Kathy Reichs: Spider Bones

Yesiree. Ryan and I work just eight floors apart.

Though the morning staff meeting held no unpleasant surprise for the anthropologist, it had been an unusually busy Thursday. A workplace electrocution and a stabbing went to one pathologist. A suspicious crib death and a fire victim went to another. Pierre LaManche, director of the LSJML’s medico-legal section, assigned himself an apparent suicide involving a teenage boy.

LaManche also assumed responsibility for LSJML-49744, the case number assigned to John Lowery, but asked that I get the ball rolling. Since ID had been established via prints, once preliminaries were done, depending on body condition, either LaManche would perform a normal autopsy, or I would clean the bones and do a skeletal analysis.

By nine thirty I was downstairs in salle d’autopsie number 4, a unit specially outfitted for decomps, floaters, and other aromatics. I work there a lot.

Like its three counterparts, salle 4 has swinging doors leading to parallel morgue bays divided into refrigerated compartments. Small white cards mark the presence of temporary residents.

After locating the bay in which LSJML-49744 waited, I got the Nikon and checked its battery. Then I pulled the stainless steel handle.

The smell of putrefying flesh rode the whoosh of refrigerated air. Disengaging the foot brake, I pulled the gurney from its slot.

Pomerleau and Lauzon had dispensed with the usual body bag. Understandable, given Lowery’s exotic outerwear.

I was shooting wide views when a door clicked open and footsteps squeaked across tile.

Seconds later Lisa Savard appeared.

Honey blond, with a ready smile and Dolly Parton jugs, Lisa is the darling of every straight homicide cop in Quebec. She’s my favorite, too, for different reasons. The woman is the best autopsy tech in the province.

Wanting to improve her fluency, Lisa always speaks English to me.

“A strange one, yes?”

“Definitely.”

Lisa studied Lowery a moment.

“Looks like a Ken doll still in the package. Radiology?”

“Yes, please.”

While Lisa shot X-rays, I went through Lowery’s dossier. So far it held little. The police incident sheet. The morgue intake form. Bandau’s report of the NCIC hit. A fax showing an ancient fingerprint card.

I checked the source of the fax. NCIC.

Curious. If Lowery died in ’68, why was he in the system? Were prints that old typically entered?

On impulse, I called the fingerprint section of Service de l’identité judiciaire. A Sergeant Boniface told me to come on up. Grabbing the file, I climbed the back stairs to the first floor.

* * *

Forty minutes later I descended, knowing a dizzying amount about tented arches, ulnar loops, and accidental whorls. Bottom line: though Boniface was uncertain why Lowery was in the FBI database, he had no doubt the match was legit.

Lowery now lay on a floor-bolted table in the center of salle 4. Flies crawled his plastic shroud and buzzed the air above it. A police photographer shot overviews from a ladder.

LaManche and Lisa were examining X-rays popped onto wall-mounted light boxes. I joined them as they moved along the row.

On each film, the skeleton glowed white within the pale gray of the flesh. I noted nothing unusual in the skull or bones.

We were on the fifth plate when LaManche’s gnarled finger tapped an object lying by Lowery’s right foot. Radiopaque, the thing lay angled across the calcaneous.

“Un couteau,” Lisa said. A knife.

“Oui,” LaManche said.

I agreed.

The next prize appeared in a view of the thorax. Roughly eight centimeters long and two centimeters wide, the second object glowed as bright as the first.

“Mais oui.” LaManche nodded slowly, finally understanding. “Oui.” The nodding morphed to head shaking. “Sacrebleu.”

Great. The bizarre death now made sense to the chief. I still didn’t get it.

I considered the shape on Lowery’s chest. It wasn’t another knife. Nor was it a watch, a belt buckle, or a piece of fishing paraphernalia. I hadn’t a clue.

Crossing to the body, LaManche began dictating notes.

“Victim is enclosed in what appears to be a homemade bag constructed of a large plastic sheet doubled over and secured with duct tape. The bottom and all but the top ten centimeters of one side are sealed from the outside. The neck end and top ten centimeters of the side are sealed from the inside.

“The plastic has been freshly cut, exposing the right hand. Moderate insect activity is evident in the region of the cut.”

As LaManche droned on with details, the photographer snapped away, repositioning the case identifier with each shot.

“It appears the victim entered the bag, then secured the plastic using one arm extended through the ten-centimeter side opening, which was later sealed from the inside.”

LaManche gestured to Lisa to measure the ankle rope.

“The left foot is booted and attached to a rock by a twenty-centimeter length of polypropylene rope. It appears the victim secured the rope to the rock then to his ankle, which was left exterior to the plastic.”

As Lisa ran her measuring tape, LaManche dictated dimensions. “The outer plastic envelope is one meter in width by two and a half meters in length and conforms closely to the body.”

LaManche moved to the end of the table. Flies rose with a buzz of annoyance. Behind me, tiny bodies bounced off the light box.

“The head is wrapped separately. A breathing tube extends to the exterior, duct-taped to the bag.”

Breathing tube?

I looked at the slime-covered cylinder. Was the plastic arrangement some sort of jerry-rigged diving gear?

“The bag’s lower border is taped tightly around the neck.”

On and on. Lisa measured. LaManche recorded lengths, positions, opening dimensions. Finally, he palpated the cranial setup.

“The breathing tube is displaced laterally and posteriorly from the region of the mouth.”

I’m not sure why, maybe a vision of the tube popping from Lowery’s mouth. A tube through which he intended to draw air.

Suddenly it clicked. The body wrapping. The ankle rock. The knife, meant for escape, but fallen far out of reach.

I felt like a dunce. The chief had it figured way before I did.

But underwater? I vowed to check the literature.

At that moment my mobile sounded.

Ryan.

Stripping off my gloves, I moved to the anteroom and clicked on.

“What’s happening?”

“We’re unwrapping Lowery.”

“You sound pretty confident that’s who it is.”

I described my session with Boniface.

“Too early for cause of death?”

“I’m pretty sure LaManche is thinking autoerotic. The guy rigged himself up to get his rocks off.”

“In a pond?” Ryan sounded skeptical.

“Anything’s possible if you follow your dream.”

“Worth sliding down for a peek?”

“Autoerotics usually are.”

“In the meantime, I thought you’d want to know. The plate on the moped traced to one Morgan Shelby of Plattsburgh, New York. He and I just finished chatting.

“Shelby says he sold the scooter to a Hemmingford man named Jean Laurier. The transaction was, shall we say, informal.”

“Cash, no paperwork, the bike goes north costing Laurier no cross-border tax.”

“Bingo. According to Shelby, the purchaser promised to deal with registration and licensing in Quebec.”

“But didn’t.”

“The sale took place only ten days ago.”

“Jean Laurier. John Lowery.”

“Oui, madame.”

“What’s his story?”

“Bandau did some canvassing, found a few locals who knew the guy. One says Laurier’s lived around Hemmingford for as long as he can remember.”