When I disconnected and turned, the hall was empty. Fine. I’d give the photo to Ryan. He’d have a copy of the list of observers. If he wanted to follow up, he could get contact information for Kessler.
I pressed for the elevator.
By noon I’d completed my report on Charles Bellemare, concluding that, however strange the circumstances, the Cowboy’s last ride had been the result of his own folly. Turn on. Tune in. Drop out. Or down, in Bellemare’s case. What had he been doing up there?
At lunch, LaManche informed me there’d be difficulty viewing Ferris’s head wounds in situ. X-rays showed only one bullet fragment, and indicated the back of the skull and the left half of the face were shattered. He also informed me that my analysis would be critical since mutilation by the cats had distorted the patterning of metallic trace observable on X-ray.
In addition, Ferris had fallen with his hands beneath him. Decomposition had rendered gunshot-residue testing inconclusive.
At one-thirty I descended again to the morgue.
Ferris’s torso was now open from throat to pubis, and his organs floated in covered containers. The stench in the room had kicked into the red zone.
Ryan and the photographer were there, along with two of the morning’s four observers. LaManche waited five minutes, then nodded a go-ahead to his autopsy tech.
Lisa made incisions behind Ferris’s ears and across his crown. Using scalpel and fingers, she then teased off the scalp, working from the top toward the back of the skull, stopping periodically to position the case label for photographs. As fragments were freed, LaManche and I observed, diagrammed, then gathered them into containers.
When we’d finished with the top and back of Ferris’s head, Lisa retracted the skin from his face, and LaManche and I repeated the procedure, examining, sketching, stepping back for pics. Slowly, we extracted the wreckage that had been Ferris’s maxillary, zygomatic, nasal, and temporal bones.
By four what remained of Ferris’s face was back in position, and Y-shaped stitching held his belly and chest. The photographer had five rolls of film. LaManche had a ream of diagrams and notes. I had four tubs of bloody shards.
I was cleaning bone fragments when Ryan appeared in the corridor outside my lab. I watched his approach through the window above my sink.
Craggy face, eyes too blue for his own good.
Or mine.
Seeing me, Ryan pressed his palms and nose to the glass. I flicked water at him.
He pushed back and pointed at my door. I mouthed “open,” and waved him through, a goofy smile spreading across my face.
Okay. Maybe Ryan isn’t so bad for me.
But I had reached that opinion only recently.
For almost a decade Ryan and I had butted heads in an on-again, off-again nonrelationship. Up-down. Yes-no. Hot-cold.
Hot-hot.
I’ve been attracted to Ryan since the get-go, but there have been more obstacles to acting on that attraction than there were signers of the Declaration.
I believe in the separation of job from play. No watercooler romance for this senorita. No way.
Ryan works homicide. I work the morgue. Professional exclusion clause applies. Obstacle one.
Then there was Ryan himself. Everyone knew his bio. Born in Nova Scotia of Irish parents, young Andrew ended up on the wrong end of a biker’s shattered Budweiser bottle. Switching from the dark side, the boy signed on with the good guys and rose to the rank of lieutenant-detective with the provincial police. Grown-up Andrew is kind, intelligent, and strictly straight arrow where his work is concerned.
And widely known as the squad room Lothario. Stud muffin exclusion clause applies. Obstacle two.
But Ryan sweet-talked the loopholes, and, after years of resistance, I finally jumped through. Then obstacle three roared in with the Yule.
Lily. A nineteen-year-old daughter, complete with iPod, belly ring, and Bahamian mother, a flesh-and-blood memento of Ryan’s long-ago ride with the Wild Ones.
Though mystified and somewhat daunted by the prospect, Ryan embraced the product of his past and made some decisions about his future. Last Christmas he’d committed to long-distance parenting. That same week he’d asked me to be his roomie.
Whoa, bucko. I gave that plan a veto.
Though I still bunk with my feline compadre, Birdie, Ryan and I are dancing around a preliminary draft of a working arrangement.
So far the dance has been good.
And strictly home turf. We keep it to ourselves.
“How’s it going, cupcake?” Ryan asked, coming through the door.
“Good.” I added a fragment to those drying on the corkboard.
“That the chimney stiff?” Ryan was eyeing the box holding Charles Bellemare.
“Happy trails for the Cowboy,” I said.
“Guy take a hit?”
I shook my head. “Looks like he leaned to when he should have leaned fro. No idea why he was sitting on a chimney ledge.” I stripped off my gloves and squeezed soap onto my hands. “Who’s the blond guy downstairs?”
“Birch. He’ll be working Ferris with me.”
“New partner?”
Ryan shook his head. “Loan-over. You think Ferris offed himself?”
I turned and shot Ryan a you-know-better-than-that look.
Ryan gave me an expression of choirboy innocence. “Not trying to rush you.”
Yanking paper towels from the holder, I said, “Tell me about him.”
Ryan nudged Bellemare aside and rested one haunch on my worktable.
“Family’s Orthodox.”
“Really?” Mock surprise.
“The Fab Four were here to ensure a kosher autopsy.”
“Who were they?” I wadded and tossed the paper towels.
“Rabbi, members of the temple, one brother. You want names?”
I shook my head.
“Ferris was a bit more secular than his kin. Operated an import business from a warehouse out near Mirabel airport. Told the wife he’d be out of town on Thursday and Friday. According to…” Ryan pulled out and glanced at a spiral pad.
“Miriam,” I supplied.
“Right.” Ryan gave me an odd look. “According to Miriam, Ferris was trying to expand the business. He called around four on Wednesday, said he was heading out, and that he’d be back late on Friday. When he didn’t arrive by sundown, Miriam figured he’d been delayed and preferred not to drive on the Sabbath.”
“Had that happened before?
Ryan nodded. “Ferris wasn’t in the habit of phoning home. When he hadn’t shown up Saturday night, Miriam started working the speed dial. No one in the family had seen him. Neither had his secretary. Miriam didn’t know which accounts he was planning to hit, so she decided to sit tight. Sunday morning she checked the warehouse. Sunday afternoon she filed a missing person report. Cops said they’d investigate if hubby hadn’t surfaced by Monday morning.”
“Grown man extending his business trip?”
Ryan shrugged one shoulder. “Happens.”
“Ferris never left Montreal?”
“LaManche thinks he died not long after his call to Miriam.”
“Miriam’s story checks out?”
