Kathy Reichs: Bones Are Forever

For my very, very old friend Bob “Airborne” Abel

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Gilles Ethier, Chief Deputy coroner of Quebec, for information pertaining to laws covering the disposal of deceased infants in the province. Dr. Robert Dorion, Dr. Michael Baden, and Dr. Bill Rodriguez helped with aspects of forensic science outside my specialty.

At the RCMP, Sgt. Valerie Lehaie and Cpl. Leander Turner shared information concerning Project KARE and the Alberta Missing Persons and Unidentified Human Remains project. John Yee provided valuable contacts. Judy Jasper answered a myriad of questions.

At the Giant Mine Remediation Project, Tara Kramers, Environmental Scientist, and Ben Nordahn, Mine Systems Officer, led me deep underground on a kick-ass tour of the Giant Gold Mine. Tara responded to my many follow-up queries.

Cathie Bolstad of De Beers Canada replied to my inquiry about exploration and staking. Gladys King took my call at the Mining Records Office in Yellowknife.

Mike Warns and Ronnie Harrison helped with scores of picky little details.

Kevin Hanson and Amy Cormier of Simon and Schuster Canada made my trip to Yellowknife possible. Judith and Ian Drinnan, Annaliese Poole, Larry Adamson, Jamie Bastedo, and Colin Henderson were warm and generous hosts at the NorthWords Literary Festival.

I appreciate the continued support of Chancellor Philip L. Dubois of the University of North Carolina–Charlotte.

Heartfelt thanks to my agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, and to my editors, Nan Graham and Susan Sandon. I also want to acknowledge all those who work so very hard on my behalf, including Lauren Lavelle, Paul Whitlatch, Rex Bonomelli, Daniel Burgess, Simon Littlewood, Tim Vanderpump, Emma Finnigan, Rob Waddington, Glenn O’Neill, Kathleen Nishimoto, Caitlin Moore, Tracy Fisher, Michelle Feehan, Cathryn Summerhayes, Raffaella De Angelis, and the whole Canadian crew.

I am grateful to my family for putting up with my moods and absences. Paul Reichs read and commented on the manuscript when he really wanted to get on with retirement.

Fire into Ice: Charles Fipke and the Great Diamond Hunt , Vernon Frolick, 2002, Raincoast Books, and Treasure Under the Tundra : Canada’s Arctic Diamonds , L. D. Cross, 2011, Heritage House, were useful resources.

Most of all, big thanks go out to my readers. I appreciate you reading about Tempe, coming to my talks and signings, visiting my website (KathyReichs.com), liking me on Facebook, and following me on Twitter (@kathyreichs). Love you, guys!

If I forgot someone, I am really, really sorry. If I made mistakes, they are my fault.

THE BABY’S EYES STARTLED ME. SO ROUND AND WHITE AND pulsing with movement.

Like the tiny mouth and nasal openings.

Ignoring the maggot masses, I inserted gloved fingers beneath the small torso and gently lifted one shoulder. The baby rose, chin and limbs tucked tight to its chest.

Flies scattered in a whine of protest.

My mind took in details. Delicate eyebrows, almost invisible on a face barely recognizable as human. Bloated belly. Translucent skin peeling from perfect little fingers. Green-brown liquid pooled below the head and buttocks.

The baby was inside a bathroom vanity, wedged between the vanity’s back wall and a rusty drainpipe looping down from above. It lay in a fetal curl, head twisted, chin jutting skyward.

It was a girl. Shiny green missiles ricocheted from her body and everything around it.

For a moment I could only stare.

The wiggly-white eyes stared back, as though puzzled by their owner’s hopeless predicament.

My thoughts roamed to the baby’s last moments. Had she died in the darkness of the womb, victim of some heartless double-helix twist? Struggling for life, pressed to her mother’s sobbing chest? Or cold and alone, deliberately abandoned and unable to make herself heard?

How long does it take for a newborn to give up life?

A torrent of images rushed my brain. Gasping mouth. Flailing limbs. Trembling hands.

Anger and sorrow knotted my gut.

Focus, Brennan!

Easing the miniature corpse back into place, I drew a deep breath. My knee popped as I straightened and yanked a spiral from my pack.

Facts. Focus on facts .

The vanity top held a bar of soap, a grimy plastic cup, a badly chipped ceramic toothbrush holder, and a dead roach. The medicine cabinet yielded an aspirin bottle containing two pills, cotton swabs, nasal spray, decongestant tablets, razor blades, and a package of corn-remover adhesive pads. Not a single prescription medication.

Warm air moving through the open window fluttered the toilet paper hanging beside the commode. My eyes shifted that way. A box of tissue sat on the tank. A slimy brown oval rimmed the bowl.

I swept my gaze left.

Lank fabric draped the peeling window frame, a floral print long gone gray. The view through the dirt-crusted screen consisted of a Petro-Canada station and the backside of a dépanneur.

Since I entered the apartment, my mind had been offering up the word “yellow.” The mud-spattered stucco on the building’s exterior? The dreary mustard paint on the inside stairwell? The dingy maize carpet?

Whatever. The old gray cells kept harping. Yellow .

I fanned my face with my notebook. Already my hair was damp.

It was nine A.M., Monday, June 4. I’d been awakened at seven by a call from Pierre LaManche, chief of the medico-legal section at the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale in Montreal. LaManche had been roused by Jean-Claude Hubert, chief coroner of the province of Quebec. Hubert’s wake-up had come from an SQ cop named Louis Bédard.

According to LaManche, Caporal Bédard had reported the following:

At approximately two-forty A.M. Sunday, June 3, a twenty-seven-year-old female named Amy Roberts presented at the Hôpital Honoré-Mercier in Saint-Hyacinthe complaining of excessive vaginal bleeding. The ER attending, Dr. Arash Kutchemeshgi, noted that Roberts seemed disoriented. Observing the presence of placental remnants and enlargement of the uterus, he suspected she had recently given birth. When asked about pregnancy, labor, or an infant, Roberts was evasive. She carried no ID. Kutchemeshgi resolved to phone the local Sûreté du Québec post.

At approximately three-twenty A.M., a five-car pileup on Autoroute 20 sent seven ambulances to the Hôpital Honoré-Mercier ER department. By the time the blood cleared, Kutchemeshgi was too exhausted to remember the patient who might have delivered a baby. In any case, by then the patient was gone.

At approximately two-fifteen P.M., refreshed by four hours of sleep, Kutchemeshgi remembered Amy Roberts and phoned the SQ.

At approximately five-ten P.M., Caporal Bédard visited the address Kutchemeshgi had obtained from Roberts’s intake form. Getting no response to his knock, he left.

At approximately six-twenty P.M., Kutchemeshgi discussed Amy Roberts with ER nurse Rose Buchannan, who, like the doctor, was working a twenty-four-hour shift and had been present when Roberts arrived. Buchannan recalled that Roberts simply vanished without notifying staff; she also thought she remembered Roberts from a previous visit.

At approximately eight P.M., Kutchemeshgi did a records search and learned that Amy Roberts had come to the Hôpital Honoré-Mercier ER eleven months earlier complaining of vaginal bleeding. The examining physician had noted in her chart the possibility of a recent delivery but wrote nothing further.