206 BONES

dropped.”

After disconnecting, I got up and popped an X-ray onto the light box. There wasn’t a trace of metal in the male’s right femur.

I studied his broad cheekbones and shoveled incisor.

More than ever I was convinced the man was not Achille Gouvrard.

My eyes shifted to the younger child’s discolored molars.

Again, shame burned my chest.

Briel spotted the tetracycline staining. I did not.

I looked away, out the window. At the scene I’d found calming for so many years. The river. The bridge. The drivers and pedestrians pursuing their everyday lives.

A moth lay on the sill, legs crimped, wings museum-mummy dry. Dead since this summer?

The little corpse triggered recall of my nighttime visitations. The moths. The skeletons. The burned corpses.

Something sat up deep in my brainpan.

I looked back at the bones.

Briel found the staining.

The something rippled the surface of my subconscious.

Briel found the bullet track.

The bullet track.

The something broke through into conscious thought.

36

GRABBING THE RECEIVER, I PUNCHED THE NUMBER FOR THE COOK County Medical Examiner. When my call was answered, I asked for Chris Corcoran.

Chris’s extension rang three times, then rolled to voice mail.

I left a message. Call as soon as you can. It’s important.

I looked at the wall clock. Nine thirty. He was probably carving out someone’s liver.

The bullet track. Natalie Ayers, a veteran pathologist, missed it. Marie-Andrea Briel, a rookie, found it. That was the flag my subconscious was waving.

The case was a stunner for Chris Corcoran. He described it in detail when I was in Chicago. The woman dead on her living room floor. The autopsy revealing no sign of trauma. The grandson admitting to capping his grandma. The reautopsy. Chris found the injury so unique he wrote it up for publication.

OK.

I hurried to the library.

Where to start? Chris was working the case when Laszlo Tot’s body turned up in the quarry. That was July of 2005.

It takes time to write a scientific article, to revise, to await your place in the publication queue. Pulling the November 2007 Journal of Forensic Sciences, I checked the author index.

Nothing. I checked 2006, 2005, 2008. Nothing.

So much for that.

Back to the lab.

While awaiting word from Chris about his bullet track case, and from Labrouse about the Sainte-Monique drowning vics, I decided to do some Internet research.

Googling the name Marie-Andrea Briel generated an astonishing number of links. In addition to numerous online papers and blogs, Briel had coauthored articles for the Journal of Forensic Sciences, the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, and a number of Canadian and British journals. All with the first sacked student assistant. All in the past year.

Briel had given dozens of interviews in both French and English. She’d served on panels directed at student career networking. She was listed among the faculty of the Department of Pathology at Laval University, and on a dozen sites hawking biomedical experts. She’d joined every forensic society in the free world.

As I followed loops into loops, I was aware of Joe moving around in the lab, logging tissue samples, shooting photos, entering data into the system. Of Jean Leloup, Isabelle Boulay, Daniel Belanger, and, of course, Celine crooning from the radio.

In all the cyber bytes tilled, I turned up nothing predating Briel’s arrival in Quebec. No biography. No resume. No mention of past employment or educational background.

When I finally peeled my eyes from the screen, I noticed a figure behind me. I turned.

Joe’s arms were crossed on his torso.

“I’m sorry. Did you say something?” I was surprised to see him there.

“The dental X-rays. Lac Saint-Jean. They were OK?”

“Yes.” Had I not thanked him? “Thanks. They were fine.”

I hesitated, debating whether to share my revised take on the vics. Why not? It might appease him, make him feel part of the breakthrough.

Joe listened to my new theory, face utterly blank.

“What about the staining?” he asked.

“An excellent question,” I said. “For which I will find an answer.”

“Do you-”

The phone rang.

I swiveled, hoping it was Chris Corcoran. It was.

“Something breaking? You sounded revved.”

“Thanks for calling back so fast. When I was in Chicago last December you described a homicide in which a single bullet shot straight down the victim’s back, remember?”

“Damndest thing. The trajectory followed the alignment of the muscle fibers, completely masking the presence of the track. I did an informal survey. No one had seen anything similar. The case was so freaky, I wrote it up for the JFS, got a revise and resubmit. I still haven’t gotten to the cuts the reviewers suggested. Want a copy?”

“Can you fax it to me now?”

“Sure.”

I gave Chris the number, then hurried to reception. Minutes later his article came clicking in.

An Unusual Gunshot Death Involving Longitudinal Tracking Through a Single Erector Mass.

Twenty-four pages. I agreed with the reviewers. Overkill.

I did a speed-read while walking back to my lab.

A sixty-eight-year-old female was last seen alive at a family picnic on the Fourth of July… . Daughter discovered decedent in an advanced state of putrefaction… . Absence of organ perforation… . Absence of skeletal trauma… . Absence of metallic trace… . Cause of death undetermined… . Victim’s grandson