7
RYAN WASN’T ALONE IN HIS REVULSION. I HAVE SEEN ABUSED AND starved children. I have seen them after they were beaten, raped, smothered, shaken to death, but I had never seen anything like what had been done to the babies found in St-Jovite.
Others had received calls the night before. When I arrived at eight-fifteen several press vans had taken up stations outside the SQ building, windows fogged, exhaust billowing from tailpipes.
Although the workday normally begins at eight-thirty, activity already filled the large autopsy room. Bertrand was there, along with several other SQ detectives and a photographer from SIJ, La Section d’Identite Judiciare. Ryan hadn’t arrived.
The external exam was under way, and a series of Polaroids lay on the corner desk. The body had been taken to X-ray, and LaManche was scribbling notes when I entered. He stopped and looked up.
“Temperance, I am glad to see you. I may need help in establishing the age of the infants.”
I nodded.
“And there may be an unusual”—he searched for a word, his long, basset face tense—“. . . tool involved.”
I nodded and went to change into scrubs. Ryan smiled and gave a small salute as I passed him in the corridor. His eyes were teary, his nose and cheeks cherry red, as though he’d walked some distance in the cold.
In the locker room I steeled myself for what was to come. A pair of murdered babies was horror enough. What did LaManche mean by an unusual tool?
Cases involving children are always difficult for me. When my daughter was young, after each child murder I’d fight an urge to tether Katy to me to keep her in sight.
Katy is grown now, but I still dread images of dead children. Of all victims, they are the most vulnerable, the most trusting, and the most innocent. I ache each time one arrives in the morgue. The stark truth of fallen humanity stares at me. And pity provides small comfort.
I returned to the autopsy room, thinking I was prepared to proceed. Then I saw the small body lying on the stainless steel.
A doll. That was my first impression. A life-size latex baby that had grayed with age. I’d had one as a child, a newborn that was pink and smelled rubbery sweet. I fed her through a small, round hole between her lips, and changed her diaper when the water flowed through.
But this was no toy. The baby lay on its belly, arms at its sides, fingers curled into the tiny palms. The buttocks were flattened, and bands of white crisscrossed the purple livor of the back. A cap of fine red down covered the little head. The infant was naked save for a bracelet of miniature blocks circling the right wrist. I could see two wounds near the left shoulder blade.
A sleeper lay on the adjacent table, blue and red trucks smiling from the flannel. Spread next to it were a soiled diaper, a cotton undershirt with crotch snaps, a long-sleeved sweater, and a pair of white socks. Everything was bloodstained.
LaManche spoke into a recorder.
“
Well developed and well nourished but dead, I thought, the outrage beginning to build.
“
I stared at the small cadaver. Yes, it was well preserved, with only slight skin slippage on the hands.
“Guess he won’t have to check for defense wounds.”
Bertrand had come up beside me. I didn’t respond. I was not in the mood for morgue humor.
“There’s another one in the cooler,” he continued.
“That’s what we’d been told,” I said crisply.
“Yeah, but, Christ. They’re babies.”
I met his eyes and felt a stab of guilt. Bertrand was not trying to be funny. He looked as if his own child had died.
“Babies. Someone wasted them and stashed them in a basement. That’s about as cold as a drive-by. Worse. The bastard probably knew these kids.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Makes sense. Two kids, two adults who are probably the parents. Someone wiped out the whole family.”
“And burned the house as a cover?”
“Possible.”
“Could be a stranger.”
“Could be, but I doubt it. Wait. You’ll see.” He refocused on the autopsy proceeding, hands clutched tightly behind his back.
