Death Du Jour

by Kathy Reichs

  Kuujjuaq looked as if it had been flown in and assembled the night before.

  “What’s that?” I asked, indicating a prefab building with a plastic outer layer.

  “The aqua center.” Pelletiér pointed to a red hexagonal sign with unfamiliar characters above, Arrêt below in bold white letters. “All the signs are in French and Inuktitut.” His upriver accent was so heavy, to my ear he might have been speaking the latter. I’d known him for years and still had trouble understanding his French.

  Pelletiér pointed at another prefab building. “That’s the courthouse.”

  It looked like the pool, sans plastic. Behind the town, the tundra stretched gray and bleak, a Serengeti of rocks and moss. A bleached caribou skeleton lay by the roadside.

  “Is that common?” asked Emily, studying the caribou.

  “Only when they’re dead.”

  “There are eight autopsies today,” said LaManche, handing out the roster. He went over them all. A nineteen-year-old male had been hit by a train, his torso bisected. It happened on a barricaded trestle frequented by teens.

  A snowmobile had gone through the ice on Lac Megantic. Two bodies recovered. Alcohol intoxication suspected.

  An infant had been found dead and putrefied in its bed. Mama, who was downstairs watching a game show when authorities arrived, said ten days earlier God told her to stop feeding the baby.

  An unidentified white male was found behind a Dumpster on the McGill campus. Three bodies were recovered from a house fire in St-Jovite.

  Pelletiér was assigned the infant. He indicated that he might request an anthropology consult. While the baby’s identity was not in question, cause and time of death would be tough.

  Santangelo got the bodies from Lac Megantic, Morin the train and Dumpster cases. The victims from the bedroom in St-Jovite were intact enough for normal autopsy. LaManche would perform them. I would do the bones from the basement.

  After the meeting, I went to my office and opened a dossier by transferring the information from the morning etiquette sheet onto an anthropology case form. Name: Inconnu. Unknown. Date of birth: blank. Laboratoire de Médecine Légale number: 31013. Morgue number: 375. Police incident number: 89041. Pathologist: Pierre LaManche. Coroner: Jean-Claude Hubert. Investigators: Andrew Ryan and Jean Bertrand, Escouade de Crimes Contre la Personne, Sûreté du Québec.

  I added the date and slipped the form into a file folder. Each of us uses a different color. Pink is Marc Bergeron, the odontologist. Green is Martin Levesque, the radiologist. LaManche uses red. A bright yellow jacket means anthropology.

  I keyed in and rode the elevator to the basement. There I asked an autopsy technician to place LML 31013 in room three, then went to change into surgical scrubs.

  The four autopsy rooms of the Laboratoire de Médecine Légale are adjacent to the morgue. The LML controls the former, the Bureau du Coroner the latter. Autopsy room two is large and contains three tables. The others have one each. Number four is equipped with special ventilation. I often work there since many of my cases are less than fresh. Today I left room four to Pelletiér and the baby. Charred bodies do not have a particularly offensive odor.

  When I got to room three, a black body bag and four plastic containers lay on a gurney. I peeled the lid from a tub, removed the cotton padding, and checked the skull pieces. They had weathered the trip without damage.

  I filled out a case identification card, unzipped the body bag, and pulled back the sheet that wrapped the bones and debris. I took several Polaroids, then sent everything for X-rays. If there were teeth or metal objects, I wanted to pinpoint them before disturbing the fill.

  As I waited I thought of Élisabeth Nicolet. Her coffin was locked in a cooler ten feet from me. I was anxious to see what was in it. One of my messages this morning had been from Sister Julienne. The nuns were impatient, too.

  After thirty minutes Lisa wheeled the bones back from radiography and handed me an envelope of films. I popped several onto a view box, starting with the foot end of the body bag.

  “They’re O.K.?” asked Lisa. “I wasn’t sure what setting to use with all that rubble in there, so I did several exposures of each.”

  “They’re good.”

  We were looking at an amorphous mass surrounded by two tiny white railroad tracks: the bag’s contents and metal zipper. The fill was speckled with construction debris, and here and there, a particle of bone appeared pale and honeycombed against the neutral background.

  “What’s that?” Lisa pointed to a white object.

  “Looks like a nail.”

  I replaced the first films with three more. Soil, pebbles, scraps of wood, nails. We could see the leg and hip bones with attached charred flesh. The pelvis looked intact.

  “Looks like metallic fragments in the right femur,” I said, indicating several white spots in the thigh bone. “Let’s be careful when we handle that. We’ll get another shot later.”

  The next films showed the ribs to be as fragmented as I remembered. The arm bones were better preserved, though fractured and badly jumbled. Several vertebrae looked salvageable. Another metal object was visible to the left of the thorax. It didn’t look like a nail.

  “Let’s watch for that, too.”

  Lisa nodded.

  Next we examined the X-rays of the plastic tubs. They showed nothing unusual. The mandible had held together well, the slender tooth roots still solidly encased in bone. Even the crowns were intact. I could see bright blobs in two of the molars. Bergeron would be pleased. If there were dental records, the fillings would be useful in establishing positive ID.

  Then I noticed the frontal bone. It was speckled with tiny white dots, as though someone had seasoned it with salt.

  “I’m going to want another shot of that, too,” I said softly, staring at the radiopaque particles near the left orbit.

  Lisa gave me an odd look.

  “O.K. Let’s get him out,” I said.

  “Or her.”

  “Or her.”

  Lisa spread a sheet over the autopsy table and set a screen across the sink. I took a paper apron from one of the stainless steel counter drawers, slipped it over my head, and tied it around my waist. Then I placed a mask over my mouth, pulled on surgical gloves, and unzipped the body bag.

  Starting at the feet and working north, I removed the largest and most easily identifiable objects and pieces of bone. Then I went back and sifted the fill to locate any small items or bone fragments I might have missed. Lisa screened each handful under gently running water. She washed and placed artifacts on the counter, while I arranged skeletal elements in anatomical order on the sheet.

  At noon Lisa broke for lunch. I worked through, and by two-thirty the painstaking process was done. A collection of nails, metal caps, and one exploded cartridge lay on the counter, along with a small plastic vial containing what I thought could be a scrap of fabric. A charred and disconnected skeleton lay on the table, the skull bones fanning out like petals on a daisy.

  It took over an hour to do an inventory, identifying each bone and determining if it came from the left or right side. Then I turned my attention to the questions Ryan would ask. Age. Sex. Race. Who is it?

  I picked up the mass that contained the pelvis and thigh bones. The fire had cooked the soft tissue, turning it black and leathery hard. A mixed blessing. The bones had been protected, but it might be a bitch getting them out.

  I rotated the pelvis. The flesh on the left had burned away, causing the femur to split. I could see a perfect cross section of the ball-and-socket hip joint. I measured the diameter of the femoral head. It was tiny, falling on the low end of the female range.

  I studied the internal structure of the head, just below the articular surface. The spicules of bone showed the typical honeycombed pattern of an adult, with no thick line to indicate a recently fused growth cap. That was consistent with the completed molar roots I’d noticed earlier in the jaw. This victim was not a kid.

  I looked
at the outer edges of the cup that formed the hip socket, and at the lower border of the femoral head. On both the bone seemed to drip downward, like wax overflowing a candle. Arthritis. The individual was not young.

  I already suspected the victim was a woman. What remained of the long bones were small in diameter, with smooth-muscle attachments. I shifted my attention to the cranial fragments.

  Small mastoids and brow ridges. Sharp orbital borders. The bone was smooth at the back of the skull and in all the places male bone would be rough and bumpy.

  I examined the frontal bone. The upper ends of the two nasal bones were still in place. They met at a high angle along the midline, like a church steeple. I found two pieces of maxilla. The lower border of the nasal opening ended in a sharp ledge with a spike of bone projecting upward at its center. The nose had been narrow and prominent, the face straight when viewed from the side. I located a fragment of temporal bone and shone a flashlight into the ear opening. I could see a tiny round opening, the oval window to the inner ear. All good Caucasoid traits.

  Female. White. Adult. Old.

  I returned to the pelvis, hoping it would allow me to confirm the sex and be more precise about the age. I was particularly interested in the region where the two halves meet in front.

  Gently, I teased away charred tissue, revealing the joint between the pubic bones, the pubic symphysis. The pubes themselves were wide, the angle below them broad. Each had a raised ridge angling across its corner. The lower branch of each pubic bone was gracile and gently recurved. Typical female features. I noted them on my case form and took more Polaroid close-ups.

  The intense heat had shrunk the connective cartilage and pulled the pubic bones apart along the midline. I twisted and turned the charred mass, trying to peer into the gap. It looked like the symphyseal surfaces were intact, but I couldn’t make out any detail.

  “Let’s take the pubes out,” I said to Lisa.

  I smelled burned flesh as the saw buzzed through the wings connecting the pubic bone to the rest of the pelvis. It took just seconds.

  The symphyseal joint was singed, but easily readable. There were no ridges or furrows on either surface. In fact, both faces were porous, their outer edges irregularly lipped. Erratic threads of bone projected from the front of each pubic element, ossifications into the surrounding soft tissue. The lady had lived a long time.

  I turned the pubes over. A deep trench scarred the belly side of each. And she had given birth.

  I reached again for the frontal bone. For a moment I stood there, the fluorescent light showing in harsh detail what I’d first suspected in the basement, and what the metallic scatter on the X-ray had confirmed.

  I’d held my feelings at bay, but now I allowed myself to grieve for the ravaged human being on my table. And to puzzle over what had happened to her.

  The woman had been at least seventy, undoubtedly a mother, probably a grandmother.

  Why had someone shot her in the head and left her to burn in a house in the Laurentians?

  BY NOON ON TUESDAY I WAS FINISHING MY REPORT. I’d worked past nine the night before, knowing Ryan would want answers. Surprisingly, I’d yet to see him.

  I read what I’d written, checking for errors. Sometimes I think gender agreements and accent marks are Francophone curses specifically designed for my torment. I try my best, but I always blow a few.

  In addition to a biological profile of the unknown, the report included an analysis of trauma. On dissection I found the radiopaque fragments in the femur were the result of postmortem impact. The small bits of metal were probably blasted into the bone by the explosion of a propane tank. Most of the other damage was also due to the fire.

  Some was not. I read my summary.

  Wound A is a circular defect, of which only the superior half is preserved. It is localized to the midfrontal region, lying approximately 2 centimeters above glabella and 1.2 centimeters to the left of midline. The defect measures 1.4 centimeters in diameter and presents characteristic beveling of the inner table. Charring is present along the margins of the defect. Wound A is consistent with a gunshot entrance wound.

  Wound B is a circular defect with characteristic beveling of the outer table. It measures 1.6 centimeters in diameter endocranially, and 4.8 centimeters in diameter ectocranially. The defect is localized to the occipital bone, 2.6 centimeters superior to opisthion and 0.9 centimeters to the left of the midsagittal line. There is focal charring of the left, right, and inferior margins of the defect. Wound B is consistent with a gunshot exit wound.

  While fire damage made a complete reconstruction impossible, I was able to piece together enough of the vault to interpret the fractures lacing between the exit and entrance holes.

  The pattern was classic. The old woman had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. The bullet entered the middle of her forehead, traversed her brain, and exited at the back. It explained why the skull had not shattered in the flames. A vent for intracranial pressure had been created before heat became a problem.

  I walked the report to the secretarial pool and returned to find Ryan sitting across from my desk, gazing out the window behind my chair. His legs stretched the length of my office.

  “Nice view.” He spoke in English.

  Five floors down the Jacques Cartier Bridge arched across the St. Lawrence River. I could see minuscule cars crawling across its back. It was a nice view.

  “It distracts me from thinking about how small this office is.” I slipped past him, around the desk, and into my chair.

  “A distracted mind can be dangerous.”

  “My bruised shins bring me back to reality.” I swiveled sideways and propped my legs on the ledge below the window, ankles crossed. “It’s an old woman, Ryan. Shot in the head.”

  “How old?”

  “I’d say she was at least seventy. Maybe even seventy-five. Her pubic symphyses have a lot of miles on them, but folks are variable up in that range. She has advanced arthritis and she’s osteoporotic.”

  He dipped his chin and raised his brows. “French or English, Brennan. Not doctor talk.” His eyes were the shade of blue on the Windows 95 screen.

  “Os-te-o-po-ro-sis.” I spoke each syllable slowly. “I can tell from the X-rays that her cortical bone is thin. I can’t see any fractures, but I only had parts of the long bones. The hip is a common site for breaks in older women because a lot of weight is transferred there. Hers were O.K.”

  “Caucasian?”

  I nodded.

  “Anything else.”

  “She probably had several kids.” The laser blues were fixed on my face. “She has a trench the size of the Orinoco on the back of each pubic bone.”

  “Great.”

  “Another thing. I think she was already in the basement when the fire started.”

  “How’s that?”

  “There was absolutely no floor debris below the body. And I found a few tiny scraps of fabric embedded between her and the clay. She must have been lying directly on the floor.”

  He thought for a moment.

  “So you’re telling me someone shot Granny, dragged her down to the basement, and left her to fry.”

  “No. I’m saying Granny took a bullet in the head. I don’t have a clue who fired it. Maybe she did. That’s your job, Ryan.”

  “Did you find a gun near her?”

  “No.”

  Just then Bertrand appeared in the doorway. While Ryan looked neat and pressed, his partner’s creases were sharp enough to cut precious gems. He wore a mauve shirt keyed to the tones of his floral tie, a lavender and gray tweed jacket, and wool trousers a precise half note down from shade four in the tweed.

  “What have you got?” Ryan asked his partner.

  “Nothing we didn’t already know. It’s like these people were beamed down from space. No one really knows who the hell was living in there. We’re still trying to track down the guy in Europe that owns the house. The neighbors across the road saw the old lady from time to time,
but she never spoke to them. They say the couple with the kids had only been there a few months. They rarely saw them, never learned their names. A woman up the road thought they were part of some sort of fundamentalist group.”

  “Brennan says our Doe is a Jane. As in Baby Jane. A septuagenarian.”

  Bertrand looked at him.

  “In her seventies.”

  “An old lady?”

  “With a bullet in her brain.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “Someone shot her and torched the place?”

  “Or Granny pulled the trigger after having lit the barbecue. But, then, where’s the weapon?”

  When they’d gone I checked my consult requests. A jar of ashes had arrived in Quebec City, the cremains of an elderly man who died in Jamaica. The family was accusing the crematory of fraud, and had brought the ashes to the coroner’s office. He wanted to know what I thought.

  A skull was found in a ravine outside the Côte des Neiges Cemetery. It was dry and bleached, and had probably come from an old grave. The coroner needed confirmation.

  Pelletiér wanted me to look at the baby for evidence of starvation. That would require microscopy. Thin sections of bone would have to be ground down, stained, and placed on slides so I could examine the cells under magnification. While high turnover of bone is typical of infants, I’d look for signs of unusual porosity and abnormal remodeling in the microanatomy.

  Samples had been sent to the histology lab. I’d also study the X-rays and the skeleton, but that was still soaking to remove the putrefied flesh. A baby’s bones are too fragile to risk boiling.

  So. Nothing urgent. I could open Élisabeth Nicolet’s coffin.

  After a refrigerated sandwich and a yogurt in the cafeteria, I rode down to the morgue, asked to have the remains brought to room three, then went to change.

  The coffin was smaller than I remembered, measuring less than three feet in length. The left side had rotted, allowing the top to collapse inward. I brushed off loose soil and took photos.