by Kathy Reichs
“Is Adamski still around?”
“Died in a boating accident in 2000. No tears there, at least not in Otto and Mona’s world. Keiser’s kids say the guy was a parasite and mean as a snake.”
“When Adamski bought the farm, Keiser added electricity and plumbing to the hunting shack. Kept the whole deal secret. Property’s still in Adamski’s name, so it never popped on the radar.”
“Her kids knew nothing about it? Her stepson?”
“Allegedly, no one did.”
“Except Lu.”
“Hard to believe, eh? Anyway, soon as Lu rolls on the shack, I haul ass to the country. Outside things look hunky-dory. Inside’s a different story.”
Claudel has a habit of rising up on his toes when he gets to the good part. He did that now. Descended.
“Interior’s one room with a sleeping loft in back. Left-hand corner, by a wood stove, the carpet, one wall, and a sofa are burned to shit. Also one body.”
I’d seen it before. A fire flames quickly, runs out of fuel, dies. One room can be toast, another undamaged.
“Where was the body?”
“Half on, half off the sofa.”
“You sure it’s Keiser?”
“Nah. My money’s on Hillary Clinton.”
I ignored the sarcasm. “You’ve told Keiser’s kids?”
Claudel nodded. “Neither suggested they’d be booking airline reservations soon. Pinsker’s on his way over here now.” The thin lips went thinner. “Unless we got us one hell of a coincidence, it’s Keiser.”
I thought of Rose Jurmain. Anne-Isabelle and Christelle Villejoin.
“Any reason to suspect foul play?”
“Gee, how about Granny’s pension checks turning up cashed? How about her purse being in a Dumpster a million miles from her crib? But there was no sign of forced entry, if that’s what you mean. The place wasn’t ransacked. No blood. The vic was fully clothed.”
“Any obvious trauma? A gunshot wound? A blow to the head?”
“I am a detective. Not a pathologist.”
Claudel’s arrogance often goads me over the edge. Given the day’s events, I was gripping the brink with my toes. But Claudel was right. My question was stupid.
That, too, made me cranky.
“Did you detect anything to suggest Keiser could have died elsewhere?”
“She was lying facedown. Contact with the floor preserved flesh on the chest and belly. Pooling looked right.”
Claudel referred to the third of death’s Triple Crown. Rigor mortis: stiffening in the muscles. Algor mortis: cooling of the tissues. Livor mortis: pooling on the “down” side.
Here’s livor, short and quick. When the heart stops beating and chasing the blood around, gravity causes the heavier red cells to sink through the lighter serum and settle in the dependent parts of the corpse. The result is a purplish red discoloration known as lividity, or livor mortis, on the body’s “down” side.
Like its colleagues, rigor and algor, livor works the clock, beginning twenty minutes to three hours after death and congealing in the capillaries in four to five. Maximum lividity usually occurs within six to twelve hours.
So. In addition to estimating postmortem interval, livor is useful in determining if a corpse has been moved.
Case in point. Had Keiser been lying prone while flying a purple bum, that pattern would have suggested she’d been moved after death. A darkened chest and belly were consistent with dying facedown.
“What about the car?”
“Parked in a lean-to in back.”
I tried to picture the setup. Woods. Rustic cabin and shed.
“Is the property that isolated?”
“The nearest neighbors are a half mile away. Cottagers, gone since September. We’re tracking them.”
“Who’s doing the post?”
“Ayers.” Claudel tugged a very expensive cuff to check a very expensive watch. “Pinsker should be here by now. He’s going to take a look at the clothes. What’s left of them.”
I got to my feet. “I’ll ride down with you.”
Petty, but I couldn’t help myself. Claudel’s phobia is the stuff of legend.
The man can calmly size up any crime scene. Blood-soaked sheets? No problem. Brain-spattered walls? Bring ’em on. Feces-smeared rugs? Groovy. To Claudel, crime scenes are telltale moments frozen in time. Violent moments, yes. But distant ones. And useful building blocks. In his thinking, each tableau is an exercise, a puzzle to be dissected and reassembled. Guts and gore talk, and one must listen intently.
But park a corpse on stainless steel and Claudel goes Jell-O in the knees. Yep. The guy can’t handle cold flesh or morgues.
“Pinsker’s identification of the body is a formality.” Claudel tipped his head. The hawk nose shot a shadow across one cheek. “It’s Keiser. I’ve got to get back on the street.”
I watched Claudel’s impeccably pressed buttocks disappear through the door.
* * *
An hour later it was Ryan.
“That the Lac Saint-Jean stuff?” Eyeing the bones spread before me.
I nodded.
“Looks old.”
“It is.”
“How old?”
“It’s safe to say these folks didn’t hang stockings this season.”
“Forty years?”
I just looked at him.
“A Cessna 310 disappeared in ’sixty-seven en route from Chicoutimi to Quebec City. Gouvrard family. Parents, two kids. The last sighting was in the vicinity of Lac Saint-Jean, so thinking was the plane went down in the water. No wreckage was ever found.”
Ryan handed me a paper. I glanced at it. Listed were the names and ages of four individuals.
Achille Gouvrard, 48
Vivienne Gouvrard, 42
Serge Gouvrard, 12
Valentin Gouvrard, 8
“Any chance there are antemorts after all these years?”
“File’s on the way.”
“You’re good, Detective.”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
“I owe you.”
“I’ll collect.” Exaggerated brow flash.
Something stirred in my southern parts. I ignored it.
“Why did Lac Saint-Jean ring a bell for you?”
“Gouvrard’s sister was married to a guy on the job, Quentin Jacquème. For years Jacquème floated a query on the anniversary of the crash. If anything turned up, he wanted to know about it.”
“Got to admire such doggedness.”
“Doggedness. Good word. The reminders stopped shortly after I came aboard, when Jacquème retired. Being former SQ, he was easy to locate.”
“Thus the continued existence and quick access to a forty-year-old file.”
“Thus.”
“Sad about Keiser,” I said.
“Yes,” Ryan said. “But expected.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
When Ryan left I finished my analysis. Though each skeleton was fragmentary and most bones were weathered and damaged, there was sufficient data to determine that the family profile fit.
No one showed any obvious health or dental issues.
But what about Daddy’s cheekbones and shoveled tooth? Probably normal variation.
Nevertheless, I’d have Ryan ask Jacquème about his brother-in-law’s ancestry.
At four twenty I phoned Hubert to report Ryan’s find.
“Nineteen sixty-seven.” I heard leather strain as Hubert shifted in his chair. “So Dr. Briel’s involvement becomes irrelevant. By the way, how did she do?”
“C minus.”
Hubert made one of his indecipherable sounds.
“I can’t sign off on IDs based on what I have,” I said. “Antemorts are on the way, but I’m not optimistic. I’ve got very few teeth. None for the younger child.”
“DNA?”
“Maybe mitochondrial, but that’s iffy. Bone quality is very poor. What are the chances of locating maternal relatives?”
“Tab
arnac. How many families could one lake hold?”
I remembered Hubert’s words at Christelle Villejoin’s grave. How many grannies go missing around here? I said nothing.
“Besides, the crash is ancient history.”
“Ancient history can snap back in bad ways. If it’s the Gouvrard family, legal issues might remain. Inheritance. Insurance. Liability.”
“Madame Keiser is downstairs.” Topic switch. Hubert’s standard operating procedure when uncomfortable. “Ayers volunteered to do the autopsy first thing tomorrow.”
I waited.
“Perhaps Keiser became disoriented and set herself on fire.”
“There’s no history of dementia.”
“Shit happens.”
* * *
I spent another two hours with the Lac Saint-Jean bones, listing details that might be useful once antemortem records arrived. I suspected Hubert was right. Mom, Dad, and two kids? What were the chances? Still.
Pelvic features told me the male and female were somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and fifty.
Gender determination is sketchy at best with preadolescent skeletons. I had only fragments of one, none of the other juvenile pelvis, so, in this case, the issue was a nonstarter.
The jaw and most of the head were missing from the older child, but arm and leg bone development suggested an age of ten to twelve years.
The younger child was represented by two vertebrae, three partial long bones, a calcaneous, and a handful of cranial fragments. Epiphyseal maturity in the proximal femur suggested an age of six to eight years. I also had three isolated molars, two deciduous and one adult. Wear facets suggested that all three molars had been fully erupted. Root closure suggested an age of six to eight years.
Why so little skull for the kids? Nothing sinister. The individual bones comprising young vaults are either separate or only partially fused. When the soft tissue sloughs, these bones often disconnect at the sutures, the squiggly lines along which they join hands.
All four individuals had cranial and thoracic fractures. The male had some lower-limb trauma. The smoothing of every broken edge made perimortem versus postmortem determination impossible.
La famille Gouvrard?
I reviewed my notes.
Adult genders: Consistent.
Adult and juvenile ages: Consistent.
Skeletal trauma: Consistent with an aviation accident. The male’s lower leg injuries were as I’d expect for a person manning the controls.
Consistent.
Not enough. The male’s cheekbones and shoveled incisor still troubled me.
I surveyed the empty lab. The silent printer. The winking message light on Joe’s phone. The screen saver looping endlessly on his computer.
Usually Joe says au revoir when clocking out. Today he’d left without a word. Clearly, I’d need to lay in more cookies. But why the snit? Because I’d chewed out Briel? Try as I might, I could think of nothing major I’d done to deserve the current cold freeze.
Dejected, I let my eyes drift to the window. Twelve stories down, traffic flowed as streams of tiny red dots. Reflected in the glass was a slender woman, blurred features impossible to read. The tense shoulders suggested frustration.
Time to go.
After securing my calipers in a drawer and locking the lab door, I crossed to my office.
With the LSJML’s new phone system, calls go directly to individual extensions. Unanswered ones roll straight to voice mail. Occasionally, contact to the main line is reported on paper.
I was zipping my parka when I noticed an old-fashioned pink slip amid the clutter on my desk.
I picked up and scanned the message.
Yes!
I snatched up the receiver.
22
CALLER HAS CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.
Perry Schechter’s name was accompanied by a ten-digit sequence starting with 312.
Chicago.
Had Jurmain’s lawyer discovered the identity of the bastard who set me up?
I dialed.
Four rings, then a way too smooth voice asked that I leave my name, number, and reason for phoning.
I did as directed, then slammed the receiver.
Could anything else go wrong today?
I checked the handwritten date and time. Schechter had contacted the lab at nine fifteen that morning.
The clock said six forty.
I decided to split and call again from home.
Sure. That’ll work.
It didn’t.
I tried once upon arrival, twice after sharing take-out pad thai with Birdie.
Vecamamma rang as I was collecting the dinner debris. She was considering cataract surgery, wanted my opinion. I told her to go for it.
I asked about Cukura Kundze. Vecamamma said that Laszlo’s remains had been released by the coroner, and that his parents had organized a memorial service and interment. She’d attended, of course. Though sad, both Cukura Kundze and Mr. Tot appeared relieved that the boy was finally square with the Lord, at least from a funerary perspective. She described the coffin, the flowers, the music, the supper, Cukura Kundze’s inappropriately magenta dress, and, of course, the minister’s homily.
Familiar with policy concerning retention of samples in open homicide cases, I wondered how much of Lassie had actually gone into the ground. Didn’t say it.
I asked about the investigation. Vecamamma knew nothing.
After disconnecting, I speculated for the hundredth time on what had happened to Lassie. Why had the kid been murdered? Where? By whom? I hoped his case wouldn’t end up like thousands of others, in a forgotten box on the shelf of a police property room.
At eleven I went to bed.
The cat joined me sometime in the night.
* * *
I slept until eight the next morning. Driving to the lab, I had a session with myself. Hostility bad. Serenity good. Smell the roses. Better for health, longevity. Blah. Blah. Blah.
First thing, I called Schechter.
The same recorded voice smarmed the same directive. After dictating a second message, I recradled the receiver. Gently.
Staff meeting was the arctic affair it had been on Monday. No smiles. No jokes. No one wanting to be there.
Briel was absent. I learned she’d begun teaching a course at the med school in Laval.
As we dispersed, I pulled Ayers aside to ask why everyone seemed so down. Mumbling about fatigue and overwork, she hurried off to cut a Y in Marilyn Keiser’s chest.
Back at my desk, I called the coroner’s office. A new secretary picked up. I began my request. Stopped. Asked the woman’s name. Adele.
I identified myself. Adele and I exchanged pleasantries. The new me.
“Has the Gouvrard file come in?”
“Un instant, s’il vous plaît.”
I heard a clunk. Computer keys. A rush of air as the receiver was raised to an ear.
“Oui. Dr. Briel has it.”
“What?” Sharp.
Silence.
I took a breath. “Sorry, Adele, but I’m confused. Why was the file sent to Dr. Briel?”
“According to the record she’s handling the case.”
“That is an error.” So very polite. “Please replace Dr. Briel’s name with mine.”
Adele said nothing.
“If you have questions, please speak with Monsieur Hubert.”
Two requests. Two “please’s.”
Adele hesitated, then, “Shall I collect the dossier and deliver it to you?”
“Thank you for offering. That’s not necessary.”
I was disconnecting when Joe stuck his head into my office.
“Anything for me?”
I started to ask for X-rays of the maybe-Gouvrard family. Remembered. Smiled.
Joe waited, face set in neutral.
Southern women are famous for knowing the right things to say. For conjuring words and phrases that put others at ease. It’s a skill I admire but do not posse
ss. That’s being generous. When it comes to small talk, I suck.
At a loss for common conversational ground, I glommed onto a comment from yesterday’s cookie enticement.
“Tell me something.” A good Dixie girl opener. “You said you’ll spend the weekend exploring. I find that intriguing.” I didn’t. My mind was on the Lac Saint-Jean bones. “Exploring what?”
Joe didn’t turn away, but didn’t exactly clamor for eye contact.
“It’s just a hobby.”
It wasn’t really an answer.
“But the weather’s so cold. What do you explore?”
Shoulder shrug. “Just stuff.”
The dolt wasn’t making this easy.
“Caves? Mines? Alternate dimensions?”
“Underground stuff. It’s called drainsploring. It’s no big deal. Do you want that girl poking around in the storage closet?”
The quick-change threw me.
“What girl?”
“Some chick’s rummaging through your old cases.”
So much for bonding.
“X-ray the Lac Saint-Jean vics.”
Shooting to my feet, I crossed the hall to my lab.
The “chick’s” back was to the door as she examined the contents of a box. Its label said LSJML-28723.
“Excuse me?”
When the girl whirled, two margarine braids whipped below a triangular bandana tied at the back of her head. Though easily six feet tall, she weighed about the same as your average middle-schooler.
“You startled me.” Hand to chest.
I crossed my arms. Considered, but didn’t tap a foot.
“And you would be?”
“Solange Duclos.”
The name meant nothing. My face clearly said it.
“Dr. Briel’s research assistant.” Almost a whisper.
The Université de Montréal student. I’d completely forgotten.
“Who let you in here?”
“Dr. Briel gave me a key.” She held it up.
I extended an upturned palm. Duclos dropped the key into it.
“Dr. Briel suggested I familiarize myself with dentition by going through old cases.” Duclos’s was the reddest lipstick I’d ever seen. Probably named Passionate Poppy or Chili Pepper Red.
I gestured Duclos out of the closet. Snatching up a spiral-bound reference, she scurried past me, book flat to her almost nonexistent breasts. After locking the door, I joined her.