?Thanks.? Back to drumming. ?Know who she is yet??
I shook my head. ?Ryan?s working on it.?
He ran a meaty hand over his face. His knuckles were covered with patches of coarse gray hair, miniature versions of the crop on his head.
?So what do you think about victim selection??
I gave a palm up gesture. ?They?re all female.?
?Great. Ages??
?Sixteen to forty-seven.?
?Physicals??
?A mix.?
?Locations??
?All over the map.?
?So what?s the sicko bastard go for? The way they look? The boots they wear? The place they shop??
I replied with silence.
?You find
?Some sonofabitch beat the crap out of them, then killed them.?
?Right.? Tilting forward, he placed his hands on his knees, hunched and lowered his shoulders, and gave a deep sigh. ?Claudel?s going to shit flaming bullets.?
When he?d gone I called Ryan. Neither he nor Bertrand was in, so I left a message. I went through the other dossiers, but found little of interest. Two drug dealers blasted and sawed up by former friends in crime. A man killed by his nephew, dismembered with a power saw, then stored in the basement freezer. A power failure had brought him to the attention of the rest of the family. A female torso washed up in a hockey bag, with head and arms found downriver. The husband was convicted.
I closed the last file and realized I was starving-1:50 P.M. No wonder. I bought a ham and cheese croissant and a Diet Coke in the cafeteria on the eighth floor, and returned to my office, ordering myself to take a break. Ignoring the order, I tried Ryan again. Still out. A break it would be. I bit the sandwich and allowed my thoughts to meander. Gabby. Nope. Out of bounds. Claudel. Veto. St. Jacques. Off limits.
Katy. How could I get through to her? Right now, no way. By default, back to Pete, and I felt a familiar flutter in my stomach. Remember the tingling skin, the pounding blood, the warm wetness between my legs. Yes, there had been passion. You?re just horny, Brennan. I took another bite of my sandwich.
The other Pete. The nights of anger. The arguments. The dinners alone. The cold shroud of resentment that had smothered the lust. I took a swig of Coke. Why was I thinking about Pete so often? If we had a chance to do it all again . . . Thanks, Ms. Streisand.
Relaxation therapy wasn?t working. I reread Lucie?s printout, careful not to drip mustard on it. I reviewed the list on page three, trying to read the items Lucie had crossed out, but her pencil marks obscured the letters. Out of curiosity, I erased each of her lines and read the entries. Two cases involved bodies stuffed into barrels then doused with acid. A new twist on the ever-popular drug burn.
The third item puzzled me. Its LML number indicated a 1990 case, and that Pelletier had been the pathologist. No coroner was listed. In the name field it read: Singe. The data fields for date of birth, date of autopsy, and cause of death were empty. The entry ?
Finishing the croissant, I went to the central files and pulled the jacket. It contained only three items: a police incident report, a one-page opinion by the pathologist, and an envelope of photographs. I thumbed through the pictures, read the reports, then went in search of Pelletier.
?Got a minute?? I said to his hunched back.
He turned from the microscope, glasses in one hand, pen in the other. ?Come in, come in,? he urged, sliding the bifocals onto his face.
My office had a window; his had space. He strode across it and gestured to one of two chairs flanking a low table in front of his desk. Reaching into his lab coat, he withdrew a pack of du Maurier?s and extended it to me. I shook my head. We?d been through the ritual a thousand times. He knew I didn?t smoke, but would always offer. Like Claudel, Pelletier was set in his ways.
?What can I help you with?? he said, lighting up.
?I?m curious about an old case of yours. Goes back to 1990.?
?Ah,
We both laughed. ?Dr. Pelletier, I think you remember just about everything you want to remember.?
He shrugged and wagged his head, all innocence.
?Anyway, I brought the file.? I held it up, then opened it. ?Police report says the remains were found in a gym bag behind the Voyageur bus station. Wino opened it, thinking maybe he could find the owner.?
?Right,? said Pelletier. ?Honest rubbies are so common they should form their own fraternal organization.?
?Anyway, he didn?t like the aroma. Said?-I skimmed the incident report to find the exact phrase-??the smell of Satan rose up out of the bag and surrounded my soul.? Unquote.?
?A poet. I like that,? said Pelletier. ?Wonder what he?d say about my shorts.?
I ignored that and read on. ?He took the bag to a janitor, who called the police. They found a collection of body parts wrapped up in some sort of tablecloth.?
?Ah,
?Dr. Pelletier??
?The case of the terminal monkey.?
?Then I read your report correctly??
He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
?It really was a monkey??
He nodded gravely. ?Capucin.?
?Why did it come here??
?Dead.?
?Yes.? Everyone?s a comedian. ?But why a coroner case??
The look on my face must have prompted a straight answer. ?Whatever was in there was small, and someone had skinned it and cut it up. Hell, it could have been anything. Cops thought it might be a fetus or a neonate, so they sent it to us.?
?Was there anything odd about the case?? I wasn?t sure what I was looking for.
?Nah. Just another sliced-up monkey.? The corners of his mouth twitched slightly.
?Right.? Dumb question. ?Anything strike you about the way the monkey was cut up??
?Not really. These monkey dismemberments are all the same.?
This was going nowhere.
?Did you ever find out whose monkey it was??
?Actually, we did. A blurb appeared in the paper, and some guy called from the university.?
?UQAM??
?Yeah, I think so. A biologist or zoologist or something. Anglophone. Ah. Wait.?
He went to a desk drawer, pushed the contents around, then withdrew a stack of business cards bound with a rubber band. Rolling the band off, he flicked through the cards and handed one to me.
?That?s him. I saw him when he came to ID the deceased.?
The card read: Parker T. Bailey, Ph.D., Professeur de Biologie, Universit #233; du Qu #233;bec #224; Montr #233;al, and gave e-mail, telephone, and fax numbers, along with an address.
?What was the story?? I asked.
?The gentleman keeps monkeys at the university for his research. One day he came in and found one less subject.?
?Stolen??
