206 BONES

Carabelli’s cusp varies in frequency of expression between populations, occurring in a high percentage of Europeans. Its presence suggested the Lac Saint-Jean child was probably white. I already suspected that. The variant was little more than a curiosity.

Frustrated, I returned the teeth to their vial.

Then I paced, thoughts buzzing like yellowjackets in my brain.

Briel had done anthropology when her training was in pathology. Remains were now in danger of misidentification. Briel’s motive didn’t matter. I had to demonstrate her ineptness to Hubert. To stop her over-reaching her professional competence.

Gnawing a thumbnail, I reviewed the facts.

Achille Gouvrard was white. The male skeleton had features suggesting Mongoloid ancestry.

Richard Blackwater was half Montagnais.

Achille Gouvrard had shrapnel embedded in one thigh bone. The man on my table did not.

Claire Clemenceau was a healthy infant.

The younger child’s baby teeth showed tetracycline staining. Obvious. Yet I’d missed it during my preliminary examination.

Claire Clemenceau probably never saw a dentist.

The child on my table had a restoration.

A Carabelli’s cusp on one baby tooth.

Useless.

I’d missed that, too.

Or had I?

Briel found the bullet track.

Briel found the phalanges.

Briel found the staining.

The truth blasted through.

I knew what had happened.

And what I had to do to prove it.

37

LEAVING MY LAB, I CHECKED THE BOARD AT THE END OF THE HALL. The letters AM were written beside Briel’s name. Absence motivee.

Briel had requested the day off.

Excellent.

I proceeded to admin. Claiming need of a file, I asked for a key to LaManche’s door. No big deal. With the chief on sick leave, the pathologists and I occasionally required dossiers from his office.

My watch said eleven fifty. Back in my office, I forced myself to wait. Twenty minutes. Then my coworkers would be downing lunch meat and microwave pizza.

Overestimation. In ten minutes the medico-legal wing was deserted.

Moving quickly, I went to LaManche’s desk and removed his master keys. Then I let myself into Briel’s office, closed the door, and began searching.

The desk produced nothing.

I worked through the bookshelves, then the credenza. Still nothing.

My palms were damp. I felt like a thief.

With jerky movements, I began pulling drawers in the first filing cabinet. Nada.

Second. Nope.

My eyes flicked to the narrow window paralleling the door. Through the blinds I detected no movement in the hall.

Deep breath.

I started on the last cabinet.

And struck gold.

The ziplock lay in the bottom drawer, in a gap behind the last file separator. Inside were at least forty teeth.

High-fiving myself, I slipped from the room, locked up, and returned the chief ’s keys.

Back in my lab, I spread the collection on my blotter. And sagged in dismay.

There wasn’t a baby tooth in the lot, stained or otherwise.

Had I erred? Misjudged Briel? Was I desperately seeking a way to let myself off the hook?

As before, my gaze drifted to the window over my desk. A frost blossom spread from a lower corner of the glass. I saw a peony. An owl. An old man’s face.

I thought of Katy, our cloud games when she was a little girl. I wished myself home, on my back in the grass on a summer afternoon.

I remembered my conversation with Solange Duclos. Her “spider” molar from Bergeron’s tub. The itsy bitsy spider went up the waterspout. I hadn’t been amused. A sign I was growing old? Losing my ability to imagine? To laugh?

To function professionally?

Hell no. I hadn’t really inspected the damn tooth.

The tooth.

The tub.

I pictured the “spider” itsy bitsying through the air.

My eyes closed.

Flew open.

Carabelli’s cusp!

Grabbing my keys, I shot to the closet, unlocked a cabinet, and yanked out Bergeron’s tub of teaching specimens.

Back to my desk for another triage.

The collection contained twelve baby teeth: eight incisors, three canines, and Duclos’s “spider” molar, an upper first from the right side.

Sonovabitch. The molar had a Carabelli’s cusp.

I carried it to a table-mounted magnifying lens. I was rotating the molar, studying every surface, when the door opened, clicked shut.

I glanced up.

Joe.

Too amped for small talk, I turned back to the lens, hoping, but not really expecting to find what I needed.

I was about to give up when a pinpoint of dullness caught my attention, not so much a stain as a subtle flattening of the enamel.