by Kathy Reichs
LaManche, Pomier, and I watched Ryan cross to the newcomers. Words were exchanged, then Gioretti and Demers began opening their kits and camera cases.
Face tense, LaManche shot a cuff and checked his watch.
“Busy day?” I asked.
“Five autopsies. Dr. Ayers is away.”
“If you prefer to get back to the lab, I’m happy to stay.”
“Perhaps that is best.”
In case more bodies are found. It didn’t need saying.
Experience told me it would be a long morning. When LaManche was gone, I glanced around for a place to settle.
Two days earlier I’d read an article on the diversity of fauna inhabiting couches. Head lice. Bedbugs. Fleas. Mites. The ratty sofa and its vermin held no appeal. I opted for the window bench.
Twenty minutes later, I’d finished jotting my observations. When I looked up, Demers was brushing black powder onto the kitchen stove. An intermittent flash told me Gioretti was shooting photos in the bathroom. Ryan and Bédard were nowhere to be seen.
I glanced out the window. Pomier was leaning against a tree, smoking. Ryan’s Jeep had joined my Mazda and the crime scene truck at the curb. So had two sedans. One had a CTV logo on its driver’s-side door. The other said Le Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe.
The media were sniffing blood.
As I swiveled back, the plank under my bum wobbled slightly. Leaning close, I spotted a crack paralleling the window wall.
Did the middle section of the bench function as a storage cabinet? I pushed off and squatted to check underneath.
The front of the horizontal plank overhung the frame of the structure. Using my pen, I pushed up from below. The plank lifted and flopped back against the windowsill.
The smell of dust and mold floated from the dark interior.
I peered into the shadows.
And saw what I’d been dreading.
THE SECOND BABY WAS WRAPPED IN A TOWEL. BLOOD OR decompositional fluids had spread brown blossoms across the yellow terry cloth.
The shrouded little corpse lay in a back corner of the window seat, surrounded by a cracked and sun-bleached catcher’s mitt, a broken tennis racket, a plastic truck, a deflated basketball, and several pairs of worn-out sneakers. Dust and dead insects completed the assemblage.
The crown of a tiny head was visible at one end of the bundle, the squiggly sutures newborn-wide. The membrane-thin bone was dusted with soft downy hair.
I closed my eyes. Saw another infantile face. Dark flesh circling startling blue eyes. Pudgy cheeks shrunk tight to delicate bones.
“Oh, no,” someone said.
I raised my lids and looked out toward the street. A hearse had joined the vehicles lining the curb. The reporters stood talking outside their cars.
A puff of breeze through the screen felt warm on my face. Or perhaps it was the adrenaline-pumped blood flaming my cheeks.
“Avez-vous quelque chose?” Do you have something?
I turned.
Demers was looking in my direction, brush poised in midair. I realized the “oh, no” had come from my own lips.
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
Demers called to Gioretti, then crossed to me. After staring at the baby a very long time, he yanked a mobile from his belt and began punching keys. “I’ll see if we can get a dog.”
Shortly, Gioretti joined us. His gaze took in the window seat. “Tabarnouche.”
Positioning a case identifier, Gioretti began shooting pictures from different angles and distances.
I stepped off a few paces to phone LaManche. He issued the instructions I expected. Disturb the remains as little as possible. Keep looking.
Twenty minutes later, Gioretti had finished with video and stills. Demers had dusted the window box and its contents.
As I snapped on latex gloves, Demers spread a body bag on the floor beside the displaced shoes and sports paraphernalia. His jaw muscles bulged as he opened the zipper.
Reaching into the window seat, I gently lifted our second little victim. Based on weight and the absence of smell, I suspected the remains were mummified.
With two hands, I transferred the bundle to the body bag. Like the vanity baby lying by the sofa, it looked pitifully small in its adult-sized sack.
While Demers held a flashlight, I tweezed half a dozen bones from the interior of the window seat. Each was smaller than a thumbnail. Three phalanges. Two metacarpals. A vertebral body.
After sealing the isolated bones in a plastic vial, I wrote the case number, the date, and my initials on the cover with a Sharpie. Then I tucked the container below one edge of the stained yellow bundle.
Demers and I watched in silence as Gioretti shot his final photos. Out on the street, a car door slammed, followed by another. Footfalls sounded on the stairs.
Gioretti looked a question at me. I nodded.
Gioretti had just zipped the body bag and folded and strapped its ends when Pomier reappeared. With him were a woman and a border collie. The woman’s name was Madeleine Caron. The collie went by Pepper.
Trained to respond to the smell of rotting human flesh, cadaver dogs find hidden bodies like infrared systems pinpoint heat. A truly skilled sniffer can nail the former resting place of a corpse even long after its removal. But these hounds of death are as variable as their handlers. Some are good, some are lousy, some are outright scams.
I was pleased to see this pair. Both were top-notch.
I crossed to Caron, gloved hands held away from my body. Pepper watched my approach with large caramel eyes.
“Nice place,” Caron said.
“A palace. Pomier brief you?”
Caron nodded.
“We’ve got two so far. One from the bath, one from the window seat.” I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder. “I’m about to release them for transport. Once the body bags are out of here, run Pepper around, see if anything piques her interest.”
“You’ve got it.”
“There’s garbage in the kitchen.”
“Unless the stuff’s human, it won’t ring her chimes.”
First Caron took Pepper to the places where the babies had been stashed. Some dogs are taught to alert by barking, some by sitting or dropping to the ground. Pepper was a sitter. At both spots, she parked on her haunches and whined. Each time Caron scratched the dog’s ears and said, “Good girl.” Then she reached down and unclipped the leash.
After sniffing her way through the kitchen and living room, Pepper padded into the bedroom. Caron and I followed at a polite distance.
Nothing at the dresser. A slight hesitation at the bed. Then the dog froze. Took a step. Paused, one forepaw six inches off the floor.
“Good girl,” Caron said softly.
Muzzle sweeping from side to side, Pepper crept across the room. At the open closet door, her snout went up and her nostrils worked the air.
Five seconds of testing, then Pepper sat, craned her head toward us, and whined.
“Good girl,” Caron said. “Down.”
Eyes glued to her handler, the dog dropped to her belly.
“Shit,” Caron said.
“What?”
Caron and I turned. Neither of us had heard Ryan step up behind us.
“She’s hit on something,” Caron said.
“How often is she right?”
“Often.”
“She alert anywhere else?”
Caron and I shook our heads.
“She ever miss?”
“Not so far.” Caron’s tone was grim. “I’ll spin her around in here once more, then take her outside.”
“Please ask the transport driver to wait,” I said. “And tell Pomier. He’s accompanying the remains to the morgue.”
“You’ve got it.”
As Caron led Pepper out, Ryan and I crossed to the closet.
The enclosure was no more than three feet by five. I pulled a chain to light the bare bulb overhead.
An iron rod held hangers, the solid kind tha
t must have been decades old. They’d been bunched to one side, I assumed by Demers.
A wooden shelf ran the length of the closet above the rod. A collection of magazines had been transferred to the bedroom floor. Like the shelf, the door, the rod, and the knob, they were coated with Demers’s fingerprint powder.
Ryan and I spotted the vent simultaneously. It was on the ceiling, roughly centered in the closet. As our eyes met, Gioretti appeared in the doorway.
“You photograph in here?” I asked.
Gioretti nodded.
“We’re going to need a ladder and the snakehead camera.”
While we waited, Ryan filled me in on the landlord. “Stephan Paxton.” He switched to English. “The guy’ll never be addressing a Harvard graduation.”
“Meaning?”
“He’s got the brainpower of a moth. Beats me how he owns three buildings.” Ryan shook his head. “The tenant here is Alma Rogers. Paxton says she pays cash, usually three or four months in advance. Has for at least three years.”
“Rogers used an alias at the hospital?”
“Or here. But it’s the same gal. Paxton’s physical description matches that of the ER doc.”
“Yet she gave her actual address.”
“Apparently.”
I found that odd but let it go. “Is there a lease?”
“Rogers moved in with a guy named Smith. Paxton thinks maybe Smith signed something at the outset, but he’s not so good at keeping records. Says the cash in advance was lease enough for him.”
“Does Rogers work?”
“Paxton hadn’t a clue.”
“Smith?”
Ryan shrugged.
“What about the neighbors?”
“Bédard’s still making the rounds.”
At that moment the equipment arrived. As Demers positioned the ladder, Gioretti connected an apparatus that looked like a plumber’s snake to a portable DVR unit. He pushed a button, and the monitor beeped to life.
While Ryan held the ladder, Demers climbed the rungs and tested the grate with one finger. It wiggled, and plaster dust cascaded down.
Demers pulled a screwdriver from his belt. A couple of twists, and the screws came loose. More plaster dropped as he removed and handed down the grate. He drew a mask up over his mouth, then reached a hand into the dark rectangle in the ceiling. Palm flat, he gingerly explored. “There’s a beam.”
I held my breath as his arm went this way and that.
“Insulation.” Finally, Demers shook his head. “I’ll need the camera.”
Gioretti handed up the snakelike tool. The tip held a fiber-optic image sensor with a lens under four millimeters across. The tiny camera would take pictures inside the wall and allow us to view images in real time.
Demers thumbed a switch, and a bright beam shot into the darkness. After adjusting its curvature, he inserted the snake into the recess. A blurry gray image appeared on the monitor down below.
“We’re reading you.” Gioretti turned a dial, and the gray blur crystallized into a wooden beam. Below the beam was what looked like old-fashioned vermiculite insulation.
“Must be a ceiling joist,” Ryan said.
We watched the camera inch right along the joist, on-screen.
“Try the other way,” Ryan said. “You should hit a wall stud and a rafter.”
Demers reversed direction.
Ryan was right. Two and a half feet beyond the vent’s left end, beams joined the joist from below and above.
Tucked in the upper V was another towel-wrapped bundle.
“Sonofabitch,” Gioretti said.
* * *
Ninety minutes later, the closet ceiling was gone, and the third baby lay zipped inside its thirty-six-by-ninety-inch pouch.
Fortunately, the small attic produced no other infants.
Pepper had not alerted outside the building.
The three body bags lay side by side in the hearse, each with a pitifully small bulge in the middle.
Up the block, the journalists were practically wetting themselves. They maintained their distance. I wondered what Ryan had threatened to keep them in check.
I stood at the hearse’s back bumper. I’d removed my jumpsuit, and the sun felt warm on my shoulders and head.
Though it was past two and I’d eaten nothing since dawn, I had no appetite. I kept staring at the bags, wondering about the woman who had done this thing. Did she feel remorse over murdering her newborns? Or did she proceed with her life, not reflecting at all on the enormity of her crimes?
Images kept intruding from my past. Unbidden. Unwanted.
My baby brother, Kevin, dead of leukemia at age three. I wasn’t allowed to see Kevin’s body. To my eight-year-old mind, his death had somehow seemed unreal. One day he was with us, then he wasn’t.
In my child’s way, I’d understood that Kevin was sick, that his life would end too soon. Still, when it happened, I was left bewildered. I’d needed to say good-bye.
Up the street, Ryan was talking to Bédard. Again.
Earlier the corporal had reported that so far, the canvas had turned up only one person who recalled ever seeing Alma Rogers. The aged widow Robertina Hurteau lived in the building opposite and kept watch on the block through her living room blinds.
The old woman described her across-the-way neighbor as ordinaire. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Rogers enter or leave the apartment. She’d occasionally seen her with a man but never a baby. The man was barbu.
What about a dog? I wondered. Or was it a cat? Had anyone asked? The missing pet bothered me. Where was it? Had Roberts/Rogers taken it with her? Had she abandoned or killed it as she had her own offspring?
Three dead babies and I was worried about a missing pet. Go figure.
You’re out there somewhere, I thought. Amy Roberts, Alma Rogers. Traveling unnoticed. In a car? On a bus or train? Alone? With the father of your poor dead children? One of them? How many fathers were there?
I hoped Ryan was getting new information.
Demers and Gioretti were packing their gear. As I watched idly, a green Kia pulled to the curb behind their truck. The driver’s door swung open, and a man hauled himself out. He wore jeans and a tank that revealed way too much flesh. His hair was lank, his face flushed and splotchy above an unkept beard.
Arm-draping the car door, the man scanned the vehicles lining the street. Then he turned and slid back behind the wheel.
My weary brain coughed up a translation.
Barbu.
Bearded.
I turned to call out.
Ryan was already sprinting up the sidewalk.
RYAN HIT THE KIA AS THE DRIVER SLAMMED THE DOOR. Reaching through the open window, Ryan snatched the key from the ignition.
Halfway up the block, I heard “What the fuck?”
Bédard arrived as Ryan badged the guy.
“What the fuck?”
The driver was Anglophone. With a limited vocabulary.
“Move!” Ryan yanked the handle.
“What the—”
“Now!”
Sandaled feet swung out, followed by a beluga body.
As Bédard drew his Glock, Ryan spun Beluga, pushed him to the Kia, kicked his legs wide, and frisked him.
“What? You’re not going to buy me a few drinks first?”
Ryan didn’t laugh at Beluga’s wit.
A rear jeans pocket produced a canvas wallet. Satisfied that his suspect was unarmed, Ryan stepped back and began checking its contents. Bédard stood with his feet spread, gun double-grip pointed at Beluga.
“Turn around, but keep the hands up.”
Beluga did as ordered.
“Ralph Trees?” Ryan looked up from a plastic card I assumed to be a license to its bearer’s face.
Beluga stood in sullen silence, hands above his head. Hair crawled from his armpits down the sides of his rib cage.
“You Ralph Trees?”
Still, Beluga said nothing.
<
br /> Ryan reached back and unclipped cuffs from his belt.
“What the shit?” Beluga splayed beefy fingers. “OK. OK. But it’s Rocky, not Ralph.”
“What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“You’re a really funny guy, Rocky.”
“How about you tell Dirty Harry over there to ease up on the firepower.”
Ryan nodded to Bédard. The corporal lowered but did not holster his weapon.
Ryan turned back to Trees and waggled the license. Trees mumbled an answer I couldn’t hear.
I walked toward the trio. They paid no attention to me.
Up close, I could see that Trees’s eyes were spiderwebbed with tiny red veins. I guessed his height at six-four, his weight at 350 or more. Tattooed between his lower lip and the top of his beard was an inverted smile composed of teeth. Classy.
“I come to see my lady. Last I checked, that ain’t a crime.”
“Murder is.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?’
“Who’s your girlfriend?”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“You’re starting to piss me off, Rocky.”
“Look, I bang her when I’m horny. Don’t mean I send her chocolates on Valentine’s Day.”
Ryan just looked at him.
“Alva Rodriguez.” The bloodshot eyes flicked from Ryan to Bédard and back. “That it? Someone offed Alva?”
“When’s the last time you saw or talked to Ms. Rodriguez?”
“Shit, I don’t know. A couple, three weeks ago.”
“Try a little harder.”
“This is harassment.”
“File a complaint.”
Trees’s gaze shifted to me. “Who’s the chick?”
“You just focus here.”
“This is bullshit.”
“When’s the last time you had contact with Ms. Rodriguez?”
Trees made a show of giving the question some thought. His jittery eyes and sweaty hairline suggested the bravado was an act. “Two weeks Thursday. No, Wednesday. I was just back from a ride out to Calgary.”
“Why Calgary?”
“I do some long-haul driving for my brother-in-law.”
“Where is Ms. Rodriguez now?”