Vecamamma’s house. Then I described the mysterious phone call to the late Edward Allen Jurmain.
“What kind of dipshit would pull something like that?”
“I intend to find out. It has to be somebody very nearby.”
“That why your knickers are in a twist to work on a Sunday?”
Mentioning no names, I told her about the Villejoin sisters. She didn’t interrupt. My sister can be impetuous, at times aggravating, but she’s a crackerjack listener.
When I finished, Harry took a moment to respond.
“Gran was eighty-one when she died.”
“She was.”
“You working this thing with Ryan?”
“Yes.”
“When you catch the bastard, do me a favor?”
I waited.
“Fry his balls.”
I couldn’t disagree with baby sister’s suggestion.
15
MONDAY I AWOKE TO THE SOUND OF PLOWS BLASTING TRIPTYCH warnings to overnight parkers.
Wreep! Wreep! Wreep!
Though the media were reporting that most main arteries were clear, through a side window I could see that my block still looked like a postcard from Finland. I knew the same scene was playing on side streets and alleys all over town. Shovels would be flying, and those who’d failed to relocate their vehicles would now do so only after heavy-duty lifting. Hospital ERs would be hopping.
Knowing traffic would be brutal and parking would involve angling ass-end into waist-high snowbanks, I opted for mass transit. Today my Nanook trek paid off. I rode standing shoulder to armpit with commuters smelling of wet wool and sweat.
At Edifice Wilfrid-Derome, small white mountains hid the fences surrounding the parking lots. Cars were wedged into every square millimeter of cleared pavement. Those blocking others had notes below their wipers. Courtesy? Or excuses to leave early?
Elevator talk was all about the storm.
Upstairs at the LSJML it was business as usual. Except in the medico-legal section. There, nothing had been usual since LaManche dropped his bomb one sparkling Friday in September.
Blocked coronary vessels. Bypass surgery in October. Medical leave until the new year.
In addition to myself and LaManche, the three other pathologists had been present that day. Michael Morin. Natalie Ayers. Emily Santangelo. So was Marc Bergeron, the lab’s consulting odontologist. We’d all sat stunned.
Sure, the chief had suffered a pesky episode a few years back. But he’d recovered quickly. Once again arrived first each morning, turned the lights off at night. Triple bypasses were for frail, old men. LaManche was only fifty-eight.
I remember meeting LaManche’s hound dog gaze. Dropping my eyes. Glancing out the window. This can’t be real, I thought. The day is too beautiful. Irrational, but that’s what I thought.
The following week, LaManche raised the issue of a temporary replacement. The decision was quick and unanimous. Ours was a congenial unit. There’d be no stand-in. Until the boss returned the pathologists would assign cases and make administrative decisions by consensus. The extra workload would be equally shared.
And that’s how it was working, three months down the road.
Sort of.
After shedding my substantial outerwear, I snapped on a lab coat and headed to the staff lounge. At the exit from our wing, where the hall makes a turn, I passed a closed and locked door. Venetian blinds allowed a peek of an empty desk.
Beside the dark office, an erasable board announced daily staff whereabouts.
A lead weight settled in my heart.
Still, the silent office and the Magic Marker entry gave me shivers.
LaManche had always been there for me, a voice of wisdom and reason. Of compassion and perspective earned by decades of working with the dead and with the bereaved left behind. That voice was now banished because of bum piping.
Screw capricious fate. I couldn’t imagine the LSJML without LaManche. Didn’t want to.
Though the lounge was deserted, the puddled floor told me others had already been there. Dropping coins into an honor box, I poured coffee translucent as smoky quartz.
Back in the medico-legal wing, I hurried to the far end of the corridor. My watch said nine ten. Morning meeting usually kicks off at nine.
Our section’s conference room is exactly what you’d envision in a government building. Algae green walls. Gray tile floor. Window blinds. Phone credenza. Gunmetal table and chairs. A blackboard/projection screen hangs at one end, a door opens to an audiovisual closet at the other.
Two pathologists sat with their backs to the windows. Sunlight warmed Ayers’s chestnut hair and glinted off Morin’s freckled brown dome. A third sat at the far end. Santangelo’s slumping shoulders suggested fatigue.
Facing the old-timers was Marie-Andrea Briel, the new kid on the LSJML block. Briel had joined the staff the previous fall, during a period when I was away in Charlotte. Lab policy is that, for their first year, new pathologists do no homicide cases, so I hadn’t really worked with Briel. Though I’d seen her in the halls, and we’d nodded across the table at staff meetings, we’d had virtually no personal interaction. I knew little about her from firsthand experience. What snippets I’d been given weren’t golden.
One late afternoon, exhausted, LaManche had confided that an offer had been extended and accepted. In his opinion, the applicant wasn’t the pick of the litter. But old Jean Pelletier had been gone for over a year and he and the others had been doing the work of five.
Though he’d yet to reveal it, the chief probably knew he was looking at surgery in the not too distant future. Another pathologist had to be hired.
Why such a prolonged search? The pay is low, and the LSJML requires fluency in
