by Kathy Reichs
“The kid’s awake and hysterical. Won’t let anyone touch her. Says someone’s going to kill her.”
“Anglophone or Francophone?”
“English. She keeps asking for the woman from the house.”
“Anique Pomerleau?”
“No. Pomerleau’s in the next bed. I think she means you. Sometimes she asks for the woman with the cop. Or the woman with the jacket. I hate to dope her up before a psychia—”
“I’m on my way.”
“I’ll hold off on sedation.”
“By the way, her name’s Tawny McGee. The parents have been notified.”
Ryan used the flashers and siren. We were at the hospital in twelve minutes.
Feldman was in the ER. Together we rode to the fourth floor. Before entering the room, I observed through the open door.
It was as though Menard’s victims had reversed roles.
Anique Pomerleau lay still in her bed.
Tawny McGee was upright, face flushed and wet. Her eyes darted. Her fingers opened and closed around the blanket clutched under her chin.
Ryan and Feldman waited in the hall while I entered the room.
“Bonjour, Anique.”
Pomerleau rolled her head. Her gaze was listless, her affect dead as petrified wood.
McGee’s head dropped. Her gown slipped, exposing one fleshless shoulder.
“It’s all right, Tawny. Things will be better now.”
I crossed toward her bed.
McGee threw back her head. Cartilage jutted like thorns from her impossibly white throat.
“You’re going to be fine.”
McGee’s mouth opened and a sob ripped free. The thorns bobbed erratically.
“I’m here.” I reached to adjust the fallen gown.
McGee’s head snapped down and her fingers tightened on the blanket. The nails were dirt-packed slivers.
“No one can hurt you now.”
The broken-doll face jerked toward Pomerleau.
Pomerleau was watching us with glassy disinterest.
McGee whipped back to me, threw off the blanket, and began tearing at the IV taped to her forearm.
“I have to go!”
“You’re safe here.” I laid my hand on hers.
McGee went rigid.
“The doctors will help you,” I soothed.
“No! No!”
“You and Anique are going to be fine.”
“Take me with you!”
“I can’t do that, Tawny.”
McGee yanked her hand free and clawed madly at the tape. Her breathing was ragged. Tears streamed down her face.
I grasped her wrists. She twisted and fought, desperation firing her with strength I would not have thought possible.
Feldman ran in, followed by a nurse.
McGee grabbed my arm.
“Take me with you!” Wild-eyed. “Please! Take me with you!”
Feldman nodded. The nurse administered an injection.
“Please! Please! Take me with you!”
Gently prying McGee’s fingers, Feldman motioned me from the bed. I stepped back, trembling.
What could I do?
Feeling useless and ineffective, I pulled a card from my purse, jotted my cell number, and laid it on the bedside table.
Moments later I stood in the corridor, jaws and hands clenched, listening as McGee’s pleas yielded to the sedative.
Whenever I think back on that moment, I wish to God I’d done what Tawny was asking. I wish to God I’d listened and understood.
33
IT WAS ANOTHER RESTLESS NIGHT. I WOKE AGAIN AND again, each time tangled in the remains of some barely remembered dream.
When my clock radio kicked on, I groaned and squinted at the digits. Five-fifteen. Why had I set the alarm for five-fifteen?
I palmed the button.
Music continued.
Slowly, awareness.
I hadn’t set the alarm.
That wasn’t the alarm.
Throwing back the quilt, I bolted for my handbag.
Sunglasses. Wallet. Makeup. Checkbook. Calendar.
“Damn!”
Frustrated, I upended the purse and pulled my mobile from the heap.
The music stopped. The digital display told me I’d missed one call.
Who the hell would call at five in the morning?
Katy!
Heart racing, I hit LIST.
Anne’s cell phone number.
Ohmygod!
I hit OPTION, then CALL.
“We’re sorry. The party you are dialing cannot—”
It was the same message I’d been hearing since Friday.
I clicked off and returned to the log. Today’s date—5:14:44 A.M.
The call had been dialed from Anne’s cell. But Anne’s cell wasn’t on.
What did that mean?
Anne had dialed, then turned her phone off? Her battery went dead? She moved out of range?
Someone else had used Anne’s phone? Who? Why?
Again scrolling through OPTIONS, I chose SEND MESSAGE, typed in “Call me!” and hit SEND.
I punched another number. Tom answered after four rings, sounding groggy.
Anne was not there. He hadn’t heard a word, nor had any of the friends he’d contacted.
I threw the phone at my pillow. Normally, I leave the phone on my bedstand at night, but the stress of events had broken that routine. I’d left the damn thing in my purse. Make one small mistake and it nails you.
Sleep was out of the question. I showered, fed Birdie, and left for the lab.
Ryan entered my office at a little past eight.
“Claudel won the lottery.”
I looked up.
“The prints taken from the fake Stephen Menard belong to a loser named Neal Wesley Catts.”
“Who is he?”
“Street corner thug. Drifter. Did one bump for peddling weed. That’s how his prints got into the system. California’s faxing his sheet.”
“Claudel’s following up?”
“He intends to know every toilet this punk ever flushed.”
“Take a look at this.” I tapped my pencil on Claudel’s MP list.
Ryan circled to my side of the desk.
“I’ve marked the possibles.”
Ryan scanned the names I’d checked. It was the majority of the list.
“The nonwhites are out.”
“And those who were too old or too tall when they disappeared.”
Ryan looked at me.
“I know. Without lower limits on age and height, I can’t really limit the subset that much.” I flapped a hand at the skeletons in my lab. “These girls could have survived years in captivity.”
Like Angela Robinson, Anique Pomerleau, and Tawny McGee.
“I cut samples for DNA testing on Angie Robinson.”
“The one wrapped in leather?”
I nodded. “I’m sure it’s her.”
“I think you’re right.”
“The coroner’s office is contacting the Robinson family. We’ll need a maternal relative to run mitochondrial comparisons.”
I slumped back.
“Anne called this morning.”
“That’s great.” Ryan’s face broke into a huge smile.
“No. It’s not.”
When I told him what had happened the smile collapsed.
“I’ve called the taxi companies. They’re checking their records for a pickup at your place Friday. Would you like me to contact rental car agencies?”
“I guess it’s time,” I said.
“It’s only been four days.”
“Yes.”
“If she—” Ryan hesitated. “If something happened we’d be the first to know.”
“Yes.”
Ryan’s cell phone rang. He checked the screen, frowned, then gave me his most boyish of grins.
“Sorry—”
“I know. Gotta take it.”
Ryan had barely cleared the door when my desk pho
ne rang. As per my request, the librarian had found materials on sexual sadism and the Stockholm syndrome.
I was reading an article in the Journal of Forensic Sciences when Claudel arrived.
“The dead man is Neal Wesley Catts.”
“S’il vous plaît.” I gestured to the chair opposite my desk. “Asseyez-vous.” Sit.
Claudel tucked down the corners of his mouth and sat.
“Catts was born in Stockton, California, in 1963. The usual sob story, broken home, alcoholic mother.”
Claudel was speaking English. What could that mean?
“Catts dropped out of high school in seventy-nine, hung with the Banditos for a while, got no invite to patch up. Served one hitch in Soledad on a drug rap.”
“Did he hold jobs?”
“Flipped burgers, tended bar, worked at a window frame plant. But here’s a tidbit you’ll love. The little pervert liked ogling forbidden grail.”
I listened without interrupting.
“Catts was hauled to the bag several times on peeping complaints.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.”
“Cops never had enough to charge him.”
“Voyeurism is a typical first step for sexual predators.”
“One old biddy accused him of snuffing her poodle. Again, no proof, no charges.”
“Where was this?”
“Yuba City, California.”
The name hit me like a blow to the chest.
“Yuba City’s right down the road from Chico.”
Claudel’s lips did something very close to a smile. “And Red Bluff.”
“When was Catts there?”
“Late seventies, early eighties. Dropped out of sight in the mid-eighties.”
“Didn’t he have to report to a parole officer or something?”
“He was clear with the state by eighty-four.”
When Claudel left to search out LaManche, I went back to my reading. I was on my second trip to the library when I ran into the chief.
“Big day yesterday, Temperance?”
“Carnaval. You’ve spoken with Claudel?”
“I’ve just given him a preliminary on Monsieur Catts.”
“Any surprises?”
LaManche pooched out his lips and waggled his fingers. Maybe yes. Maybe no.
“What?”
“I found no gunpowder on the hands.”
“Were they bagged?”
“They were.”
“Shouldn’t powder be present if he fired a gun?”
“Yes.”
“How can that be?”
LaManche lifted one shoulder and both brows.
Charbonneau rounded out my morning’s list of callers.
“Menard and Catts knew each other,” he said without preamble.
“Really.”
“I managed to locate one of Menard’s former profs at Cal State–Chico. Guy’s been teaching since Truman started redecorating the White House, but his memory’s primo. He put me onto one of Menard’s old girlfriends. Woman named Carla Greenberg.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“Greenberg’s on faculty at some small college in Pennsylvania. Says she and Menard dated their first year of grad school, then she left for Belize. Menard didn’t land a job on the dig, or on any other project, for that matter, so he stayed in Chico that summer. When Greenberg got back, Menard was spending most of his time with some guy in Yuba City.”
“Catts?”
“Our hero.”
“How did Catts and Menard hook up?”
“They look alike.”
“Come on.”
Charbonneau held up a hand. “I’m not making this up, Doc. According to Greenberg, people kept telling Menard some pawnbroker in Yuba City was his dead-ringer double. The archaeology students liked to prowl this guy’s shop, being as he wasn’t overly rigid about laws pertaining to antiquities, if you catch my meaning.”
“And?”
“Menard went for a look-see and the two became buds. At least that’s the story Menard laid on Greenberg.”
“That sounds preposterous.”
“Greenberg e-mailed this.”
Charbonneau handed me a color photo printed on computer paper. In it three people stood arm in arm on a pier.
The woman was squat and muscular, with straight brown hair and wide-set eyes. The men flanking her looked like bookends. Both were tall and thin, with wild red hair and freckles gone mad.
“I’ll be damned.”
“According to Greenberg, Menard spent less and less time in Chico, eventually blew off the program. She was wrapped up in her thesis that fall and never really gave him much thought.”
“Could you find anyone in Yuba City who remembered Catts?”
“One old couple. Still live in a trailer next to the one Catts rented.”
“Let me guess. Nice young man. Quiet. Kept to himself.”
“You’ve got it.”
Charbonneau reclaimed Greenberg’s picture and looked at it as one might look at a turd on the lawn.
“Luc and I are going to spin down to Vermont, flash the pic, see if we can goose a few memories.”
After Charbonneau left, I dialed Anne’s cell. “We’re sorry. The party . . .”
I tried working my way through the journals the librarian had pulled for me. British Journal of Psychiatry. Behavioral Sciences and the Law. Medicine and Law. Bulletin of the American Academy of Science and the Law.
It was no good. My mind kept wandering.
I phoned Anne again. Her cell was still off.
I phoned Tom. No word from his wife.
I phoned Anne’s brothers in Mississippi. No Anne. No call.
I forced myself back to the stack.
One article focused on Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, the California geniuses who’d built underground bunkers to house female sex slaves.
At trial, Ng’s lawyers argued that their client was a mere bystander, a dependent personality waiting to be led. According to the defense, Lake’s ex-wife was the real heavy.
Right, Charlie. You were a victim. Like poor little Karla Homolka.
In 1991, Leslie Mahaffy, fourteen, was found dismembered and encased in concrete in an Ontario lake. The following year, Kristen French, fifteen, turned up naked and dead in a ditch. Both had been brutalized, raped, and murdered.
Paul Bernardo and his wife, Karla Homolka, were subsequently arrested. Young and blond and beautiful, the press dubbed the couple the Ken and Barbie Killers.
In exchange for testimony against her ex-husband, Homolka was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter. Bernardo was convicted of murder one, aggravated sexual assault, forcible confinement, kidnapping, and performing an indignity on a human body.
Like Lake and Ng, the Bernardos filmed their little orgies. When the tapes finally surfaced, footage showed bride and groom as equal enthusiasts in the torture and murder. But Karla had already cut her deal.
I was moving on to the next article, when my phone rang again.
“They’re gone.” Ryan sounded like he was calling from Uranus.
“Who’s gone?”
“Anique Pomerleau and Tawny McGee.”
34
“HOW CAN THEY BE GONE?”
“When the day nurse checked, their beds were empty.”
“There was no guard?”
“We told Feldman security wasn’t an issue.”
“Had they been released?”
“No.”
“Were they alone?”
“No one saw them leave.”
“Had they had visitors?” My voice was too loud. “A family member?”
“We’ve yet to locate any of Pomerleau’s relatives. McGee’s sister flew east from Alberta last night. Sandra something. She and the mother are en route from Maniwaki now.”
Adrenaline surge.
“Menard!”
“I floated his description around the floor. No one spotted anyone resembling him.”
“Tawny McGee was hysterical yesterday. These geniuses are now suggesting she and Pomerleau just pulled on their panties and waltzed out?”
“The head nurse thinks they may have split during a shift change. Or during the night.”
“They didn’t have clothes!”
“Two coats and two pair of boots are missing from the staff lounge. Along with seventeen dollars from the coffee fund.”
“Where would two disoriented, homeless women go?”
“Calm down.”
I closed my eyes and willed the adrenaline back to its myriad sources.
“They may not have gone anywhere. General’s a warren of tunnels and crannies, the basement’s some kind of medieval maze. I’m at the hospital now. If they don’t turn up inside, we’ll canvass the neighborhood.”
“And then?”
“When the McGees arrive I’ll find out if Tawny knew anyone in Montreal.”
“Jesus Christ, Ryan. That poor woman loses her child, probably gives her up for dead, then finally gets word her daughter is alive. Now we have to tell her the kid’s missing again?”
“We’ll find her.” Ryan’s voice was tempered steel.
“I’ll call the women’s shelters,” I said.
“Worth a try.”
It was a dead end. No one had seen or admitted any woman fitting either of the descriptions I provided.
I went back to my research, but it was worse than before. I couldn’t sit. Couldn’t read. I was charged with enough energy to blast through granite.
These women had been kidnapped years ago, Angela Robinson in 1985, Anique Pomerleau in 1990, Tawny McGee in 1999. Their abductor was now dead.
So why this growing sense of dread?
Had we blown it? Was Catts the sole abductor? Had Stephen Menard been Neal Wesley Catts’s accomplice in his twisted little game, or vice versa? Was Menard still out there?
Were Pomerleau and McGee again in Menard’s hands? Had he forced them from the hospital? Had the women gone willingly, still under his spell?
Had Catts killed Menard? When? Why?
Catts should have had gunpowder on his hands. LaManche found none. Was it the other way around? Had Menard killed Catts?
I remembered McGee’s pleas to be taken from the hospital.
Had McGee persuaded Pomerleau to leave? Had the women simply fled? Had the unaccustomed environment frightened them into flight? But flight to where?
Why this intense feeling that McGee and Pomerleau were in danger? That I could rescue them if I was just clever enough to sort things out?