Kathy Reichs: Bones Are Forever

“Good girl,” Caron said softly.

Muzzle sweeping from side to side, Pepper crept across the room. At the open closet door, her snout went up and her nostrils worked the air.

Five seconds of testing, then Pepper sat, craned her head toward us, and whined.

“Good girl,” Caron said. “Down.”

Eyes glued to her handler, the dog dropped to her belly.

“Shit,” Caron said.

“What?”

Caron and I turned. Neither of us had heard Ryan step up behind us.

“She’s hit on something,” Caron said.

“How often is she right?”

“Often.”

“She alert anywhere else?”

Caron and I shook our heads.

“She ever miss?”

“Not so far.” Caron’s tone was grim. “I’ll spin her around in here once more, then take her outside.”

“Please ask the transport driver to wait,” I said. “And tell Pomier. He’s accompanying the remains to the morgue.”

“You’ve got it.”

As Caron led Pepper out, Ryan and I crossed to the closet.

The enclosure was no more than three feet by five. I pulled a chain to light the bare bulb overhead.

An iron rod held hangers, the solid kind that must have been decades old. They’d been bunched to one side, I assumed by Demers.

A wooden shelf ran the length of the closet above the rod. A collection of magazines had been transferred to the bedroom floor. Like the shelf, the door, the rod, and the knob, they were coated with Demers’s fingerprint powder.

Ryan and I spotted the vent simultaneously. It was on the ceiling, roughly centered in the closet. As our eyes met, Gioretti appeared in the doorway.

“You photograph in here?” I asked.

Gioretti nodded.

“We’re going to need a ladder and the snakehead camera.”

While we waited, Ryan filled me in on the landlord. “Stephan Paxton.” He switched to English. “The guy’ll never be addressing a Harvard graduation.”

“Meaning?”

“He’s got the brainpower of a moth. Beats me how he owns three buildings.” Ryan shook his head. “The tenant here is Alma Rogers. Paxton says she pays cash, usually three or four months in advance. Has for at least three years.”

“Rogers used an alias at the hospital?”

“Or here. But it’s the same gal. Paxton’s physical description matches that of the ER doc.”

“Yet she gave her actual address.”

“Apparently.”

I found that odd but let it go. “Is there a lease?”

“Rogers moved in with a guy named Smith. Paxton thinks maybe Smith signed something at the outset, but he’s not so good at keeping records. Says the cash in advance was lease enough for him.”

“Does Rogers work?”

“Paxton hadn’t a clue.”

“Smith?”

Ryan shrugged.

“What about the neighbors?”

“Bédard’s still making the rounds.”

At that moment the equipment arrived. As Demers positioned the ladder, Gioretti connected an apparatus that looked like a plumber’s snake to a portable DVR unit. He pushed a button, and the monitor beeped to life.

While Ryan held the ladder, Demers climbed the rungs and tested the grate with one finger. It wiggled, and plaster dust cascaded down.

Demers pulled a screwdriver from his belt. A couple of twists, and the screws came loose. More plaster dropped as he removed and handed down the grate. He drew a mask up over his mouth, then reached a hand into the dark rectangle in the ceiling. Palm flat, he gingerly explored. “There’s a beam.”

I held my breath as his arm went this way and that.

“Insulation.” Finally, Demers shook his head. “I’ll need the camera.”

Gioretti handed up the snakelike tool. The tip held a fiber-optic image sensor with a lens under four millimeters across. The tiny camera would take pictures inside the wall and allow us to view images in real time.

Demers thumbed a switch, and a bright beam shot into the darkness. After adjusting its curvature, he inserted the snake into the recess. A blurry gray image appeared on the monitor down below.

“We’re reading you.” Gioretti turned a dial, and the gray blur crystallized into a wooden beam. Below the beam was what looked like old-fashioned vermiculite insulation.

“Must be a ceiling joist,” Ryan said.

We watched the camera inch right along the joist, on-screen.

“Try the other way,” Ryan said. “You should hit a wall stud and a rafter.”

Demers reversed direction.

Ryan was right. Two and a half feet beyond the vent’s left end, beams joined the joist from below and above.

Tucked in the upper V was another towel-wrapped bundle.

“Sonofabitch,” Gioretti said.

* * *

Ninety minutes later, the closet ceiling was gone, and the third baby lay zipped inside its thirty-six-by-ninety-inch pouch.

Fortunately, the small attic produced no other infants.

Pepper had not alerted outside the building.

The three body bags lay side by side in the hearse, each with a pitifully small bulge in the middle.

Up the block, the journalists were practically wetting themselves. They maintained their distance. I wondered what Ryan had threatened to keep them in check.

I stood at the hearse’s back bumper. I’d removed my jumpsuit, and the sun felt warm on my shoulders and head.

Though it was past two and I’d eaten nothing since dawn, I had no appetite. I kept staring at the bags, wondering about the woman who had done this thing. Did she feel remorse over murdering her newborns? Or did she proceed with her life, not reflecting at all on the enormity of her crimes?

Images kept intruding from my past. Unbidden. Unwanted.

My baby brother, Kevin, dead of leukemia at age three. I wasn’t allowed to see Kevin’s body. To my eight-year-old mind, his death had somehow seemed unreal. One day he was with us, then he wasn’t.

In my child’s way, I’d understood that Kevin was sick, that his life would end too soon. Still, when it happened, I was left bewildered. I’d needed to say good-bye.

Up the street, Ryan was talking to Bédard. Again.

Earlier the corporal had reported that so far, the canvas had turned up only one person who recalled ever seeing Alma Rogers. The aged widow Robertina Hurteau lived in the building opposite and kept watch on the block through her living room blinds.

The old woman described her across-the-way neighbor as ordinaire . She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Rogers enter or leave the apartment. She’d occasionally seen her with a man but never a baby. The man was barbu .

What about a dog? I wondered. Or was it a cat? Had anyone asked? The missing pet bothered me. Where was it? Had Roberts/Rogers taken it with her? Had she abandoned or killed it as she had her own offspring?

Three dead babies and I was worried about a missing pet. Go figure.

You’re out there somewhere , I thought. Amy Roberts, Alma Rogers. Traveling unnoticed. In a car? On a bus or train? Alone? With the father of your poor dead children? One of them? How many fathers were there?

I hoped Ryan was getting new information.

Demers and Gioretti were packing their gear. As I watched idly, a green Kia pulled to the curb behind their truck. The driver’s door swung open, and a man hauled himself out. He wore jeans and a tank that revealed way too much flesh. His hair was lank, his face flushed and splotchy above an unkept beard.

Arm-draping the car door, the man scanned the vehicles lining the street. Then he turned and slid back behind the wheel.

My weary brain coughed up a translation.

Barbu .

Bearded.

I turned to call out.

Ryan was already sprinting up the sidewalk.