerian French.
“Maladie d’Alzheimer.” Kezerian.
“She’s not buried.” Simone.
“Qui est avec les saints?” Who is with the saints?
Simone wagged her head slowly from side to side.
My eyes flew open.
Wolf had been replaced by Anthony Bourdain.
I rewound the dream.
Juggled the pieces my id had gathered and stored.
They fit.
Jesus. Could that be it?
I lunged for the phone.
CHAPTER 20
I CHECKED THE time as I punched in the number. 11:15. A twinge of guilt. I ignored it.
“Umpie Rodas.”
“It’s Dr. Brennan. Tempe.”
A sliver of a pause as the name registered.
“Yes.”
“I’m in Montreal. With Ryan.”
He waited.
“This may be nothing.”
“You wouldn’t phone this late about nothing.” A mild reprimand?
“In the course of your investigation, did you ever come across the name Corneau?”
“No. Why?”
“When we shut Pomerleau down back in ’04, she was working with a guy calling himself Stephen Menard. The story’s complicated, so I’m simplifying. The house they occupied on de Sébastopol originally belonged to a couple named Corneau, Menard’s grandparents. The Corneaus died in a car wreck in Quebec in 1988. You with me?”
“I’m listening.”
“Menard’s mother was Genevieve Rose Corneau, an American. She and her husband, Simon Menard, owned a home near St. Johnsbury, Vermont. The deed was in Simon’s name. Stephen Menard lived there for a time before relocating to Montreal.”
“To set up his twisted little fantasyland.”
I figured Rodas had learned about Menard recently, either from Ryan or Honor Barrow, or perhaps on his own, when the DNA recovered from Nellie Gower’s body led to Anique Pomerleau.
“Right. This afternoon Ryan and I visited Sabine Pomerleau, Anique’s mother. She’s eighty-two and suffers from dementia. But she said one thing. Could be I’m reading too much into the ramblings of a senile old woman—”
“What did she say?”
“That Anique is avec les saints. Saint Jean. Then in English she said buried.”
Silence hummed as Rodas considered that.
“Ryan and I took it to mean she believes Anique is in the cimetière Saint-Jean-Baptiste, where Marie-Joëlle Bastien is buried.”
“Another of Pomerleau’s victims.”
“Yes. But thinking back, it’s possible she also said Jean, in English. That we misunderstood her completely.”
Rodas got it immediately. “Saint John. Buried. St. Johnsbury. The home in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.”
“It’s a long shot, I know. But if there’s other family property there registered in the name Corneau—”
“I never would have made that connection.”
“Anique might have learned of the property from Menard. Perhaps they discussed it as a safe house. Or a meeting-up point.”
“Vermont is a bump down the road from Quebec.”
A ping dragged me up from a miles-deep sleep. Another followed. Groggy, I thought my house alarm was announcing a burglar or fire.
Then recognition. I reached for my iPhone.
The text was maddeningly short: You were right. En route now. Will call with updates. UR
I sat up, fully awake. What the hell? Had Rodas found a place deeded to the proper Corneaus? Was he on his way there? Where?