RYAN’S FINGERS RAKED HIS HAIR. TOUCHED HIS MOUTH. DRUMMED his belt.

“We may have a serial.”

Beside me, Briel went very still.

“In Montreal?”

“No. In Saskatoon.”

“Hardy friggin’ har.”

“I ran into your pal Claudel this morning.”

Sergeant-détective Luc Claudel, SPVM. A city cop. Claudel and I were pals in the sense Hatfields and McCoys were buds.

“He’s working an MP.”

Ryan referred to a missing person case.

“Ten days ago a landlord named Mathieu Baudry dropped in on one of his tenants, Marilyn Keiser, a seventy-two-year-old widow living alone. Baudry was pissed about unpaid rent.”

“Where’s the apartment?”

“Édouard-Montpetit. The place looked abandoned. Unopened mail. Dead plants. Spoiled food in the refrigerator. The usual. Baudry asked around the building. None of the neighbors had seen or talked to Keiser in months. One suggested she might have gone south for the winter.”

“Was that her pattern?”

“No. Keiser wasn’t a snowbird. She drove, occasionally made short trips. Quebec City. Ottawa. Charlevoix. That was about it.”

“Her car is also missing?”

Ryan nodded.

“Family?”

“Two kids, both married and living in Alberta. The only local relative is a stepson named Myron Pinsker. Baudry phoned Pinsker repeatedly. After a week of no contact and no returned calls he gave up and dialed nine-one-one.

“Claudel caught the case, did some digging, learned that since October Marilyn Keiser has missed medical appointments, book club meetings, a sit-down with her rabbi, and about a zillion other engagements. No apologies, no explanations.”

“That’s out of character?”

“Definitely. The stepson is a forty-four-year-old grounds worker at a West Island golf course. Beaconsfield, I think. Told Claudel he was unaware Keiser was missing.”

“Maybe they aren’t close.”

“Maybe not. But someone cashed Keiser’s last three old age insurance pension checks.”

“Crap.”

“Claudel learned that late yesterday. This morning he hauled Pinsker’s ass to the bag.”

“Detective Claudel thinks Madame Keiser is dead?”

Ryan and I glanced at Briel in surprise. She’d been so still, I think we’d both forgotten she was there.

“Doesn’t look good,” Ryan said.

“He suspects the stepson?”

“Pinsker better have a good explanation for those checks.”

Ryan turned to me.

“Four elderly women in two years.”

Three, yes. But four? I must have looked confused.

“Keiser. Anne-Isabelle Villejoin. This one.” Ryan jabbed a thumb toward the bones behind me. “Jurmain.”

“Rose Jurmain was hardly elderly,” I said.

“But she looked old. Remember Janice Spitz’s photos, the ones taken shortly before Jurmain’s death?”

I nodded understanding. Maybe the drugs. Maybe the booze. Rose had looked decades beyond her fifty-nine years.

Again, Ryan gestured at the table. “Keiser’s disappearance throws a whole new wrinkle into this ID.”

I remembered Hubert’s rhetorical question at graveside. How many grannies go missing around here?

Too many, I thought.

“I’ll know within the hour if it’s Christelle Villejoin,” I said.

“Gotta roll. Claudel’s interrogating Pinsker now.”

With that, Ryan was gone.

A greedy relative? Or an anonymous predator targeting the weak?

I felt the usual riot of emotions. Anger. Outrage. Sorrow.

I needed a break.

Excusing myself to Briel, I stripped off my gloves and headed upstairs.

Thirty minutes later I was back in the basement. Coming down the corridor, I noticed Briel through the little window in the door to the large autopsy suite. She was speaking to Joe Bonnet while removing the brain from one of the Baie-Comeau corpses.

I paused briefly, wondering how the two new hires meshed. Joe was prickly, quick to take offense. Briel was as amiable as a statue in the park.

Briel said something. Joe listened, hair doing a latter-day Ric Flair in the fluorescent light.

Briel touched Joe’s hand. He smiled. Actually laughed.

I continued on to Salle 4.

Taking the envelope that Morin had delivered to me from the Bureau du coroner, I spread the contents on the anteroom desk.

My pessimism was justified. There was little to spread.

Entries only went back to 1987. Nothing sinister there. Space in medical offices is limited, and paperwork is often destroyed when legally permissible.

For the past two decades, Christelle Villejoin had used a GP named Sylvain Rayner. Sparingly.

In 1989 she’d been diagnosed with shingles. In 1994 it was mild bronchitis.

The most recent entries dated to 1997.

On April 24 Christelle had complained of constipation. Rayner prescribed a laxative. On April 26 the problem was diarrhea.

Good job, Doc.

Christelle had no history of any bone-altering disease. No stents, pins, rods, or artificial joints had been placed in her body. She’d suffered no fractures. She’d undergone no surgeries of any kind.

No X-rays.

Nothing dental.

Christelle’s chart was useless to me.

But there was a number for Rayner’s office.

When I phoned, a robotic voice told me to take a hike. I’m paraphrasing.

On a hunch, I returned to the twelfth floor and tried Google on my laptop.

Sylvain Alexandre Rayner had earned his MD at McGill in 1952, retired from practice in 1998. A little more searching and I had a home number and directions to Rayner’s residence in Côte Saint-Luc.

God bless the Internet.

My call went unanswered. I left a message and headed back downstairs.

I’d barely entered Salle 4 when the anteroom phone shrilled.

“Dr. Temperance Brennan, s’il vous plaît,” a male voice said.

“May I ask who’s calling?”

“Sylvain Rayner.”

“The Sylvain Rayner who treated Christelle Villejoin?” I spoke loudly and slowly, a well-intentioned reaction based on a common and often false assumption. Rayner is elderly, therefore hard of hearing, perhaps dull-witted.

“Oui.”

“Dr. Sylvain Rayner?” I repeated the name, upping the volume and emphasizing the title.

“I can hear you, miss.” The man had switched to English. “Yes. This is Sylvain Rayner. I’m returning your call.”

Clearly, the good doctor had excellent ears. Or a dandy of a hearing aid. He’d even caught my Anglophone accent.

“Sorry, sir. Occasionally this phone distorts sound levels,” I lied.

“How may I help you?”

“As I said in my message, my name is Temperance Brennan. I’m the forensic anthropologist with the coroner in Montreal. I have some questions concerning a former patient.”

I expected the usual rebuff based on confidentiality. That’s not what I got.

“You’ve found Christelle Villejoin,” Rayner said.

“Perhaps.” Careful. “Remains have come into the morgue. I’ve determined the bones are those of an elderly white female, but I’ve found nothing sufficiently unique to permit positive identification. The medical file I have is quite limited.”

“I’m not surprised. The Villejoin sisters were blessed with remarkable genes. I saw both of them from the mid-seventies until my retirement in ’ninety-eight. They rarely had an ailment. Oh, a bellyache now and then. Common cold. Maybe a rash. Anne-Isabelle and Christelle may have been the two healthiest patients I treated in my entire forty-six years of practice. Never smoked, never drank. Took only drugstore vitamins, an aspirin now and then. No magic potions or lifestyle secrets. Just whoppin’ good DNA.”

“The coroner provided no dental records.”

“The girls weren’t so lucky there. Brushed and flossed like the devil, but still lost their teeth. Didn’t matter how much I scolded. Both hated dentists. Got it from their mama, I think.”

“I see.” Discouraged, I slumped back in my chair.

“Fact is, they distrusted medicine in general. As far as I know, they gave up on doctors altogether when I retired. I referred their files to the young fellow who took over my practice, but he once told me he never laid eyes on either. Funny, them working all their lives at the hospital.”

Is it? I thought. Maybe they’d seen too much.

“I remember the attack,” Rayner said. “Poor Anne-Isabelle. I suppose the same demented animal also killed Christelle that day?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t discuss an open investigation.”

Rayner wasn’t fooled.

“It’s a harsh world we live in.”

I couldn’t disagree with that.

“Dr. Rayner, can you think of anything that might help me determine if this skeleton is Christelle’s? Perhaps something you noticed while examining her? Something she told you? Something you spotted in older records that no longer exist?”

Down the hall I heard a door open, close. Footsteps. The pause continued so long I thought we’d been disconnected.

“Sir?”

“Actually, there was something.”

Sitting upright, I said, “Tell me about it.”

“Christelle had a ninety-degree flexion contracture in the proximal interphalangeal joint of her right little finger. When I asked about it she said her pinky had been crooked since birth.”

“What about the other joints in that finger?” I grabbed pen and paper.

“They were fine. At first. Whenever I saw Christelle I checked her hand. Over the years compensatory deformity developed in the metacarpo-phalangeal and distal interphalangeal joints.”

“Camptodactyly?” I guessed.

“I think so.”

“Congenital?”

“Yes.”

“Bilateral or just on the right?”

“Just the one hand was affected.”

“Did you take X-rays?”

“I offered repeatedly. Christelle always refused. Said the thing never caused her any pain. The finger wasn’t a complaint, and there was never any treatment, so I didn’t chart it. Didn’t seem important.”

Suddenly, I was in a froth to get back to the bones.

“Thank you so much, doctor. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Call if you need anything further.”

Though an affected finger may look painfully distorted, camptodactyly is usually asymptomatic. And, like Christelle, many with the condition seek no medical attention.

Not particularly useful from an antemortem records perspective.

But two things were very useful.

Camptodactyly occurs in less than one percent of the population.

Camptodactyly leaves its mark on the joints.

After disconnecting, I shot upstairs, grabbed a Diet Coke, then practically danced back down to Salle 4.

Scooping the unsorted phalanges, I began to triage.

Row: Proximal. Middle. Distal.

Digit: Thumb. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Side: Left. Right.

Done.

I stared in disbelief.