Kathy Reichs - Bones Are Forever

Ryan read from the flyer. “‘Got it here? Want it there? We move fast.’ Pure poetry.”

Trees missed the sarcasm. “Yeah. Phil’s good with writing and shit.”

“Phil looks like a skunk.”

“Hey, he can’t help it. He was born that way.”

Ryan skimmed the work order, then handed both papers to me. Curious about his comment, I glanced at the flyer.

A happy driver I assumed to be Phil sat smiling and waving behind the wheel of a truck. His hair was black and combed straight back from his face. A white crescent streaked from his forehead toward the crown of his head.

Bédard rejoined us. Shook his head.

Ryan spread his feet and stared at Trees as though weighing options. Then, “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’ll go with Corporal Bédard. You’ll write down contact information for yourself and your brother-in-law and anyone else who can vouch for your sorry ass. You can write, can’t you, Rocky?”

“You’re the funny guy.”

“Downright hilarious when I’m searching a glove compartment.”

“OK. OK.” Two placating palms came up.

“You will record everything you remember about Alva Rodriguez. Right down to the last time she flushed the toilet. You got it?”

Trees nodded.

Ryan raised his brows at me.

“Does Alva have a dog or cat?” I asked.

“A dog.”

“What kind?”

“Just a dog.” The oaf looked confused by the question.

“Big? Small? Long-eared? Brown? White?”

“A little gray yappy thing. Shits all over the place.”

“What’s the dog’s name?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“If Alva left, would she take the dog with her?”

“Fuck if I know.”

Ryan shot me a quizzical look but said nothing. Then to Trees, “Go, Rocky. And dig real deep.”

While Trees followed Bédard to his unit, Ryan walked me to my car.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“The guy couldn’t find his own ass with GPS. Brain’s probably fried.”

“You think he’s using?”

Ryan pulled his “you’ve got to be kidding” face.

“I thought he sounded genuinely shocked at the mention of the babies.”

“Maybe,” Ryan said. “But I’m going to be on that prick like fleas on a hound.”

“Anything new on Roberts?”

“Demers doubts he got any useful prints. Those he lifted will take time to process. If Roberts isn’t in the system, that’s a dead end anyway. The landlord paid the utilities. There’s no phone. No computer. No paper trail of any kind. If Mama’s in the wind, it could take a while to find her.”

“And the baby can’t help us.”

Turned out I was dead wrong.

THE NEXT MORNING I SPENT TWENTY MINUTES SNAKING UP and down the narrow streets of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, a working-class neighborhood a bump east of centre-ville . I passed iron staircase–fronted two-flats, convenience stores, a school, a small park. But no curbside usable at eight A.M. on a Tuesday in June.

Don’t get me started. One needs a degree in civil engineering to understand when and where it is legal to park in Montreal, and the luck of a lotto winner to find footage that qualifies.

On my fifth pass down Parthenais, a Mini Cooper pulled out half a block up. I shot forward and, with much shifting and swearing, wedged my Mazda into the vacated space.

The clock on the dash said 8:39. Great. Morning meeting would begin in about six minutes.

After gathering my laptop and purse from the backseat, I got out and assessed my handiwork. Six inches in front, eight behind. Not bad.

Pleased with my achievement, I headed toward the thirteen-story glass-and-steel structure recently renamed Édifice Wilfrid-Derome in honor of Quebec’s famous pioneer criminalist. Famous by Quebec standards. In forensic circles.

Hurrying along the sidewalk, I could see the T-shaped black hulk looming over the quartier. Somehow, the brooding structure looked wrong against the cheery blue sky.

Old-timers still refer to Wilfrid-Derome as the QPP or SQ building. Quebec Provincial Police for Anglophones, Sûreté du Québec for Francophones. Makes sense. For decades the provincial force has laid claim to most of the square footage.

But the cops aren’t alone in the édifice. The Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale, Quebec’s combined medico-legal and crime lab, occupies the top two floors. The Bureau du coroner is on eleven. The morgue and autopsy suites are in the basement. Hail, the gang’s all here. Makes my job easier in many ways, harder in some. Ryan’s office is just eight floors below mine.

I swiped my security pass in the lobby, in the elevator, at the entrance to the twelfth floor, and at the glass doors separating the medico-legal wing from the rest of the T. At eight-forty-five the corridor was relatively quiet.

As I passed windows opening onto microbiology, histology, and pathology labs, I could see white-coated men and women working at microtomes, desks, and sinks. Several waved or mouthed greetings through the glass. I returned their bonjour and hustled to my office, not in the mood to chat. I hate being late.

I’d barely dumped my laptop and stowed my purse when my desk phone rang. LaManche was eager to begin the meeting.

When I entered the conference room, only the chief and one other pathologist, Jean Pelletier, were seated at the table. Both did that half-standing thing older men do when women enter a room.

LaManche asked about events following his departure from the apartment in Saint-Hyacinthe. As I briefed him, Pelletier listened in silence. He is a small, compact man with thin gray hair and bags under his eyes the size of catfish. Though subordinate to LaManche, Pelletier had been at the lab a full decade when the chief hired on.

“I will begin the baby’s autopsy as soon as we adjourn,” LaManche said to me in his perfect Sorbonne French. “If the other infants have been reduced to bone, as you suspect, those cases will be assigned to you.”

I nodded. I already knew they would be.

Hearing Pelletier sigh, I looked in his direction.

“So sad.” Pelletier drummed the tabletop with his fingers, the first two permanently yellowed from half a century of smoking Gauloises cigarettes. “So very, very sad.”

At that moment Marcel Morin and Emily Santangelo joined us. More pathologists. Bonjour and Comment ça va all around. After distributing copies of the day’s lineup, LaManche began discussing and assigning cases.

A thirty-nine-year-old woman had been found dead, tangled up in a plastic dry-cleaning bag in Longueuil. Alcohol intoxication was suspected.

A man’s body had washed ashore under the Pont des Îles on Île Sainte-Hélène.

A forty-three-year-old woman had been bludgeoned by her husband following an argument over the TV remote. The couple’s fourteen-year-old daughter had called the Dorval police.

An eighty-four-year-old farmer had been found dead of a gunshot wound in a home he shared with his eighty-two-year-old brother in Saint-Augustin.

“Where’s the brother?” Santangelo asked.

“Call me crazy, but I expect the SQ is pondering that very question.” Pelletier’s dentures clacked as he spoke.

The Saint-Hyacinthe infants had been assigned LSJML numbers 49276, 49277, and 49278.

“Detective Ryan is attempting to locate the mother?” LaManche said it more as statement than question.

“Yes,” I said. “But there’s little to go on, so it could take time.”

“Monsieur Ryan is a man of many talents.” Though Pelletier’s expression was deadpan, I wasn’t fooled. The old codger knew that Ryan and I had been an item, and loved to tease. I didn’t take his bait.