by Kathy Reichs
Forty minutes later there was a knock on my door.
“Entrez.”
A small, dark-haired girl wearing a trench coat and a brown beret stepped into the room, followed by an older, hatless woman in wool. A moment of confusion, then recognition.
“Hello, Tawny,” I said to the girl, coming around my desk and extending both hands.
Tawny shrank back slightly and did not raise her arms.
I clasped my hands in front of me and said, “I’m very glad to see you. I wanted to thank you for saving my life.”
At first, no response, then, “You saved my life.” More hesitation. Then, speaking slowly, “I asked for this visit because I wanted you to see me. I wanted you to see that I am a person, not a creature in a cage.”
This time when I stepped toward her, Tawny held her ground. I enveloped her in a hug and pressed the side of my head to hers. Feelings for Tawny and Katy and young women everywhere, adored or abused, overwhelmed me and I began to weep. Tawny did not cry, but she did not pull away.
I released her and stepped back, taking hold of her hands.
“I never thought of you as other than a person, Tawny, and neither do the people who are helping you now. And I’m sure your family is very anxious to have you back with them.”
She looked at me, dropped her hands to her sides, and stepped back.
“Good-bye, Dr. Brennan.” Her face was without expression, but there was a depth to her eyes that differed from the blank stare of earlier days.
“Good-bye, Tawny. I am so very happy you came.”
Dr. Lindahl smiled in my direction, and the two women exited.
I fell back into my chair, exhausted but uplifted.
40
THE HOLIDAYS CAME AND WENT. THE SUN ROSE AND set on a winter of Mondays.
In one of the dozens of boxes taken from the de Sébastopol basement, investigators found a journal. The journal contained names. Angela Robinson, Kimberly Hamilton, Anique Pomerleau, Marie-Joëlle Bastien, Manon Violette, Tawny McGee.
LSJML-38427 was identified as Marie-Joëlle Bastien, a sixteen-year-old Acadian from Bouctouche, New Brunswick, who’d gone missing in the spring of 1994. Over the years her file had been misplaced, her name deleted from the MP lists. My age and height estimates suggested Marie-Joëlle died soon after her capture.
Dr. Energy’s girl was identified as Manon Violette, a fifteen-year-old Montrealer who’d disappeared in the fall of 1994, six months after Marie-Joëlle Bastien. Manon’s skeletal age and height suggested she’d survived in captivity for several years.
By March, the bones of Angie Robinson, Marie-Joëlle Bastien, and Manon Violette were returned to their families. Each was laid to rest in a quiet ceremony.
Kimberly Hamilton was never located.
Anne and Tom-Ted plunged full-tilt boogie into counseling. She took golf lessons. He bought gardening books. Together they planted a gazillion azaleas.
I had no further contact with Tawny McGee. She spent weeks in intensive in-patient therapy, eventually moved home to Maniwaki. It would be a long road back, but doctors were optimistic.
Anique Pomerleau’s photo went out across the continent. Dozens of tips were received by the CUM and SQ. Pomerleau was sighted in Sherbrooke. Albany. Tampa. Thunder Bay.
The hunt continues.
For Anique Pomerleau.
For Kimberly Hamilton.
For all the lost girls.
From the Forensic Files of Dr. Kathy Reichs
For legal and ethical reasons I cannot discuss any of the real-life cases that may have inspired Monday Mourning, but I can share with you some experiences that contributed to the plot.
The weather was sunny and shirt-sleeve mild that week in September in Montreal. An Indian summer hiccup before the nine-month freeze.
Friday, September 14, was created for hiking the mountain, playing tennis, or biking the path along the Lachine Canal. Instead, I got a call to report to the lab.
The case was waiting when I arrived, Demande d’Expertise en Anthropologie on my desk, bones on the counter. I went straight to the form and scanned the information.
LSJML number. Morgue number. Police incident number. Investigating officer. Coroner. Pathologist. Description of specimens: fragmentary skeletal remains. Expertise requested: biological profile, manner of death, postmortem interval.
I looked at the three brown paper bags sealed with red evidence tape.
Right.
According to the summary of known facts, the episode began with a backed-up toilet in a pizza-by-the-slice joint. Plunger failing, the frustrated proprietor called in help. While banging pipes, the plumber spotted a trapdoor behind the commode.
Curious, the plucky plombier pried, then peered, then plunged underground. When his flashlight beamed up a half-buried long bone, the man surfaced, notified the owner, and the two set off for the local stacks. A copy of L’Anatomie pour les Artistes confirmed that the booty in their sack was a human femur.
The pair called the police. The police processed the basement, recovered a bottle, a coin, and two dozen additional bones, and sent the remains to the morgue. The coroner notified the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale. The pathologist took one look and torpedoed my day in the sun.
Sorting and analysis occupied me for several hours. In the end, three individuals lay on my table: a young adult aged eighteen to twenty-four, a middle-aged adult, and an older adult with advanced arthritis. The youngest of the three had sharp instrument trauma on the head, jaw, sacrum, femur, and tibia.
I called the detectives. They informed me that the bottle was new but the coin was old, dating to the late nineteenth century. They could not confirm the coin’s association with the skeleton. I told them to return to the basement. I needed more bones.
A week passed.
Bad news. The detectives reported that no cemetery had ever occupied land under or in the vicinity of the pizza parlor building. Worse news. The detectives reported possible mob links for an occupant of the property some forty years earlier.
Again, I repeated my request for reprocessing, and offered to accompany a team back into the basement. Again, a week passed. Two.
Why the reluctance to return to that cellar?
When confronted, the boys had a one-word reply.
Rats!
Compromise. Establish that the deaths had taken place within the last half century, and we’d dig the whole cellar, rodents be damned.
My analysis now focused on the question of time since death. Every bone and bone fragment was dry and devoid of odor or flesh. Only one technique held promise.
After I explained the use of artificial or “bomb” Carbon 14 in determining postmortem interval with modern organic materials, the Bureau du Coroner authorized payment for testing. I cut and sent samples from two individuals to Beta Analytic Inc., a radiocarbon dating lab in Miami, Florida. A week later we had our answer.
Though the results were complicated, one thing was clear. The pizza parlor victims had died prior to 1955.
No curtain call with Rattus rattus. Cue the archaeologists.
Though the dossier is closed, I still ponder those bones. I am touched by the thought of the dead lying in anonymous cellar graves while the living transact business one floor up.
Pepsi, please, and a pepperoni and cheese to go.
What would they think?
Scribner Proudly Presents
BREAK
NO BONES
KATHY REICHS
Available now in hardcover from Scribner
Turn the page for a preview of Break No Bones . . .
By four, what remained of Avram Ferris’s face was back in position, and Y-shaped stitching held his belly and chest. Ferris, a fifty-six-year-old Orthodox Jew, had gone missing a week earlier. His body had been discovered yesterday in a storage closet in his place of business. Death by self-inflicted gunshot wound was the on-scene assessment, but the man’s family adamantly rejected suicid
e as the cause of death. The photographer had five rolls of film. My boss, Pierre LaManche, had a ream of diagrams and notes. I had four tubs of bloody shards.
I was cleaning bone fragments, when Ryan appeared in the corridor outside my lab. I watched his approach through the window above my sink.
Craggy face, eyes too blue for his own good.
Or mine.
Seeing me, Ryan pressed his palms and nose to the glass. I flicked water at him.
He pushed back and pointed at my door. I mouthed “open” and waved him through, a goofy smile spreading across my face
OK. Maybe Ryan isn’t so bad for me.
But I had reached that opinion only recently.
For almost a decade Ryan and I had butted heads in an on-again, off-again non-relationship. Up-down. Yes-no. Hot-cold.
Hot-hot.
I’ve been attracted to Ryan since the get-go, but there have been more obstacles to acting on that attraction than there were signers of the Declaration.
I believe in the separation of job and play. No water cooler romance for this señorita. No way.
Ryan works homicide. I work the morgue. Professional exclusion clause applies. Obstacle one.
Ryan was widely known as the squad-room Lothario. Stud muffin exclusion clause applies. Obstacle two.
But Ryan sweet-talked the loopholes, and, after years of resistance, I finally jumped through.
“How’s it going, cupcake?” he asked, coming through the door.
“Good.” I added a fragment to those drying on the corkboard.
“That the chimney stiff?” Ryan was eyeing the box holding Charles Bellemare.
“Happy trails for the Cowboy,” I said.
“Guy take a hit?”
I shook my head. “Looks like he leaned to when he should have leaned fro. No idea why he was sitting on a chimney ledge.” I stripped off my gloves and squeezed soap onto my hands. “Who’s the blond guy downstairs?”
“Birch. He’ll be working Ferris with me.”
“New partner?”
Ryan shook his head. “Loan-over. You think Ferris offed himself?”
I turned and shot Ryan a you-know-better-than-that look.
Ryan gave me an expression of choirboy innocence. “Not trying to rush you.”
Yanking paper towels from the holder, I said, “Tell me about him.”
Ryan nudged Bellemare aside and rested one haunch on my worktable.
“Family’s Orthodox.”
“Really?” Mock surprise.
“The Fab Four were here to ensure a kosher autopsy.”
“Who were they?” I wadded and tossed the paper towels.
“Rabbi, members of the temple, one brother. You want names?”
I shook my head.
“Ferris was a bit more secular than his kin. Operated an import business from a warehouse out near Mirabel airport. Told the wife he’d be out of town on Thursday and Friday. According to—” Ryan pulled out and glanced at a spiral pad.
“Miriam,” I supplied.
“Right.” Ryan gave me an odd look. “According to Miriam, Ferris was trying to expand the business. He called around four on Wednesday, said he was heading out, and that he’d be back late on Friday. When he didn’t arrive by sundown, Miriam figured he’d been delayed and preferred not to drive on the Sabbath.”
“Had that happened before?”
Ryan nodded. “Ferris wasn’t in the habit of phoning home. When he hadn’t shown up Saturday, Miriam started working the speed dial. No one in the family had seen him. Neither had his secretary. Miriam didn’t know which accounts he was planning to hit, so she decided to sit tight. Sunday morning she checked the warehouse. Sunday afternoon she filed a missing persons report. Cops said they’d investigate if hubby hadn’t surfaced by Monday morning.”
“Grown man extending his business trip?”
Ryan shrugged one shoulder. “Happens.”
“Ferris never left Montreal?”
“LaManche thinks he died not long after his call to Miriam.”
“Miriam’s story checks out?”
“So far.”
“The body was found in a closet?”
Ryan nodded. “Blood and brains all over the walls.”
“What kind of closet?”
“Small storage space off an upstairs office.”
“Why would cats be in there with him?”
“The door’s outfitted with one of those little two-way flaps. Ferris kept food and litter in there.”
“He gathered the cats to shoot himself?”
“Maybe they were in there when he took the bullet, maybe they slipped in later. Ferris may have died sitting on a stool, then tumbled off. Somehow his feet ended up jamming the kitty door.”
I thought about that.
“Miriam didn’t check the closet when she visited on Saturday?”
“No.”
“She didn’t hear scratching or meowing?”
“The Missus is not a cat lover. That’s why Ferris kept them at work.”
“She didn’t notice any odor?”
“Apparently Ferris wasn’t real fastidious about feline toilette. Miriam said if she’d smelled anything she’d have figured it was kitty litter.”
“She didn’t find the building overly warm?”
“Nope. But if a cat brushed the thermostat after her visit, Ferris would still have been cooking from Sunday till Tuesday.”
“Did Ferris have other employees besides the secretary?”
“Nope.” Ryan consulted the notes in his spiral. “Courtney Purviance. Miriam calls her a secretary. Purviance prefers the term associate.”
“Is the wife downgrading, or the help upgrading?”
“More likely the former. Appears Purviance played a pretty big role in running the business.”
“Where was Purviance on Wednesday?”
“Left early. Bad sinuses.”
“Why didn’t Purviance find Ferris on Monday?”
“Monday was some kind of Jewish holiday. Purviance was home eating seder and planting trees.”
“Tu Bishvat, the festival of trees. Was anything missing?”
“Purviance insists there’s nothing in the place worth stealing. Computer’s old. Radio’s older. Inventory’s not valuable. But she’s checking.”
“How long has she worked for Ferris?”
“Since ninety-eight.”
“Anything suspicious in Ferris’s background? Known associates? Enemies? Gambling debts? Jilted girlfriend? Boyfriend?”
Ryan shook his head.
“Anything to suggest he was suicidal?”
“I’m digging, but so far zip. Stable marriage. Took the little woman to Boca in January. Business wasn’t blazing, but it was producing a steady living. Especially since Purviance hired on, a fact she’s not hesitant to mention. No signs of depression.”
I remembered Kessler and slipped the photo from the pocket of my lab coat.
“A gift from one of the Fab Four.” I held it out. “He thinks it’s the reason Ferris is dead.”
“Meaning?”
“He thinks it’s the reason Ferris is dead.”
“You can be a real pain in the ass, Brennan.”
“I work at it.”
Ryan studied the photo.
“Which of the Fab Four?”
“Kessler.”
Floating a brow, Ryan laid down the photo and flipped a page in his spiral.
“You sure?”
“That’s the name he gave me.”
When Ryan looked up the brow had settled.
“No one named Kessler was cleared for that autopsy.”
“I’m certain Kessler’s the name he gave.”
“He was an authorized observer?”
“As opposed to one of the multitudes of Hasidim who haunt these halls?”
Ryan ignored my sarcasm.
“Did Kessler say that’s why he was here?”
“No.” For some reason Ryan’s quest
ions were irking me.
“You’d seen Kessler earlier in the autopsy room?”
“I—”
I’d been distressed over Miriam and Dora Ferris, then distracted by Pelletier’s call. Kessler had glasses, a beard, and a black suit. My mind had settled for a cultural stereotype.
I wasn’t irked at Ryan. I was irked at myself.
“I just assumed.”
“Let’s take it from the top.”
I told Ryan about the incident in the downstairs corridor.
“So Kessler was in the hall when you left the family room.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see where he came from?”
“No.”
“Where he went?”
“I thought he was going to join Dora and Miriam.”
“Did you actually see him enter the family room?”
“I was speaking to Pelletier.” It came out sharper than I intended.
“Don’t be defensive.”
“That was not defensive,” I said defensively, and did a two-handed pull to unsnap my lab coat. “That was enlargement of detail.”
Ryan picked up Kessler’s print.
“What am I looking at?”
“A skeleton.”
Ryan’s eyes rolled up.
“Kessler—” I stopped. “The mysterious bearded stranger told me it came from Israel.”
“The photo came from Israel, or was shot there?”
Another screw-up on my part.
“The picture’s over forty years old. It’s probably meaningless.”
“When someone says it caused a death, it’s not meaningless.”
I reddened.
Ryan flipped the photo as I had. “What’s M de 1 H?”
“You think that’s an M?”
Ryan ignored my question.
“What was going on in October of sixty-three?” he asked more of himself than of me.
“Oswald’s thoughts were on JFK.”
“Brennan, you can be a real—”
“We’ve established that.”
Crossing to Ryan, I reversed the photo and pointed at the object to the left of the leg bones.