KATHY REICHS - 206 BONES

Anyway, by four I’d had it.

With Ryan’s promise to keep me looped in, I headed home.

That night I dreamed again of moths and skeletons and incinerated corpses. Ryan was there, Ayers, Chris Corcoran. Others, too murky to name.

I awoke at eight, again sensing a missed shoulder-tap from my subconscious.

What? The Jurmain, Villejoin, and Keiser cases were closed. The Lac Saint-Jean bones would soon be identified. Nothing remained but Edward Allen’s accuser. Was that the cause of the psst! from my id?

While feeding the cat, I realized I’d failed to tell Ryan about my discovery of the Sainte-Monique boating accident. No biggie. He’d call shortly with an update on Adamski.

“Big day today, Bird.”

Birdie kept crunching his little brown pellets.

“First, I’m going to resolve the Lac Saint-Jean case. Then I’m going to nail the rat bastard who smeared my name.”

Bird shot me the cat equivalent of a reproachful glance. At my use of language? The rodent reference?

I left him to breakfast alone.

At Wilfrid-Derome, a small tan envelope lay on my lab desk. Finally, Joe had taken postmortem X-rays of all the teeth recovered with the Lac Saint-Jean remains.

Sliding the little black films onto a light box, I examined each tooth.

The spot of dullness on the second upper baby molar glowed white and radiopaque. A restoration. Interesting, but of little value without antemortem dental records.

Next, I reexamined each of the Lac Saint-Jean skeletons. Then I called Labrousse, the gynecologist-coroner in Chicoutimi.

After describing my library microfilm find, I asked Labrousse to see what he could dig up locally on the drowning victims. He agreed to look for surviving family members, medical, and dental records. He also offered to check the coroner archives, but doubted anything would remain from 1958.

Agreeing that retention of fifty-year-old files was unlikely, I asked Labrousse to query three things. Was Richard Blackwater First Nations? Was Claire Clemenceau given antibiotics as an infant? Did she have any fillings?

Labrousse said he’d get back to me.

Next, I called the chief coroner.

To describe Hubert’s reaction as skeptical would be akin to calling Bull Run a minor skirmish. Or maybe he hated to admit that my skepticism was justified. Whatever.

His parting remarks: Valentin Gouvrard took tetracycline at age seven months. The kid from the lake had defective baby molars. Quelle coincidence!

Coincidence is right, I thought, hand lingering on the cradled receiver. A coincidence the size of Yankee Stadium.

Sometimes you just know. Call it intuition. Call it deductive reasoning based on experience and subconscious pattern recognition.

I was certain in my gut that the people from Lac Saint-Jean were the Sainte-Monique picnickers. I simply had to prove it.

I searched my brain. Was there anything to indicate the gender of the juvenile skeletons? Given the condition of the bone, measurement was impossible.

I came up blank.

I was gnawing on the problem when Ryan called. He sounded as tired as I felt. That didn’t surprise me. His update did.

“Adamski’s copping to Keiser and the Villejoins, coughing up detail like he’s writing a novel. But he’s adamant about having nothing to do with Jurmain.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Why own three murders and lie about the fourth?”

“You did suggest a little American custom called capital punishment.”

“Adamski lawyered up. He now knows extradition’s not on the table.”

“Is that little trick going to come back to haunt you?”

“No one told Adamski he’d go to the States. It’s not our fault if the moron misinterpreted reference to Jurmain’s citizenship. We were just placing her death in context.”

I thought a moment. Rose Jurmain’s bones had no signs of violence.

“Maybe being at the auberge was nothing more than bad luck for Adamski,” I said.

“Meaning the initial finding was correct. Jurmain wandered off drunk and froze to death.”

“There was no trauma to her skeleton.”

“Except for the bears.”

“Except for that. And her body wasn’t buried or hidden in any way.”

“Speaking of trauma, here’s another kicker. Adamski swears he gut-punched Keiser to death.”

“Why lie about shooting her?”

“Beats me. But the story skews right with his history.”

“But I saw the bullet track. Ayers showed me photos.”

“Maybe Adamski has self-image issues. You know, guns are for sissies, that sort of thing. Or maybe the gun belongs to someone he’s trying to protect. We’re still working him. It’s harder now that he’s hired a mouthpiece.”

I told Ryan about the ’58 boating accident on Lac Saint-Jean.

“Did you ask Jacquème about his brother-in-law’s ancestry?”

“Yes, ma’am. Achille Gouvrard was pure laine .”

Pure laine . Pure wool. Translation: old-line white Québécois.

“And Jacquème remembered something else. Gouvrard fought at the battle of Scheldt in ’forty-four. Came home with shrapnel in his right thigh. Complained of bone pain when temperatures dropped.”

After disconnecting, I got up and popped an X-ray onto the light box. There wasn’t a trace of metal in the male’s right femur.

I studied his broad cheekbones and shoveled incisor.

More than ever I was convinced the man was not Achille Gouvrard.

My eyes shifted to the younger child’s discolored molars.

Again, shame burned my chest.

Briel spotted the tetracycline staining. I did not.

I looked away, out the window. At the scene I’d found calming for so many years. The river. The bridge. The drivers and pedestrians pursuing their everyday lives.

A moth lay on the sill, legs crimped, wings museum-mummy dry. Dead since this summer?

The little corpse triggered recall of my nighttime visitations. The moths. The skeletons. The burned corpses.

Something sat up deep in my brainpan.

I looked back at the bones.

Briel found the staining.

The something rippled the surface of my subconscious.

Briel found the bullet track.

The bullet track.

The something broke through into conscious thought.

GRABBING THE RECEIVER, I PUNCHED THE NUMBER FOR THE COOK County Medical Examiner. When my call was answered, I asked for Chris Corcoran.

Chris’s extension rang three times, then rolled to voice mail.

I left a message. Call as soon as you can. It’s important.

I looked at the wall clock. Nine thirty. He was probably carving out someone’s liver.

The bullet track. Natalie Ayers, a veteran pathologist, missed it. Marie-Andréa Briel, a rookie, found it. That was the flag my subconscious was waving.

The case was a stunner for Chris Corcoran. He described it in detail when I was in Chicago. The woman dead on her living room floor. The autopsy revealing no sign of trauma. The grandson admitting to capping his grandma. The reautopsy. Chris found the injury so unique he wrote it up for publication.

OK.

I hurried to the library.

Where to start? Chris was working the case when Laszlo Tot’s body turned up in the quarry. That was July of 2005.

It takes time to write a scientific article, to revise, to await your place in the publication queue. Pulling the November 2007 Journal of Forensic Sciences , I checked the author index.

Nothing. I checked 2006, 2005, 2008. Nothing.

So much for that.

Back to the lab.

While awaiting word from Chris about his bullet track case, and from Labrouse about the Sainte-Monique drowning vics, I decided to do some Internet research.