The balding was not due to decomposition. The strands that remained were firmly rooted. The detached segment of skin and hair was neatly rectangular, its edges torn and ragged.
Jennifer Cannon’s scalp had been ripped from her skull.
I thought of what that meant.
And I thought of something else.
Could I have been so thick? Could a preconceived mind-set have blinded me to the obvious?
I grabbed my keys and purse and flew out the door.
Forty minutes later I was at the university. The bones of the unidentified Murtry victim stared accusingly from my lab table.
How could I have been so careless?
“Never assume a single source of trauma.” My mentor’s words floated back across the decades.
I’d fallen into the trap. When I saw the destruction on the bones I’d thought raccoons and vultures. I hadn’t looked closely. I hadn’t measured.
Now I had.
While there was extensive damage on the skeleton due to postmortem scavenging, other injury had gone before.
The two holes in the occipital bone were the most telling. They measured five millimeters each, with a distance between them of thirty-five. These punctures were not made by a turkey vulture, and the pattern was too large for a raccoon.
The dimensions suggested a large dog. So did parallel scratches on the cranial bones, and similar perforations in the clavicle and sternum.
Jennifer Cannon and her companion had been attacked by animals, probably large dogs. Teeth had torn their flesh and scored their bones. Some bites had been powerful enough to pierce the thickness at the back of the skull.
My mind made a leap.
Carole Comptois, the Montreal victim who had been hung by her wrists and tortured, had also been mauled.
That’s reaching, Brennan.
Yes.
It’s ridiculous.
No, I told myself. It’s not.
Up to now my skepticism had done nothing for these victims. I’d been slack about the animal damage. I’d doubted the link between Heidi Schneider and Dom Owens, and I’d failed to see his connection to Jennifer Cannon. I hadn’t helped Kathryn or Carlie, and I’d done nothing to locate Anna Goyette.
From now on, if necessary, I
I phoned Hardaway, not expecting him to be working late on Saturday. He wasn’t. Neither was LaManche, the pathologist who had done the Comptois autopsy. I left messages for both.
Frustrated, I took out a tablet and began to list what I knew.
Jennifer Cannon and Carole Comptois were both from Montreal. Each died following an animal attack.
The skeleton buried with Jennifer Cannon also bore the marks of animal teeth. The victim died with levels of Rohypnol indicative of acute intoxication.
Rohypnol was isolated in two of the victims found with Heidi Schneider and her family in St-Jovite.
Rohypnol was found in bodies at the murder/suicide sites of the Order of the Solar Temple.
The Solar Temple operated in Quebec and Europe.
Phone calls were made from the house in St-Jovite to Dom Owens’ commune on Saint Helena. Both properties were owned by Jacques Guillion, who also owned property in Texas.
Jacques Guillion is Belgian.
One of the St-Jovite victims, Patrice Simonnet, was Belgian.
Heidi Schneider and Brian Gilbert joined Dom Owens’ group in Texas and returned there for the birth of their babies. They left Texas and were murdered. In St-Jovite.
The St-Jovite victims died approximately three weeks ago.
Jennifer Cannon and the unidentified victim on Murtry died three to four weeks ago.
Carole Comptois died a little less than three weeks ago.
I stared at the page. Ten. Ten people dead. Again the odd phrase ricocheted through my brain. Death du jour. Death of the day. We’d found them day by day, but they’d all died around the same time. Who would be next? Into what circle of hell had we stumbled?
When I got home I went directly to the computer to revise my report on the Murtry skeleton to include injury due to animal attack. Then I printed and read what I’d written.
As I finished, the clock chimed the full Westminster refrain, then gave six low bongs. My stomach growled a
