Kathy Reichs - Deadly Descisions

"Now what?" I asked.

"Now let's get you a place to stay, have a nice dinner, and figure where to go from here."

Seemed like a plan.

I reserved a room at a Red Roof Inn on 1-40 and booked a morning flight. Then I tried Kit but got no answer Surprised, I left a message and the number for my cell phone. When I'd finished, Kate and I packed our respective bones and drove up Gamer Road to her office.

The structure housing the SBI stood in stark contrast to its ultramodern crime laboratory. While the latter is high-rise cement, all sterile and efficient, the headquarters building is only two stories, a genteel redbrick affair with cream-colored trim. Surrounded by manicured grounds and approached by an entrance lane of stately oaks, the complex blends better with the tiny antiques store it faces than with the megalith down the road.

We parked on the main avenue, retrieved our packages, and headed toward the building. To the right lay a circular hedge with border plantings of marigolds and pansies. Three poles rose from the garden's center, like the masts on a square rigger. I could hear the flap of fabric and the clink of metal as a uniformed officer lowered the last of the flags. He was backlit by a partial sun dropping below the roof of the Highway Patrol Training Center.

We passed through the glass door with its North Carolina Department of Justice, State Bureau of Investigation crest, cleared security, and climbed to the second floor. Once again we secured the bones, this time in a locked cabinet in Kate's small office.

"What would you like to eat?"

"Meat," I said without hesitating. "Red meat marbled with real fat."

"We had cheeseburgers for lunch."

"True. But I just read a theory about the evolution of Neanderthals into modern human beings. Seems the key to the transition was increased fat in the diet. Maybe a pair of big prime ribs will help our thought processes.

"I'm convinced."

The beef turned out to be a good idea. Or maybe it was just the break from blurry print on photocopied documents. By the time our cobbler arrived we'd focused on the central question.

The bones in Montreal were without a doubt Savannah's. For the bones found here the jury was still out. Did a sickly sixteenyear-old girl with bad eyesight and a timid personality travel fifteen hundred miles north of her home to another country and die there? Or did some, but not all, of the bones belonging to a dead girl get taken from the Carolinas to Montreal and buried there?

If death occurred in Montreal, the Myrtle Beach bones were not Savannah's.

Though Kate didn't buy this theory, shc did admit to its possibility

If the Myrtle Beach bones were Savannah's, part of the skeleton had been moved.

I'd studied the scene photos and found nothing disturbing. The decomposition appeared consistent with a period of nine months, and a postmortem interval that tallied with the date of Savannah's disappearance. Unlike the pit at the Vipers' clubhouse, this scene gave no indication of a secondary burial.

This assumption presented several possibilities.

Savannah died in Myrtle Beach.

Savannah died elsewhere, then her body was brought to Myrtle Beach.

Savannah's body was dismembered, parts either brought to or left in Myrtle Beach, then the skull and leg bones separated and transported to Canada.

But if the body had been deliberately separated, why were there no cut marks on any of the bones?

The key question remained: How did Savannah, either in whole or part, alive or dead, end up in Quebec?

"Do you think they'll reopen the case?" I asked as we waited for the bill.

"It's doubtful. Everyone was pretty well convinced Dwayne did it. The investigation had stalled long before his accident, but his death really capped it."

I handed the waiter my Visa card, ignoring Kate's protests.

"What now?"

"Here's my thinking," she said. "First of all, that was a sneak play on the check."

Yeah. Yeah. I urged her on with a hand gesture.

"Savannah's skull was found on biker property in Quebec."

She enumerated points by raising fingers.

"The Vipers are a puppet club for the Hells Angels, correct?"

I nodded.

"The Angels were gathering just down the highway from Savannah's hometown the week she disappeared."

A third finger joined the other two.

"Her skeleton turned up in Myrtle Beach State Park, a stone's throw from the party venue.

Her eyes met mine.

"Seems worth looking into."

"But you did that."

"We didn't have the Quebec link."

"What do you propose?"

"The early eighties were a wild ride for Carolina bikers. Let's pull out my gang files and see what we can see.

"They go back that far?"

"The gathering of historic information is one of my mandates. Predicate acts are often important in RICO investigations, especially old homicides."

She referred to the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act signed by Nixon in 1970. The statute was often used in the prosecution of organized crime.

"Also, gang members often shift between chapters and it's helpful to know who was at what location at what time when you're looking for witnesses. I have tons of information, including photos and videos."

"I've got all night," I said, spreading my hands.

"Let's go look at bikers."

And that's what we did until my cell phone rang at 5:23 MM. The call was from Montreal.

Les appartments Du Soleil were anything but aunny, contrary to their name. But naming the place after its actual attributes would have been bad marketing. The building was dark and cheerless, its windows clouded by grime and painted shut by decades of careless maintenance. The tiny balconies jutting from each of its three floors were wrapped in turquoise siding and packed with rusted grills and cheap lawn chairs, plastic garbage cans, and assorted types of athletic equipment. One or two had flowerpots, the contents brown and withered from seasons past.

But no one could fault the heating system. In the day I'd been gone in North Carolina spring had finally made it to Quebec, and I touched down to a report of sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. It was above that now, but the Soleil's radiators soldiered on, raising the temperature inside to well over eighty. The heat and the odor of putrefaction combined to make one queasy and inclined toward shallow breathing.

From where I stood I could see into each of the rooms that made up the squalid little flat. The kitchen lay to my left, the living room to my right, the bedroom and bath straight ahead. The place looked as if its occupant had been holding a garage sale, though the filth and stench would have discouraged even the most ardent bargain hunter.

Every elevated surface was heaped with tools, magazines, paperback books, bottles and broken appliances, and the floor was crammed with camping equipment, automobile and motorcycle parts, tires, cardboard boxes, hockey sticks, and plastic bags tied with metal twisters. A pyramid of beer cans rose almost to the ceiling at the far end of the living room, with torn and curling posters tacked to the wall on either side. The poster on the right advertised a Grateful Dead concert. July 17,1 983. Below it a White Power fist advocated Aryan purity.

On the top left a poster entitled Le Hot Rod showed a penis in Ray-Bans, a smoking cigarette tucked between it and its companion genitalia. The image below featured an upright phallus, the words A st re-Cock in bold letters across the top. The organ was circled by the symbols of the Zodiac, a message of wisdom under each. I took a pass on consulting my sign.

As far as I could see, the only furniture available for practical use consisted of a Formica table and single chair in the kitchen, a twin bed in thc bedroom, and an armchair in the living room. A body now occupied the armchair, its head a distorted red mass above a blackened torso and limbs. Embedded in the flesh I could see a shattered skull and facial bones, a partial nostril with mustache skirt, and one complete eye. The lower jaw hung slack but intact, showing a purpled tongue and rotten teeth stained brown.