information on the form. ?Disappeared April 4, 1994.? Pause. ?Female. White.? Long pause. ?Date of birth 9/6/48.?
We both calculated mentally-forty-five years old.
?Possible,? I said, gesturing with my hand for him to go on.
He laid the form on the desk and read from the next. ?Solange Leger. Reported missing by the husband,? he paused, straining to make out the date, ?May 2, 1994. Female. White. Date of birth 8/17/28.?
?No.? I shook my head. ?Too old.?
He placed the form at the back of the folder and selected another. ?Isabelle Gagnon. Last seen April 1, 1994. Female. White. Date of birth 1/15/71.?
?Twenty-three. Yeah.? I nodded slowly. ?Possible.? It went on the desk.
?Suzanne St. Pierre. Female. Missing since March 9, 1994.? His lips moved as he read. ?Failed to return from school.? He paused, calculating on his own. ?Age sixteen. Jesus Christ.?
Again I shook my head. ?She?s too young. This isn?t a kid.?
He frowned, pulling out the last form. ?Evelyn Fontaine. Female. Age thirty-six. Last seen in Sept #206;les on March 28. Oh yeah. She?s an Innu.?
?Doubtful,? I said. I didn?t think the remains were those of an Indian.
?That?s it,? he said. There were two forms on the desk. Myriam Weider, age forty-five, and Isabelle Gagnon, age twenty-three. Maybe one of them was lying downstairs in room 4. Claudel looked at me. His eyebrows rose in the middle forming yet another V, this one inverted.
?How old
?Let?s go downstairs and see.? That?ll bring a little sunshine into your day, I thought.
It was petty but I couldn?t help it. I knew Claudel?s reputation for avoiding the autopsy room, and I wanted to discomfort him. For a moment he looked trapped. I enjoyed his unease. Grabbing a lab coat from the hook on the door, I hurried down the hall and inserted my key for the elevator. He was silent as we descended. He looked like a man on the way to a prostate exam. Claudel rarely rode this elevator. It stopped only at the morgue.
The body lay undisturbed. I gloved and removed the white sheet. From the corner of my eye I could see Claudel framed in the doorway. He?d entered the room just far enough to be able to say he?d been there. His eyes wandered over the steel countertops, the glass-fronted cabinets with their stock of clear plastic containers, the hanging scale, everything but the body. I?d seen it before. Photographs were no threat. The blood and gore were somewhere else. Distant. The murder scene was a clinical exercise. No problem. Dissect it, study it, solve the puzzle. But place a body on an autopsy table and it was a different matter. Claudel had put his face in neutral, hoping to look calm.
I removed the pubic bones from the water and gently pried them apart. Using a probe, I teased around the edges of the gelatinous sheath that covered the right pubic face. Gradually it loosened its hold and came away. The underlying bone was marked with deep furrows and ridges coursing horizontally across its surface. A sliver of solid bone partially framed the outer margin, forming a delicate and incomplete rim around the pubic face. I repeated the process on the left. It was identical.
Claudel hadn?t moved from the doorway. I carried the pelvis to the Luxolamp, pulled the extensor arm toward me, and pressed the switch. Fluorescent light illuminated the bone. Through the round magnifying glass, details appeared that hadn?t been apparent to the naked eye. I looked at the uppermost curve of each hipbone and saw what I?d been expecting.
?Monsieur Claudel,? I said without looking up. ?Look at this.?
He came up behind me, and I moved over to allow him an unobstructed view. I pointed to an irregularity on the upper border of the hip. The iliac crest was in the process of attaching itself when death had occurred.
I set the pelvis down. He continued looking at it, but didn?t touch it. I returned to the body to examine the clavicle, certain of what I?d find. I withdrew the sternal end from the water and began to tease away the tissue. When I could see the joint surface I gestured for Claudel to join me. Wordlessly I pointed to the end of the bone. Its surface was billowy, like the pubic face. A small disk of bone clung to the center, its edges distinct and unfused.
?So?? Sweat beaded his forehead. He was hiding his nervousness with bravado.
?She?s young. Probably early twenties.?
I could have explained how bone reveals age, but I didn?t think he?d be a good listener, so I just waited. Particles of cartilage clung to my gloved hands, and I held them away from my body, palms up, like a panhandler. Claudel kept the same distance he would with an Ebola patient. His eyes stayed on me, but their focus shifted to thoughts inside his head as he ran through the data, looking for a match.
?Gagnon.? It was a statement, not a question.
I nodded. Isabelle Gagnon. Age twenty-three.
?I?ll have the coroner request dental records,? he said.
I nodded again. He seemed to bring it out in me.
?Cause of death?? he asked.
?Nothing apparent,? I said. ?I may know more when I see the X rays. Or I may see something on the bones when they?re cleaned.?
With that he left. He didn?t say good-bye. I didn?t expect it. His departure was mutually appreciated.
I stripped off my gloves and tossed them. On the way out I poked my head into the large autopsy suite and told Daniel I was finished with this case for the day. I asked him to take full body and cranial X rays, A-P and lateral views. Upstairs I stopped by the histology lab and told the head technician that the body was ready for boiling, warning him to take extra care since this was a dismemberment. It was unnecessary. No one could reduce a body like Denis. In two days a skeleton would appear, clean and undamaged.
I spent the rest of the afternoon with the glued-together skull. Though fragmentary, there was, indeed, enough detail to confirm the identity of its owner. He wouldn?t drive any more propane tankers.
Returning home, I began to feel the sense of foreboding I?d experienced in the ravine. All day I?d used work to keep it at bay. I?d banished the apprehension by centering my mind fully on identifying the victim and on piecing together the late trucker. At lunch the park pigeons had been my distraction. Unraveling the pecking order could be all-consuming. Gray was alpha. Brown speckles seemed to be next. Blackfoot was clearly low on the list.
Now I was free to relax. To think. To worry. It started as soon as I pulled into the garage and turned off the radio. Music off, anxiety on. No, I admonished myself. Later. After dinner.
I entered the apartment and heard the reassuring beep of the security system. Leaving my briefcase in the entry hall, I closed the door and walked to the Lebanese restaurant on the corner, where I ordered a Shish Taouk and Shawarma plate to go. It?s what I love most about living downtown-within a block of my condo are representative samples of all the cuisines of the world. Could the weight gain . . . ? Nah.
While I waited for the take-out I perused the buffet selections. Homos. Taboule.
A shelf to the left of the cash register held bottles of red wine. My weapon of choice. As I looked at them, for the thousandth time I felt the craving. I remembered the taste, the smell, the dry, tangy feel of the wine on my tongue. I remembered the warmth that would start in my gut and spread upward and outward, navigating a path through my body, lighting the fires of well-being along its course. The bonfires of control. Of vigor. Of invincibility. I could use that right now, I thought. Right. Who was I kidding? I wouldn?t stop there. What were those stages? I?d move right on to bulletproof and then to invisible. Or was it the other way around? No matter. I?d carry it too far, and then the crash would come. The comfort would be short term, the price heavy. It?d been six years since I?d had a drink.
I took my food home and ate it with Birdie and the Montreal Expos. He slept, curled in my lap, purring softly. They lost to the Cubs by two runs. Neither mentioned the murder. I appreciated that.
I took a long, hot bath and fell into bed at ten-thirty. Alone in the dark and quiet I could no longer suppress the thought. Like cells gone mad, it grew and gathered strength, finally forcing itself into my consciousness, insisting on recognition. The other homicide. The other young woman who?d come to the morgue in pieces. I saw her in vivid detail, remembered my feelings as I?d worked on her bones. Chantale Trottier. Age: sixteen. Strangled,
