“No.”
“Doesn’t rule it out. Some of these guys use women like condoms. The ladies might have been at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Yes.”
“Cause of death?”
“I haven’t finished yet.”
“Go get ‘em, tiger. But remember, we’re going to need you on the St-Jovite cases when I nail these bastards.”
“What bastards?”
“Don’t know yet, but I will.”
When we disconnected I stared at my report. Then I got up and paced the lab. Then I sat. Then I paced some more.
My mind kept throwing up images from St-Jovite. Doughy white babies, eyelids and fingernails a delicate blue. A bullet-pierced skull. Slashed throats, hands scored with defense wounds. Scorched bodies, their limbs twisted and contorted.
What linked the Quebec deaths to the point of land on Saint Helena Island? Why babies and fragile old women? Who was Guillion? What was in Texas? Into what form of malignancy had Heidi and her family stumbled?
Concentrate, Brennan. The young women in this lab are just as dead. Leave the Quebec murders to Ryan and finish these cases. They deserve your attention. Find out when they died. And how.
I pulled on another pair of gloves and examined every bone of the second victim’s skeleton under magnification. I found nothing to tell me what caused her death. No blunt instrument trauma. No gunshot entry or exit. No stab wound. No hyoid fracture to indicate strangulation.
The only damage I observed was caused by animals scavenging on her corpse.
As I replaced the last foot bone, a tiny black beetle crawled from under a vertebra. I stared at it, remembering an afternoon when Birdie had tracked a June bug in my kitchen in Montreal. He’d played with the creature for hours before finally losing interest.
Tears burned my eyelids, but I refused to give in.
I collected the beetle and put it in a plastic container. No more death. I would release the bug when I left the building.
O.K., beetle. How long have these ladies been dead? We’ll work on that.
I looked at the clock. Four-thirty. Late enough. I flipped through my Rolodex, found a number, and dialed.
Five time zones away a phone was answered.
“Dr. West.”
“Dr. Lou West?”
“Yes.”
“A.k.a. Kaptain Kam?”
Silence.
“Of Spam fame?”
“It’s tuna fish. Is that you, Tempe?”
In my mind’s eye I saw him, thick silver hair and beard framing a face permanently tanned by the Hawaiian sun. Years before I’d met him, a Japanese ad agency spotted Lou and cast him as spokesman for a brand of canned tuna. His earring and ponytail were perfectly suited to the sea captain image they wanted. The Japanese loved Kaptain Kam. Though we teased him unmercifully, no one I knew had ever seen the ads.
“Ready to give up bugs and hawk tuna full time?”
Lou holds a doctorate in biology and teaches at the University of Hawaii. In my opinion he is the best forensic entomologist in the country.
“Not quite.” He laughed. “The suit itches.”
“Do it in the buff.”
“I don’t think the Japanese are ready for that.”
“When has that ever stopped you?”
Lou and I, and a handful of other forensic specialists, teach a course on body recovery at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. It’s an irreverent group, composed of pathologists, entomologists, anthropologists, botanists, and soil experts, most with academic backgrounds. One year a zealously conservative agent suggested to the entomologist that his earring was inappropriate. Lou listened solemnly, and the next day the small gold loop was replaced by an eight-inch Cherokee feather with beads, fringe, and a small silver bell.
“I’ve got your bugs.”
“They came through intact?”
“Unscathed. And you did a great job collecting. In the Carolinas the insect assemblage associated with decomposition includes over five hundred and twenty species. I think you sent me most of them.”
