206 BONES

confessed to shooting… .

My eyes froze on a sentence in a section subtitled Second Autopsy Findings.

Cross-sectional dissection demonstrated a single bullet track running longitudinally down the right erector mass.

Throat constricting with anger, I skimmed the rest.

… wound orientation suggested the victim was moving at the moment of projectile impact… . Cause of death reevaluated as homicide… . Extremely rare… . Review of the literature revealed no reported cases… .

I tossed the fax onto my desk, thoughts firing like kernels in a popper.

The bullet track was extraordinarily uncommon and difficult to spot. Ayers missed it with Keiser. Chris missed it in his Chicago case. Both are experienced pathologists.

Briel found it.

Luck? Skill? Coincidence?

Not a chance.

Briel couldn’t have read about Chris’s case. The article wasn’t yet in print.

My Internet search had turned up zip on Briel’s past. She claimed to have done a number of postdocs. Might one have been with the CCME?

My id popped another flashbulb image. Friday night’s dream. The tendrils floating from Rose Jurmain’s skeleton, one inscribed with the initials ML.

But that was wrong. ML analyzed Lassie’s bones. Not Rose’s.

Suddenly the skin on my face felt tight.

Briel was keen on anthropology. She’d taken a short course. Done the reexcavation at Oka. Jumped on the Lac Saint-Jean vics in my absence.

Might Briel be ML?

My cortex scoffed at my lower centers. Waaay overreaching.

Yet.

I dialed Chris again. This time he answered.

“I read the article. Good job.”

“You think it’s too long?”

“A little. Do you remember having a pathologist at the CCME named Marie- Andrea Briel?”

“No. But they come and go.”

“You did the bullet track autopsy around the time Laszlo Tot’s body was dragged from the Thornton Quarry, right?”

“Yes.”

“You said Walczak uses freebies for skeletal cases, pathologists, residents, anthropology grad students, right?”

“It’s not my decision.”

“Someone named ML did the anthropology on Laszlo’s remains, right?”

“Sorry. I don’t remember. I’d have to recheck the file.”

“Can you do that for me? And if ML examined Lassie’s bones, find out who that person was?”

“Does this have to do with the jerk who called Edward Allen Jurmain?”

God Almighty.

Suddenly, it all made terrible sense.

Briel found the bullet track.

Briel found the phalanges.

Briel found the staining.

My competence wasn’t slipping. I was being sabotaged.

Was Briel the one who’d contacted Jurmain? She was here. She’d have known about my involvement in the case.

But why?

“Earth to Tempe.”

“Sorry. I’m not sure, Chris. Maybe. But I know one thing for certain. The merde’s about to hit the ventilateur.”

The line beeped.

“Gotta go. Let me know what you learn. And thanks.”

I clicked over.

Labrousse. I was on a roll.

“Good thing this area is so inbred.” Labrousse wasn’t using the expression metaphorically. Being an isolated population that had bottlenecked genetically and reproduced wildly, over the years the folks of Lac Saint-Jean had been mined extensively for medical research. “Families stay put around here. And have memories deeper than a hooker’s cleavage. On Blackwater, everyone’s in agreement. He was half Montagnais.”

Yes!

“And Claire Clemenceau?” I asked. “Any history of tetracycline?”

“No one remembers anything like that. Brother says Claire was a healthy baby. Local GP’s dead, but he had a young associate just coming on in the fifties. The guy’s retired now, but remembers Claire. Says she was seen mainly for well-baby checkups. Guy’s ninety, but seems sharp enough.”

“But there are no written records to back him up.”

“No.”

“How about dental work?”

“The brother says none of the kids saw a dentist.”

That tracked. Based on the adult female’s teeth, it didn’t appear dental hygiene was a big priority.

Yet the younger child had a filling. That didn’t track.

“Did the brother remember staining on Claire’s dentition?”

“Says she had perfect teeth.”

Silence hummed down from the north. Then,

“Family version could be revisionist thinking.”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“Tragic accident, years pass, the dead kid becomes the perfect little girl.”

“Or the doc could be right. Claire was healthy.”

“Could be,” Labrousse said. “Let me know what you decide.”

After hanging up, I crossed to my worktable and scooped up the younger child’s two baby teeth.

I closed my eyes and digits and willed the tiny molars to speak to me. Claire Clemenceau, drowned while boating? Valentin Gouvrard, killed while flying?

I felt only a prickly hardness in my fist.

Uncurling my fingers, I studied the small crowns with their discolored enamel.

A phrase whispered through my brain.

Cusp of Carabelli.

No surprise I’d missed it. The tiny bump was barely visible, a wee bulge on the lingual surface of the mesiolingual cusp of the upper M2.

I picked up the permanent molar. No cusp.

Odd, but no big deal. The variation is most common on permanent first upper molars, but can be present on baby second molars as well.