by Kathy Reichs
“And fruitless. No one on the block had heard or seen a thing. Canvassing turned up zip. Ditto for phone checks. The vics had no credit cards and weren’t computer savvy, so those avenues didn’t exist. One neighbor thought he remembered Christelle talking about some distant cousins up in the Beauce. Those folks were never found. Local kids shoveled the snow, cut the grass, that sort of thing. The women’s only known associates were either people in the immediate vicinity or members of the parish. Every last one alibied out.”
“Wasn’t there something about a bank card?”
“That was the only lead. On five May, around eighteen thirty hours, a withdrawal was made from Christelle’s savings account at the Bank of Montreal.”
“Made where?”
Ryan referred to the spiral. “An ATM at four-two-five-oh Ontario East.”
“That’s out east, near the Olympic stadium.” Miles from Pointe-Calumet. “Did the sisters have a car?”
“No.”
“Was the transaction caught on video?”
“No. The camera was down for three hours that night.”
I thought a minute. “If LaManche is right about PMI, Anne-Isabelle was already dead by six p.m.”
“Yes.” Tight. “We missed the perp’s photo due to a technical glitch.”
“Did Anne-Isabelle have an account?”
“Both sisters used the same one.”
Ryan drained the last of his beer. For a moment his thumb played over sweat fogging the outside of his mug. When his eyes met mine they were hard with resolve.
“I’m going to get this prick.”
A fleck of foam hung on Ryan’s lip. I fought an urge to wipe it away.
“I know you will,” I said.
* * *
By eight a.m. there were sixty-seven centimeters blanketing the ground. Twenty-six inches. On any scale, that’s a lot of snow.
Montreal is a champ at handling storms, but this time the city was brought to its knees. Between crowing about broken records, newscasters reported that only a handful of buses and metros were running. The airport was down. Church services were canceled. Businesses that normally operated on Sunday were closed.
Later it would become clear that most of the populace rose, looked out their windows, and crawled back into bed. God or the boss would understand.
I wasn’t quite so complacent. I wanted to get to the lab to complete my analysis of the Oka bones.
After a breakfast of coffee, Grape-Nuts, and yogurt, I pulled on boots, donned my Kanuk, muffler, and mitts, and headed out, hoping to make it to the underground two blocks away.
No plow had ventured onto my street. No early riser had shoveled the walks. Why bother? The snow was thigh high and still coming down, the flakes tiny now, icy bullets that stung my face and bounced off my jacket.
On Sainte-Catherine, vehicles lining the curbs looked like lumpy white hedgerows. No buses. No cars. No pigeons. No people. Nothing moved. The hood was as deserted as Times Square in Vanilla Sky.
I arrived at the metro panting and perspiring inside my parka. A handwritten sign was taped to the grimy glass of the ticket booth.
Coupure de courant non programmée. Problème électrique. Unscheduled outage. Electrical problem. Below the words, the author had drawn a smiley face with a downturned mouth.
“Picture friggin’ perfect.” I was talking to myself again.
Fifteen minutes later, I was back at my building. As I turned into the corridor leading to my condo, I noticed a ziplock tucked behind the door knob.
Pulling off a mitt, I dislodged and checked the contents of the bag. Five small blobs, dry, crumbly, dark brown-black.
I unsealed the plastic and sniffed.
Excrement.
“Asshole!” The word echoed down the empty hall.
My neighbor Sparky had pulled this before. Once it was soiled litter, once a dead sparrow.
I definitely needed to vent.
After flushing the turds, I dialed my sister, Harry, in Houston.
I told her about Sparky’s latest stunt.
She repeated my expletive, adding a modifier.
I told her about the snow.
“Doesn’t ole blue eyes have a Jeep?”
“I can’t crawl to Ryan every time I have a problem.”
“Jeeps run in snow.”
“So do Ski-Doos, but I’m not phoning Snowmobile Patrol.”
“Is that a real thing?”
“Whatever. What are you doing?”
“Weeding my garden. It’s so hot here the trees are bribing the dogs. Got to get at it early.”
That made me feel worse. I said nothing.
“What else is new?” Harry asked.
I told her about Chicago, Cukura Kundze, and Ryan’s sudden appearance at Vecamamma’s house. Then I described the mysterious phone call to the late Edward Allen Jurmain.
“What kind of dipshit would pull something like that?”
“I intend to find out. It has to be somebody very nearby.”
“That why your knickers are in a twist to work on a Sunday?”
Mentioning no names, I told her about the Villejoin sisters. She didn’t interrupt. My sister can be impetuous, at times aggravating, but she’s a crackerjack listener.
When I finished, Harry took a moment to respond.
“Gran was eighty-one when she died.”
“She was.”
“You working this thing with Ryan?”
“Yes.”
“When you catch the bastard, do me a favor?”
I waited.
“Fry his balls.”
I couldn’t disagree with baby sister’s suggestion.
15
MONDAY I AWOKE TO THE SOUND OF PLOWS BLASTING triptych warnings to overnight parkers.
Wreep! Wreep! Wreep!
Déplacez votre voiture! Move your car! Move your ass!
Though the media were reporting that most main arteries were clear, through a side window I could see that my block still looked like a postcard from Finland. I knew the same scene was playing on side streets and alleys all over town. Shovels would be flying, and those who’d failed to relocate their vehicles would now do so only after heavy-duty lifting. Hospital ERs would be hopping.
Knowing traffic would be brutal and parking would involve angling ass-end into waist-high snowbanks, I opted for mass transit. Today my Nanook trek paid off. I rode standing shoulder to armpit with commuters smelling of wet wool and sweat.
At Édifice Wilfrid-Derome, small white mountains hid the fences surrounding the parking lots. Cars were wedged into every square millimeter of cleared pavement. Those blocking others had notes below their wipers. Courtesy? Or excuses to leave early?
Elevator talk was all about the storm. La tempête de neige.
Upstairs at the LSJML it was business as usual. Except in the medico-legal section. There, nothing had been usual since LaManche dropped his bomb one sparkling Friday in September.
Blocked coronary vessels. Bypass surgery in October. Medical leave until the new year.
In addition to myself and LaManche, the three other pathologists had been present that day. Michael Morin. Natalie Ayers. Emily Santangelo. So was Marc Bergeron, the lab’s consulting odontologist. We’d all sat stunned.
Sure, the chief had suffered a pesky episode a few years back. But he’d recovered quickly. Once again arrived first each morning, turned the lights off at night. Triple bypasses were for frail, old men. LaManche was only fifty-eight.
I remember meeting LaManche’s hound dog gaze. Dropping my eyes. Glancing out the window. This can’t be real, I thought. The day is too beautiful. Irrational, but that’s what I thought.
The following week, LaManche raised the issue of a temporary replacement. The decision was quick and unanimous. Ours was a congenial unit. There’d be no stand-in. Until the boss returned the pathologists would assign cases and make administrative decisions by consensus. The extra workload would be equally shared.
And that’s how it was working, three months down the road.
Sort of.
After shedding my substantial outerwear, I snapped on a lab coat and headed to the staff lounge. At the exit from our wing, where the hall makes a turn, I passed a closed and locked door. Venetian blinds allowed a peek of an empty desk.
Beside the dark office, an erasable board announced daily staff whereabouts. Congé de maladie was scribbled in the box beside LaManche’s name. Sick leave.
A lead weight settled in my heart.
The surgery went well. He’ll be fine.
Still, the silent office and the Magic Marker entry gave me shivers.
LaManche had always been there for me, a voice of wisdom and reason. Of compassion and perspective earned by decades of working with the dead and with the bereaved left behind. That voice was now banished because of bum piping.
LaManche isn’t old. Agitated, I swiped my card, missed, swiped again. The glass panels whooshed open. It’s not fair.
Life’s not fair. Gran’s favorite retort zinged at me from the past.
Screw capricious fate. I couldn’t imagine the LSJML without LaManche. Didn’t want to.
Though the lounge was deserted, the puddled floor told me others had already been there. Dropping coins into an honor box, I poured coffee translucent as smoky quartz.
Back in the medico-legal wing, I hurried to the far end of the corridor. My watch said nine ten. Morning meeting usually kicks off at nine.
Our section’s conference room is exactly what you’d envision in a government building. Algae green walls. Gray tile floor. Window blinds. Phone credenza. Gunmetal table and chairs. A blackboard/projection screen hangs at one end, a door opens to an audiovisual closet at the other.
Two pathologists sat with their backs to the windows. Sunlight warmed Ayers’s chestnut hair and glinted off Morin’s freckled brown dome. A third sat at the far end. Santangelo’s slumping shoulders suggested fatigue.
Facing the old-timers was Marie-Andréa Briel, the new kid on the LSJML block. Briel had joined the staff the previous fall, during a period when I was away in Charlotte. Lab policy is that, for their first year, new pathologists do no homicide cases, so I hadn’t really worked with Briel. Though I’d seen her in the halls, and we’d nodded across the table at staff meetings, we’d had virtually no personal interaction. I knew little about her from firsthand experience. What snippets I’d been given weren’t golden.
One late afternoon, exhausted, LaManche had confided that an offer had been extended and accepted. In his opinion, the applicant wasn’t the pick of the litter. But old Jean Pelletier had been gone for over a year and he and the others had been doing the work of five.
Though he’d yet to reveal it, the chief probably knew he was looking at surgery in the not too distant future. Another pathologist had to be hired.
Why such a prolonged search? The pay is low, and the LSJML requires fluency in French. You guessed it. The litter wasn’t that big.
Ayers and Morin smiled when I entered. Santangelo flicked a wave.
“Bonjour, Tempe.” Morin’s French was that of the islands. “Comment ça va?”
“Ça va bien.” I’m doing fine.
“Couldn’t stay away from our Montreal weather, eh?” Ayers knew my feelings on snow.
“No comment.” I took a seat.
Briel glanced in my direction.
I nodded. Smiled.
Briel looked down at her notepad, vertical lines creasing the gap where heavy dark brows reached for each other over her nose.
I looked at Ayers. She shrugged. Who knows?
I tried again with my newest colleague. “I hope you’re now feeling comfortable here.”
Briel’s face rose, frown lines in place. “Oui.”
“Not letting these old goats get on your nerves.”
Ayers bleated softly.
“I can handle difficulties.”
Marie-Andréa Briel was not blessed with beauty. Perhaps thirty-two, she had a substantial fundament, frizzy black hair, and skin the color of fluoridated teeth. That skin now went incandescent.
“I’m not implying that anyone is difficult. That’s not what I meant. I’m very happy here. Thankful for the chance to learn.”
Though grammatically flawless, Briel’s French was oddly without accent or inflection. Definitely not Québécois or European. I made a mental note to ask about her origins.
Morin reached over and patted Briel’s hand. “You’re doing fine.”
The frown lines relaxed. A micron.
“The old lady from Oka is downstairs?” Morin asked me.
“Yes. I started my analysis on Saturday, hope to finish today.”
“Then outa here for a Dixie Christmas?” Ayers.
“That’s the plan.”
“Put elf hats on the hunting dogs?” Ayers loved to tease about my Southern roots.
“Yep. Then the cousins gather in my trailer to drink hooch and eat pork skins.”
“Bon.” Morin distributed photocopied rosters of the day’s cases. “Then let’s not waste time.”
I skimmed the daily morgue sheet. Eight autopsies. A typical Monday. Busy as hell.
Morin went over each case.
A Ski-Doo had slammed into a tree near Sainte-Agathe. A second snowmobile had then plowed into the first. Two dead. Alcohol intoxication was suspected.
An Argentine seaman had died in a home-rigged sauna in the Gay Village. The presumed host was in critical condition at the General. Alcohol and drug intoxication were suspected.
Two men and a woman had been discovered dead in their beds in Baie-Comeau. Carbon monoxide poisoning was suspected.
A man had been gunned down outside a convenience store in Longueuil.
A woman had been stabbed in her home in Lac-Beauport. The estranged husband was in custody.
Only the Longueuil shooting victim’s identity was unknown. Prints were being run and a photo was being shopped to known gang members.
Nothing for the anthropologist. Hot damn. I’d be free to work on the Oka lady.
Though Briel offered, Morin assigned himself the stabbing victim. Mo went onto the roster beside that case.
Santangelo got the snowmobilers. Sa.
Ayers volunteered for the sailor and the gunshot death. Again Briel offered, but was refused. The shooting was clearly a homicide. The sautéed sailor was a foreign national. That meant potential diplomatic issues. Ay.
Briel’s brow-pucker deepened as Morin wrote Br beside the chalet vics then tossed her a ziplock filled with vials of prescription drugs.
“Christelle Villejoin’s antemortem records,” he said, handing me an envelope whose size did not look encouraging.
“No X-rays?”
Morin shook his head.
“Dentals?”
“Apparently les soeurs Villejoin were not fond of medical professionals. Everything in the file looks pretty old.”
Great.
Morin turned to budget matters. Additional cuts had been demanded by the ministry. Nothing new. Each year funding grew more spartan. The joke was that soon autopsies would be billed by the pound.
We were pushing from the table when Briel spoke up.
“I have taken on a student.”
We all paused.
“A student?” Morin raised a questioning brow.
“I am beginning a new project and need a new research assistant.”
“A project?” The brow floated higher.
“Montreal remains the last U.S. or Canadian city with a population over one million that does not fluoridate its water. Some communities in the West Island do fluoridate. Pointe-Claire, Dorval, Beaconsfield, Baie-d’Urfé, Kirkland, and parts of Dollard-des-Ormeaux and Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue.”
Ayers groaned softly. It was an old issue.
Briel ignored her.
“Though the Quebec government endorses and has offered to subsidize fluoridation in Montreal, the city refuses. I have read statist
ics stating that Montreal children have seventy-seven percent more cavities compared to children in areas of Quebec where fluoride is added to the water. The dichotomy on the Island of Montreal provides a natural laboratory. My assistant and I will be comparing the decay rates of unfluoridated city children to those of their fluoridated surburban counterparts.”
“All costs will have to—”
“I have a grant.”
“What happened to your old student?”
“I had to let her go.”
“Who is the new student?” Santangelo asked.
“Solange Duclos. She is a fourth-year biology major at l’Université de Montréal. She will come for six hours each week beginning next Tuesday.”
“Shouldn’t this have been discussed prior to making a commitment?” Santangelo’s voice had an edge. “There are security and safety issues.”
Briel’s cheeks flamed again, reminding me of Chris Corcoran. Which reminded me of Edward Allen Jurmain and his snake-belly informant. I would begin digging as soon as I finished with the Oka woman.
“—visibility for the lab. I plan to present my findings to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. And to publish them in the Journal of Forensic Sciences and the Journal of the Canadian Dental Association.”
Ayers started to comment. Morin cut her off.
“You are new here. There is much to absorb.”
Briel’s shoulders hitched back. “I have completed a residency program in anatomic and clinical pathology. And several postdocs. I am not without experience.”
“Our autopsy schedule is very demanding,” Ayers said. “Look at today. You have two cases.”
“I don’t mind working late. Or on weekends. The research will be done on my own time.”
Ayers shook her head. Santangelo wrote something on her roster.
“Access must be limited to our section alone,” Morin said. “As with your previous student, Ms. Duclos must not enter the morgue or any other restricted area of the building. And she must, for security purposes, submit to a full background check.”
“The background check has already been done.”
“Have Ms. Duclos come to my office when she arrives on Tuesday.” Morin looked around the table. “Other business?”