my investigative skills are limited.
Encouraged by my success in Bryson City, I spent a library morning with back issues of the
The Internet produced a few references to the poetry of Kendall Rollins, the poet Mrs. Veckhoff had mentioned. That was it. Davis. Payne. Birkby. Warren. They were common names, leading into labyrinths of useless information. The Charlotte White Pages listed dozens of each.
That evening, I took Ryan to dinner at the Selwyn Pub. He seemed withdrawn and preoccupied. I didn't push.
Sunday afternoon Birdie went to Pete, and Ryan and I flew to Montreal. What remained of Jean Bertrand traveled below in a glossy metal casket.
We were met at Dorval Airport by a funeral director, two hearse attendants, and four uniformed officers of the Surete du Quebec. Together we escorted the body into town.
October can be glorious in Montreal, with church spires and skyscrapers piercing a crisp, blue sky, the mountain burning brightly in the background. Or it can be gray and cheerless, with rain, sleet, or even snow.
This Sunday the temperature flirted with freezing, and dark, heavy clouds hung over the city. Trees looked stark and black, lawns and parkways frosted white. Burlap-wrapped shrubs stood guard outside homes and businesses, floral mummies bundled against the cold.
It was past seven by the time we delivered Bertrand to an Urgel Bourgie in St-Lambert. Ryan and I parted ways, he being taken to his condo at Habitat, I to mine in Centre-ville.
Arriving, I threw my overnighter on the bed, turned on the heat, checked my answering machine, and then the refrigerator. The former was full, flashing like a blue light at a Kmart special. The latter was empty, stark white walls and smeared glass shelves.
LaManche. Isabelle. Four telemarketers. A McGill graduate student. LaManche.
Digging a jacket and gloves from the hall closet, I walked to Le Faubourg for provisions.
By the time I returned, the condo had warmed. I built a fire anyway, needing its comfort more than its heat. I was feeling as down as I had at Sharon Hall, haunted by the specter of Ryan's mysterious Danielle, saddened by the prospect of Bertrand's funeral.
As I stir-fried scallops and green beans, sleet began ticking against the windows. I ate at the hearth, thinking of the man I'd come to bury.
The detective and I had worked together over the years, when murder victims caused our paths to cross, and I'd come to understand certain things about him. Incapable of deviousness, he'd seen the world in black and white, with cops on one side of a moral line, criminals on the other. He'd had faith in the system, never doubting it would sort the good guys from the bad.
Bertrand had visited me here the previous spring, devastated by an incomprehensible break with Ryan. I pictured him sitting on my couch that night, wretched with anger and disbelief, not knowing what to say or do, the same feelings now overpowering Andrew Ryan.
After dinner, I loaded the dishwasher, stoked the fire, then took the handset to the sofa. Mentally switching to French, I dialed LaManche's home number.
My boss said he was glad I'd come to Montreal, even though the circumstances were so sad. There were two anthropology cases at the lab.
“Last week a woman was found, nude and decomposed, wrapped in a blanket in Parc Nicholas-Veil.”
“Where is that?”
“The far northern edge of the city.”
“CUM?”
The Communaute Urbaine de Montreal Police, or Montreal Urban Community Police, have jurisdiction over everything on the island of Montreal.
Claudel. The highly regarded bulldog of a detective who would grudgingly work with me, but remained unconvinced that female forensic anthropologists were helpful to law enforcement. Just what I needed.
“Has she been ID'ed?”
“There is a presumptive identification, and a man has been arrested. The suspect is claiming she fell, but Monsieur Claudel is suspicious. I would like you to examine the cranial trauma.” LaManche's French, always so proper.
“I'll do it tomorrow.”
The second case was less urgent. A small plane had crashed two years earlier near Chicoutimi, the copilot never found. A segment of diaphysis had recently washed up in that vicinity. Could I determine if the bone was human? I assured him I could.
LaManche thanked me, asked about the Air TransSouth recovery, and expressed sorrow over Bertrand's death. He did not inquire about my problems with the authorities. Surely the news would have reached him, but he was too discreet to raise a painful subject.
The telemarketers I ignored.
The graduate student had long since obtained the needed reference.
My friend Isabelle had hosted one of her soirees the previous Saturday. I apologized for missing her call, and her dinner party. She assured me there would be another soon.
I had just replaced the handset when my cell phone rang. I sprinted across the room and dug it out, once
