with room temperature root beer. Not haute cuisine, but filling.
The luggage I’d dropped off Tuesday night sat unopened in the bedroom. I didn’t consider unpacking. Tomorrow. I fell into bed, planning to sleep at least nine hours. The phone woke me in less than four.
“
“Temperance. It is Pierre LaManche. I am very sorry to disturb you at this hour.”
I waited. In the seven years I’d worked for him, the lab director had never called me at three in the morning.
“I hope things went well at Lac Memphremagog.” He cleared his throat. “I have just had a call from the coroner’s office. There is a house fire in St-Jovite. The firefighters are still trying to get it under control. The arson investigators will go in first thing in the morning, and the coroner wants us there.” Again the throat. “A neighbor says the residents are at home. Their cars are in the driveway.”
“Why do you need me?” I asked in English.
“Apparently the fire is extremely intense. If there are bodies, they will be badly burned. Perhaps reduced to calcined bone and teeth. It could be a difficult recovery.”
Damn. Not tomorrow.
“What time?”
“I will come for you at six A.M.?”
“O.K.”
“Temperance. It could be a bad one. There were children living there.”
I set the alarm for five-thirty.
2
I HAVE LIVED IN THE SOUTH ALL OF MY ADULT LIFE. IT CAN NEVER be too hot for me. I love the beach in August, sundresses, ceiling fans, the smell of children’s sweaty hair, the sound of bugs at window screens. Yet I spend my summers and school breaks in Quebec. Most months during the academic year, I fly from Charlotte, North Carolina, where I am on the anthropology faculty at the university, to work at the medicolegal lab in Montreal. This is a distance of approximately twelve hundred miles. Due north.
When it is deep winter, I often have a talk with myself before deplaning. It will be cold, I remind myself. It will be very cold. But you will dress for it and be ready. Yes. I will be ready. I never am. It’s always a shock to leave the terminal and take that first, startling breath.
At 6 A.M., on the tenth day of March, the thermometer on my patio read two degrees Fahrenheit. Seventeen below, Celsius. I was wearing everything I possibly could. Long underwear, jeans, double sweaters, hiking boots, and woolen socks. Inside the socks, I had sparkly insulated liners designed to keep astronaut feet toasty on Pluto. Same provocative combo as the day before. I’d probably stay just as warm.
When LaManche honked, I zipped my parka, pulled on gloves and ski hat, and bolted from the lobby. Unenthused as I was for the day’s outing, I didn’t want to keep him waiting. And I was extremely overheated.
I had expected a dark sedan, but he waved at me from what would probably be called a sport utility vehicle. Four-wheel drive, bright red, with racing stripes.
“Nice car,” I said as I climbed in.
“
On the drive to St-Jovite, LaManche related what he knew. It went little beyond what I’d heard at 3 A.M. From across the road a neighbor couple saw occupants enter the residence at nine in the evening. The neighbors left after that and visited friends some distance away, where they stayed late. When they were returning around two they noted a glow from down the road, and then flames shooting from the house. Another neighbor thought she’d heard booming sounds sometime after midnight, wasn’t sure, and went back to sleep. The area is remote and sparsely populated. The volunteer fire brigade arrived at two-thirty, and called in help when they saw what they had to deal with. It took two squads over three hours to put out the flames. LaManche had talked to the coroner again at five forty-five. Two deaths were confirmed, others anticipated. Some areas were still too hot, or too dangerous, to search. Arson was suspected.
We drove north in the predawn darkness, into the foothills of the Laurentian Mountains. LaManche talked little, which was fine with me. I am not a morning person. He is an audio junkie, however, and kept an unbroken succession of cassettes playing. Classics, pop, even C&W, all converted to easy listenin’. Perhaps it was meant to calm, like the numbing music piped to elevators and waiting rooms. It made me jittery.
“How far is St-Jovite?” I picked a double-chocolate honey-glazed.
“It will take us about two hours. St-Jovite is about twenty-five kilometers this side of Mont Tremblant. Have you skied there?” He wore a knee-length parka, army green with a fur-lined hood. From the side, all I could see was the tip of his nose.
“Um. Beautiful.”
I nearly got frostbite on Mont Tremblant. It was the first time I’d skied in Quebec, and I was dressed for the Blue Ridge Mountains. The wind at the summit was cold enough to freeze liquid hydrogen.
“How did things go at Lac Memphremagog?”
“The grave wasn’t where we expected, but, what’s new? Apparently she was exhumed and reburied in 1911. Odd that there was no record of it.” Very odd, I thought, taking a sip of tepid coffee. Instrumental Springsteen. “Born in the U.S.A.” I tried to block it. “Anyway, we found her. The remains will be delivered to the lab today.”
