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Chapter 6

I USE A HOME-RIGGED SYSTEM FOR CLEANING CADAVERS. ORIGINALLY designed for institutional cooking, the apparatus consists of water intake and discharge pipes, grease filtration gear, a compartmentalized boiling tank, and submersion baskets, the kind used to deep-fry potatoes or fish.

In the square baskets I simmer small body parts—dissected jaws, hands, feet, maybe a skull. In the large, rectangular ones I reduce the big stuff—long bones, rib cages, pelves—once defleshing has been done by morgue technicians. Heat water to just below boiling, add enzyme detergent to minimize grease, stir. The recipe’s a hit every time.

Unless the bones are too fragile, of course. Then it’s hand laundry all the way.

That morning the “cooker” was full to capacity. The Lac des Deux Montagnes corpse. Parts of Santangelo’s charred bed smoker. Geneviève Doucet.

Putrid, sodden flesh means quicker turn-around time. And Ryan’s floater had gone in first. Denis was removing those bones when I arrived following the morning staff meeting.

First, I opened the brown envelopes containing the Lac des Deux Montagnes scene and autopsy photos. One by one I worked from recovery through autopsy completion.

It was obvious why LaManche needed help. When dragged from the river, the body looked like a marionette wrapped in moss-colored Spam. No hair. No features. Large areas of flesh devoured by crabs and fish. I noted that the woman wore only one red sock.

I began constructing the requested portions of the biological profile. It took all morning. Though I’d left word to call the minute anything arrived from Rimouski, no one phoned or popped into my lab.

That no one included Ryan.

At lunch, I told LaManche what I was finding out about the Lac des Deux Montagnes woman. He told me that Théodore Doucet had undergone the first in his series of psychiatric interviews.

According to the doctor, Doucet was oblivious to the deaths of his wife and daughter. Delusional, he believed Dorothée and Geneviève had gone to church and would be home shortly to prepare supper. Doucet was being held at the Institut Philippe-Pinel, Montreal’s main legal psychiatric hospital.

Back in my lab, I found the fire victim’s pelvis and upper arm and leg bones spread out on a counter. Gloving, I transferred the remains to a second worktable and began my exam.

Though severely damaged, sufficient structure remained to confirm the gender as male. The pubic symphysis, coupled with advanced arthritis, suggested a skeletal age consistent with ninety-three.

Age and sex consistent. Orthopedic implant serial number a match. Known resident at the address. Known bed smoker. Good enough for me. Now it was up to the coroner. By three I’d completed my report and delivered it to the secretarial office for typing.

It isn’t protocol to notify me of a skeleton’s arrival. Normally, a case goes to one of the lab’s five pathologists, and via him or her, to me. But I’d asked for a heads-up on the bones Bradette was sending from Rimouski. On the chance they’d forgotten, I checked with morgue intake.

Nothing.

Geneviève Doucet’s were the third set of remains that had simmered overnight. Using long-handled tongs, I fished out her skull, pelvis, and several long bones, then spent an hour teasing off flesh. The stuff was resilient as gator hide, so I accomplished very little.

I was lowering Geneviève’s basket back into its compartment when my lab door opened. I turned.

Of course. Ryan has a knack for showing up when I’m looking bad. I waited for a crack about steam-lank hair and eau de poached flesh. He made none.

“Sorry I didn’t bring Charlie last night.”

“No problem.” I settled the stainless steel cover over the well and checked the temperature gage.

“Lily,” Ryan sort of explained.

“Nothing serious, I hope.” Backhanding hair from my face with a lab coat sleeve.

“I’ll come by tonight.” Ryan jabbed a thumb at the skeleton laid out behind me. “That my floater?”

“Yes.” I stepped to the table, holding wet, greasy gloves away from my body. “She’s young. Fifteen to eighteen. Mixed racial background.”

“Tell me about that.”

“Except for the front teeth, I’d have said she was white. Nasal opening is narrow and spiked at the bottom, nasal bridge is high, cheekbones aren’t especially flaring. But all eight incisors are shoveled.”

“Meaning?”

“There’s a high probability she’s part Asian or Native American.”

“First Nations?”

“Or Japanese, Chinese, Korean. You know, Asian?”

Ryan ignored the dig. “Show me.”

I rotated the woman’s skull so her upper dentition was visible. “Each of the four flat teeth in front has a raised border around its outer perimeter on the tongue surface.” Picking up the jaw, I indicated a similar raised ridge. “Same with the lowers.”

I set down the jaw.

“I took cranial measurements and ran them through Fordisc 3.0. Metrically she falls in the overlap region for Caucasoid and Mongoloid.”

“White and Indian.”

“Or Asian.” A teacher correcting a dull pupil. “Any interest in age indicators?”

“Hit me with the high points.”

I indicated a roughened area on the base of the skull. “The basilar suture is fused.”

“The wisdom teeth aren’t fully out,” Ryan observed.

“Correct. The third molars have emerged but aren’t yet in alignment with the tooth row.”

Moving farther down the table, I ran my finger over an irregular line curving below the upper edge of the right pelvic blade. “The iliac crests are partially fused.” I picked up a collarbone and pointed to a similar irregularity on the throat end. “Same for the medial clavicular epiphyses.” I waved my hand over the arm and leg bones. “Growth caps on the long bones are in various states of fusion.”

“Anything else?”

“She stood about five foot three.”

“That’s it?”

I nodded. “No abnormalities or anomalies. No new or healed fractures.”

“LaManche thought the hyoid was intact.”

Ryan referred to a tiny U-shaped throat bone often damaged during manual strangulation.

I gathered a small ovoid disc and two slender spurs in the palm of one glove. “At her age the hyoid wings and body aren’t yet ossified. That means there’s elasticity, so the bone can undergo considerable compression without breaking.”

“So she could still have been strangled.”

“Strangled, smothered, poisoned, gut-stabbed. I can only tell you what the bones tell me.” I replaced the hyoid.

“Which is?”

“She wasn’t shot or bludgeoned. I found no bullet entrance or exit wounds, no fractures, no cuts or slash marks anywhere on the skeleton.”

“And the autopsy revealed zip.”

LaManche and I had discussed his findings at lunch. There hadn’t been much to discuss.

“The lungs were too far gone to know if she was breathing when she went into the water. Marine scavengers took care of her eyes, so there’s no way to check for petechiae.”

Petechiae are red pinpoint hemorrhages caused by leaky capillaries under increased venous pressure. Since sustained compression of the neck causes the backup of blood returning to the heart, the presence of petechiae on the skin of the face, and particularly around the eyes, is strongly suggestive of strangulation.

“So she could have been dead when she went into the water.”

“I could try playing around with diatoms.”

“I know you’re going to tell me what those are.”

“Unicellular algae found in aquatic and damp terrestrial habitats. Some pathologists believe the inhalation of water causes penetration of diatoms into the alveolar system and bloodstream, with subsequent deposition in the brain, kidneys, and other organs, including the bone marrow. They see the presence of diatoms as indicative of drowning.”

“You sound skeptical.”

“I’m not convinced diatoms can’t make their way into any submerged body, drowned or not. Neither is LaManche. But there is another application. Many diatom species are habitat specific, so assemblages found in or on bodies can be compared with assemblages found in control samples taken from different locations. Sometimes specific microhabitats can be identified.”

“Use diatoms to narrow where the body’s been. Salt water. River bottom. Swamp. Estuary.”

“That’s the general idea. But it’s a long shot.”

“Sounds good.”

“Before boiling I removed bone samples for DNA testing. I could have a marine biologist check the marrow in those. Also the sock.”

Ryan spread both hands, palms up. “Case practically solved.”

I raised questioning brows.

“The girl died near the river or someplace else. She was alive or dead when she entered the water. If alive, she fell, jumped, or was pushed, so manner of death is suicide, homicide, or accidental.”

“Unless she had a stroke or heart attack,” I said, knowing the only categories left were “natural” and “undetermined.”

“Unless that. But this is a teenager.”

“It happens.”

Ryan did show up that night. I’d showered and blow-dried my hair. And, yes, I confess, applied mascara and lip gloss and a spritz of Alfred Sung behind each ear.

The buzzer warbled around nine. I was reading about FTIR spectroscopy in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Birdie was performing his evening toilette on the far end of the couch. Losing interest in intertoe spaces, he padded along to the foyer.

The security screen showed Ryan in the vestibule, birdcage at his feet. I buzzed them in, welcomed both warmly. After greeting and ear scratching the cat, Ryan accepted my offer of a beer.

While I poured Moosehead and Diet Coke, Ryan settled Charlie on the dining room table. Birdie assumed his sphinx pose on one of the chairs, head up, paws in-curled, every sense fixed on the cage and its occupant.

Charlie was in top form, perch hopping, seed spewing, head cocking right then left to eyeball the cat. Every now and then he’d fire off a line from his repertoire noir.

Ryan took Birdie’s end of the couch. I took mine, feet tucked under my bum. Again, we established that our daughters were good. Lily was waiting tables at Café Cherrier on Rue Saint-Denis. Katy was doing a summer Spanish course in Santiago, Chile.

My Montreal condo is small. Kitchen, bedroom, den, two baths. Only the main living area is spacious. French doors open from opposite sides, the north set to a central courtyard, the south to a Lilliputian-sized patch of grass.

Stone fireplace. Glass dining table. Yellow and blue Provençal sofa and loveseat. Cherry-wood moldings, window trim, and mantel.

As we talked, Ryan’s eyes roved from object to object. Pictures of Katy. My younger sister, Harry. My nephew, Kit. A ceramic plate gifted from an old woman in Guatemala. A giraffe carving purchased in Rwanda. Rarely did his gaze meet mine.

Inevitably, we drifted into shop talk. Safe, neutral ground.

Ryan had been working special assignments since the death of his partner several years earlier. He described his current investigation.

Three girls missing. Two others found in or near water. And now there was the Lac des Deux Montagnes floater. Six in all.

I told Ryan about the burn victim, the Doucets, and the Rimouski skeleton en route to my lab. He asked who was responsible for the latter. I described my meeting with Hippo Gallant.

Ryan said Hippo was inputting on his missing persons and DOA’s. Thus, we drifted into the inevitable Hippo stories. The time he left his gun behind in a gas station men’s room. The time he pulled a suspect from a culvert and ripped his pants up the ass. The time a collar took a dump in the back of his cruiser.

Conversation was genial and friendly. And brotherly as hell. No mention of the past or future. No body contact. The only references to sex were those made by Charlie.

At ten-thirty Ryan rose. I walked him to the door, every cell in my brain screaming that what I was debating was a lousy idea. Men hate being asked what they’re feeling. I hate it, too.

Not for the first time, I ignored the advice of my instincts.

“Talk to me, Ryan.” I laid a hand on his arm.

“Right now Lily—”

“No,” I blurted. “It’s more than Lily.”

The cornflower blues refused to meet mine. A beat passed. Then, “I don’t think you’re over your husband.”

“Pete and I have been separated for years.”

Ryan’s eyes finally locked home. I felt something hot coil in my belly.

“Operative word,” he said, “‘separated.’”

“I hate lawyers and paperwork.”

“You were a different person when you were with him.”

“The man had been shot.”

Ryan didn’t reply.

“My marital status never mattered in the past.”

“No. It didn’t.”

“Why now?”

“I hadn’t seen you together.”

“And now that you have?”

“I realize how much you care.” Before I could speak Ryan added, “And how much I care.”

That stunned me. For a moment I could think of nothing to say.

“Now what?”

“I’m trying to get by it.”

“How’s it going?”

“Not well.”

With that he was gone.

As I lay in bed, emotions battled inside me. Resentment at the feeling that Ryan had suckered me in. All the asking. Then the striving to keep things light.

Annoyance at Ryan’s cowboy-done-wrong act.

But Ryan had one valid point. Why didn’t I divorce Pete?

I take offense slowly, store insult until the end of time. Ryan is the opposite, affronted quickly, but quickly forgiving. Each of us reads the other well.

Ryan was light-years beyond feeling slighted or piqued. His signals were unmistakable.

So, mostly, I felt sadness. Ryan was pulling away.

A tear slid from the corner of one eye.

“OK, wrangler.” Spoken aloud in my party-of-one bed. “Adios.”


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