I nodded.
“Looks old.”
“It is.”
“How old?”
“It’s safe to say these folks didn’t hang stockings this season.”
“Forty years?”
I just looked at him.
“A Cessna 310 disappeared in ’sixty-seven en route from Chicoutimi to Quebec City. Gouvrard family. Parents, two kids. The last sighting was in the vicinity of Lac Saint-Jean, so thinking was the plane went down in the water. No wreckage was ever found.”
Ryan handed me a paper. I glanced at it. Listed were the names and ages of four individuals.
Achille Gouvrard, 48
Vivienne Gouvrard, 42
Serge Gouvrard, 12
Valentin Gouvrard, 8
“Any chance there are antemorts after all these years?”
“File’s on the way.”
“You’re good, Detective.”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
“I owe you.”
“I’ll collect.” Exaggerated brow flash.
Something stirred in my southern parts. I ignored it.
“Why did Lac Saint-Jean ring a bell for you?”
“Gouvrard’s sister was married to a guy on the job, Quentin Jacqueme. For years Jacqueme floated a query on the anniversary of the crash. If anything turned up, he wanted to know about it.”
“Got to admire such doggedness.”
“Doggedness. Good word. The reminders stopped shortly after I came aboard, when Jacqueme retired. Being former SQ, he was easy to locate.”
“Thus the continued existence and quick access to a forty-year-old file.”
“Thus.”
“Sad about Keiser,” I said.
“Yes,” Ryan said. “But expected.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
When Ryan left I finished my analysis. Though each skeleton was fragmentary and most bones were weathered and damaged, there was sufficient data to determine that the family profile fit.
No one showed any obvious health or dental issues.
But what about Daddy’s cheekbones and shoveled tooth? Probably normal variation.
Nevertheless, I’d have Ryan ask Jacqueme about his brother-in-law’s ancestry.
At four twenty I phoned Hubert to report Ryan’s find.
“Nineteen sixty-seven.” I heard leather strain as Hubert shifted in his chair. “So Dr. Briel’s involvement becomes irrelevant. By the way, how did she do?”
“C minus.”
Hubert made one of his indecipherable sounds.
“I can’t sign off on IDs based on what I have,” I said. “Antemorts are on the way, but I’m not optimistic. I’ve got very few teeth. None for the younger child.”
“DNA?”
“Maybe mitochondrial, but that’s iffy. Bone quality is very poor. What are the chances of locating maternal relatives?”
“
I remembered Hubert’s words at Christelle Villejoin’s grave. How many grannies go missing around here? I said nothing.
“Besides, the crash is ancient history.”
“Ancient history can snap back in bad ways.
“Madame Keiser is downstairs.” Topic switch. Hubert’s standard operating procedure when uncomfortable. “Ayers volunteered to do the autopsy first thing tomorrow.”
I waited.
“Perhaps Keiser became disoriented and set herself on fire.”
“There’s no history of dementia.”
“Shit happens.”
I spent another two hours with the Lac Saint-Jean bones, listing details that might be useful once antemortem records arrived. I suspected Hubert was right. Mom, Dad, and two kids? What were the chances? Still.
Pelvic features told me the male and female were somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and fifty.
Gender determination is sketchy at best with preadolescent skeletons. I had only fragments of one, none of the other juvenile pelvis, so, in this case, the issue was a nonstarter.
The jaw and most of the head were missing from the older child, but arm and leg bone development suggested an age of ten to twelve years.
The younger child was represented by two vertebrae, three partial long bones, a calcaneous, and a handful of cranial fragments. Epiphyseal maturity in the proximal femur suggested an age of six to eight years. I also had three isolated molars, two deciduous and one adult. Wear facets suggested that all three molars had been fully erupted. Root closure suggested an age of six to eight years.
Why so little skull for the kids? Nothing sinister. The individual bones comprising young vaults are either separate or only partially fused. When the soft tissue sloughs, these bones often disconnect at the sutures, the squiggly lines along which they join hands.
All four individuals had cranial and thoracic fractures. The male had some lower-limb trauma. The smoothing of every broken edge made perimortem versus postmortem determination impossible.
I reviewed my notes.
Adult genders: Consistent.
Adult and juvenile ages: Consistent.
Skeletal trauma: Consistent with an aviation accident. The male’s lower leg injuries were as I’d expect for a person manning the controls.
Consistent.
Not enough. The male’s cheekbones and shoveled incisor still troubled me.
I surveyed the empty lab. The silent printer. The winking message light on Joe’s phone. The screen saver looping endlessly on his computer.
