by Kathy Reichs
“Bébé de race blanche, bien développé et bien nourri. . . .”
Well developed and well nourished but dead, I thought, the outrage beginning to build.
“Le corps est bien préservé, avec une légère macération épidermique. . . .”
I stared at the small cadaver. Yes, it was well preserved, with only slight skin slippage on the hands.
“Guess he won’t have to check for defense wounds.”
Bertrand had come up beside me. I didn’t respond. I was not in the mood for morgue humor.
“There’s another one in the cooler,” he continued.
“That’s what we’d been told,” I said crisply.
“Yeah, but, Christ. They’re babies.”
I met his eyes and felt a stab of guilt. Bertrand was not trying to be funny. He looked as if his own child had died.
“Babies. Someone wasted them and stashed them in a basement. That’s about as cold as a drive-by. Worse. The bastard probably knew these kids.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Makes sense. Two kids, two adults who are probably the parents. Someone wiped out the whole family.”
“And burned the house as a cover?”
“Possible.”
“Could be a stranger.”
“Could be, but I doubt it. Wait. You’ll see.” He refocused on the autopsy proceeding, hands clutched tightly behind his back.
LaManche stopped dictating and spoke to the autopsy technician. Lisa took a tape from the counter and stretched it the length of the baby’s body.
“Cinquante-huit centimètres.” Fifty-eight centimeters.
Ryan observed from across the room, arms crossed, right thumb grating the tweed on his left biceps. Now and then I saw his jaw tense and his Adam’s apple rise and fall.
Lisa wrapped the tape around the baby’s head, chest, and abdomen, calling out after each measurement. Then she lifted the body and laid it in a hanging scale. Normally the device is used to weigh individual organs. The basket swung slightly and she placed a hand to steady it. The image was heartrending. A lifeless child in a stainless steel cradle.
“Six kilos.”
The baby had died weighing only six kilos. Thirteen pounds.
LaManche recorded the weight, and Lisa removed the tiny corpse and placed it on the autopsy table. When she stepped back my breath froze in my throat. I looked at Bertrand, but his eyes were now fixed on his shoes.
The body had been a little boy. He lay on his back, legs and feet splayed sharply at the joints. His eyes were wide and button round, the irises clouded to a smoky gray. His head had rolled to the side, and one fat cheek rested against his left collarbone.
Directly below the cheek I saw a hole in the chest approximately the size of my fist. The wound had jagged edges, and a deep purple collar circled its perimeter. A star burst of slits, each measuring one to two centimeters in length, surrounded the cavity. Some were deep, others superficial. In places one slit crossed another, forming L- or V-shaped patterns.
My hand flew to my own chest and I felt my stomach tighten. I turned to Bertrand, unable to form a question.
“Do you believe that?” he said dismally. “The bastard carved his heart out.”
“It’s gone?”
He nodded.
I swallowed. “The other child?”
He nodded again. “Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you learn that you haven’t.”
“Christ.” I felt cold all over. I hoped fervently the children were unconscious when the mutilation took place.
I looked across at Ryan. He was studying the scene on the table, his face without expression.
“What about the adults?”
Bertrand shook his head. “Looks like they were stabbed repeatedly, throats slashed, but nobody harvested their organs.”
LaManche’s voice droned on, describing the external appearance of the wounds. I didn’t have to listen. I knew what the presence of hematoma meant. Tissue will bruise only if blood is circulating. The baby had been alive when the cut was made. Babies.
I closed my eyes, fought the urge to run from the room. Get a grip, Brennan. Do your job.
I crossed to the middle table to examine the clothing. Everything was so tiny, so familiar. I looked at the sleeper with its attached footies and soft, fleecy collar and cuffs. Katy had worn a dozen of them. I remembered opening and closing the snaps to change her diaper, her fat little legs kicking like mad. What were these things called? They had a specific name. I tried to recall but my mind refused to focus. Perhaps it was protecting me, urging me to stop personalizing and get back to business before I began to weep or simply went numb.
Most of the bleeding had been while the baby lay on his left side. The right sleeve and shoulder of the sleeper were spattered, but blood had soaked the left side, darkening the flannel to shades of dull red and brown. The undershirt and sweater were similarly stained.
“Three layers,” I said to no one in particular. “And socks.”
Bertrand crossed to the table.
“Someone took care that the child would be warm.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Bertrand agreed.
Ryan joined us as we stared at the clothing. Each garment displayed a jagged hole surrounded by a star burst of small tears, replicating the injuries on the baby’s chest. Ryan spoke first.
“The little guy was dressed.”
“Yeah,” said Bertrand. “Guess clothing didn’t interfere with his vicious little ritual.”
I said nothing.
“Temperance,” said LaManche, “please get a magnifying glass and come here. I’ve found something.”
We clustered around the pathologist, and he pointed to a small discoloration to the left and below the hole in the infant’s chest. When I handed him a glass, he bent close, studied the bruise, then returned the lens to me.
When I took my turn I was stunned. The spot did not show the disorganized mottling characteristic of a normal bruise. Under magnification I could see a distinct pattern in the baby’s flesh, a cruciate central feature with a loop at one end like an Egyptian ankh or Maltese cross. The figure was outlined by a crenulated rectangular border. I handed the glass to Ryan and looked a question at LaManche.
“Temperance, this is clearly a patterned injury of some kind. The tissue must be preserved. Dr. Bergeron is not here today, so I would appreciate your assistance.”
Marc Bergeron, odontologist to the LML, had developed a technique for lifting and fixing injuries in soft tissue. Initially he’d devised it to remove bite marks from the bodies of victims of violent sexual assault. The method had also proved useful for excising and preserving tattoos and patterned injuries on skin. I’d seen Marc do it in hundreds of cases, had assisted him in several.
I got Bergeron’s kit from a cabinet in the first autopsy room, returned to room two, and spread the equipment on a stainless steel cart. By the time I’d gloved, the photographer had finished and LaManche was ready. He nodded that I should go ahead. Ryan and Bertrand watched.
I measured five scoops of pink powder from a plastic bottle and placed it in a glass vial, then added 20 cc’s of a clear liquid monomer. I stirred and, within a minute, the mixture thickened until it resembled pink modeling clay. I formed the dough into a ring, and placed it on the tiny chest, completely encircling the bruise. The acrylic felt hot as I patted it into place.
To accelerate the hardening process, I placed a wet cloth over the ring, then waited. In less than ten minutes the acrylic had cooled. I reached for a tube and began squeezing a clear liquid around the edges of the ring.
“What’s that?” asked Ryan.
“Cyanoacrylate.”
“Smells like Krazy Glue.”
“It is.”
When I thought the glue was dry, I tested by tugging gently on the ring. A few more dabs, more waiting, and the ring held fast. I marked it with the date, and case and morgue numbers, and indicated top, bottom, right, and left relative to the baby�
��s chest.
“It’s ready,” I said, and stepped back.
LaManche used a scalpel to dissect free the skin outside the acrylic doughnut, cutting deep enough to include the underlying fatty tissue. When the ring finally came free, it held the bruised skin tightly in place, like a miniature painting stretched on a circular pink frame. LaManche slid the specimen into the jar of clear liquid that I held ready.
“What’s that?” Ryan again.
“A solution of ten percent buffered formalin. In ten to twelve hours the tissue will be fixed. The ring will ensure that there’s no distortion, so later, if we get a weapon, we’ll be able to compare it to the wound to see if the patterns match. And, of course, we’ll have the photos.”
“Why not just use the photos?”
“With this we can do transillumination if we have to.”
“Transillumination?”
I wasn’t really in the mood for a science seminar, so I kept it simple. “You can shine a light up through the tissue and see what’s going on under the skin. It often brings out details not visible on the surface.”
“What do you think made it?” Bertrand.
“I don’t know,” I said, sealing the jar and handing it to Lisa.
As I was turning away I felt a tremendous sadness, and couldn’t resist lifting the tiny hand. It felt soft and cold in my fingers. I rotated the blocks circling the wrist. M-A-T-H-I-A-S.
I’m so sorry, Mathias.
I looked up to see LaManche gazing at me. His eyes seemed to mirror the despair I was feeling. I stepped back, and he began the internal exam. He would excise and send upstairs the ends of all bones cut by the killer, but I wasn’t optimistic. Though I’d never looked for tool marks on a victim this young, I suspected that an infant’s ribs would be too tiny to retain much detail.
I stripped off my gloves and turned to Ryan as Lisa made a Y-shaped incision on the infant’s chest.
“Are the scene photos here?”
“Just the backups.”
He handed me a large brown envelope containing a set of Polaroids. I took them to the corner desk.
The first showed the largest of the outbuildings at the chalet in St-Jovite. The style was that of the main house: Alpine Tacky. The next photo was taken inside, shot from the top of a staircase looking downward. The passage was dark and narrow, with walls on both sides, wooden handrails on the walls, and junk heaped at both ends of each step.
There were several pictures of a basement taken from different angles. The room was dim, the only light coming from small rectangular windows close to the ceiling. Linoleum floor. Knotty pine walls. Washtubs. A hot water heater. More junk.
Several photos zoomed in on the water heater, then on the space between it and the wall. The niche was filled with what looked like old carpets and plastic bags. The next pictures showed these objects lined up on the linoleum, first unopened, then laid out to expose their contents.
The adults had been wrapped in large pieces of clear plastic, then rolled in rugs and stacked behind the water heater. Their bodies showed abdominal bloating and skin slippage, but were well preserved.
Ryan came and stood over me.
“The water heater must have been off,” I said, handing him the picture. “If it was running the heat would have caused more decomposition.”
“We don’t think they were using that building.”
“What was it?”
He shrugged.
I went back to the Polaroids.
The man and woman were both fully dressed, though barefoot. Their throats had been cut and blood saturated their clothing and stained the plastic shrouds. The man lay with one hand thrown back, and I could see deep slashes across his palm. Defense wounds. He had tried to save himself. Or his family.
Oh, God. I closed my eyes for a moment.
With the infants the packaging had been simpler. They were bundled in plastic, placed in garbage bags, then stuffed in above the adults.
I looked at the little hands, the dimpled knuckles. Bertrand was right. There would be no defense wounds on the babies. Grief and anger merged in my mind.
“I want this son of a bitch.” I looked up into Ryan’s eyes.
“Yeah.”
“I want you to get him, Ryan. I mean it. I want this one. Before we see another baby butchered. What good are we to anyone if we can’t stop this?”
The electric blues stared straight back. “We’ll get him, Brennan. No doubt about that.”
* * *
I spent the rest of the day riding the elevator between my office and the autopsies. It would take at least two days to complete them since LaManche was doing all four victims. This is standard procedure in multiple homicides. Using one pathologist provides coherence in a case, and ensures consistency in testimony if it goes to trial.
When I looked in at one o’clock Mathias had been rolled back to the morgue cooler and the autopsy of the second infant was under way. The scene we’d played out in the morning was taking place again. Same actors. Same setting. Same victim. Except this one wore a bracelet that spelled out M-A-L-A-C-H-Y.
By four-thirty Malachy’s belly had been closed, his tiny skullcap replaced, his face repositioned. Save for the Y-incisions and the mutilation to their chests, the babies were ready for burial. As yet we had no idea where that would be. Or by whom.
Ryan and Bertrand had also spent the day coming and going. Prints had been taken from both boys’ feet, but the smudges on hospital birth records are notoriously unreadable, and Ryan was not optimistic about a match.
The bones in the hand and wrist represent over 25 percent of those in the skeleton. An adult has twenty-seven in each hand, an infant far fewer, depending on its age. I’d examined X-rays to see which bones were present and how well they were formed. According to my estimate, Mathias and Malachy were about four months old when they were killed.
This information was released to the media, but, aside from the usual loonies, there was little response. Our best hope lay with the adult bodies in the cooler. We were sure that when the identities of the adults were established, those of the children would follow. For the present the infants remained Baby Malachy and Baby Mathias.
ON FRIDAY I SAW NEITHER RYAN NOR BERTRAND. LaManche spent all day downstairs with the adult corpses from St-Jovite. I had the babies’ ribs soaking in glass vials in the histology lab. Any grooves or striations that might be present would be so tiny I didn’t want them damaged by boiling or scraping, and I couldn’t risk introducing nicks with a scalpel or scissors, so all I could do at that point was periodically change the water and tease off flesh.
I was glad for the temporary lull in the level of activity, and was using the time to finalize my report on Élisabeth Nicolet, which I’d promised that day. Since I had to return to Charlotte on Monday, I planned to examine the ribs over the weekend. If nothing else came up, I thought I could get everything that was pressing done before Monday. I had not counted on the call I took at ten-thirty.
“I am very, very sorry to call you like this, Dr. Brennan.” English, spoken slowly, each word chosen with care.
“Sister Julienne, it’s nice to hear from you.”
“Please. I apologize for the calls.”
“The calls?” I riffled through the pink slips on my desk. I knew she’d phoned back Wednesday, but thought it was a follow-up on our earlier conversation. There were two other slips with her name and number.
“I’m the one who should apologize. I was tied up all day yesterday, and didn’t check my messages. I’m sorry.”
There was no response.
“I’m writing the report now.”
“No, no, it’s not that. I mean, yes, of course, that is terribly important. And we are all anxious . . .”
She hesitated, and I could picture her dark brows deepening the perpetual frown she wore. Sister Julienne always looked worried.
“I feel very awkward, but I don’t know where to turn. I’ve prayed, of course, and I know God
is listening, but I feel I should be doing something. I devote myself to my work, to keeping God’s archives, but, well, I have an earthly family too.” She was forming her words precisely, shaping them like a baker molding dough.
There was another long pause. I waited her out.
“He does help those who help themselves.”
“Yes.”
“It’s about my niece, Anna. Anna Goyette. She’s the one I spoke of on Wednesday.”
“Your niece?” I couldn’t imagine where this was going.
“She’s my sister’s child.”
“I see.”
“She’s . . . We’re not sure where she is.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s normally a very thoughtful child, very reliable, never stays out without calling.”
“Uh-huh.” I was beginning to get the drift.
Finally, she blurted it out. “Anna didn’t come home last night and my sister is frantic. I’ve told her to pray, of course, but, well . . .” Her voice trailed off.
I wasn’t sure what to say. This was not where I’d expected the conversation to go.
“Your niece is missing?”
“Yes.”
“If you’re worried, perhaps you should contact the police.”
“My sister called twice. They told her that with someone Anna’s age their policy is to wait forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”
“How old is your niece?”
“Anna is nineteen.”
“She’s the one studying at McGill?”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded tense enough to saw metal.
“Sister, there’s really noth . . .”
I heard her choke back a sob. “I know, I know, and I apologize for bothering you, Dr. Brennan.” Her words came out between sharply inhaled breaths, like hiccups. “I know you are busy, I know that, but my sister is hysterical and I just don’t know what to tell her. She lost her husband two years ago and now she feels that Anna is all she has. Virginie is calling me every half-hour, insisting I help her find her daughter. I know this is not your job, and I would never call you unless I was desperate. I’ve prayed, but, oh . . .”
I was startled to hear her burst into tears. They engulfed her speech, obliterating her words. I waited, my mind in a muddle. What should I say?