Sweet Jesus.
I climbed the ladder and poked my head into the kitchen. Ryan stood by the counter talking with the photographer.
“You’d better come down,” I said.
They both raised eyebrows and pointed to their chests.
“Both of you.”
Ryan set down the Styrofoam cup he was holding.
“What?”
“This one may not have lived to see the fire.”
4
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON BEFORE THE LAST OF THE BONE WAS packaged and ready for transport. Ryan watched as I carefully extracted and wrapped the skull fragments and placed them in plastic containers. I would analyze the remains at the lab. The rest of the investigation would be his baby.
Dusk was easing in when I emerged from the basement. To say I was cold would be like saying Lady Godiva was underdressed. For the second day in a row I finished the afternoon with no feeling in any digit. I hoped amputation would not be necessary.
LaManche was gone, so I rode to Montreal with Ryan and his partner, Jean Bertrand. I sat in back, shivering and asking for more heat. They sat up front, sweating, now and then removing an article of outerwear.
Their conversation wafted in and out of my consciousness. I was fully drained and just wanted to take a hot bath and crawl into my flannel nightgown. For a month. My mind drifted. I thought about bears. There was an idea. Curl up and sleep until spring.
Images floated in my head. The victim in the basement. A sock dangling over singed and stiffened toes. A nameplate on a tiny casket. A happy-face sticker.
“Brennan.”
“What?”
“Good morning, starshine. Earth says ‘Hello.’”
“What?”
“You’re home.”
I’d been sound asleep.
“Thanks. Talk to you on Monday.”
I stumbled from the car and up the stairs of my building. A light snow was topping the neighborhood like frosting on a sticky bun. Where did so much snow come from?
The grocery situation had not improved, so I ate soda crackers spread with peanut butter and washed them down with clam chowder. I found an old box of Turtles in the pantry, dark chocolate, my favorite. They were stale and hard, but I was not in a position to be choosy.
The bath was all I’d hoped it would be. Afterward, I decided to light a fire. I was finally warm, but felt very tired and very alone. The chocolate had been some comfort, but I needed more.
I missed my daughter. Katy’s school year was divided into quarters, my university was on a semester system, so our spring breaks did not coincide. Even Birdie had stayed south this trip. He hated air travel and voiced that opinion loudly through each flight. Since I’d be in Quebec less than two weeks this time, I’d decided to spare both the cat and the airline.
As I held the match to the starter log I considered fire. Homo erectus first tamed it. For almost a million years we’d been using it to hunt, cook, keep warm, and light our way. That had been my last lecture before break. I thought of my students in North Carolina. While I’d been searching for Élisabeth Nicolet, they’d been taking their midterm exam. The little blue books would arrive here tomorrow by overnight delivery, while the students split for the beaches.
I turned off the lamp and watched the flames lick and twist among the logs. Shadows danced around the room. I could smell pine and hear moisture hiss and pop as it boiled to the surface. That’s why fire has such appeal. It involves so many senses.
I synapsed back to childhood Christmases and summer camps. Such a dicey blessing, fire. It could give solace, rekindle gentle memories. But it could also kill. I did not want to think about St-Jovite anymore tonight.
I watched snow gather on the windowsill. My students would be planning their first beach day by now. While I was fighting frostbite, they were preparing for sunburn. I didn’t want to think about that, either.
I considered Élisabeth Nicolet. She’d been a recluse. “Femme contemplative,” the plaque had said. But she hadn’t done any contemplating for over a century. What if we had the wrong casket? Something else I didn’t want to think about. At least for tonight, Élisabeth and I had little in common.
I checked the time. Nine-forty. Her sophomore year Katy was voted one of the “Beauties of Virginia.” Though she maintained a grade point average of 3.8 while working on dual degrees in English and psychology, she’d never been a slouch socially. Not a chance she’d be home on a Friday night. Ever the optimist, I brought the phone to the hearth and dialed Charlottesville.
Katy answered on the third ring.
Expecting her voice mail, I stuttered something unintelligible.
“Mom? Is that you?”
“Yes. Hello. What are you doing home?”
“I’ve got a zit on my nose the size of a hamster. I’m too ugly to go out. What are you doing home?”
“There is no way you are ugly. No comment on the zit.” I settled against a cushion and put my feet up on the hearth. “I’ve spent two days digging up dead people and I’m too tired to go out.”
“I won’t even ask.” I heard cellophane crinkle. “This zit is pretty gross.”
“It, too, will pass. How is Cyrano?” Katy had two rats, Templeton and Cyrano de Bergerat.
“He’s better. I got some medicine at the pet store and I’ve been giving it to him with an eyedropper. He’s pretty much stopped that sneezing thing.”
“Good. He’s always been my favorite.”
“I think Templeton knows that.”
“I’ll try to be more discreet. What else is new?”
“Not much. Went out with a guy named Aubrey. He was pretty cool. Sent me roses the next day. And I’m going on a picnic tomorrow with Lynwood. Lynwood Deacon. He’s first-year law.”
“Is that how you pick them?”
“What?”
“The names.”
She ignored that. “Aunt Harry called.”
“Oh?” My sister’s name always made me slightly apprehensive, like a bucket of nails balanced too close to an edge.
“She’s selling the balloon business or something. She was actually calling to find you. Sounded a little weirded out.”
“Weirded out?” On a normal day my sister sounded a little weirded out.
“I told her you were in Quebec. She’ll probably call tomorrow.”
“O.K.” Just what I needed.
“Oh! Dad bought a Mazda RX-7. It is so sweet! He won’t let me drive it, though.”
“Yes, I know.” My estranged husband was undergoing a mild midlife crisis.
There was a slight hesitation. “Actually, we were just going out to grab a pizza.”
“What about the zit?”
“I’m going to draw ears and a tail on it and claim it’s a tattoo.”
“Should work. If caught, use a false name.”
“Love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too. Talk to you later.”
I finished the rest of the Turtles and brushed my teeth. Twice. Then I fell into bed and slept eleven hours.
I spent the rest of the weekend unpacking, cleaning, shopping, and grading exams. My sister called late Sunday to say she’d sold her hot air balloon. I felt relieved. I’d spent three years inventing excuses to keep Katy on the ground, dreading the day she’d finally go up. That creative energy could now be turned elsewhere.
“Are you at home?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Is it warm?” I checked the drift on the windowsill. It was still growing.
“It’s always warm in Houston.”
Damn her.
“So why are you selling the business?”
Harry has always been a seeker, though her grail has never been in focus. For the past three years she’d been gung-ho buggers over ballooning. When not floating safaris over Texas, she and her crew packed an old pickup and zigzagged the country to balloon rallies.
“Striker and I are splitting.”
“Oh.”
She’d also been gung-ho buggers over Striker. They met at a rally in Albuquerque, married five days later. That had been two years ago.
For a long time no one spoke. I cracked first.
“What now?” I asked.
“I may go into counseling.”
That surprised me. My sister rarely did the obvious.
“It might help you get through this.”
“No. No. Striker’s got Kool-Aid for brains. I’m not crying over him. That just makes me puffy.” I heard her light a cigarette, draw deeply, exhale. “There’s this course I’ve heard about. You take it, then you can advise people on holistic health and stress relief and stuff. I’ve been reading about herbs and meditation and metaphysics and it’s pretty cool. I think I’ll be good at this.”
“Harry. That sounds a little flaky.” How many times had I said that?
“Duh. Of course I’ll check it out. I’m not flat-ass stupid.”
No. She was not stupid. But when Harry wants something, she wants it intensely. And there is no dissuading her.
I hung up feeling a little shaken. The thought of Harry advising people with problems was unnerving.
Around six I made myself a dinner of sautéed chicken breast, boiled red potatoes with butter and chives, and steamed asparagus. A glass of Chardonnay would have made it perfect. But not for me. That switch had been in the off position for seven years and it was staying there. I’m not flat-ass stupid either. At least not when I’m sober. The meal still beat the hell out of last night’s soda crackers.
As I ate, I thought about my baby sister. Harry and formal education have never been compatible. She married her high school sweetheart the day before graduation, three others after that. She’s raised Saint Bernards, managed a Pizza Hut, sold designer sunglasses, led tours in the Yucatán, done PR for the Houston Astros, started and lost a carpet-cleaning business, sold real estate, and, most recently, taken up riders in hot air balloons.
When I was three and Harry was one, I broke her leg by rolling over it with my tricycle. She never slowed down. Harry learned to walk while dragging a cast. Unbearably annoying and totally endearing, my sister offsets with pure energy what she lacks in training or focus. I find her thoroughly exhausting.
At nine-thirty I turned on the hockey game. It was the end of the second period and the Habs were losing four-zip to St. Louis. Don Cherry blustered about the ineptness of the Canadiens management, his face round and flushed above his high-collar shirt. He looked more like a tenor in a barbershop quartet than a sports commentator. I watched, bemused that millions listened to him every week. At ten-fifteen I turned off the TV and went to bed.
The next morning I got up early and drove to the lab. Monday is a busy day for most medical examiners. The random acts of cruelty, senseless bravado, lonely self-loathing, and wretched bad timing that result in violent death accelerate on weekends. The bodies arrive and are stored in the morgue for Monday autopsy.
This Monday was no exception. I got coffee and joined the morning meeting in LaManche’s office. Natalie Ayers was at a murder trial in Val-d’Or, but the other pathologists were present. Jean Pelletiér had just returned from testifying in Kuujjuaq, in far northern Quebec. He was showing snapshots to Emily Santangelo and Michael Morin. I leaned in.
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 fl
esh. 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.
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