Kathy Reichs - Monday Mourning

“So Parent’s last meal must have been dinner.”

“The soup would have been evacuated from the stomach after three hours, the Ambien after two,” LaManche said. “The sleeping aid would have been dissolved in the tea.”

“According to the niece, Parent usually ate around seven. Assuming she did so on Friday, that brings us up to ten P.M.,” Ryan calculated. “Assuming she took the Ambien at bedtime, that brings us up to eleven or midnight. So death must have occurred in the early hours of Saturday morning.”

“That is consistent with the state of decomposition,” LaManche said.

“My offer’s still on the table,” Ryan said, when LaManche had gone.

“When did you learn about the phone calls?” I asked.

“Today. It’s one of the things I was going to tell you. Hurley’s?”

I looked at Ryan a long, long time, then wrenched my lips into a smile.

“With one condition.”

Ryan spread his palms.

“The check’s mine.”

“Hee-haw!” Ryan said.

Hurley’s Irish Pub is on rue Crescent just below rue Ste-Catherine. Driving there, I debated my choices: Park at home and risk hypothermia walking. Die of old age searching for a place to leave the car.

I opted for parking over thermal equilibrium. Scurrying along Ste-Catherine, I questioned the wisdom of that decision.

Ryan was seated in the snug when I arrived, a half-drunk pint on the table in front of him. I ordered lamb stew and a Perrier with lemon. He ordered chicken St-Ambroise.

While awaiting our food, Ryan and I circled each other warily. We both tried jokes. Most fell flat.

Around us swirled the usual Saturday night throng of drinkers. Some looked happy. Others desperate. Others merely blank. I couldn’t imagine their myriad problems and relationships.

Beside us, a young couple sat pressed together closer than socks from a dryer. He wore red felt reindeer antlers. She wore a Christmas sweater.

As I stared, reindeer antlers nuzzled Christmas sweater’s neck. She laughed.

They looked so happy, so comfortable with each other.

Christmas sweater’s eyes met mine. I looked away quickly, to a sign above Ryan’s head.

Bienvenue. Welcome. Fáilte. Someone had draped a pine garland across the top edge.

A girl wormed past our table, moving with the exaggerated care one uses to mask inebriation. She had pale skin and a long black braid.

I thought of Anique Pomerleau. Where had she been for almost fifteen years? Why was she now with the man who was using Menard’s name?

The waitress brought our dinners. Ryan ordered another pint. I ordered another Perrier.

As we ate, the conversation turned to work. Safe ground.

“Claudel’s gone to Vermont.”

My brows shot up. “To research the real Menard?”

Ryan nodded.

“Whose idea?”

“Claudel is a good cop.”

“Who thinks I’m a moron.”

“I don’t hang with morons.”

You don’t hang with me. I didn’t say it.

“Do you suppose this Menard impostor killed Louise Parent?” I asked.

“It’s a possibility.”

“Pretty good possibility, don’t you think? Parent calls me about Menard. Within days, some guy tunes her up with a pillow.”

Ryan didn’t comment.

“But how could this Menard impostor have known that Parent called me?”

“How could anyone have known?”

I had no answer for that.

“Have you talked to the neighbor with the SUV?”

“He’s clean.”

“I keep thinking about Parent’s final night. Her last feelings and thoughts. Do you suppose she knew?”

“There were no signs of a struggle. She was lubed on Ambien.”

“Some cold-blooded psycho found a way into that house in the middle of the night and smothered Parent with her sister’s pillow. Do you suppose she sensed pressure against her face? Smelled the fabric softener? Tasted the feathers? Felt terror at some level?”

“Don’t do this to yourself, Tempe.”

“I just keep wondering about her last sensations.”

To keep myself from imagining those of three dead girls. I didn’t say that either.

“There’s something I haven’t told you yet.”

I waited for Ryan to continue.

“Louise Parent left an estate worth almost a half million dollars. She was insured for another quarter million.”

“The beneficiary?” I asked.

“Her sister. Rose Fisher.”

Ryan dropped me off around nine-thirty. He didn’t ask to come in. I didn’t invite him.

The answering machine was dark and still.

Where the hell was Anne?

Shower. Teeth. Face.

Into bed. Birdie hopped up and curled beside me.

I tried reading. Too agitated.

Closing my book, I turned off the light.

Subliminal gnawing.

I rolled from my right side to my left. To my right.

Birdie shifted to the corner of the bed.

I’d never wanted a drink so badly in my life. Could one tiny cabernet hurt?

You’re an alkie. Alkies can’t do booze.

I punched the pillow. Rolled to my back.

Giving up on sleep, I groped for the remote, clicked on the TV, and found a mindless sitcom.

What was it I was missing?

Anique Pomerleau disappeared from Mascouche in 1990. She was fifteen. Today she’s alive and living in Montreal.

Two of the pizza basement girls were around fifteen. The leather shroud girl was older.

Angie Robinson disappeared in 1985. She was almost fifteen. Unlike Pomerleau, she’s never turned up.

The actors became shadowbox puppets. The dialogue and laugh track receded to background.

Angie Robinson broke her wrist. The leather shroud girl broke her wrist. But their ages don’t match. Neither do their heights.

What was I missing?

Angie Robinson disappeared in north-central California. I couldn’t remember the name of the place. Conners? Corners? Cornero?

Was that Butte County?

No. Butte County was Chico.

Menard spent at least a year in Chico. But which Menard? The real one?

Angie Robinson’s father filed his MP report with the Tehama County Sheriff’s Department.

Throwing back the covers, I got up, booted my computer, logged onto Yahoo!, and asked for a map of north-central California.

Tehama County lay directly northwest of Butte. I found Chico, and almost directly above it, the little village of Corning.

I zoomed in on the region.

Towns and secondary highways appeared. Hamilton City. Willows. Orland.

I clicked on an arrow, moved north.

Red Bluff.

The thought lurking in my subconscious lumbered toward focus, receded.

Red Bluff.

What?

Think, Brennan. Think.

The most minuscule atom of an idea sparked.

When had Red Bluff been in the news?

Ten years ago? Twenty?

Why?

Think!

I got up and killed the TV. Tossing the remote, I paced the room, desperate to get into the backcountry of my subconscious.

Silence filled the condo. Not the comforting, I’m-alone-enjoying-my-solitude kind. A pressing silence.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

Red Bluff. Red Bluff.

Finally, a neural pathway fired. I froze.

Dear God! Was that it?

I flew to the computer.

Who was that victim?

Using multiple search engines, most of which sent me through infuriating, labyrinthine back alley cyberloops, I finally found the name.

More searching.

Archives of the Red Bluff Daily News.

Archives of the Chico Examiner.

The normal sounds of night receded to the edge of my hearing. Birdie slumbered on.

Hours later, I sat back, numb with the horror of what I was unraveling.

I understood what was going on.

30

I LASTED UNTIL SEVEN A.M. BEFORE PHONING RYAN. HE ANSWERED quickly, sounding alert but tired.