Reichs, Kathy: Death Du Jour

“What’s that?”

“My sister lives in Texas. I work in Quebec, and have lifelong ties to the Carolinas. Everywhere I turned, Elle’s influence was there. Her reach was awesome. How many lives do you suppose these cults affect?”

“There’s no telling.”

The sound of Vivaldi drifted from my neighbor’s patio.

“How did your friend Sam take the news that one of his employees brought bodies to Murtry?”

“He wasn’t thrilled.” I remembered Joey’s nervousness by the water truck when we emerged from the burial location. “Joey Espinoza had been working for Sam for almost two years.”

“Right. He was an Owens follower, but lived in his mother’s house. She’s the one who phoned Social Services. Well, it turns out he’s also Carlie’s father. That’s why Kathryn fled to him when things got ugly. It seems she didn’t know anything about the murders.”

“Where are they now?”

“She and the baby are with some cousin of hers. Joey is discussing the recent past with Sheriff Baker.”

“Has anyone been charged?”

“Elle and Daniel have each been charged with three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Jennifer Cannon, Amalie Provencher, and Carole Comptois.”

Ryan picked up a magnolia leaf and trailed it across his thigh.

“What else was in the evaluation?”

“According to the court-appointed shrink Elle suffers from an elaborate multidelusional psychosis. She’s convinced that the apocalypse will occur soon in the form of a giant environmental disaster, and that she’s destined to preserve humanity by transporting followers away from the apocalypse.”

“Where were they going?”

“She’s not saying. But you aren’t on her manifest.”

“How do people buy into such crap?” Ryan echoed my question to Red Skyler.

“The group recruited people who were disillusioned with their lot and attracted by group acceptance, being accorded a sense of worth and importance, and being given simple answers to all questions, with a little drug therapy thrown in.”

A breeze lifted the branches of the magnolia, bringing with it the smell of wet grass. Ryan said nothing.

“Elle may be crazy, but she’s smart and extraordinarily persuasive. Even now her followers are loyal. While she’s pontificating, they’re not saying a word.”

“Yeah.” He stretched, raised his bandaged arm, and repositioned it on his chest. “She’s cunning, all right. She was never after a huge following. She wanted a small but loyal band. That and Guillion’s money let her keep a low profile. Until it began to unravel, she made very few mistakes.”

“What about the cat? That was brutal but stupid.”

“That was Dom Owens. Elle ordered him to stop your meddling. He claims he was not into physically harming people, so he directed some student followers in Charlotte to do something to frighten you off. They devised the cat trick. Got the poor thing from the animal shelter.”

“How did they find me?”

“One of them took a bill or something from your office. It had your home address.”

Ryan sipped his tea.

“By the way, your St. Paddy’s Day adventure in Montreal was also student-inspired.”

“How did you know about that?”

He smiled and waggled the teacup. “It seems the protective attitude went both ways between Jeannotte and her students. One of them saw that she was upset, and concluded your visits were the cause. He decided to freelance and deliver a personal message.”

I changed the subject. “Do you believe Owens was involved in killing Jennifer and Amalie?”

“He denies it. Claims that after he confronted Jennifer about the phone calls he reported to Elle. Says Elle told him she and Daniel were taking Jennifer and Amalie back to Canada.”

“Why was Owens not at Ange Gardien?”

“Owens had decided to bail. He either became afraid over what Elle might do because he had lost track of Joey, Kathryn, and Carlie, or he didn’t have confidence in the cosmic crossover. Either way, he had over two hundred thousand dollars of Guillion’s money left, so he gathered it up and went west as everyone else headed north. The American feds caught up with him at a naturalist commune in Arizona. Elle would not have had her fifty-four souls even with Harry.”

“Hungry?”

“Let’s eat.”

We made salad, then skewered chicken and vegetables for shish kebabs. Outside the sun had dropped below the horizon, and the deepening dusk filled the trees and grounds with dark shadows. We ate on the patio, talking and watching night settle in. Inevitably, the conversation drifted back to Elle and the murders.

“I guess Daisy Jeannotte felt she could confront her brother and force him to stop the madness.”

“Yeah, but Elle spotted Daisy first and had Daniel eliminate her and throw her into the crawl space where they later stashed you. You had been perceived as a lesser threat and had simply been rapped over the head and stuck in the hole. When you responded by getting free and causing more trouble, Elle was outraged and committed you to the same murder-exorcism that she had lavished on Jennifer and Amalie.”

“Daniel helped Elle kill Jennifer and Amalie, and he’s the main suspect in the Carole Comptois murder. Who were the assassins in St-Jovite?”

“We may never know. No one has told that story yet.”

Ryan finished his tea and leaned back. Crickets had taken over for birds. Far off a siren moaned in the night. For a long time we didn’t speak.

“Do you remember the exhumation I did in Lac Memphrémagog?”

“The saint.”

“One of the nuns in that order is Anna Goyette’s aunt.”

“Thanks to nuns I still have limited use of my knuckles.”

I smiled. Another gender inequality.

I told him about Élisabeth Nicolet.

“They were all captives in one way or another. Harry. Kathryn. Élisabeth.”

“Elle. Anna. Prisons take many forms.”

“Sister Julienne shared a quote with me. In Les Misérables Victor Hugo refers to the convent as an optical device whereby man gains a glimpse of infinity.”

The crickets chirped.

“It’s not infinity, Ryan, but we’re barreling toward the end of a millennium. Do you suppose there are others out there preaching Armageddon and orchestrating rituals of group death?”

For a moment he didn’t answer. The magnolia rustled overhead.

“There will always be mystic hustlers who will play upon disillusionment, despair, low self-esteem, or fear to promote their own agendas. But if any of these psycho charlatans get off the bus in my town the reckoning will be swift and certain. Revelation according to Ryan.”

I watched a leaf tumble across the brick.

“What about you, Brennan? Will you be there to help me?”

Ryan’s form was black against the night sky. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew they were looking straight toward mine.

I reached over and took his hand.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathy Reichs is forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and for the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciares et de Médecine Légale for the province of Quebec. She is one of only fifty forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology and is on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. A professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Dr. Reichs is a native of Chicago, where she received her Ph.D. at Northwestern. She now divides her time between Charlotte and Montreal and is a frequent expert witness in criminal trials. She is the author of Déjà Dead, winner of the Ellis Award for Best First Novel of 1997.