Nations?”
I nodded again.
“He’s got a thing about the dead being buried proper. Thinks your spirit’s screwed if you ain’t planted six feet under. Anyway, some SQ dick at Gaston’s last posting keeps a skull in his desk. Has the rest of the skeleton in a box.”
“How did this detective come to have these bones?” I lifted the bag and held it out. Hippo shook his head. I looked inside, barely interested. Yes! One maple syrup frosted. I set the bag down.
“Gaston doesn’t know. But his conscience is kicking ass because he didn’t do more to get the bones buried.”
“No grave, no afterlife.”
“Bingo.”
“This is where I come in.”
“Gaston asked me if I’d heard of some bone lady here in Montreal. I said, you kiddin’? Doc Brennan and me is
“He’s certain these bones are human?”
Hippo nodded. “Yeah, and he thinks it’s a kid.”
“Why?”
“They’re small.”
“Gaston should call the local coroner.” I reached in and took the maple syrup frosted, casual as hell.
“He did. The guy blew him off.”
“Why?”
“These bones ain’t exactly fresh.”
“They’re archaeological?” Maple syrup wasn’t bad, but chocolate still ruled.
“As I understand it, they’re dry, and there’s cobwebs in the holes where the eyes used to be.”
“Cobwebs would suggest time spent aboveground.”
“Bingo.” Hippo liked the word. Used it a lot. “Coroner said the stuff had been kicking around too long.”
I stopped chewing. That wasn’t right. If the bones were human, technically they were unidentified remains and fell within the coroner’s mandate. It was up to a forensic anthropologist to determine if death had occurred recently enough to be of forensic interest.
“Who is this coroner?” I reached for paper and pen.
Hippo patted his jacket, which is worth mentioning. The fabric had yellow and orange lines running vertically and horizontally through a russet background. With its gold polyester pocket hanky, the garment would have been haute couture in rural Romania.
Locating a spiral pad, Hippo flipped several pages.
“Dr. Yves Bradette. Want the number?”
I nodded, jotted.
“Look, Gaston doesn’t want to jam anybody up.”
My eyes rose to Hippo’s.
“OK, OK.” Hippo pointed two palms in my direction. “Just be discreet. The stuff’s at SQ headquarters, Rimouski.” Hippo looked at his notes. “That’s the District of Bas-Saint-Laurent–Gaspesie–Iles-de-la-Madeleine.” Typical Hippo. Too much information.
“I can’t get to this right away.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.
When a body clocks out it trips one of three pathways: putrefaction, mummification, or saponification. None is pretty.
In a warm, moist setting, with bacteria, insects, and/or vertebrate scavengers looking for lunch, you get putrefaction. Putrefaction features skin slippage, discoloration, bloating, eruption of the abdominal gases, caving of the belly, rotting of the flesh, and, way down the road, disintegration of the bones.
In a warm, dry setting, with bugs and critters excluded, you get mummification. Mummification features destruction of the internal organs by autolysis and enteric bacterial action, and muscle and skin dehydration and hardening due to evaporation.
No one’s really sure, but saponification seems to require a cool setting and poorly oxygenated water, though the water can come from the corpse itself. Saponification features the conversion of fats and fatty acids into adipocere, a cheesy, stinky compound commonly called “grave wax.” Initially white and soaplike, adipocere can harden with age. Once formed the stuff lasts a very long time.
But decomp’s not as simple as door A, B, or C. Putrefaction, mummification, and saponification can occur separately or in any combination.
Genevieve Doucet’s body had lain in a unique microenvironment. Air blowing from the heat vent had been trapped by blankets and clothing, creating a mini-convection oven around her corpse. Voila! Door B!
Though head hair remained, Genevieve’s features were gone, leaving only desiccated tissue in the orbits and overlying the facial bones. Her limbs and chest were encased in a thick, hard shell.
