Hallelujah.
During lucid periods, I learned that cold hadn’t been my only aggressor. Joe Bonnet had also contributed his share of hurt. In the course of abducting, transporting, and dumping me, he’d concussed my brain, sprained one ankle, and converted one cheek to raw flank steak.
Yeah. Joe. The drainsplorer. I’d gotten that right.
I let my gaze travel the room. IV drip. Cardiac monitor. Water pitcher. Wall- mounted TV. Visitor chair, one of those convertible plastic types originally designed to crack secret agents. A paperback novel lay on the arm rest.
I checked the title.
I smiled. It hurt like hell.
I recalled talking to Ryan during one waking phase. Grilling him would be more accurate. I’d been abducted at 10 Tuesday night. It was now 10 a.m. Thursday. I did some calculation. Thirty-six hours had passed since I’d charged from my condo. Twenty-eight since Ryan had sprung me from the sewer. More math. I’d spent eight hours underground.
The flukey warm spell had been a mixed blessing. Milder temperatures had aided my survival. They’d also spurred melting, sending gallons of runoff into the sewers.
As if cued by telepathy, Ryan appeared, bearing a bouquet of pointy orange things that looked like they fed on small lizards.
Seeing me awake, Ryan hurried to the bed.
“Are those things dangerous?” My voice sounded hoarse and croaky. “Only if you threaten their young.” Ryan set the flowers on the bed, took my hand.
“Holding only. No caressing or massaging.” He stroked a thumb lightly across my knuckles.
I floated a brow. I think. My questioning brow is on the right. That side of my face was toast.
“Rubbing could dislodge ice crystals intent on bushwacking your heart.”
“I hate when that happens,” I said.
Ryan dragged a chair to the bed. Sat. Reclaimed my hand.
“OK, Galahad,” I said. “Dish.”
“Everything?”
“For now, just the highlights. My abductor was Joe Bonnet, right?”
Ryan nodded. “Long story short, your beloved assistant felt under-appreciated and overworked.”
I rolled my eyes. That hurt, too.
“Sensing disaffection, Briel schmoozed Joe up. Said he was a superstar. Offered a golden future with Body Find.”
“Joe stole Christelle Villejoin’s phalanges for her.”
“No, that was Briel’s handiwork. She overheard your conversation with the Villejoins’ doctor, figured the finger bones would be important because of the camptodactyly.”
I thought back to that day. “Briel pinched them while I was upstairs getting a Diet Coke.”
“She reasoned that since the phalanges would be ‘discovered’ during her follow-up dig, no harm no foul.”
“How did she know Hubert would send her to Oka?”
“If not, she planned to find the phalanges in the lab. Either way, you’d look bad.”
“Briel also swapped out the Lac Saint-Jean teeth?”
“Yep. Read Valentin Gouvrard’s antemorts, remembered Duclos mentioning a dental collection with brown baby teeth. Joe let her into the cabinet containing Bergeron’s tub, she found the stained deciduous molars, palmed and planted them with the remains. Who cares after all these years?”
“Decades-old bones, case going nowhere, what’s the difference, right?”
“Exactly her thinking.”
“That’s what tipped me in the sewer that my attacker was Joe. I realized Briel had to have gotten access through him. Only Bergeron, Joe, and I had keys. That and the long spider legs.”
“Long spider legs?”
“Never mind.”
Ryan let it go. “Both with Oka and Lac Saint-Jean, Briel felt she could make herself dazzle while doing no harm.”
“Except to me.”
“Another plus.”
“Did Briel call Edward Allen Jurmain?”
“She had Raines do that. Wanted it to be a male voice in case anyone asked Edward Allen. He used a pay phone at the gare Centrale to avoid blowback on either of them.”
“Did she shoot the bullet into Marilyn Keiser’s corpse?”
“Briel insists that was all Joe. Says she’d never do anything to compromise a police investigation. Claims she was horrified by Joe’s action. I suspect it was a joint effort. Joe wouldn’t have known anything about that kind of bullet track. Briel remembers Richie Cunningham’s case in Chicago-”
“His name is Chris Corcoran.”
“-sees another chance to shine. Three-month-old homicide, probably never be solved. If it is, so what if cause of death’s a little off. I’m thinking she held the body while Joe fired the shot. She dissects out the bullet, announces the track,
A nurse entered the room, rubber sole squeaked to the bed. She took my pulse, then stuck a thermometer into my mouth, strapped my arm with a blood pressure collar, and pumped the little black ball.
“Those flowers must go into a vase.” Without looking at either Ryan or me.
“Of course.” Ryan offered his most engaging grin. “Would you possibly happen to have an old one lying around?”
We all waited out my thermal performance.
The nurse entered vitals into my chart, hurried off.
“Don’t cross that woman,” Ryan said.
“Not a chance,” I said.
“Did Briel write the
“That was Joe’s little touch.”
“Nice. I suppose she leaked the Keiser ID to the press.”
“How better to score tube time.”
“What happened Tuesday night? Where was I?”
Ryan’s brows definitely rose. “You explained it to
Sweet pea? That was a new one. Or was that a medical reference? I did have a catheter and tinkle bag.
I shook my head.
“I found you in a sewer below Alexandre-de-Seve. You’d crawled along a semi- abandoned collector to its junction with a main line. You’d broken out of an old tomb below Veterans Park. Searchers learned about that today.”
“Part of the Old Military Burying Ground,” I said. “But that cemetery was relocated long ago.”
“Right you are.” Ryan assumed a professorial tone. “At
