“It’s another possibility. But remember. Diatoms are found in only one third of all drowning cases.”
“Why such a low percentage?”
“Many reasons. I’ll give you the primary three. First, it may have to do with method of collection. If very few diatoms are present in the marrow cavity, they may simply be missed in sampling. Second, victims who hyperventilate and pass out under water or who experience laryngeal spasm may die more quickly, leading to a reduced quantity of inhaled water. Third, as I am sure you know, a relatively low volume of blood flows to and through the bone and bone marrow. And, for this individual, one bone plug was all I had. No samples from lungs, brain, kidney, liver, spleen.”
“When may I expect your report?”
“I’m completing it now.”
Thanking Suskind, I disconnected.
Great. The girl drowned or didn’t. In the river or elsewhere.
But the boat ramp. That was useful.
I called, but Ryan didn’t answer his cell. Of course. He was in court. I left a message.
The receiver had barely hit the cradle when the phone rang again.
“Having a nice day, kitten?” Male. Unaccented English.
“Who is this?”
“No matter.”
My mind looked for matches.
Cheech, the thug from Tracadie? I couldn’t be sure. He’d only spoken a sentence or two.
“Where did you get this number?”
“You’re easy to find.”
“What do you want?”
“Working hard fighting crime?”
I refused to be goaded.
“Noble endeavor, that. Protecting the good citizens of this province.”
Down the hall, a phone rang.
“But hazardous.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“That’s one fine-looking sister you’ve got.”
A cold tentacle curled in my gut.
“What’s little sis do while big sis plays cop?”
I didn’t react.
“She’s pretty easy to find, too.”
“Screw you,” I said, and slammed the receiver.
I sat a moment twisting and untwisting the phone cord. Cheech? If so, was he a threat, or merely a yokel with a bad approach and an overblown opinion of his own appeal? No. He was delivering a threat from someone.
Why? Did he work for Bastarache? What did he mean by “this province”? Where was he?
Who was he?
Phone Hippo?
No way.
Fernand Colbert.
Good one, Brennan. Colbert was a techie cop who owed me for bringing him barbecue sauce from North Carolina.
I phoned.
When Colbert answered, I explained the anonymous call. He promised to try a trace.
I was hanging up when my gaze fell on my doodles.
Duck…
Shell…
Forget it. Focus on current cases. Ryan’s MP’s: Kelly Sicard. Anne Girardin. Claudine Cloquet. Phoebe Quincy. Ryan’s DOA’s: Rivière des Mille Îles. Dorval. Lac des Deux Montagnes.
Duck…
Shell…
The whisper broke through, and jumped all thoughts of MP’s, DOA’s, or Cheech and the threat.
25
H URRYING TO THE LIBRARY, I PULLED OUT THE SAME NEW Brunswick atlas I’d consulted on Saturday, and flipped to the same map. Sheldrake Island lay in the mouth of the Miramichi River.
I checked an English dictionary.
Sheldrake. Any of several varieties of Old World ducks of the genus Tadorna…
Duck. Shell. Sheldrake.
Duck Island. Sheldrake Island.
A bec scie was a duck.
Could Sheldrake Island be the English equivalent of Île-aux-Becs-Scies? Was that the short-circuiting message to my cerebrum? Could Jerry O’Driscoll’s drifter, Tom Jouns, a one-time archaeologist, have taken the girl’s skeleton from Sheldrake Island?
Returning to my office, I logged onto the Internet. Before Google opened, my phone rang again. This time it was Harry.
“Did you call the forensic linguist?”
“Not yet.”
Harry used silence to express her disapproval.
“I will.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
More censuring nothing hummed across the line.
“I’ll do it now.”
“Good.”
“What are you up to?”
“Not much. Reading through these poems. They’re really quite beautiful.”
I could tell she was down.
“Harry, do you remember how we used to cook when Mama was having one of her bad spells?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s do that tonight. You and me.”
“You were pretty bossy.”
“Pick a recipe. I’ll be sous chef.”
“You’ll call the linguist?”
“As soon as we hang up.”
“How about that thing we used to do with chicken and smashed potatoes.”
“Perfect.”
“Will they understand me at that little grocery store on Sainte-Catherine?”
“Speak English. Not Texan.”
“Hee haw!”
“And, Harry.” I hesitated. Yes. “Keep your head up.”
“For what?”
“Just be careful.”
Rob Potter was finishing his doctorate in anthropology when I began my grad studies at Northwestern. Older, wiser, he’d been an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on. Not to mention everyone’s secret crush. Improbably, before turning to academia, Rob had been a bona fide seventies rock star. Sang at Woodstock. Wore leather jackets and butt-molding gold lamé pants. Knew Hendrix, Lennon, and Dylan. In Rob’s words, he quit the limelight because for him, rock lost its luster after Jimi and Janis died, and he preferred looking ahead to being an aging professor than an aging—or dead—rock star.
While I’d poked bones Rob had parsed language, focusing on its context in other semiotic systems, modalities, and channels. He once explained what that meant. And I understood. Sort of.
Rob was now on the faculty at Columbia. Like me, he’d been pulled into forensics by cops and lawyers in need of expertise. Though we’d worked no cases jointly, we frequently joked about the possibility.
I checked my American Academy of Forensic Sciences membership directory. Rob was listed.
I dialed. He answered. I identified myself.
“I’ve been thinking about you.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
“What if you were supposed to have?”
“Then I did it.”
“Glad that’s cleared up. Since you’re so conscientious, would you consider being program chair for next year’s AAFS meeting?”
“Can I think about it?”
“Only you can answer that.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Fair enough. What’s on your mind?”
“I have a favor to ask.”
“Not until I know how much money it will cost.”
“Could you analyze two samples of poetry?”
“I could.”
“Would you?”
“Of course. For you, anything. Is this to extract author demographic information, or to test for common authorship?”
“To determine common authorship.”
“Go on.”
“One poem was written by an adolescent girl. The author of the others is unknown.”
“You suspect the poems were penned by the same hand.”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Realize that these analyses can take a long time.”
“Whenever you can. But there’s a catch.”
“As am I.”
“This isn’t an official request.”
“Meaning no money. Or am I to forget the analysis after I give it to you?”
“Well, both.”
“So. A favor. And an unofficial one. And sec
ret. And no pay.”
“I’ll—”
“Oh, you’ll pay, all right. Maybe your next trip through New York?”
“Lunch. We’re on.”
“Tell me about this gig.”
“Some of the poems appear in a self-published volume. Others are handwritten.”
“Give me some background.”
I did. Pawleys Island. Évangéline’s sudden disappearance. The recent trip to Tracadie. Harry’s liberation of Bones to Ashes. O’Connor House. I left out only that Obéline had killed herself.
“I’ll send the materials today,” I said.
“You start with a theme.”
“What?”
“A conference theme. A conceptual framework.”
“Organizing an AAFS program is massive, Rob.”
“It’s a piece of cake.”
“Like landscaping the Mojave is a piece of cake.”
“I’ll provide fertilizer.”
“You always do.”
I called Harry, gave her Rob’s address, and suggested a shop on de Maisonneuve for FedEx shipping. She was thrilled to have another mission.
I turned back to my computer. As though on cue, Hippo appeared. His frown did not say forgive and forget. I braced for more disapproval.
“Might be we got us one less MP.”
That caught me off guard. “What do you mean?”
Hippo was chewing gum, carefully not looking at me. “Girardin’s old man took himself out last night.”
“Anne Girardin? The little girl from Blainville?”
Tight nod. Sans orbital contact.
“What happened?”
“Girardin was a boozer. Wednesday he got wasted, told a drinking buddy he offed his kid and buried her in the woods. Wanted sympathy because her ghost’s now haunting his sleep. Upstanding citizen thought it over, moral dilemma, you know, loyalty versus civic duty. This morning he went to see Girardin. Found him in the bathtub, pump-action Remington between his toes, brains on the ceiling.”
“Sweet mother of God.”
Hippo spit his gum into his palm, popped two antacids, reengaged the wad. “Dog insists there’s something out behind the trailer.”
“Were you able to reach Ryan?”
Hippo nodded. “He’s rolling.”
I stood.
“Let’s go.”
“Girardin hated crowds, distrusted strangers. Lived in a single-wide miles from anywhere.”
“Lonely life for a ten-year-old girl.”
“Yeah.” Hippo’s eyes stayed on the road.
Again, I was on my way toward Blainville. Again, I was being briefed on a child whose corpse I might soon dig up.
“Kid disappeared in ’04. Adelaide, that’s Mommy, split six months later. Girardin stayed put.”
“What’d he do for a living?”
“Construction. Pickup jobs, mostly.”
“Where is Adelaide now?”
“In the wind.”
“Is she a local?”
“Thunder Bay, Ontario.” Hippo made a turn. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”
As we approached our destination, signs of habitation faded away. The few shacks and mobile homes we did pass were straight out of Deliverance.
Girardin’s trailer was a rectangular box with dull yellow siding and pumpkin trim. A makeshift porch had been nailed around the entrance. On it sat an avocado refrigerator and an orange Barcalounger with herniated stuffing.
The yard was cluttered with the usual trash. Old tires, rusted barrels, plastic furniture, the skeleton of a lawn mower. Larger items included a boat trailer and an ancient Mustang.
The CSU truck was there. The coroner’s van. Chenevier and Pasteur. Sylvain and the cadaver collie, Mia. Ryan.
The air was hot, the humidity a notch below rain.
It was the Kelly Sicard search all over again.
With a sadly different outcome.
The sun was low when we finally lifted the small bundle. Threads of light cut the foliage, casting odd patterns on the shallow pit, the plywood, the fifty-gallon Hefty.
The grave was not unexpected. We’d found a half-empty bag of quicklime under the trailer. A long-handled spade.
And Mia had been emphatic.
The others watched as my blade slit the plastic. Odor drifted out, rotten-sweet, like spoiled vegetation. A sole cawing crow broke the hush.
The child had been buried in pink flowered jeans, a pink hoodie, pink Keds. Carrot pigtails still clung to the skull, dirt-crusted, death-dulled. The teeth were in that stage between kid and adult.
As one, we recalled the snapshot. The police report filed by Anne Girardin’s mother.
No one spoke. No one had to.
We all knew that Anne had been found.
I asked Ryan to drive me to the lab. He said that was crazy, that my analysis could wait until Monday. Daddy was dead. Finding Mommy might take time.
No good. Next-of-kin notification couldn’t occur without an official ID. As a mother, I knew the anguish filling Adelaide Girardin’s days. I wanted to be ready.
Hippo stayed to help Chenevier and Pasteur process the trailer. Ryan drove me to Wilfrid-Derome. On the way, I called Lisa, the autopsy technician. She agreed to work overtime. I asked her to determine if Anne Girardin’s dental records were on file. And to call Mark Bergeron, the LSJML odontologist.
I also phoned Harry, filled her in on the day’s events, and told her our culinary caper would have to wait. She asked when I’d be home. Late. I hated leaving her alone so much. What if the pair asking about my condo had had more than real estate in mind? What if the anonymous call really had been a threat?
Harry offered to get take-out whenever I was ready. I thanked her, reminded her to always set the security system. In my mind I could see her rolling her eyes.
The child was at the morgue when I arrived. She’d been assigned case number LSJML #57836–07. Dental X-rays had been taken.
People think quicklime hurries decomposition. They’re wrong. Calcium oxide only masks the odor of decay. And its presence deters scavengers.
But time will have its way with flesh. Though the remains had suffered no animal damage, skeletonization was complete. Some hair remained, but there was no soft tissue at all.
Lisa photographed as I removed the rotting garments and spread them on the counter. Hoodie. Jeans. Training bra with expandable AAA “cups.” Cotton briefs, Barbie doll pattern.
I’d been doing well. Despite the sadness and fatigue. But the underwear hit me hard. Barbies and bras. Monkey bars and lipstick. A child-woman on the brink. The sight was heartbreaking.
“Good thing the bastard is dead, yes?” Lisa gave me a look as heavy as a tombstone. I could tell she felt as wretched as I did.
“Yes,” I said.
Focus, I thought, arranging bones on the autopsy table.
Lisa shot stills as I worked through my analysis.
The child’s cranial and facial features indicated Caucasoid ancestry.
Fusion of the ischial and pubic pelvic rami suggested an age over eight. Absence of a tiny round bone at the base of the thumb, a sesamoid, suggested prepubescence. Long-bone development suggested a range of nine to ten years.
Sex assessment is imprecise with children. Though the clothing and pigtails pointed to female gender, I left that part of the biological profile blank.
Bergeron phoned as I was making final notes. He was upstairs and had Anne Girardin’s antemortem records. The dentals were a match.
No surprise.
It was almost ten when I finally got home. After I showered, Harry and I ate Thai from the corner restaurant, then I excused myself. She understood and did not press.
Again, my brain resisted sleep. When I finally drifted off, it was into a landscape of disjointed dreams. Anne Girardin. Évangéline. The skeleton from Sheldrake Island, Hippo’s girl. Pawleys Island. Ryan.
Then I was awake. I checked the clock. Two-forty. I closed my eyes. Checked again. Thr
ee-ten. Three-fifty.
At four, I gave up. Throwing back the covers, I went to the kitchen and brewed a cup of jasmine tea. Then I booted my laptop and began researching Sheldrake Island.
Dawn lit the shade when I finally sat back. Stunned. Appalled. Certain of two things.
Sheldrake Island was, indeed, Île-aux-Becs-Scies. Hippo’s girl had suffered a hideous death.
26
I SUSPECT LACK OF SLEEP MUDDLED MY THINKING.
Or maybe it was Pete’s early morning call about grounds. And filing papers. And young Summer’s inability to find a caterer.
Or maybe Hippo’s shocker.
In looking back, there’s always the mental cringe. The suspicion that I could have done better.
After speaking with Pete, I woke Harry and explained what I’d learned on the Net. Then I apologized for abandoning her again.
I need to be certain, I said.
We could be back to square one, she said.
Yes, I agreed.
Harry went shopping. I went to the lab.
It took only an hour with the skeleton. The diagnosis seemed so obvious now. How could I have been so dense about the lesions?
It’s the horror of other places, other times, I told myself. Not twentieth-century North America.
True. Nevertheless, a sorry defense.
When I’d finished with the bones, I logged onto my computer, wanting to arm myself fully for the upcoming conversation with Hippo. I was closing the Web browser when a ping told me a new e-mail had landed.
Contacting a government office on a weekend is like phoning the Pope on Easter morning. Curious who’d e-mailed on a Saturday, I clicked over to my in-box.
I didn’t recognize the sender:
[email protected].
When I opened the message, icy-hot barbs shot through my chest.
Temperance:
Staring your severed head in the face…
Death. Fate. Mutilation.
A photo had been inserted below the text.
Thursday night. Harry and I, backlit by the bulbs at Milos’s entrance.
I stared at the photo, breath stuck in my throat. It wasn’t only the shock of seeing myself. Or the idea that I’d been watched by a stranger. Something was off. Wrong.
Then it registered.
Harry’s head was on my body, mine on hers.
My gaze drifted to the italicized line in the message. Poetry? Lyrics?