by Kathy Reichs
A boot.
I reached left.
A second boot lay beside the first.
Heart hammering, I danced my fingers upward over mold-crusted fabric that crumbled at my touch. Running beneath the fabric were long tubular objects. I recognized their shape. Their meaning.
Leg bones.
Dear God, I was feeling up a corpse.
I pictured the body.
Swinging my legs right, I inched upward along the side of the torso, blindly probing in the darkness. My fingers picked out heavy round buttons.
I counted. Visualized. A jacket?
I applied pressure with my palm.
The jacket overlaid a series of rigid arcs. Lumps and knobs. A collapsed rib cage. Vertebrae.
I tried lifting the jacket’s lower edge. My effort kicked up a tsunami of scent, rank and earthy and reeking of death.
I changed to breathing through my mouth.
Elbowing and kneeing in reverse, I cleared the boots and shifted left.
Beside the first, my trembling fingers encountered a second set of footwear. Trousers. Another jacket. A fleshless skull, spiderweb hair clinging to the crown.
Again, I hitched backward and dragged myself left.
A third corpse lay head to foot with the others. Or had, until the skull detached and sought new ground.
My hands recoiled in horror.
Mother of God! My prison was a crypt, more frigid and black than I could have imagined possible. Filled with complete and utter silence.
And decaying bodies.
Questions kaleidoscoped in my brain. Hysterical. Pointless.
How long? How many? Who?
Using my bound legs, I hitched myself aft of the third corpse and dragged myself left, hands fumbling in the dark.
Irrational, but I had to know.
Beyond the first three dead I found four more.
Brailleing for clues, I determined that everyone had been entombed wearing boots, belted pants, and jackets with heavy round buttons, probably metal. Four jackets were adorned with medals and insignia.
Dead soldiers?
It didn’t matter. What did matter was the possibility that I’d soon join their ranks.
My breath began to catch, my chest to heave.
Reason weighed in.
No tears! Think!
A single word exploded in my brain.
Edges!
A desperate ghoul, I raided the dead and placed my booty in a pile. Medals. Buckles. Insignias. Three lower jaws with the front teeth in place.
Shifting to a hunch-sit, I spread my knees, leaned forward, and began sawing at my ankle bindings. One cord was all I needed.
One.
One.
How long did I gnaw away at those ropes? Long.
As with my wrists, it finally happened. A gentle yielding of pressure. A pop. My legs flew apart.
Electricity exploded from neuron to neuron.
I wanted to scream.
To shout for joy.
To kill the bastard who’d done this to me.
I wanted to escape.
Rounding my back, I massaged and flexed both ankles.
When blood flow returned, I eased onto all fours.
Not bad.
I flexed a knee, testing the injured leg.
Tender. Tolerable.
During my corpse crawl, I’d noted that the dead had been placed with their heads or feet to a wall. Apparently, I was at one end of the tomb.
Might a door be at the other?
Arms and legs rubber, I crawled toward the spot where I’d first regained consciousness, left hand periodically skimming the brick. One step. Five. Twelve.
Twenty steps. My outstretched palm smacked brick. Another wall was meeting the long wall at ninety degrees. I’d reached the other end of the tomb.
I began sidestepping right, hand groping for a door.
Sudden horrifying thought. If the bodies had been simply bricked in, there’d have been no need of a door. No one was ever entering again. Or leaving.
My tortured brain rode another illogical wave. Poe. “The Cask of Amontillado.”
But Montresor was caught.
No. Fortunato died. Alone. Underground.
My movements became frenzied. Sitting on my haunches, I hand-swept the brick in wide jagged arcs.
Someone put you here. There had to be a way in.
There has to be a way out.
I almost gasped when my fingers brushed something set into the masonry. Flat. Smooth.
Wood!
I groped for a handle.
Zip.
A latch.
No go.
My frozen fingertips were sending little to my brain. I rubbed my hands together fast. Some feeling returned.
I began anew, more slowly. More carefully.
Eventually, my trembling fingers picked out an irregularity. Traced it.
My brain tallied the tactile, threw up a visual. A crack, outlining a door maybe two feet square.
Frantic, I began clawing at the gap with my nails. The narrow space was packed with a hard, crumbly substance.
Think, Brennan!
Fumbling back through the dark, I gathered my macabre assemblage. Then I scramble-crawled back to the door and began hacking and gouging.
Periodically, I’d roll to my back and hammer the wood with my feet. Or throw my weight from all fours, connecting with a shoulder or hip.
Sounds filled the stillness. The clink of my pirated tools. The tick of mortar falling on brick. The wheeze of air in and out of my mouth.
I was sweat-soaked and panting when the door finally popped free and dropped with a clunk.
I inched to the edge and peered out.
28
CLUNK.
I raised my lids.
The window shade was a muted gray rectangle outlined by strips of sluggish daylight. Again. War of the Toxic Ham Salad: Day Three.
Birdie was atop the bureau on the far side of the room. Below him, a framed photo of Katy lay angled to a baseboard.
Though better than yesterday, my body still felt like it had gone through a crusher.
I sat up. Groaned.
Bird looked an accusation in my direction.
Can cats do that?
Thursday was a blur. I could remember trying to change the sheets. To feed the cat. To shower. To eat crackers. My innards would have nothing to do with digestion. After each attempt at activity, I’d fall back into bed.
Fitful while sleeping, I’d kicked the covers to the floor. Reengaging them, I assessed. Though the fever and nausea were gone, my rib and abdominal muscles ached, and a low throbbing lingered behind my eyeballs. My nightshirt was soaked.
I looked at the clock. Ten twenty.
Bird had a point.
“You hungry, buddy?”
Prim nonresponse.
Peeling off the wet jammies, I donned sweats, then dragged to the kitchen to feed the cat.
Back to the bathroom. Already my energy level was tanking.
I studied my image in the mirror while brushing my teeth. Eyes rabbit pink. Face oatmeal. Hair pasted to my scalp and forehead in swirly wet clumps.
How would Harry describe my appearance? Rode hard and put away wet.
“Apt.” My voice sounded croaky.
Lab today?
Maybe.
Shower?
Not yet.
Hair?
Later.
One system kicked in. Suddenly I was famished. Ten hours of vomiting will do that, I guess.
The refrigerator offered condiments, Diet Coke, moldy lettuce, and a trio of plastic containers whose contents would require a gas spec for ID.
I was contemplating a grocery run when I heard knocking at the front door.
Entrance to my building requires a key. Others must buzz. Only the caretaker or a resident should already be inside.
Sparky?
Merciful God. Not today.
I tiptoed down the hall an
d peeked through the peephole.
An impossibly blue eye stared back.
“I know you’re in there.” Muffled through the door.
“Go away.”
“I have news. Open up.”
Reluctantly, I did.
Ryan was bundled in hooded parka, muffler, and tuque pulled low to his brows. His nostrils were blanched, his cheeks flushed. He held a square white box in mittened hands.
“Klondike Pete called,” I said. “They want the outfit back.”
“It’s twenty-two below.” Shifting the bakery, Ryan palmed back his hood.
“You could not know I was here,” I said.
“Shadow in the peephole. The cat moves low to the ground. I’m a detective. I read clues.”
Ryan’s eyes roved my body. My hair. A grin played his lips.
“Don’t say it,” I warned.
“Say what?” All innocence.
“I’ve been under the weather.”
“Two-day blizzard?”
“You’re a laugh riot, Ryan. You should take yourself on the road. Like, right now?”
Ryan proffered the box. “I brought breakfast.”
I smelled pastry. Buttery eggs. Salty bacon.
“You’ll do coffee?” Ryan had his faults, but he made great coffee.
“Bien sûr. I am the brewer of coffee and the fixer of glass.”
“My hero.” Stepping back. “Winston already replaced the window.”
Ryan disappeared into the kitchen. I went to the bathroom to try to reason with my hair. Pointless. I finally yanked it into a knot on top of my head.
Lipstick and blush?
Screw it. I almost died of food poisoning.
Ryan had set two places at the dining room table. He sat at one, sipping coffee from my RCMP mug. The open box was one croissant down.
“Flu?” he asked when I reappeared.
“Deadly ham salad.”
“But you emerge the victor.”
“I do.” I opened a croissant, considered, then removed the bacon, not up to another porcine encounter. “Let me guess. Someone in Pointe-Calumet recognized Red O’Keefe’s picture?”
“No.”
“OK. What’s your news?”
“One Bud Keith was on the payroll of L’Auberge des Neiges at the time Rose Jurmain disappeared.”
“Holy shit.” Through a mouthful of egg and dough.
“The holiest.”
“Doing what?”
“Kitchen worker.”
“Bud Keith aka Red O’Keefe?”
“Our very own.”
“Was Keith/O’Keefe questioned?”
“Yep. Cops ran him, saw he had a record, a string of aliases. But Keith cooperated, and, more importantly, served up an airtight alibi for the time period in question. He was bear hunting with friends near La Tuque. Six guys put him there the date Jurmain disappeared. Cops saw no reason to follow up.”
“How long did Keith/O’Keefe work at the inn?”
“Split after a two-month stint. Gave no notice and left no forwarding address. Manager says he was a good worker, but moody.”
“What does that mean?”
“He didn’t like the guy.”
“What does Claudel think?”
“He thinks it’s worth follow-up.”
“Is he making progress on Keiser?”
“He’s got the vic’s son, Otto, flying in from Alberta. Apparently Mona’s divorced, has three little kids and nowhere to leave them. Claudel wants to run sonny around the apartment and the cabin at Memphrémagog, see if maybe something clicks. I’ll probably join up for a look-see.”
“You never know,” I said.
“You never know.”
A detail had been nagging at me since I’d heard about Keiser’s visits to Eastman Spa.
“Something’s been bothering me.”
“You know I’m yours if you want me.”
“I’ll keep some bubbly on ice.”
“I’m all over that.”
“Marilyn Keiser made regular visits to Eastman. That’s big bucks. Yet she had only modest assets. How did she pay for her pricey spa habit?”
Ryan got it right away.
“You’re thinking home banking. She kept a cash stash, like the Villejoins.”
“Could that be the link?”
“I’ll pass the idea along to Claudel. Maybe he needs to go further back in Keiser’s financials, look for large unexplained withdrawals. Also check with Eastman, see how she paid.”
“How’d you guess I was here?” I reached for my second croissant.
“You weren’t at the lab yesterday or today. Where else would you be?”
“I do have a life.”
“Course you do.”
To switch topics, I described Briel’s television debut.
“What do you know about this Body Find outfit?” Ryan asked when I’d finished.
“Nothing,” I said. “Yet.”
“Want me to do some poking?”
“I can handle it.”
“I’m sure you can.”
I told Ryan about the call from Chris Corcoran. The inmate at Stateville.
“The Chicago cops think the guy’s story is solid?”
“Apparently.”
“I hope it pans out. For Cukura Kundze’s sake.”
“And Lassie’s.”
Ryan tipped a wrist to check the time.
“You heading in this afternoon?”
“Probably not.” I surprised myself. Until that moment I’d been operating on the assumption that I’d go to the lab.
Ryan crossed to me, squatted, and placed a hand over mine. His face was so close I could feel his breath, smell the familiar Garnier shampoo.
“You deserve a couple of days off.” Gentle squeeze. “I’m going to build you a fire. Light it when you want.”
“Thanks.” Barely audible.
When Ryan left I gathered the breakfast debris, called the lab to tell them I wouldn’t be in until Monday, then took a long bubble bath. Lying in water as hot as I could bear, I pondered my decision to stay home. I never take an unscheduled break. Idleness makes me cranky.
Post-poisoning fatigue? Minus twenty-two temperature reading? Confidence that the Lac Saint-Jean vics would soon be IDed? Humiliation over Briel’s public disclosure of my screwup in the Villejoin case?
Whatever.
The hot water and full belly acted like an opiate, drugging me into a state of total lethargy.
Avoiding my sweat-stained bed, I got a quilt, lit Ryan’s fire, and stretched out on the couch. Birdie joined me.
I stroked his fur. He purred on my chest.
I closed my eyes, feeling drained of the ability to move. To read. To watch TV. To think.
* * *
I awoke to the sound of a ringing phone. Bird was gone. The windows were dark and the fire was nothing but embers.
Retrieving the handset, I clicked on.
“I didn’t see you today or yesterday.” Emily Santangelo.
“Food poisoning. I’ll spare you the details.”
“You OK now?”
“I’ll live.” My eyes drifted to the mantel clock. Four forty-five. “Beware vending machine sandwiches.”
“You actually ate one?”
“Not the crusts.”
Pause.
“Did you see Briel’s interview Wednesday night?”
“A thing of beauty.”
Longer pause.
“We need to talk.”
My instincts sat up. Emily Santangelo was a reserved, almost reclusive woman, not one for office gossip or girlie exchanges.
“Sure,” I said.
“You feel up to dinner, maybe something light? Chicken soup? I could bring it to you.”
“I’ll need to disinfect this place before anyone enters.” I was thinking flamethrower. “How about meeting at Pho Nguyen on Saint-Mathieu?”
“Vietnamese?”
“They make great soup.”
/> “That works. I can be there by six thirty.”
“I won’t look good.”
“I won’t call the press.”
There was a subtle muffling of ambient noise, as though Santangelo had cupped the mouthpiece.
“Something’s very wrong.” Almost a whisper.
“Wrong?” I asked.
“See you soon.”
The line went dead.
29
DÉCOR IS NOT A PRIORITY AT PHO NGUYEN. TWO steps down from the sidewalk, the place has a white tile floor, white walls, and maybe a dozen Formica-topped tables. White.
But the soupe Tonkinoise kicks ass.
Santangelo was there when I arrived, seated in a back corner, perusing the menu. She smiled on seeing me. Waved.
“This cold will either cure or kill me.” I pulled off my muffler and gloves and unzipped my parka. “Glad you called. I needed some fresh air.”
“You walked?”
“It’s not far.” Pho Nguyen’s other attraction is that it’s only blocks from my condo.
Stuffing my accessories into a sleeve, I hung the jacket on the chair back. An Asian kid approached as soon as I sat. His cheekbones were high, his hair thick and black, with one platinum streak in front. A gold earring looped his right brow.
“I’ll have a number six, medium.”
“What’s that?” Santangelo asked.
“Pho bo. Beef noodle soup.”
“The same for me.” Santangelo tucked the menu back into its holder.
The kid crossed to the front counter and bellowed our order into the kitchen.
“I’m not what you’d call an adventurous eater,” Santangelo said.
“You’ll like this.”
The kid returned with small plates piled with basil, lime, and sprouts.
Santangelo shot me a quizzical look.
“I’ll talk you through it,” I said.
I brought Santangelo up to date on the Keiser and Villejoin investigations. On Ayers’s distress over missing a bullet track. Fully engaged in transitioning to the coroner’s office, she’d not kept current. When the soup arrived, we focused on adding hot sauce, soy sauce, and the fresh embellishments.
We’d been slurping and twirling for a while when Santangelo finally got to the subject on her mind.
“Do you know the real reason I’m leaving the lab?”
“No.”
“The atmosphere has gone rancid. It’s Briel.” Santangelo practically spit the name. “She’s poison.”
Like Ryan, I used silence, allowing her to go on. She did. Big-time.