by Kathy Reichs
When the phone rang I grabbed it.
“Dallair.”
“Yes.” I swallowed and the pain was excruciating.
“I sent the file about five minutes ago. It’s called Tang.tif. It’s compressed, so you’ll have to unencode. I’ll stick here until you’ve downloaded, to be sure there’s no problem. Just send a reply. And good luck.”
I thanked him and hung up. Moving to the computer I logged into my mailbox at McGill. The Mail Waiting!!! message glowed brightly. Ignoring other unread mail, I downloaded the file Dallair had sent, and returned it to its graphic format. A dental imprint arched across the screen, each tooth clearly visible against a white background. To the left and below the impression was a right-angle ABFO ruler. I sent Dallair a reply and logged off.
Back in the imaging program, I called up Tang.tif and double-clicked it open. Tanguay’s impression filled the screen. I retrieved the bite mark in the Rue Berger cheese, and tiled the two images side by side.
Next I converted both images to an RGB scale, to maximize the amount of information in the pictures. I adjusted tone, brightness, contrast, and saturation. Finally, using the image editor I sharpened the edges on the Styrofoam impression as I had with the indentations in the cheese.
For the type of comparison I planned to try, both images had to be to the same scale. I got out a needle point caliper and checked the ruler in the Tanguay photo. The distance between hash marks was exactly one millimeter. Good. The image was one to one.
There was no ruler in the Berger photo. Now what?
Use something else. Go back to the full image. There has to be a known.
There was. The Burger King cup touched the bowl adjacent to the cheese, its red and yellow logo clear and recognizable. Perfect.
I ran to the kitchen. Let it still be here! Throwing open the cabinet doors, I rummaged through the trash under the sink.
Yes! I washed off the coffee grounds and carried the cup to the computer. My hands trembled as I spread the calipers. The upright arm of the logo B measured exactly 4 millimeters across.
Selecting the resize function in the image editor I clicked on one edge of the B on the Rue Berger cup, dragged the cursor to the far border, and clicked again. Having chosen my calibration points I told the program to resize the entire image so that the B measured exactly 4 millimeters across at that position. Instantly the picture changed dimension.
Both images were now one to one. I looked at them side by side on the computer screen. The impression Tanguay had given showed a complete dental arch, with eight teeth on each side of the midline.
Only five teeth had registered in the cheese. Bertrand was right. It was like a false start. The teeth had gripped, slid, or been retracted, then bitten a chunk from behind the mark I was now seeing.
I stared at the trail of indentations. I was sure it was an upper arch. I could see two long depressions to either side of the midline, probably the central incisors. Lateral to them were two similarly oriented but slightly shorter grooves. Farther out, on the left of the arcade, was a small, circular dent, probably made by the canine. No other teeth had registered.
I ran my sweaty palms down the sides of my shirt, arched my back, and took a deep breath.
Okay. Position.
Choosing the Effect function, I clicked on Rotate, and slowly maneuvered Tanguay’s dental impression, hoping to achieve the same orientation as the mark in the cheese. Click by click I rotated the central incisors clockwise. Forward, then backward, then forward again, a few degrees at a time, my anxiousness and clumsiness prolonging the process. It took an entire growing season, but at last I was satisfied. Tanguay’s front teeth lay at the same angle and position as their counterparts in the cheese.
Back to the Edit menu. Stitch function. I selected the cheese as the active image and the Tanguay impression as the floating image. I set the the transparency level at 30 percent, and Tanguay’s bite mark grew cloudy.
I clicked on a spot directly between Tanguay’s front teeth, and again on the corresponding gap in the cheese arcade, defining a stitch point on each image. Satisfied, I activated the Place function, and the image editor superimposed Tanguay’s bite mark directly over that in the cheese. Too opaque. The cheese trail was completely obliterated.
I raised the transparency level to 75 percent, and watched the Styrofoam dots and dashes fade to ghostly transparency. I now had a clear view of the dents and hollows in the cheese through the impression made by Tanguay.
Dear God.
I knew instantly the bites were not by the same person. No amount of manual manipulation or fine tuning of the images could alter that impression. The mouth that had bitten into the Styrofoam had not left the marks in the cheese.
Tanguay’s dental arch was too narrow, the curve at the front much tighter than that preserved in the cheese. The composite image showed a horseshoe overlying a partial semicircle.
More striking, the person eating cheese at the Rue Berger flat had an irregular break to the right of the normal midline gap, and the adjacent tooth shot off at a thirty-degree angle, making the tooth row look like a picket fence. The cheese eater had a badly chipped central incisor, and a sharply rotated lateral.
Tanguay’s teeth were even and uninterrupted. His bite showed neither of these traits. He had not bitten that cheese. Either Tanguay had entertained a guest at Rue Berger, or the Rue Berger apartment had nothing to do with Tanguay at all.
WHOEVER USED RUE BERGER HAD KILLED GABBY. THE GLOVES matched. The strong probability was that Tanguay was not that person. His teeth had not bitten the cheese. St. Jacques was not Tanguay.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, my voice raspy in the silence of my empty home. Fears for Katy erupted full force. Why hadn’t she called?
I tried Ryan at home. No answer. I tried Bertrand. He’d gone. I tried the task force room. No one.
I went to the yard and peeked through the fence at the pizza parlor across the street. The alley was empty. The surveillance team had been pulled. I was on my own.
I ran through my options. What could I do? Not much. I couldn’t leave. I had to be here if Katy came back. When Katy came back.
I looked at the clock—7:10 P.M. The files. Back to the files. What else could I do from inside these walls? My refuge had become my prison.
I changed clothes and went to the kitchen. Though my head was swimming, I took no medication. My mind was dull enough without sedation. I’d blast the germs with vitamin C. I got a can of frozen orange juice from the freezer and dug for the opener. Damn. Where is it? Too impatient to look for long, I grabbed a steak knife and sawed the top of the cardboard can to remove the metal lid. Pitcher. Water. Stir. You can do it. Clean up the mess later.
Moments later I was settled on the couch, tightly quilted, tissues and juice within arm’s reach. I played with my eyebrow to hold my nerves together.
Damas. I descended into the file, revisiting names, places, and dates I’d visited before. The Monastère St. Bernard. Nikos Damas. Father Poirier.
Bertrand had done a follow-up on Poirier. I reread it, my mind resisting concentration. The good father checked out. I reviewed the original interview, looking for other names to chase after, like clues in a road rally scavenger hunt. Next I’d rehash dates.
Who was the caretaker? Roy. Emile Roy. I dug for his statement.
It wasn’t there. I went through everything in the jacket. Nothing. Surely someone had talked to him. I couldn’t recall seeing the report. Why wasn’t it here?
I sat for a moment, the friction of my breath the only sound in my universe. The pre-idea sensation was back, like an aura presaging a migraine. The sense that I was missing something was stronger than ever, but the elusive fact would not come into focus.
I went back to Poirier’s statement. Roy tends the building and grounds. Fixes the furnace, shovels the snow.
Shovels snow? At age eighty? Why not? George Burns could do it. Past images drifted into my mind. I thought of the ap
parition I’d had, alone in the car, Grace Damas’s bones lying behind me in the rain-soaked woods.
I thought of my other dream that night. The rats. Pete. Isabelle Gagnon’s head. Her grave. The priest. What had he said? Only those who worked for the church could enter its gates.
Could that be it? Is that how he got onto the grounds of the monastery and Le Grand Séminaire? Is our killer someone who works for the church?
Roy!
Right, Brennan, an eighty-year-old serial killer.
Should I wait to hear from Ryan? Where the hell is he? I pulled out the phone book with trembling hands. If I can find the caretaker’s number, I’ll call.
There was one E. Roy listed in St. Lambert.
“Oui.” A gravelly voice.
Be careful. Take your time.
“Monsieur Emile Roy?”
“Oui.”
I explained who I was and why I was calling. Yes, I had the right Emile Roy. I asked about his duties at the monastery. For a long time he said nothing. I could hear him wheezing, the breath drawing in and out like air through a blowhole. Finally:
“I don’t want to lose my job. I take good care of the place.”
“Yes. Do you do it by yourself?”
I heard his breath catch, as though a pebble had clogged the blowhole.
“I just need a little help from time to time. It don’t cost them nothing more. I pay for it myself, out of my wages.” He was almost whining.
“Who helps you, Monsieur Roy?”
“My nephew. He’s a good boy. Mostly he does the snow. I was going to tell Father, but …”
“What’s your nephew’s name?
“Leo. He’s not going to get in no trouble, is he? He’s a good boy.”
The receiver felt slick in my palm.
“Leo what?”
“Fortier. Leo Fortier. He’s my sister’s grandson.”
His voice receded. I was pouring sweat. I said the necessary things and hung up, my mind flailing, my heart racing.
Calm down. It could be a coincidence. Being a caretaker and a part-time butcher’s helper doesn’t make one a killer. Think.
I looked at the clock and reached for the phone. Come on. Be there.
She picked up on the fourth ring.
“Lucie Dumont.”
Yes!
“Lucie, I can’t believe you’re still there.”
“I had some trouble with a program file. I was just leaving.”
“There’s something I need, Lucie. It’s extremely important. You may be the only one who can get it for me.”
“Yes?”
“I want you to run a check on someone. Do whatever it is you do to pull up everything there is on this guy. Can you do that?”
“It’s late and I wa—”
“This is critical, Lucie. My daughter may be in danger. I really need this!”
I made no attempt to hide the desperation in my voice.
“I can link through to the SQ files and see if he’s there. I have clearance. What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“What can you give me?”
“Just a name.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Who is it?”
“Fortier. Leo Fortier.”
“I’ll call you back. Where are you?”
I gave her the number and hung up.
I paced the apartment, crazy with fear for Katy. Was it Fortier? Had his psychotic rage fixed on me because I had thwarted him? Had he killed my friend to vent this rage? Did he plan the same for me? For my daughter? How did he know about my daughter? Had he stolen the photo of Katy and me from Gabby?
The cold, numbing fear went deep into my soul. I had the worst thoughts I’ve ever known. I pictured Gabby’s last moments, imagined what she must have felt. The phone exploded into my train of thought.
“Yes!”
“It’s Lucie Dumont.”
“Yes.” My heart was pounding so hard I thought she might hear it.
“Do you know how old your Leo Fortier is?”
“Uh … thirty, forty.”
“I came up with two; one has a date of birth 2/9/62, so he’d be about thirty-two. The other was born 4/21/16, so he’d be, what … seventy-eight.”
“Thirty-two,” I said.
“That’s what I thought, so I ran him. He’s got a big jacket. Goes back to juvenile court. No felonies, but a string of misdemeanor problems and psychiatric referrals.”
“What kind of problems.”
“Caught for voyeurism at age thirteen.” I could hear her fingers clicking on the keyboard “Vandalism. Truancy. There was an incident when he was fifteen. Kidnapped a girl and kept her for eighteen hours. No charges. You want it all?”
“What about recent things?”
Click. Clickety. Click. I could picture her leaning into the monitor, her pink lenses bouncing back the green glow.
“The most recent entry is 1988. Arrested for assault. Looks like a relative, victim has the same name. No jail time. Did six months in Pinel.”
“When did he get out?”
“The exact date?”
“Do you have it?”
“Looks like November 12, 1988.”
Constance Pitre died in December of 1988. The room was hot. My body was slick with sweat.
“Does the file list the name of his attending psychiatrist at Pinel?”
“There’s reference to a Dr. M. C. LaPerrière. Doesn’t say who he is.”
“Is his number there?”
She gave it to me.
“Where is Fortier now?”
“The file ends in 1988. You want that address?”
“Yes.”
I was on the verge of tears as I punched in a number and listened to a phone ring on the far northern end of the island of Montreal. Composer, they say in French. Composer le numéro. Compose yourself, Brennan. I tried to think what to say.
“L’institute Philippe Pinel. Puis-je vous aider?” A female voice.
“Dr. LaPerrière, s’il vous plaît.” Please let him still work there.
“Un instant, s’il vous plaît.”
Yes! He was still on staff. I was put on hold, then led through the same ritual by a second female voice.
“Qui est à l’appareil?”
“Dr. Brennan.”
The sound of more empty air. Then.
“Dr. LaPerrière.” A female voice, this one sounding tired and impatient.
“I’m Dr. Temperance Brennan,” I said, fighting to keep the tremor from my voice, “forensic anthropologist at the Laboratoire de Médecine Légale, and I’m involved in the investigation of a series of murders which have taken place over the past several years in the Montreal area. We have reason to believe one of your former patients may be involved.”
“Yes.” Wary.
I explained about the task force, and asked what she could tell me about Leo Fortier.
“Dr. … Brennan, is it? Dr. Brennan, you know I can’t discuss a patient file on the basis of a phone call. Without court authorization, that would be a breach of confidentiality.”
Stay cool. You knew that would be the response.
“Of course. And that authorization will be forthcoming, but we are in an urgent situation, Doctor, and we cannot delay in speaking with you. And at this point that authorization really isn’t necessary. Women are dying, Dr. LaPerrière. They’re being brutally murdered and disfigured. The individual doing this is capable of extreme violence. He mutilates his victims. We think he’s someone with tremendous rage against women, and someone with enough intelligence to plan and carry out these killings. And we think he’ll strike again soon.” I swallowed, my mouth dry from fear. “Leo Fortier is a suspect, and we need to know whether, in your opinion, there is anything in Fortier’s history to suggest he could fit this profile? The paperwork for production of his records will catch up, but if you have a recollection of this patient, information you provide now may h
elp us stop the killer before he strikes again.”
I had wrapped another quilt around myself, this one a blanket of icy calm. I could not let her hear the fear in my voice.
“I simply cannot …”
My blanket was slipping.
“I have a child, Dr. LaPerrière? Do you?”
“What?” Affront vied with the weariness.
“Chantale Trottier was sixteen years old. He beat her to death, then cut her up and left her in a dump.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Though I’d never met Marie Claude LaPerrière, her voice painted a vivid scene, a triptych done in metal gray, institutional green, and dirty brick.
I could picture her: middle-aged, disillusionment etched deeply in her face. She worked for a system in which she’d long ago lost faith, a system unable to understand, much less curb, the cruelty of a society gone mad on its fringes. The gang bang victims. The teenagers with vacant eyes and bleeding wrists. The babies, scalded and scarred by cigarette burns. The fetuses floating in bloody toilet bowls. The old, starved and tethered in their own excrement. The women with their battered faces and pleading eyes. Once, she’d believed she could make a difference. Experience had convinced her otherwise.
But she’d taken an oath. To what? For whom? The dilemma was now as familiar to her as her idealism had once been. I heard her take a deep breath.
“Leo Fortier was committed for a six-month period in 1988. During that time I was his attending psychiatrist.”
“Do you remember him?”
“Yes.”
I waited, heart pounding. I heard her click a lighter open and shut, then breathe deeply.
“Leo Fortier came to Pinel because he beat his grandmother with a lamp.” She spoke in short sentences, treading carefully. “The old woman needed over a hundred stitches. She refused to press charges against her grandson. When Fortier’s period of involuntary commitment ended, I recommended continued treatment. He refused.”
She paused to select just the right words.
“Leo Fortier watched his mother die while his grandmother stood by. Grandma then raised him, engendering in him an extremely negative self-image that resulted in an inability to form appropriate social relationships.