Bones to Ashes

The small island is only fifty kilometers long, and varies from five to thirteen kilometers in width, narrowing at its ends and thickening at its center. Its dominant feature is Mont Royal, an igneous intrusion rising a proud 231 meters above sea level. Les Montrealais call this tiny bump la montagne. The mountain.

For policing purposes, Montreal is parceled out according to those particulars of geology. On the island: SPVM. Off the island: SQ. Assuming there is no local PD. Though rivalries exist, in general ca marche. It works.

My eye fell on the name of the investigating SQ officer. Detective-Lieutenant Andrew Ryan.

My stomach did a wee flip.

But more of that later.

Pierre LaManche is a large man in a grandpa-was-a-lumberjack hunched-forward sort of way. Favoring crepe soles and empty pockets, the man moves so quietly he can appear in a room with no warning of approach.

“I apologize for disturbing you at home last evening.” LaManche was standing in my doorway, clipboard in one hand, pen in the other.

“No problem.” Rising, I circled my desk, gathered the lab coats, and hung them on a hook on the back of my door.

LaManche lowered himself into the chair. I waited for him to begin.

“You know maitre Asselin, of course.”

In Quebec, coroners are either physicians or attorneys. Odd system, but ca marche. It works. Michelle Asselin was a lawyer, thus the title maitre.

I nodded.

“Maitre Asselin has been a coroner for as long as I’ve been with this lab.” LaManche stroked his jaw, as though verifying he’d shaved that morning. “She is close to retirement.”

“The complicated case is hers?”

“Indirectly. Maitre Asselin has a nephew who farms near Saint-Antoine-Abbe. Theodore Doucet. Theodore and his wife, Dorothee, have one child, a daughter. Genevieve is thirty-two, but has special needs and lives at home.”

LaManche seemed to study the placement of my wastebasket. I waited for him to go on.

“Dorothee was a regular churchgoer, but stopped attending. No one is certain of the exact date. Though the family was known to be reclusive, neighbors grew worried. Yesterday two parishioners visited the Doucet farm. They found Dorothee and Genevieve dead in an upstairs bedroom. Theodore was downstairs playing Silent Hunter on his computer.”

LaManche mistook my quizzical look. “It is a computer game. One does something with submarines.”

I knew that. I was surprised LaManche did.

“You went to the scene?” I asked.

LaManche nodded. “The house was a nightmare, rooms crammed with useless trash. Oatmeal cartons. Newspapers. Tin cans. Used tissues. Feces in ziplock baggies.”

“Theodore is being held for psychiatric evaluation?”

LaManche nodded. He looked tired. But, then, the old man usually looked tired.

“Both women were fully dressed, lying on their backs with bedding pulled to their chins. Their heads were tilted and touching, and their arms were entwined.”

“Posed.”

“Yes.”

I was wondering what this had to do with me. Unless dismembered, mutilated, or stripped of identifiers such as fingerprints or teeth, fresh corpses were rarely my domain.

“My feeling is that Dorothee has been dead for at least two weeks,” LaManche continued. “I will confirm that today. Genevieve is the problem. Her body was lying beside a heat vent.”

“With the fan blowing on her,” I guessed. I’d seen it before.

LaManche nodded. “PMI will be difficult.”

Mummified corpse. Uncertain postmortem interval. Yep. That would be me.

“Signs of trauma?” I asked.

“I saw nothing during my external examination of Dorothee. Genevieve’s body is far too dehydrated. I saw nothing on the X-rays of either mother or daughter.”

“Top priority?”

LaManche nodded. Then the hound-dog eyes locked onto mine. “I’m confident this can be handled discreetly and compassionately.”

Unlike the Doucet women, few who rolled through our doors had died in their beds. Ours were the murdered, the suicides, those whose lives were cut short by bad timing, bad judgment, or bad luck.

LaManche understood my commitment to the dead and to those left behind. He’d witnessed my interactions with families, and with journalists seeking footage for the five o’clock news.

LaManche knew the words he’d spoken did not need saying. The fact that he’d voiced them revealed an uncharacteristic level of emotion. The old man cared deeply for Michelle Asselin.