Kathy Reichs: Bones to Ashes

The small island is only fifty kilometers long, and varies from five to thirteen kilometers in width, narrowing at its ends and thickening at its center. Its dominant feature is Mont Royal, an igneous intrusion rising a proud 231 meters above sea level. Les Montréalais call this tiny bump la montagne . The mountain.

For policing purposes, Montreal is parceled out according to those particulars of geology. On the island: SPVM. Off the island: SQ. Assuming there is no local PD. Though rivalries exist, in general ça marche . It works.

My eye fell on the name of the investigating SQ officer. Detective-Lieutenant Andrew Ryan.

My stomach did a wee flip.

But more of that later.

Pierre LaManche is a large man in a grandpa-was-a-lumberjack hunched-forward sort of way. Favoring crepe soles and empty pockets, the man moves so quietly he can appear in a room with no warning of approach.

“I apologize for disturbing you at home last evening.” LaManche was standing in my doorway, clipboard in one hand, pen in the other.

“No problem.” Rising, I circled my desk, gathered the lab coats, and hung them on a hook on the back of my door.

LaManche lowered himself into the chair. I waited for him to begin.

“You know maître Asselin, of course.”

In Quebec, coroners are either physicians or attorneys. Odd system, but ça marche . It works. Michelle Asselin was a lawyer, thus the title maître .

I nodded.

“ Maître Asselin has been a coroner for as long as I’ve been with this lab.” LaManche stroked his jaw, as though verifying he’d shaved that morning. “She is close to retirement.”

“The complicated case is hers?”

“Indirectly. Maître Asselin has a nephew who farms near Saint-Antoine-Abbé. Théodore Doucet. Théodore and his wife, Dorothée, have one child, a daughter. Geneviève is thirty-two, but has special needs and lives at home.”

LaManche seemed to study the placement of my wastebasket. I waited for him to go on.

“Dorothée was a regular churchgoer, but stopped attending. No one is certain of the exact date. Though the family was known to be reclusive, neighbors grew worried. Yesterday two parishioners visited the Doucet farm. They found Dorothée and Geneviève dead in an upstairs bedroom. Théodore was downstairs playing Silent Hunter on his computer.”

LaManche mistook my quizzical look. “It is a computer game. One does something with submarines.”

I knew that. I was surprised LaManche did.

“You went to the scene?” I asked.

LaManche nodded. “The house was a nightmare, rooms crammed with useless trash. Oatmeal cartons. Newspapers. Tin cans. Used tissues. Feces in ziplock baggies.”

“Théodore is being held for psychiatric evaluation?”

LaManche nodded. He looked tired. But, then, the old man usually looked tired.

“Both women were fully dressed, lying on their backs with bedding pulled to their chins. Their heads were tilted and touching, and their arms were entwined.”

“Posed.”

“Yes.”

I was wondering what this had to do with me. Unless dismembered, mutilated, or stripped of identifiers such as fingerprints or teeth, fresh corpses were rarely my domain.

“My feeling is that Dorothée has been dead for at least two weeks,” LaManche continued. “I will confirm that today. Geneviève is the problem. Her body was lying beside a heat vent.”

“With the fan blowing on her,” I guessed. I’d seen it before.

LaManche nodded. “PMI will be difficult.”

Mummified corpse. Uncertain postmortem interval. Yep. That would be me.

“Signs of trauma?” I asked.

“I saw nothing during my external examination of Dorothée. Geneviève’s body is far too dehydrated. I saw nothing on the X-rays of either mother or daughter.”

“Top priority?”

LaManche nodded. Then the hound-dog eyes locked onto mine. “I’m confident this can be handled discreetly and compassionately.”

Unlike the Doucet women, few who rolled through our doors had died in their beds. Ours were the murdered, the suicides, those whose lives were cut short by bad timing, bad judgment, or bad luck.

LaManche understood my commitment to the dead and to those left behind. He’d witnessed my interactions with families, and with journalists seeking footage for the five o’clock news.

LaManche knew the words he’d spoken did not need saying. The fact that he’d voiced them revealed an uncharacteristic level of emotion. The old man cared deeply for Michelle Asselin.

Administrative issues discussed, cases assigned, staff meeting wrapped up by nine. Returning to my office, I donned a lab coat and crossed to the anthropology lab. The bones found at the construction site covered two worktables.

One glance told me the case wouldn’t need detailed analysis. After eyeballing each element, I wrote a one-line report.

Les ossements ne sont pas humains. The bones are not human. Twenty minutes. Done.

Next, I instructed my lab technician, Denis, concerning cleaning of Santangelo’s incinerated cadaver. Burned bodies can be fragile, requiring careful disarticulation of the skeleton and removal of soft tissue by hand.

Then it was on to the morgue.

Clipboard. Calipers. Skeletal autopsy forms.

I had my hand on the doorknob when the phone rang. I almost ignored it. Should have, perhaps.

4

“DOC BRENNAN?” THE VOICE WAS BARBWIRE DRAGGED ACROSS corrugated tin. “C’est moé, Hippo.”

“Comment ça va?” As in the elevator, a formality. If queried sincerely, I knew the caller would respond in detail. Though I liked the guy, this wasn’t the time.

“Ben. J’vas parker mon char. Chu—”

“Hippo?” I cut him off.

Sergent-enquêteur Hippolyte Gallant was with L’unité “Cold cases” du Service des enquêtes sur les crimes contre la personne de la Sûreté du Québec. Big title. Easy translation. Provincial police. Crimes against persons. Cold case squad.

Though Hippo and I had worked a case or two since the unit’s creation in 2004, I’d never cracked his accent. It wasn’t the joual of Quebec’s Francophone working class. It was definitely not Parisian, Belgian, North African, or Swiss. Whatever its origin, Hippo’s French was a mystery to my American ear.

Fortunately, Hippo was fluently bilingual.

“Sorry, doc.” Hippo switched to English. Accented, and slang-heavy, but intelligible. “I’m downstairs parking my car. Got something to run by you.”

“LaManche just handed me an urgent case. I was heading to the morgue.”

“Ten minutes?”

Already my watch said 9:45.

“Come on up.” Resigned. Hippo would find me, anyway.

He appeared twenty minutes later. Through the observation window, I watched him work the corridor, pausing to exchange greetings with those pathologists still in their offices. He entered my lab carrying a Dunkin’ Donuts bag.

How to describe Hippo? With his extra poundage, plastic-framed glasses, and retro crew cut, he looked more like a code programmer than a cop.

Hippo crossed to my desk and parked the bag on it. I looked inside. Doughnuts.

To say Hippo wasn’t into healthy living would be like saying the Amish weren’t into Corvettes. A few members of his squad called him High Test Hippo. Ironic, since the man’s stomach was perpetually upset.

Hippo helped himself to a maple syrup frosted. I went with chocolate.

“Figured you mighta skipped breakfast.”

“Mm.” I’d eaten a bagel with cream cheese and a half pint of raspberries.

“That your urgent case?” Hippo chin-cocked the construction site lamb chops and poultry.