KATHY REICHS - 206 BONES

“Yeah.” Hubert puffed air through his lips. They badly needed Chap-Stick.

“What have you done so far?”

“Secured the area, shot photos, cleared snow, set up the tent. The heater’s been going since yesterday, so the ground should be thawed.”

“ Bon, ” I said.

“Let’s do it.”

Hubert was right. The ground was sufficiently soft to dig. And another thing worked in our favor. Human nature. Either lazy or nervous, the perp had buried his vic only eighteen inches down.

By one, Bonnet and I had exposed the entire skeleton. Most of the bones we’d left in situ. Those found by sifting dirt through a screen we’d sealed into evidence bags.

I’d done an inventory, detailing everything but the phalanges. Those I merely counted.

One skull, including all twenty-one cranial bones and the six from the inner ear. One mandible. One hyoid. One sternum. Two clavicles. Two scapulae. Twenty-four ribs. Twenty-four vertebrae. One sacrum. One coccyx. Six arm bones. Six leg bones. Two innominates. Two patellae. Sixteen carpus. Ten metacarpus. Fourteen tarsus. Ten metatarsus. Fifty-six phalanges.

Two hundred and six bones. Damn, we were good.

Throughout the exhumation, Ryan and Hubert had come and gone. Turned out the heater recognized only two settings: Off and Tropic of Cancer. Though we’d opened a flap, the temperature in the tent rose to roughly 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Bonnet and I had peeled by layers, ended up working in T-shirts and jeans.

Now, as I made notes and Bonnet snapped photos, Ryan and Hubert stood peering into the pit. Their faces were flushed, their hairlines dampened by sweat.

The victim lay facedown, wearing bra and panties, with arms and legs twisted to the right. A fracture spidered the back of the skull.

“ Eh, misère. ” Hubert had uttered the expletive at least twenty times.

“Thoughts on body position?” Ryan asked me.

“Only preliminary.”

Ryan nodded. “I’m guessing she was hit from behind. Then she either fell or was pushed into the grave.”

“Hit with what?” Taut.

“From the shape of the indentation, I’d say something flat with a raised central ridge.”

“She?” Hubert had picked up on my gender reference.

“Yes.”

“Because of the undies?”

“Because of cranial and pelvic features.”

“The rest of her clothing rotted away?”

“I doubt it. Granted, the underwear is polyester, and synthetics outlast natural fibers like cotton or linen, but I’d have found zippers, buttons, snaps, something. I don’t think she was wearing anything else.”

“And no shoes or socks,” Ryan pointed out.

“No,” I agreed.

“Age?” Hubert asked.

Squatting, I lifted and rotated the skull.

Only eight yellowed teeth were present, their cusps worn flat. The remaining sockets were smoothed by bony infill.

The cranial sutures were fused. Both temporo-mandibular joints and occipital condyles were gnarled by arthritis.

“Old,” I said, not trusting my voice to add more.

“Gotta be Villejoin. How many grannies go missing around here?”

I imagined the grisly scene. A terrified old woman, forced to strip and face death on the edge of her own grave.

Had she begged for her life? Realizing there would be no mercy, had she closed her eyes? Listened to the wind in the trees? To birdsong? Had she heard the sound of the weapon as it arced toward her head?

Suddenly, I had to get out of that tent.

BACK IN TOWN, RYAN AND I GRABBED LUNCH AT A LA BELLE Province. I had little appetite. The wet-wipes and disinfectant had gone only so far. I just wanted to shampoo and scrub the remaining dirt from under my nails. But Ryan was resolute. He often showed a bubbe streak, insisting I eat when I least wanted food.

Ryan ordered poutine, a Quebec delicacy that I’ve always found baffling. Take fries, top with cheese curds, cover with tasteless brown gravy. Yum.

I had pea soup and a salad.

We went directly from the restaurant to the Édifice Wilfrid-Derome in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district just east of centre-ville . The Laboratoire des sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale occupies the top two floors of the T-shaped structure, the Bureau du coroner is on eleven, the morgue is in the basement. The remaining footage belongs to the SQ.

Ryan took an unsecured elevator to four. I took a restricted one servicing only the LSJML, the coroner, and the morgue.

Any weekday the labs, offices, and corridors would have been swarming with white-coated scientists and technicians. That afternoon the place was quiet as a tomb. God bless Saturday.

Swiping my security pass for the fourth time since entering the building, I passed through glass doors separating the medico-legal wing from the rest of the twelfth floor, and proceeded down a hall with offices on the right and labs on the left. Microbiology. Histology. Pathology. Anthropology-Odontology.

During my absence in Chicago, window frames, bookshelves, cabinet doors, and refrigerators had been transformed. Each work area now reflected the sugarplum vision of its decorator. Plastic pine garlands. Lace doily snowflakes. Père Noël with his sack of goodies, reindeer, and sleigh.

My desk was heaped and my phone was flashing. Ignoring the hysterical red message light, I slipped my purse into a drawer and headed for the locker room.

Showered and dressed in surgical scrubs, I returned to the lab for case forms, calipers, and a clipboard. Then I took another elevator offering the same limited choices: LSJML, coroner, morgue.

In the basement, through another secure door, a long, narrow corridor shoots the length of the building. To the left are an X-ray room and four autopsy suites, three with single tables, one with a pair. To the right are drying racks, computer stations, and wheeled tubs and carts for transporting specimens to the various departments on high.

Through a small glass window in each door, I could see that here, too, nothing was happening. No police photographers, no autopsy techs, no pathologists. Some of the bulletin boards were decked out like the labs upstairs.

’Tis the season, I thought glumly, wishing I were home with Katy and Birdie.

I went directly to salle d’autopsie number four-my salle , specially ventilated for decomps, floaters, mummified corpses, and other aromatics.

As does each of the others, autopsy room four has double doors leading to parallel morgue bays divided into refrigerated compartments. Small white cards mark the presence of temporary residents.

But I didn’t have to go there. The Oka victim lay on a gurney on the autopsy room side of the doors. Paperwork peeked from below the body bag.

A quick glance showed that the remains had been assigned LSJML and morgue numbers, and that Hubert had filled out a request for an anthropology consult.

I began by entering pertinent information into my anthropology case form. Numéro de morgue: 38107. Numéro de LSJML: 45736. Coroner: Jean-Claude Hubert. Enquêteur: Lieutenant-détective Andrew Ryan, Section des crimes contre la personne, Sûreté du Québec. Nom: Inconnu. Unknown.

Last, I wrote the date and a brief summary of facts.

Tossing my clipboard onto the counter, I located a camera and checked to be sure the battery was charged. Next I pulled a plastic apron from one drawer, gloves and a mask from another, and put them on. Costumed and ready, I rolled the gurney to one side of the stainless steel table floor-bolted in the center of the room.

As a precaution, I took shots of the body bag closed, then unzipped with contents revealed. The bra and panties were visible, folded and tucked into one corner.