Kathy Reichs - Grave Secrets

“At a police station on Guy near boulevard René Lévesque.”

Op South. It was just blocks from my condo.

“Shall we pick you up?”

“I’ll meet you there.”

I’d hardly replaced the receiver when the phone rang again. It was Susanne Jean. She would be with Volvo engineers all morning, had a lunch meeting at Bombardier, but could see me in the afternoon. We agreed to meet at three.

Crossing to the lab, I prepared folders for each case, and quickly scanned the torso request. Adult male. Arms, legs, and head missing. Advanced state of decomposition. Discovered in a culvert at Lac des Deux-Montagnes. Coroner: Leo Henry. Pathologist: Pierre LaManche. Investigating officer: Lieutenant-détective Andrew Ryan, Sûreté du Québec.

Well, well.

The remains were downstairs, so I took the secure elevator, swiped my card, and punched the lowest of the three buttons: LSJML. Coroner. Morgue.

In the basement, I entered another restricted area. On the left, doors opened into autopsy rooms, three containing single tables, the largest containing two.

Through the small window in the door of the central suite, I spotted a woman in surgical scrubs. She had long, curly hair, secured with a barrette at the back of her head. Pretty and thirty-something, with a quick smile and 36Ds, Lisa was a perennial favorite with the homicide detectives.

She was a perennial favorite with me for preferring to speak English.

Hearing the door, she turned and did that.

“Good morning. I thought you were in Guatemala.”

“I’ll be going back down.”

“R and R?”

“Not exactly. I’d like to look at LaManche’s torso.”

She pulled a face.

“He’s sixty-four, Dr. Brennan.”

“Everyone’s a comedian.”

“Morgue number?”

I read it aloud from the request form.

“Room four?”

“Please.” She disappeared through double doors. Beyond lay one of five morgue bays, each divided into fourteen refrigerated compartments secured by stainless steel doors. Small white cards announced the presence of occupants. Red stickers warned of HIV-positive status. The morgue number would tell Lisa behind which door the torso lay.

I proceeded to suite four, a room specially outfitted for extra ventilation. The room for floaters and bloaters. The room for crispers. The room in which I usually worked.

I’d barely gloved and masked when Lisa rolled a gurney through swinging doors identical to those in the central suite. When I unzipped the body bag, a nauseating odor filled the air.

“I think he’s done.”

“And then some.”

Lisa and I slid the torso onto the table. Though swollen and disfigured, the genitals were intact.

“It’s a boy.” Lisa Lavigne, obstetrical nurse.

“Unquestionably.”

I made notes while Lisa retrieved the X rays ordered by LaManche. They revealed vertebral arthritis, and three to four inches of bone in each of the severed limbs.

Using a scalpel, I removed the soft tissue overlying the breastbone, and Lisa revved up a Stryker saw to buzz through the sternal ends of the third, fourth, and fifth ribs. We did the same for the pelvis, dissecting out then cutting free the frontal portions where the two halves meet along the midline.

All six ribs and the pubic symphyses showed porosity and lots of erratic bone. This guy looked like he was up there in years.

Sex was indicated by the genitalia. The rib ends and symphyses would allow me to estimate the man’s age. Ancestry would be a tough call.

Skin color is meaningless, since a body can darken, blanch, or colorize, depending upon postmortem conditions. This gentleman had chosen a camouflage motif: mottled brown and green. I could take a few postcranial measurements, but with no head or limbs, racial assessment would be almost impossible.

Next, I detached the fifth cervical vertebra, the most superior of those remaining in the neck. I retracted soupy flesh from what was left of the arm and leg stumps, and Lisa cut a sample from the severed end of each humerus and femur.

A quick survey showed significant chipping, and deep L-shaped striations across every cut surface. I suspected I had a chain saw case.

Thanking Lisa, I took the samples to the twelfth floor and turned them over to the lab technician. Denis would soak the bones, then slowly tease off the remaining flesh and cartilage. In days I would have viewable specimens.

A McGill clock sits on my office windowsill, presented in appreciation for a guest lecture to the alumni association. Beside the clock is a framed snapshot of Katy and me, taken one summer at the Outer Banks. Entering the office my eyes fell on the photo. I felt the usual pain, followed by a rush of love so intense it hurt.

For the millionth time, I pondered why the photo triggered such emotion. Loneliness for my daughter? Guilt over being so often away? Grief for the friend with whose corpse it had lain?

I recalled finding the photo in my friend’s grave, remembered the terror, the burning rage. I pictured her killer, wondered if he thought of me during his long prison days and nights.

Why did I keep the photo?

No explanation.

Why here?

I didn’t have a clue.

Or did I? Didn’t I understand, at some subconscious level? Amid the numbing madness of murder, mutilation, and self-destruction, the cracked and faded snapshot reminded me that I had feelings. It triggered emotions.

Year after year, the photo remained on my windowsill.

I shifted my gaze to the McGill clock. Twelve forty-five. I had to hurry.

16

OUTSIDE THE SQ, THE AIR FELT HEAVY AND HUMID. A BREEZEoff the St. Lawrence was providing only small relief. The brewery stench had dissipated, but the smell of the river was now strong. As I walked to the car a seagull screeched overhead, protesting or celebrating the premature tickle of summer.

Policing is complicated in Quebec. The SQ is responsible for all parts of the province not under the jurisdiction of municipal forces, of which there are many in the Montreal suburbs. The island itself is protected by the Police de la Communauté Urbaine de Montréal, or CUM.

The CUM is divided into four sections: Operations North, South, East, and West. Not creative, but geographically correct. Each section has a headquarters housing investigative, intervention, and analysis divisions. Each also hosts a detention center.

Suspects arrested for crimes other than murder and sexual assault await arraignment at one of these four sectional jails. For shoplifting at the MusiGo store in Le Faubourg on rue Ste-Catherine, Chantale Specter and Lucy Gerardi were taken to Op South.

Op South, which includes my neighborhood, is as varied as a chunk of urban geography can be. Though predominantly French and English, it is also Greek, Italian, Lebanese, Chinese, Spanish, Parsi, and a dozen other dialects. It is McGill University and Wanda’s strip club, the Sun Life Building and Hurley’s Pub, the Cathédrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde and the Crescent Street condom shop.

Op South is home to separatists and federalists, to drug dealers and bankers, to wealthy widows and penniless students. It is a playground for hockey fans and for singles looking to mingle, a workplace for suburban commuters, a bedroom for vagrants who drink from brown bags and sleep on the walks. Over the years I’ve been involved in numerous murder investigations originating within its borders.

Reversing my morning route, I headed west through the tunnel, took the Atwater exit, shot north on St-Marc, turned right on Ste-Catherine, right again on Guy. At one point I was meters from home, wishing I could make that cutoff instead of continuing to my scheduled rendezvous.

As I drove, I thought about the parents of Chantale and Lucy. Señor Gerardi, arrogant and overbearing. His cowed wife. Mrs. Specter, with her colorized eyes and painted nails. The absent Mr. Specter. They were the fortunate ones. Their daughters were alive.