We went directly from the restaurant to the Edifice Wilfrid-Derome in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district just east of
Ryan took an unsecured elevator to four. I took a restricted one servicing only the LSJML, the coroner, and the morgue.
Any weekday the labs, offices, and corridors would have been swarming with white-coated scientists and technicians. That afternoon the place was quiet as a tomb. God bless Saturday.
Swiping my security pass for the fourth time since entering the building, I passed through glass doors separating the medico-legal wing from the rest of the twelfth floor, and proceeded down a hall with offices on the right and labs on the left. Microbiology. Histology. Pathology. Anthropology-Odontology.
During my absence in Chicago, window frames, bookshelves, cabinet doors, and refrigerators had been transformed. Each work area now reflected the sugarplum vision of its decorator. Plastic pine garlands. Lace doily snowflakes. Pere Noel with his sack of goodies, reindeer, and sleigh.
My desk was heaped and my phone was flashing. Ignoring the hysterical red message light, I slipped my purse into a drawer and headed for the locker room.
Showered and dressed in surgical scrubs, I returned to the lab for case forms, calipers, and a clipboard. Then I took another elevator offering the same limited choices: LSJML, coroner, morgue.
In the basement, through another secure door, a long, narrow corridor shoots the length of the building. To the left are an X-ray room and four autopsy suites, three with single tables, one with a pair. To the right are drying racks, computer stations, and wheeled tubs and carts for transporting specimens to the various departments on high.
Through a small glass window in each door, I could see that here, too, nothing was happening. No police photographers, no autopsy techs, no pathologists. Some of the bulletin boards were decked out like the labs upstairs.
’Tis the season, I thought glumly, wishing I were home with Katy and Birdie.
I went directly to salle d’autopsie number four-my
As does each of the others, autopsy room four has double doors leading to parallel morgue bays divided into refrigerated compartments. Small white cards mark the presence of temporary residents.
But I didn’t have to go there. The Oka victim lay on a gurney on the autopsy room side of the doors. Paperwork peeked from below the body bag.
A quick glance showed that the remains had been assigned LSJML and morgue numbers, and that Hubert had filled out a request for an anthropology consult.
I began by entering pertinent information into my anthropology case form.
Last, I wrote the date and a brief summary of facts.
Tossing my clipboard onto the counter, I located a camera and checked to be sure the battery was charged. Next I pulled a plastic apron from one drawer, gloves and a mask from another, and put them on. Costumed and ready, I rolled the gurney to one side of the stainless steel table floor-bolted in the center of the room.
As a precaution, I took shots of the body bag closed, then unzipped with contents revealed. The bra and panties were visible, folded and tucked into one corner.
I checked undie labels, but the printing was faded beyond legibility. After measuring waist and chest circumferences and shooting a few more pics, I spread the garments on the counter.
Prelims finished, I began reassembling the skeleton. I’d completed an inventory at graveside, distinguishing lefts from rights, so the process went quickly until I got to the fingers and toes. Since individuation is so dreadfully tedious, those bones I’d merely counted and bagged.
A normal adult human has fifty-six phalanges. The thumbs and halluces, or big toes, have two rows each, proximal and distal. Every other digit has three rows, proximal, middle, and distal.
First, I separated hands from feet. Piece of cake for
The reverse is true for pointer, middleman, ringman, and pinky. In those digits, finger phalanges are larger than toe phalanges. They are also flatter on their palm surfaces and more rounded on their backs, and their shafts are shorter and less laterally compressed.
Row position is all about joints. At its proximal end, a first-row phalange has a single facet, or concave oval surface for articulation with a metatarsal in the foot or a metacarpal in the hand. At its distal end are double knobs. A second-row phalange has double knobs at the distal end and double facets at the proximal end. A third-row phalange has a double facet at the near end, a tapered point at the far.
Setting the twenty-eight finger bones aside, I sorted toe phalanges by position. That done, I determined specific digits, two through five. Then I separated lefts from rights.
See what I mean by tedious?
By the time I finished with the feet my back was kinked and my face was itchy from the mask. I was doing overhead arm stretches when I thought I heard movement somewhere down the hall.
I checked the wall clock. 6:40.
I peered out the door in both directions.
Not a soul.
Back to the table.
“Fa la la la la.” My song rang cheerless in the empty room.
After another muscle stretch, I dived into the hand bones. Proximal, middle, distal.
I was sorting digits when I heard the muted clink of metal on metal. Again, I checked the hall.
Again, it was empty.
Printer recalibrating? Cooler kicking on?
The ghost of Christmas future coming to kick butt?
Achy and cranky, I turned back to the phalanges. I wanted to finish as quickly as possible. To go home, eat supper, maybe read a good book. Alexander McCall Smith. Or Nora Roberts. A story distant from this parallel universe of death.
Then I remembered. I didn’t have a car because I’d ridden with Ryan. I’d have to take the metro.
Crap.
And it was probably a billion degrees below zero.
Crap. Crap.
As I worked, my mood grew blacker and blacker. I remembered there was no food at the condo. Dinner would be a frozen
And I’d eat it alone. Birdie was in North Carolina. So was Katy. Since I wasn’t supposed to be in Montreal, Ryan had Charlie at his place.
