“Like igneous rock.”
“Bastillo is taking Fisher to visit her priest at ten. She suggested we swing by the house at eleven.” I heard what sounded like a match, then the exhalation of smoke. “Pick you up around ten-thirty?”
“I’ll be at home.”
Claudel phoned as I was blow-drying my hair.
As usual, there was no greeting, no formulaic query about my health or my day.
“Detective Charbonneau suggested I contact you, though I am uncertain why.” From most tongues, the French language glides like silk. From Claudel’s, it thuds like potatoes down a chute. “I have nothing to report.”
“Meaning?”
“No smoking gun on Cyr’s list of renters. No hits with CPIC. No hits with NCIC. No hits in Vermont or California.”
“Not a single missing person even came close?”
“One kid in California. Broken right wrist. Tickled the lower end of your height range.”
“How tall?”
“Five-four.”
I felt a buzz of electricity.
“Close enough. When was she reported missing?”
“Eighty-five.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Kid was fourteen.”
The current fizzled.
“The skeleton with the fractured radius had to be closer to twenty.” I pictured the bones of the girl in the leather shroud, the molar root closure on her dental X-rays. “Maybe as young as eighteen, but there’s no way she was fifteen.”
“My point precisely.”
“Of course date of disappearance need not be the date of death. Did you learn anything else?”
“Battalions of girls go missing each year.”
Hang up, a voice warned. Hang up now or Claudel’s going to suffer another direct hit.
My doorbell doesn’t ring. It twitters. At that moment, it did so.
“I’d like a printout of every female aged fifteen to twenty-two reported missing in Quebec over the past twenty years.”
“You’re talking dozens. Most’ll turn out to be runaways who eventually slunk back to Mommy or Daddy when they got tired of eating Beanie Weenies and sleeping on the floor.”
Easy.
“It would be helpful to me to know which ones didn’t.”
More twittering.
“Madame, th—”
“Detective Ryan is here. I have to go.”
“Andrew Ryan?”
“We are going to interview Louise Parent’s sister.”
“The DOA in Candiac?”
“Yes.”
“The old lady that was burning up your phone line?”
“She called me.”
“Wanting what?”
“That is exactly what I intend to find out.”
“When did the sister surface?”
“Yesterday.”
“Where?”
“At her home.”
“Where was the old biddy hiding out?”
“Pointe-aux-Pics.” Icy. “I’d like that printout as soon as it’s ready.”
