KATHY REICHS - 206 BONES

My lids felt heavy .

I allowed them to drift down .

Briel took the spider tooth from Bergeron’s tub and placed it with the Lac Saint-Jean child .

Down came the rain and washed the spider out …

Like I’d soon be washed out .

In a sewer .

What do you explore?

Underground stuff .

Drainsplorers .

Joe .

Joe had access to the tub .

Not Briel .

I had a key .

Joe had a key .

I was so tired. I wanted to drag myself back uphill to the tomb. To hide .

Spine to the wall, I slid downward into the fetid water. Hugged my knees in an attempt to preserve heat .

A million miles away I heard splashing. Shouting .

No. Not distant .

Here .

Now .

Dragging my lids apart, I muscled myself forward and peeked into the intersecting sewer .

A two-headed monster-marionette stumbled and splashed in the pale circle of gray cast by the open manhole. Four legs struggled in the swirling black water, two glistening, two dark. Four arms flailed .

As I watched, the marionette-monster exploded down the middle. Two puppets emerged. Both were tall and lanky. One wore a tassled hat. The other had hair that was spiked on top .

Spike lurched left .

Tassle lunged after and grapple-hooked Spike around the throat .

Both puppets toppled backward but were not swept away. Their thrashing sent waves cascading outward into the darkness .

Angry shouting bounced down the tube. I could not catch words .

My vision was swimming .

I blinked. Still the images seemed disjointed, like frames of film disconnected by edits .

Spike staggered to his feet .

Tassle clung to Spike’s leg, was dragged .

Spike turned and kicked out with one foot .

Tassle’s head snapped back. He pinwheeled, then fell. Filthy brown water covered his face .

Spike slogged toward the ladder .

Tassle struggled to his feet, pistoned, caught Spike from behind and drove him face-first into the wall .

Spike’s hands flew up and his neck whiplashed .

Tassle body-slammed Spike a second time, harder .

Spike’s head again smashed brick .

Tassle stepped back .

Spike slid downward into the watery scum .

“ Here.” Barely a whisper. “I’m here. ”

With that, I crawled to a hidden corner of my mind. To the reassuring cadence of blood pulsing in my inner ear .

The sewer evaporated. The water. The cold. The rats .

Moments, or hours, later I saw a flashlight bob toward me .

Time passed. Or didn’t .

I became aware of a presence. Of my shoulders being raised. Deep rasping breaths. The smell of wet wool. Male sweat. Warmth .

I forced my eyes open .

A face floated inches from mine .

Slowly, the features shaped up .

“ Hold on, buttercup .”

STAGE TWO HYPOTHERMIA.

That was the diagnosis. When Ryan found me, my body temperature had dropped to 95 Fahrenheit.

For mammals, that’s not good.

I have only dim memories of my last moments in the sewer. By then I was feeling warm and sleepy, ready for cocoa and cookies and bed.

I remember being jostled. Something padded under my back, probably a stretcher. Gray sky. Flashing red lights.

Then nothing.

I woke in a hospital room. It was dark. Then light. Then dark again. Nurses adjusted tubes, changed drip bags, checked my hands and feet, shined lights into my eyes.

I’d suffered frostnip, not frostbite. The doctor had chuckled on explaining that. I’d been far less amused. But relieved that I’d keep all my digits.

I was also relieved that my treatment involved only heated blankets and hot drinks. No sloshing warm liquids through my bladder, stomach, and other hidden places. Lavage. He’d described that, too.

Hallelujah.

During lucid periods, I learned that cold hadn’t been my only aggressor. Joe Bonnet had also contributed his share of hurt. In the course of abducting, transporting, and dumping me, he’d concussed my brain, sprained one ankle, and converted one cheek to raw flank steak.

Yeah. Joe. The drainsplorer. I’d gotten that right.

I let my gaze travel the room. IV drip. Cardiac monitor. Water pitcher. Wall-mounted TV. Visitor chair, one of those convertible plastic types originally designed to crack secret agents. A paperback novel lay on the arm rest.

I checked the title. Playback . Raymond Chandler was Ryan’s favorite author.

I smiled. It hurt like hell.

I recalled talking to Ryan during one waking phase. Grilling him would be more accurate. I’d been abducted at 10 Tuesday night. It was now 10 a.m. Thursday. I did some calculation. Thirty-six hours had passed since I’d charged from my condo. Twenty-eight since Ryan had sprung me from the sewer. More math. I’d spent eight hours underground.

The flukey warm spell had been a mixed blessing. Milder temperatures had aided my survival. They’d also spurred melting, sending gallons of runoff into the sewers.

As if cued by telepathy, Ryan appeared, bearing a bouquet of pointy orange things that looked like they fed on small lizards.

Seeing me awake, Ryan hurried to the bed.

“Are those things dangerous?” My voice sounded hoarse and croaky. “Only if you threaten their young.” Ryan set the flowers on the bed, took my hand.

“Holding only. No caressing or massaging.” He stroked a thumb lightly across my knuckles.

I floated a brow. I think. My questioning brow is on the right. That side of my face was toast.

“Rubbing could dislodge ice crystals intent on bushwacking your heart.”

“I hate when that happens,” I said.

Ryan dragged a chair to the bed. Sat. Reclaimed my hand.

“OK, Galahad,” I said. “Dish.”

“Everything?”

“For now, just the highlights. My abductor was Joe Bonnet, right?”

Ryan nodded. “Long story short, your beloved assistant felt under-appreciated and overworked.”

I rolled my eyes. That hurt, too.

“Sensing disaffection, Briel schmoozed Joe up. Said he was a superstar. Offered a golden future with Body Find.”

“Joe stole Christelle Villejoin’s phalanges for her.”

“No, that was Briel’s handiwork. She overheard your conversation with the Villejoins’ doctor, figured the finger bones would be important because of the camptodactyly.”

I thought back to that day. “Briel pinched them while I was upstairs getting a Diet Coke.”

“She reasoned that since the phalanges would be ‘discovered’ during her follow-up dig, no harm no foul.”

“How did she know Hubert would send her to Oka?”

“If not, she planned to find the phalanges in the lab. Either way, you’d look bad.”

“Briel also swapped out the Lac Saint-Jean teeth?”

“Yep. Read Valentin Gouvrard’s antemorts, remembered Duclos mentioning a dental collection with brown baby teeth. Joe let her into the cabinet containing Bergeron’s tub, she found the stained deciduous molars, palmed and planted them with the remains. Who cares after all these years?”

“Decades-old bones, case going nowhere, what’s the difference, right?”

“Exactly her thinking.”

“That’s what tipped me in the sewer that my attacker was Joe. I realized Briel had to have gotten access through him. Only Bergeron, Joe, and I had keys. That and the long spider legs.”