early months of 1845. He apparently expressed his views frequently. But, much to the doctor’s annoyance, Eugenie would not be dissuaded. She was leaving in April, would do concerts in Paris and Brussels, then spend the summer in France, returning to Montreal at the end of July.
A voice ordered trays and chair backs into full upright and locked position for landing in Pittsburgh.
An hour later, again airborne, I skimmed through the spring of 1845. Louis-Philippe was busy with hospital and city affairs, but made weekly visits to his brother-in-law. Alain Nicolet, it appears, did not travel to Europe with his wife.
I wondered how Eugenie’s tour had gone. Apparently Uncle Louis-Philippe had not, since she was mentioned little during those months. Then an entry caught my eye.
July 17, 1845. Due to irregular circumstances, Eugenie’s stay in France would be prolonged. Arrangements had been made, but Louis-Philippe was vague as to their nature.
I stared at the whiteness outside my window. What “irregular circumstances” had kept Eugenie in France? I calculated. Elisabeth was born in January. Oh, boy.
Throughout the summer and fall Louis-Philippe made only brief reference to his sister. Letter from Eugenie. Doing well.
As our wheels touched pavement at Dorval Airport, Eugenie reappeared. She, too, had returned to Montreal. April 16, 1846. Her baby was three months old.
There it was.
Elisabeth Nicolet was born in France. Alain could not be her father. But who was?
Ryan and I deplaned in silence. He checked his messages while I waited for the baggage. When he returned his face told me the news was not good.
“They found the vans near Charleston.”
“Empty.”
He nodded.
Eugenie and her baby faded into another century.
The sky was nickel and a light rain blew across the headlights as Ryan and I drove east along Highway 20. According to the pilot, Montreal was a balmy thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.
We rode in silence having already agreed on our courses of action. I wanted to rush home, to find my sister and relieve myself of a building sense of foreboding. Instead, I would do as Ryan asked. Then I would pursue a plan of my own.
We parked in the lot at Parthenais and Ryan and I picked our way toward the building. The air smelled of malt from the Molson brewery. Oil filmed the pools of rainwater collecting on the uneven pavement.
Ryan got off on the first floor and I continued to my office on the fifth. After removing my coat, I dialed an inside extension. They’d gotten my message and we could begin as soon as I was ready. I went at once to the lab.
I gathered scalpel, ruler, glue, and a two-foot length of rubber eraser material and set them on my worktable. Then I opened my carry-on package, unwrapped and inspected the contents.
The skull and mandible of the unknown Murtry victim had made the trip undamaged. I often wonder what the airport scanner operators think when my skeletal parts go through. I placed the skull on a cork ring in the middle of the table. Then I squeezed glue into the temporomandibular joint and fixed the jaw in place.
While the Elmer’s dried, I found a chart of facial tissue thicknesses for white American females. When the jaw felt firm I slid the skull onto a holder, adjusted the height, and secured it with clamps. The empty orbits stared directly into my eyes as I measured and cut seventeen tiny rubber cylinders and glued them onto the facial bones.
Twenty minutes later I took the skull to a small room down the corridor. A plaque identified the section as Section d’Imagerie. A technician greeted me and indicated that the system was up and running.
Wasting no time, I placed the skull on a copy stand, captured images of it with a video camera, and sent them to the PC. I evaluated the digitized views on the monitor and chose a frontal orientation. Then, using a stylus and drawing tablet attached to the computer, I connected the rubber markers projecting from the skull. As I directed the crosshairs around the screen a macabre silhouette began to emerge.
When satisfied with the facial contour, I moved on. Using the bony architecture as a guide I sampled eyes, ears, noses, and lips from the program’s database, and fitted predrawn features onto the skull.
Next I tested hair, and added what I thought would be the least distracting style. Knowing nothing of the victim, I decided it was better to be vague than wrong. When I was happy with the components I’d added to the captured cranial image, I used the stylus to blend and shadow to make the reconstruction as lifelike as possible. The whole process took less than two hours.
I leaned back and looked at my work.
A face gazed from the monitor. It had drooping eyes, a delicate nose, and broad, high cheekbones. It was pretty in a robotic, expressionless way. And somehow familiar. I swallowed. Then with a touch of the stylus I modified the hair. Blunt cut. Bangs.
I drew in a breath. Did my reconstruction resemble Anna Goyette? Or had I simply created a generic young female and given the hair a familiar cut?
I returned the hair to the original style and evaluated the likeness. Yes? No? I had no idea.
Finally, I touched a command on the drop-down menu, and four frames appeared on the screen. I compared the series, looking for hints of inconsistency between my merged image and the skull. First, the unaltered cranium and jaw. Next, a peel image, with bare bone on the skull’s left, fleshed features on the right. Third, the face I’d created superimposed in ghostly translucence over bone and tissue markers. Last, the finished facial approximation. I clicked the final image to full screen and stared at it a long time. I still wasn’t sure.
