KATHY REICHS - 206 BONES

“Why did Lac Saint-Jean ring a bell for you?”

“Gouvrard’s sister was married to a guy on the job, Quentin Jacquème. For years Jacquème floated a query on the anniversary of the crash. If anything turned up, he wanted to know about it.”

“Got to admire such doggedness.”

“Doggedness. Good word. The reminders stopped shortly after I came aboard, when Jacquème retired. Being former SQ, he was easy to locate.”

“Thus the continued existence and quick access to a forty-year-old file.”

“Thus.”

“Sad about Keiser,” I said.

“Yes,” Ryan said. “But expected.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

When Ryan left I finished my analysis. Though each skeleton was fragmentary and most bones were weathered and damaged, there was sufficient data to determine that the family profile fit.

No one showed any obvious health or dental issues.

But what about Daddy’s cheekbones and shoveled tooth? Probably normal variation.

Nevertheless, I’d have Ryan ask Jacquème about his brother-in-law’s ancestry.

At four twenty I phoned Hubert to report Ryan’s find.

“Nineteen sixty-seven.” I heard leather strain as Hubert shifted in his chair. “So Dr. Briel’s involvement becomes irrelevant. By the way, how did she do?”

“C minus.”

Hubert made one of his indecipherable sounds.

“I can’t sign off on IDs based on what I have,” I said. “Antemorts are on the way, but I’m not optimistic. I’ve got very few teeth. None for the younger child.”

“DNA?”

“Maybe mitochondrial, but that’s iffy. Bone quality is very poor. What are the chances of locating maternal relatives?”

“ Tabarnac . How many families could one lake hold?”

I remembered Hubert’s words at Christelle Villejoin’s grave. How many grannies go missing around here? I said nothing.

“Besides, the crash is ancient history.”

“Ancient history can snap back in bad ways. If it’s the Gouvrard family, legal issues might remain. Inheritance. Insurance. Liability.”

“Madame Keiser is downstairs.” Topic switch. Hubert’s standard operating procedure when uncomfortable. “Ayers volunteered to do the autopsy first thing tomorrow.”

I waited.

“Perhaps Keiser became disoriented and set herself on fire.”

“There’s no history of dementia.”

“Shit happens.”

I spent another two hours with the Lac Saint-Jean bones, listing details that might be useful once antemortem records arrived. I suspected Hubert was right. Mom, Dad, and two kids? What were the chances? Still.

Pelvic features told me the male and female were somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and fifty.

Gender determination is sketchy at best with preadolescent skeletons. I had only fragments of one, none of the other juvenile pelvis, so, in this case, the issue was a nonstarter.

The jaw and most of the head were missing from the older child, but arm and leg bone development suggested an age of ten to twelve years.

The younger child was represented by two vertebrae, three partial long bones, a calcaneous, and a handful of cranial fragments. Epiphyseal maturity in the proximal femur suggested an age of six to eight years. I also had three isolated molars, two deciduous and one adult. Wear facets suggested that all three molars had been fully erupted. Root closure suggested an age of six to eight years.

Why so little skull for the kids? Nothing sinister. The individual bones comprising young vaults are either separate or only partially fused. When the soft tissue sloughs, these bones often disconnect at the sutures, the squiggly lines along which they join hands.

All four individuals had cranial and thoracic fractures. The male had some lower-limb trauma. The smoothing of every broken edge made perimortem versus postmortem determination impossible.

La famille Gouvrard?

I reviewed my notes.

Adult genders: Consistent.

Adult and juvenile ages: Consistent.

Skeletal trauma: Consistent with an aviation accident. The male’s lower leg injuries were as I’d expect for a person manning the controls.

Consistent.

Not enough. The male’s cheekbones and shoveled incisor still troubled me.

I surveyed the empty lab. The silent printer. The winking message light on Joe’s phone. The screen saver looping endlessly on his computer.

Usually Joe says au revoir when clocking out. Today he’d left without a word. Clearly, I’d need to lay in more cookies. But why the snit? Because I’d chewed out Briel? Try as I might, I could think of nothing major I’d done to deserve the current cold freeze.

Dejected, I let my eyes drift to the window. Twelve stories down, traffic flowed as streams of tiny red dots. Reflected in the glass was a slender woman, blurred features impossible to read. The tense shoulders suggested frustration.

Time to go.

After securing my calipers in a drawer and locking the lab door, I crossed to my office.

With the LSJML’s new phone system, calls go directly to individual extensions. Unanswered ones roll straight to voice mail. Occasionally, contact to the main line is reported on paper.

I was zipping my parka when I noticed an old-fashioned pink slip amid the clutter on my desk.

I picked up and scanned the message.

Yes!

I snatched up the receiver.

CALLER HAS CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.

Perry Schechter’s name was accompanied by a ten-digit sequence starting with 312.

Chicago.

Had Jurmain’s lawyer discovered the identity of the bastard who set me up?

I dialed.

Four rings, then a way too smooth voice asked that I leave my name, number, and reason for phoning.

I did as directed, then slammed the receiver.

Could anything else go wrong today?

I checked the handwritten date and time. Schechter had contacted the lab at nine fifteen that morning.

The clock said six forty.

I decided to split and call again from home.

Sure. That’ll work.

It didn’t.

I tried once upon arrival, twice after sharing take-out pad thai with Birdie.

Vecamamma rang as I was collecting the dinner debris. She was considering cataract surgery, wanted my opinion. I told her to go for it.

I asked about Cukura Kundze. Vecamamma said that Laszlo’s remains had been released by the coroner, and that his parents had organized a memorial service and interment. She’d attended, of course. Though sad, both Cukura Kundze and Mr. Tot appeared relieved that the boy was finally square with the Lord, at least from a funerary perspective. She described the coffin, the flowers, the music, the supper, Cukura Kundze’s inappropriately magenta dress, and, of course, the minister’s homily.

Familiar with policy concerning retention of samples in open homicide cases, I wondered how much of Lassie had actually gone into the ground. Didn’t say it.

I asked about the investigation. Vecamamma knew nothing.

After disconnecting, I speculated for the hundredth time on what had happened to Lassie. Why had the kid been murdered? Where? By whom? I hoped his case wouldn’t end up like thousands of others, in a forgotten box on the shelf of a police property room.

At eleven I went to bed.

The cat joined me sometime in the night.

I slept until eight the next morning. Driving to the lab, I had a session with myself. Hostility bad. Serenity good. Smell the roses. Better for health, longevity. Blah. Blah. Blah.

First thing, I called Schechter.

The same recorded voice smarmed the same directive. After dictating a second message, I recradled the receiver. Gently.

Staff meeting was the arctic affair it had been on Monday. No smiles. No jokes. No one wanting to be there.