by Kathy Reichs
I stopped. “Asked what?”
“How many rooms. If the backyard was yours.” Winston shrugged, thumbs hooking his jeans. “The usual.”
I felt a tickle of apprehension. “Did they leave contact information?”
Winston shook his head.
“Did they use my name specifically?”
Winston gave the question some thought. “Not sure. It’s been a zoo here today. They’re probably gawkers. We get a lot of those.”
“Release absolutely no information on my condo.”
Winston’s smile crumpled. His arms came up and crossed on his chest.
“I’m sorry. I know you’d never do that.”
Winston ran a finger and thumb along the corners of his mouth.
I smiled. “Thanks for telling me.”
“That sister of yours is a hoot.”
“Isn’t she.” I made the turn toward my hallway. “I better feed her or she’ll start gnawing the woodwork.”
Still wounded, Harry had declined participation in restaurant selection. I took her to one of my favorites. Milos is pricey, but this wasn’t the night for counting coins.
Conversation upon departure went something like this.
“Is the fish fresh?”
“Still swimming.”
Upon arrival.
“Where are we?”
“Saint-Laurent near Saint-Viateur.”
“Holy mackerel.”
We shared a Greek salad and an order of deep-fried zucchini. Harry had crab legs and I had snapper.
After much prompting, she agreed to discuss Bones to Ashes.
“When I called the Bathurst post office, I was directed to a Miss Schtumpheiss.” Harry pronounced the name with a hokey Colonel Klink accent. “Frau Schtumpheiss would neither confirm nor deny that Virginie LeBlanc had rented a postal box in her facility. I swear, Tempe, you’d think the woman was running a gulag.”
“Stalag. What did she say?”
“That the information was confidential. I think Frau Schtumpheiss just didn’t want to move her frauenhintern.”
I bit. “Frauenhintern?”
“Buttocks. Female.”
“How do you know that?”
“Conrad spoke German.”
Conrad was hubby number two. Or three.
“I could ask Hippo to give her a call,” I said. “He hails from that neck of the woods.”
“Might work.” Aloof, but not hostile. Harry’s mood was improving.
For the rest of the meal, I kept it light. When coffee arrived, I reached across the table and took my sister’s hand.
“Hippo gave me some very bad news today.”
Harry fixed me with two worried eyes.
I swallowed. “Obéline may be dead.”
The eyes clouded. “Ohmygod!” Whispered, “How? When?”
I relayed what I knew. Braced.
Harry picked up a spoon and stirred her coffee. Tapped the rim. Set the spoon on the table. Leaned back. Bit her lip thoughtfully.
No tears. No outburst.
“Are you OK?”
Harry didn’t respond.
“Apparently the current is very strong.”
Harry nodded.
My sister’s composure was unsettling. I started to speak. She flapped a hand for quiet.
I signaled for the check.
“There is something we can do,” she said. “In homage to Évangéline and Obéline.”
Harry waited as the waiter refilled my mug.
“Remember the guy who mailed bombs to universities and airlines?”
“The Unabomber?”
“Yeah. How’d that go?”
“From the late seventies to the early nineties, Theodore Kaczynski killed three and wounded twenty-nine people. The Unabomber was the target of one of the most expensive manhunts in FBI history. What does Kaczynski have to do with Obéline?”
A manicured nail jabbed the air. “How did they finally catch him?”
“His manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future. Kaczynski argued that the bombs were necessary to attract attention to his work. He wanted to inspire others to fight against subjugation facilitated by technological progress.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But how did they nail the skank?”
“In the mid-nineties, Kaczynski mailed letters, some to his former victims, demanding that his manifesto be printed by a major newspaper. All thirty-five thousand words. Verbatim. If not, he threatened to kill more people. After a lot of debate, the Justice Department recommended publication. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran the thing, hoping something would break.”
“And?” Harry turned her palm up.
“Kaczynski’s brother recognized the writing style and notified authorities. Forensic linguists compared text samples provided by Kaczynski’s brother and mother with the Unabomber’s manifesto, and determined they’d been authored by the same person.”
“There you go.” Harry added a second upturned palm.
“What?” I was lost.
“That’s what we do. In Obéline’s memory. And Évangéline’s, of course. We get a linguist to compare the poems in Bones to Ashes to poems Évangéline wrote as a kid. Then we make Évangéline an official poet.”
“I don’t know, Harry. A lot of her early stuff was just adolescent angst.”
“You think young Kaczynski was William Friggin’ Shakespeare?”
I tried not to look dubious.
“You talked to Obéline about Évangéline’s murder. I don’t speak French, but I listened. I know what I heard in her voice. Guilt. Terrible, horrible, gut-wrenching guilt. The woman’s whole life was one giant guilt trip because she hid the fact that she knew about her sister’s killing. Wouldn’t she want this?”
“Yes, but—”
“Do you know a forensic linguist?”
“Yes, but—”
“Well enough to ask him to do a comparison?”
“I suppose.”
Dropping both hands to the table, Harry leaned forward onto her forearms. “Évangéline and Obéline are both gone. That book is all we have left. Don’t you want to know if Évangéline wrote it?”
“Of course I do, but—”
“And get Évangéline’s name on record? Make her the published poet she always wanted to be?”
“But wait. This makes no sense. You’re suggesting Évangéline wrote the poems and that Obéline had them printed by O’Connor House. But why would Obéline use the name Virginie LeBlanc? And why wouldn’t she cite Évangéline as the author of the collection?”
“Maybe she had to hide the project from her creepozoic husband.”
“Why?”
“Hell, Tempe, I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t want old dirt stirred up.”
“Évangéline’s murder?”
Harry nodded. “We know Bastarache used to beat the crap out of Obéline. He probably scared her.” Harry’s voice went hushed. “Tempe, do you think he’s now killed her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think she’s even dead? I mean, where’s the body?”
Indeed, I thought. Where is the body?
The check arrived. I did the math and signed.
“There’s a problem, Harry. If I still have any of Évangéline’s poems, and that’s a big ‘if,’ they’d be in Charlotte. I have nothing here in Montreal.”
A smile crawled Harry’s lips.
24
W HEN HARRY PLAYS COY, THERE’S NO CRACKING HER. THOUGH I asked repeatedly, she’d tell me nothing. My sister loves being on the giving end of surprises. I knew I was in for one.
Twenty minutes later we were in my bedroom, the odd samplings of my past staring up at us. The arm-in-arm friends. The ticket. The napkin.
But Harry didn’t linger on that page of the scrapbook. On the next she’d pasted three items: a tiny Acadian flag, that being the French tricolor with one yellow star; a quill pen sticker; a cream-colored envelope with metallic lining and Évan
géline stenciled on the outside.
Raising the flap, Harry extracted several pastel sheets and handed them to me.
The room fell away. I was twelve. Or eleven. Or nine. Standing by the mailbox. Oblivious to everything but the letter in my hand.
By reflex, I sniffed the stationery. Friendship Garden. Sweet Jesus, how could I remember the name of a childhood cologne?
“Where did you find these?”
“When I decided to put my house on the market, I started gophering through boxes. First thing I hit was our old Nancy Drew collection. Found them stuck in The Password to Larkspur Lane. That’s what sparked the scrapbook idea. I like the pink one. Read it.”
I did.
And stared into the unfinished country of Évangéline’s dream.
The poem was untitled.
Late in the morning I’m walking in sunshine, awake and aware like
I have not been before. A warm glow envelops me and tells all around,
“Now I am love!” I can laugh at the univers for he is all mine.
“Now listen to this.”
Opening the purloined copy of Bones to Ashes, Harry read,
“Laughing, three maidens walk carelessly, making their way to the river.
Hiding behind a great hemlock, one smiles as others pass unknowing Then with a jump and a cry and a laugh and a hug the girls put their Surprise behind them. The party moves on through the forest primeval
In a bright summer they think lasts forever. But not the one ailing.
She travels alone and glides through the shadows; others can not see her.
Her hair the amber of late autumn oak leaves, eyes the pale purple of dayclean.
Mouth a red cherry. Cheeks ruby roses. Young bones going to ashes.”
Harry and I sat in silence, lost in memories of four little girls, smiling toward life and what it would bring.
Harry swallowed. “The two poems kinda ring the same, don’t you think?”
I felt an ache so deep I couldn’t imagine it ever ending. I couldn’t answer.
Harry hugged me. I felt her chest heave, heard a tiny, hiccupping intake of air. Releasing me, she slipped from the room. I knew my sister was as devastated by Obéline’s death as I.
I couldn’t bear to read the other poems right then. I tried to sleep. Tried to put everything from my mind. I failed. The day kept replaying in flashpoint fragments. Cormier’s thumb drive. Hippo’s anger. Obéline’s suicide. Évangéline’s poetry. The skeleton. Île-aux-Becs-Scies.
Bec scie. Duck. Far away, in my head, a whisper. Faint, unintelligible.
Most distressing, try as I would, I could summon only a watercolor impression of Évangéline’s face. A blurry countenance at the bottom of a lake.
Had my memory run out, used up by countless visits over the years? Or was it the opposite? In medicine we talk of atrophy, the shriveling of bone or tissue due to disuse. Had Évangéline’s face evaporated because of neglect?
I sat up, intending to study the scrapbook snapshot. While I reached for the lamp, a disturbing thought struck me.
Had recall of my friend grown dependent upon photographic feeding? Were my recollections of Évangéline being shaped by the vagaries of light and shadow at frozen moments in time?
Settling back, I cleared my mind, and dug deep.
Unruly dark curls. A tilt to the chin. A careless tossing of the head.
Again, the nagging pssst! from my unconscious…
Honey skin. Ginger freckles sprinkling a sunburned nose.
A comment…
Luminous green eyes.
A link I was missing…
A slightly too-square jaw.
An idea. Bothering me…
Willowy limbs. A tender suggestion of breasts.
Something about a duck…
And then I fell asleep.
Eight A.M. found me in my office at Wilfrid-Derome. It was to be a day of interruptions.
My phone was blinking like a railroad crossing signal. I reviewed the messages, but returned only one call. Frances Suskind, the marine biologist at McGill.
I’d completely forgotten about the diatom samples I’d taken from the teenaged girl found in Lac des Deux Montagnes. Ryan’s DOA number three.
Suskind answered on the first ring.
“Dr. Brennan. I was about to phone you again. My students and I are very excited about our findings.”
“You shared information with students?”
“Graduate level, of course. We found your challenge extraordinarily invigorating.”
Challenge? Invigorating?
“Are you acquainted with the field of limnology?”
“Diatoms have their own ology?” Intended as a joke. Suskind didn’t laugh.
“Diatoms are part of the class Bacillariophyceae of the Chrysophyta phylum of microscopic unicellular plants. Did you know that the members of this group are so numerous they represent the single most abundant oxygen source in our atmosphere?”
“I didn’t.”
I began doodling.
“Let me explain our procedure. First, we collected twelve samples from each of seven sites along the river and around Lac des Deux Montagnes, which is actually part of the river, of course, including L’Île-Bizard, near the point where the body was recovered. Those samples acted as our controls in examining diatom assemblages recovered from the victim. The ones we obtained from the specimens you provided. The bone plug and sock.”
“Uh-huh.” I drew a shell.
“At each site we collected from a variety of habitats. Riverbed. Riverbank. Lakeshore.”
I added spirals to the shell.
“Our control samples yielded ninety-eight different diatom species. The various assemblages are similar and share many species.”
I started a bird.
“The dominant ones include Navicula radiosa, Achnan—”
There are over ten thousand diatom species. Suspecting Suskind was launching into a full roll call, I interrupted. “Perhaps we could let that go until I have your written report.”
“Of course. Well, let me see. There are variations in the presence or absence of minor species, and changes in the proportions of the dominant species. That’s to be expected given the complexity of the microhabitats.”
I added tail feathers.
“Basically, the samples divide into three cluster zones. A midchannel habitat with a depth of over two meters, which experiences moderate water flow. A shallow water habitat of less than two meters, which experiences slow water flow. And a riverbank or lakeshore habitat, above water level.”
An eye. More plumage.
“Perhaps I should explain our statistical treatment. We do cluster analysis, to determine the clusters I just described.” Suskind made a honking sound, which I assumed to be laughter. “Of course. That’s why it’s called cluster analysis.”
I sketched a bill.
“To compare the control samples to the victim samples, we use a transfer function called modern analog technique. We calculate the dissimilarity between a victim sample and the most similar control sample, using the squared chord distance as the dissimilarity coefficient—”
“May we also leave quantitative analysis for the report?”
“Of course. The bottom line. We found that the diatom assemblages recovered from the sock show strong similarity to samples taken from the midlake channel and from the lakeshore.”
Webbed feet.
“Our analog matching technique suggests that the closest lakeshore analogy is with a control sample collected at the bottom of a boat ramp situated in the Bois-de-L’Île-Bizard nature preserve, not far from the body recovery site.”
My pen froze.
“You can pinpoint with that much precision?”
“Of course. What we do—”
“Where is this park?”
She told me. I wrote it down.
“What about the bone plug?”
“I’m afraid that’s a bit more complex.�
�
Suskind now had my full attention. “Go on.”
“The diatom flora from the bone’s outer surface is similar to that recovered from the sock. We recovered no diatoms from the marrow cavity.”
“Meaning?”
“Interpretation of negative evidence is always risky.”
“Suggest some scenarios.”
“Diatoms find their way into the body via inhalation, via ingestion, and via the aspiration of water. Whatever the initial pathway, assuming they are sufficiently tiny, the diatoms then circulate into the body’s organs and marrow. Diatoms are recovered from the bone marrow of approximately thirty percent of all drowning victims. They occur at significantly lower rates, perhaps as low as ten percent, in cases of bathtub or other city water drownings.”
“Because diatoms and other impurities are filtered out of domestic water,” I guessed.
“Of course. If present in domestic water, they’ve most likely come from household cleaners. But those are unique and recognizable species.”
“You found none.”
“We found nothing in the marrow cavity.”
“So it’s possible the victim may have drowned in treated or filtered water, not in the river?”
“It’s possible. But let me continue. The diatom concentration in bone marrow is usually proportionate to the diatom concentration in the drowning medium. That concentration varies due to the natural cycle of blooms and die-offs. In the northern hemisphere, diatom blooms occur in the spring and fall, creating persistently high levels in rivers and lakes throughout the summer. In winter, levels are typically at their lowest.”
“So the victim could have drowned in the river, but before this season’s bloom.”
“It’s another possibility.”
“When did this season’s bloom occur?”
“April.”
I was scribbling notes next to my doodles.
“Aspiration of water is required to transport the diatoms,” Suskind continued. “The transportation process works because diatoms are resistant to the mucus of the respiratory system and are able to embolize from the circulatory system into the internal organs.”
I knew where she was going. “Blood has to be pumping to get diatoms into the marrow.”
“Of course.”
“So the victim may not have been breathing when she hit the water.”