“Tip-top.”
“What kind of sandwich did you buy from the machine?”
“Cheese.”
“I’ll pass. Let me know if you have any luck with the photo.”
Palming another antacid into my mouth, I popped the first few X-rays onto the light box, unsure what I was hoping for. The Gouvrard antemorts suggested no condition or injury that would affect bone. At least not the bone that I had.
I was halfway through the films when my gut signaled again. Forget twinge. This was a card-carrying cramp.
My gaze drifted to the trays I’d organized for Joe.
I looked at the clock. Four thirty-five. Had he actually left without taking the films?
“Joe,” I called around the corner.
What the hell?
“Joe!” I barked.
The top of my head flew off and my innards lurched.
I looked at the teeth. The bones. The useless X-rays.
These people had been dead for decades. They could wait another day.
Flicking off the light box, I locked up and headed out.
By the time I reached home the evil ham salad was goose-stepping across my gut, bellowing threats of a holocaust to come.
Entering the kitchen only to fill Birdie’s dish, I stripped, yanked on a nightshirt, and fell into bed. Minutes later I was up and lunging for the bathroom.
The vomiting continued well past the emptying point. When it ended, my mouth tasted of bile and my intercostals and abdominals ached from the strain.
But I felt better.
Not for long.
The microbes ran me in twenty-minute loops. Hurl. Recover. Renauseate. Hurl.
By ten I was shaking and drained. Literally. My thermoregulators had long since thrown up their hands, leaving my body on its own to decide whether to shiver or sweat. At times it did both.
I was crawling under the covers after a session with the porcelain prince when my eyes wandered to my bedside clock. Eleven twenty-five. My pounding brain managed a cogent recollection.
Briel.
Clawing the remote into my palm, I clicked on the TV and found the right station.
The interview was a feature spot, one of those long pieces in which an unusual job or profession is highlighted. The interviewer was a tweed-jacketed guy who looked like he’d just finished high school. Maybe.
Tweed Jacket introduced Briel as though she were Our Lady of Forensics. He might even have said that. I was so ill by that time, looking back, I’m never sure.
Briel wore a white cotton blouse and black pants that showed far too much ankle. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a bow. The perpetual frown was firmly in place.
If the sandwich hadn’t already laid me low, my colleague’s grandstanding certainly would have. With Tweed Jacket lobbing softball questions, Briel spoke of her brief but illustrious career.
An exhumation in France. A case involving a mysterious poison. The elusive cause of death for Marilyn Keiser. Though Briel’s face remained neutral, her tone was one of smug satisfaction.
To my horror, toward the wrap-up, discussion turned to Christelle Villejoin’s missing phalanges.
“Do you know Dr. Temperance Brennan?” Tweed Jacket asked.
“She is my colleague.”
“Her training is in anthropology, correct?”
“Yes. As is mine.”
I shot to a sit.
“A short course! You took a bloody short course!”
“Isn’t Dr. Brennan usually responsible for coroner-ordered exhumations?”
“Yes.” Just the slightest hesitation. The winging down of brows. For effect? “Dr. Brennan led the initial recovery at Oka. The phalanges were missed.”
Though I was chilled and shaking, my face burned.
Had I? Had I really missed them? I must have. But how?
My queasy brain scraped together an image of the tent. The pit. The earth- stained bones.
“-specialty training in forensic archaeology. What is needed in such situations is a team approach, the utilization of experts in excavation methodology, taphonomy and decomposition, and human soft and hard tissue anatomy and pathology.”
“Do such teams exist in Quebec?”
“One. A private company called Body Find. Corps decouvert. I am-”
My poisoned gut arced full cycle.
I stumbled to the bathroom on shaky legs.
When the retching stopped, I staggered back to bed.
Shivering uncontrollably, I killed the TV and light and pulled the covers to my chin.
27
“
