Bones to Ashes

the case, I’d come to think of the skeleton as Hippo’s girl.

The more detail I revealed about Hippo’s girl, the more puzzling the picture became.

Around eleven, a skull came in from Iqaluit, a pinpoint on the Quebec map a zillion miles north on Frobisher Bay. I looked the place up. Though I wanted to stay with Hippo’s girl, I stuck with my promise to LaManche, and started on the new arrival.

Leaving the lab around five, I delivered the Lac des Deux Montagnes bone plug and sock to the biologist at McGill, then stopped by Hurley’s for my version of a pint: Diet Coke on the rocks with a twist. It wasn’t for the soft drink, of course, but for the contact with friends the pub would provide.

As I passed through the game room, I glanced up at the wall-mounted TV. A classic school portrait showed as a backdrop to a grimfaced anchorman. The young girl’s eyes were green and mischievous, her hair center-parted and pulled into shoulder-length braids. Phoebe Quincy.

A small group of regulars was gathered around the downstairs bar: Gil, Chantal, Black Jim, and Bill Hurley himself. They greeted me, faces somber, then recommenced airing their views on the Quincy disappearance.

“Sweet mother o’ Jesus, thirteen years old.” Chantal shook her head and signaled for another pint. A Newfoundlander, she could outdrink the best of the best. And often did.

“Hope to God she’s just gone walkabout.” Black Jim’s accent changed with his story of the moment. No one knew where Jim really originated. Every time someone asked, he produced a different tale. Tonight he was speaking Aussie.

“How long’s she been gone?” Bill signaled the bartender and a Diet Coke was set before me.

“Three days. Went to dance class. Sufferin’ Jesus.” Chantal.

“You involved?” Bill asked me.

“No.”

“Ryan?”

“Yes.”

“Where is Ryan? You finally manage to lose that slug?”

I sipped my Coke.

“It doesn’t look good, does it?” Gil resembled an aging French version of the Fonz.

“She may turn up,” I said.

“They think some bugger nipped her?” Black Jim.

“I don’t know.”

“Can you imagine what her poor parents are going through?” Gil.

“They catch the bastard, I’ll volunteer to cut off his dick, bye.” Chantal.

I stared into my mug, rethinking my decision to delay going home. I’d wanted to shed the mantle of sorrow and death, arrive home diverted and refreshed, but it seemed there would be no relief tonight.

What had happened to Phoebe? Was she out there on the streets, alone but stubbornly following her own play? Or was she being held in some dark place, helpless and terrified? Was she even alive? How were her parents surviving the endless hours of uncertainty?

And what about the corpse from Lac des Deux Montagnes? Who was she? Had she been murdered?

And the other girl in my lab. Hippo’s girl. When had she died? An irrational leap of thought. Could the skeleton be Evangeline Landry? Where was Evangeline?

I realized Bill was talking to me. “Sorry. What?”

“I asked where Ryan is.”

Obviously, word hadn’t reached the pub that Ryan and I had split. Or whatever it was we’d done.

“I don’t know.”

“You OK? You look beat.”

“It’s been a tough couple of days.”

“Fuckin’ hell,” said Chantal.

I listened to the conversation a few minutes longer. Then I downed my Coke and set out for home.

Friday morning brought no new anthropology cases. I was composing a report on the Iqaluit cranium when Ryan showed up in my lab.

“Nice do.”

My left hand did an automatic hair-behind-the-ears tuck, then I realized Ryan’s remark was directed at the skull. It was sun-baked white, its crown capped with dried green moss.

“It’s been lying on the tundra a very long time.”

Normally Ryan would have asked how long. He didn’t. I waited for him to get to the point of his visit.

“Got a call from Hippo Gallant this morning. Guy named Joseph Beaumont is doing a nickel to dime at Bordeaux.”

Bordeaux is the largest of Quebec’s correctional facilities.