Through the throbbing and shivering, I began to realize I wasn’t in my bed. My groping hand encountered twigs and leaves. That got my eyes open, pain or no pain.
I was sitting in a wood, in wet clothes and covered with mud. The ground around me was littered with leaves and small branches, and the air was heavy with the smell of earth and things that would become earth. Above me I could see a latticework of branches, their dark, spidery fingers intertwining against a black velvet sky. Behind them, a million stars flickered through the leafy cover.
Then memory logged in. The storm. The gates. The path. But how had I come to be lying here? This was not a hangover night, only a parody of one.
I ran an exploratory hand over the back of my head. A knob the size of a lime was palpable beneath my hair. Great. Bashed twice in one week. Most boxers are punched less often.
But how had I been bashed? Had I tripped and fallen? Had a tree limb struck me? The storm had been churning things up pretty well, but no large branches lay next to me. I couldn’t remember, and I didn’t care. I just wanted to be gone.
Fighting back nausea, on my hands and knees I fumbled for the flashlight. I found it half buried in mud, wiped it clean, and flicked the switch. Amazingly, it worked. Controlling my trembling legs, I stood and more fireworks exploded in my head. I braced myself against a tree and retched again.
The taste of bile filled my mouth and triggered more questions by my consciousness. When did I eat? Last night? Tonight? What time is it? How long have I been here? The storm had ended and stars emerged. And it was still night. And I was freezing. That’s all I knew.
When the abdominal contractions stopped, I straightened slowly and played the flashlight around me, looking for the path. The beam dancing across the ground cover tripped another cognitive wire. The buried bag. The burst of memory brought with it a wave of fear. I gripped the flashlight tighter, and turned a complete rotation, assuring myself that no one was behind me. Back to the bag. Where had it been? Recall was creeping back, but in still frames. I could see the bag in my mind, but couldn’t fix a location on the ground.
I probed in the adjacent vegetation searching for the burial. My head pounded and nausea kept rising in my throat, but there was nothing left, and the dry heaving made my sides ache and my eyes tear. I kept stopping and bracing against a tree, waiting for the spasms to subside. I noted crickets warming up for a post-storm gig, and their music had the feel of gravel sucked into my ears and dragged across my brain.
The bag was not ten feet away when I finally found it. Shaking so I could hardly hold the flashlight steady, I saw it as I remembered, though with more plastic exposed. A moat of rainwater circled its perimeter, and small pools had collected in the folds and creases of the bag itself.
In no condition to recover it, I just stood staring. I knew the scene had to be processed correctly, but was afraid someone might disturb it, or remove the remains before a unit could get there. I wanted to cry in frustration.
Oh, there’s a good idea, Brennan. Weep. Maybe someone will come and rescue you.
I stood, trembling from cold and whatever, trying to think but my brain cells not cooperating, slamming their doors and refusing all callers. Phone it in. That thought got through.
I identified the borders of the brushy path and picked my way out of the woods. Or hoped I was. Couldn’t remember coming in and had only a vague notion of the way out. My sense of direction had left with my short-term memory. Without warning, the flashlight died, and I was plunged into the near darkness of filtered starlight. Shaking the flashlight did not help, nor swearing at it.
“Shit!” At least I tried.
I listened for some audible direction finder. All I heard were crickets from every direction. Chirping in the round. That wouldn’t work.
I tried to distinguish shadowy small growth from shadowy larger growth, and crept forward in the direction my face was pointing. As good a plan as any. Unseen branches grabbed my hair and clothing, and vines and creepers tugged at my feet.
You’re off the path, Brennan. This stuff’s getting thicker.
I was deciding which way to veer when one foot met air and dropped off the earth. I followed it forward, landing hard on my hands and one knee. My feet were trapped, and my forward knee pressed against what felt like loose earth. The flashlight had flown from my hand and jarred to life when it hit the ground. It had tumbled and was now casting an eerie yellow glow back toward me. I looked down and saw my feet disappearing into a tight, dark space.
My heart in my throat, I clawed my way out and scrambled toward the light, sideways like a crab on a beach. Pointing the beam to where I’d fallen, I saw a small crater. It gaped fresh and raw, like an unhealed wound in the earth. Loose dirt rimmed its perimeter and gathered in a small mound behind it.
I shone the light into the opening. It was not large, perhaps two feet across and three feet deep. In my stumbling, I planted a foot too close to the rim, sending a stream of soil dribbling into the pit. Like Grape-Nuts pouring from a box, I thought. They joined those I’d dislodged by my fall.
I stared at the soil as it collected in a small heap at the bottom of the hole. Something about it. Then realization. The dirt was practically dry. Even to my scrambled brain the inference was clear. This hole had either been covered, or dug since the rain.
An involuntary tremor seized me, and I wrapped my arms across my chest for warmth. I was still soaking and the storm had left cold air in its wake. The arm movement didn’t really warm me, and drew the light away from the pit. I unfolded my arms and readjusted the beam. Why would someone …
The real question slammed home, making my stomach recoil like a .45 caliber pistol. Who? Who had come here to dig, or empty, this hole? Is he, or she, here now? That thought jolted me into action. I spun and swept the flash around in a 360. A geyser of pain vented in my head and my heartbeat tripled.
I don’t know what I expected to see. A slathering Doberman? Norman Bates with his mother? Hannibal Lecter? A George Burns god in a baseball cap? None of them showed. I was alone with the trees and the creepers and the star-pierced darkness.
What I did see in the rotating light was the path. I left the fresh hole and staggered back to the half-buried bag. I kicked a blanket of leaves over it. The crude camouflage wouldn’t fool the person who brought it there, but it might conceal the bag from casual eyes.
When satisfied with my ground cover, I took the can of insect repellent from my pocket and jammed it into the fork of an adjacent tree as a marker. Moving down the path, I tripped on weeds and roots and barely kept my feet. My legs felt as if they’d been deadened with drugs, and I moved in slow motion.
At the junction of the path with the roadbed, I stuck each of my gloves into a tree fork, and plunged on toward the gate. I was sick and exhausted, and feared I might pass out. The adrenaline would soon give out, and collapse would come. When it did, I wanted to be elsewhere.
My old Mazda was parked where I’d left it. Looking neither left nor right, I stumbled headlong across the street, mindless of who might be waiting for me. Almost past feeling, I plunged my hands into pocket after pocket, groping for keys. On finding them I cursed myself for carrying so many on the same ring. Shaking, cursing, and dropping the keys twice, I disentangled the car key, opened the door, and threw myself behind the wheel.
Locking the door, I draped my arms across the steering wheel and rested my head. I felt a need to sleep, to escape my circumstances by drifting out of them. I knew I had to fight the urge. Someone could be out there, watching me, deciding on a course of action.
Another mistake, I reminded myself, as my eyelids drifted toward each other, would be to just rest here a second.
My mind went into random scan. George Burns appeared again and said, “I’m always interested in the future. I plan to spend the rest of my life there.”
I sat up smartly and dropped my hands to my lap. The stab of pain helped clear my mind. I didn’t throw up. Progress.
> “If you’re going to have a future, you’d better get your ass out of here, Brennan.”
My voice sounded heavy in the closed space, but it, too, helped orient me to the present reality. I started the engine, and the digits on the console clock glowed green: 2:15 A.M. When had I set out?
Still shivering, I flicked the heat to high, though I wasn’t sure it would help. The chill I was feeling was only partly due to the wind and the night air. There was a deeper cold in my soul that would not be warmed by a mechanical heater. I pulled away without a backward glance.
• • •
I slid the soap over my breasts, circling each again and again, willing the sweet-smelling lather to cleanse me of the night’s events. I raised my face to the spray that was pounding my head and coursing over my body. The water would grow cold soon. I’d been showering for twenty minutes, trying to drive out the cold and silence the voices in my head.
The heat and the steam and the scent of jasmine should have relaxed me, loosened the tension in my muscles and carried away the soreness. They hadn’t. The whole time I was listening for a sound outside my rectangle of steam. I was waiting for the phone to ring. Fearful I’d miss Ryan’s call, I had brought the handset into the bathroom.
I’d called the station immediately on reaching home, even before stripping off my wet clothes. The dispatcher had been skeptical, reluctant to disturb a detective in the middle of the night. She’d been adamant in her refusal to give me Ryan’s home number, and I’d left his card at work. Standing in my living room, shivering, my head still pounding and my stomach regrouping for another attack, I’d been in no mood for discussion. My words, as well as my tone, persuaded her. I would apologize tomorrow.
That had been half an hour ago. I felt the back of my head. The lump was still there. Under my wet hair it felt like a hard-boiled egg, and was tender to the touch. Before getting into the shower I’d gone through the instructions I’d been given following previous thumps on the head. I checked my pupils, rotated my head hard right and hard left, and pricked my hands and feet to test for feeling. All parts seemed to be in their proper places and in working order. If I’d suffered a concussion, it was a mild one.
I turned off the water and stepped from the shower. The phone lay where I’d left it, mute and disinterested.
Damn. Where is he?
I dried myself, slipped into my ratty old terry cloth robe, and wrapped a towel around my hair. I checked the answering machine to be sure I hadn’t missed a call. No red light. Damn. Retrieving the handset, I clicked it on to see if it was working. Dial tone. Of course it was working. I was just agitated.
I lay down on the couch and placed the phone on the coffee table. Surely he’d call soon. No point going to bed. I closed my eyes, planning to rest a few minutes before making something to eat. But the cold and the stress and the fatigue and the jolt to my brain melded into a tidal wave of exhaustion that rose up and crashed over me, plunging me into a deep but troubled sleep. I didn’t drift off, I passed out.
I was outside a fence, watching someone dig with an enormous shovel. Each time the blade came out of the ground it seethed with rats. When I looked down, there were rats everywhere. I had to keep kicking at them to keep them off my feet. The figure wielding the shovel was shadowy, but when it turned I could see it was Pete. He pointed at me and said something, but I couldn’t make out the words. He started to shout and beckon to me, his mouth a round, black circle that grew larger and larger, engulfing his face and turning it into a hideous clown mask.
Rats ran across my feet. One was dragging Isabelle Gagnon’s head. Its teeth were clamped onto her hair as it yanked the head across the lawn.
I tried to run, but my legs didn’t move. I’d sunk into the earth, and was standing in a grave. Dirt was trickling in around me. Charbonneau and Claudel were peering down at me. I tried to speak, but words wouldn’t come. I wanted them to pull me out. I held my hands out to them, but they ignored me.
Then they were joined by another figure, a man in long robes and an odd hat. He looked down and asked me if I’d been confirmed. I couldn’t answer. He told me I was on church property, and had to leave. He said only those who worked for the church could enter its gates. His cassock flapped in the wind, and I worried that his hat would fall into the grave. He tried to restrain his vestments with one hand, and dial a flip phone with the other. It started to ring, but he ignored it. It rang and rang.
So did the phone on my coffee table, which I eventually distinguished from the phone in my dream. Awakening through layers of resistance, I reached for the handset.
“Um. Hm,” I said, groggily.
“Brennan?”
Anglophone. Gruff. Familiar. I fought to clear my head.
“Yes?” I looked at my wrist. No watch.
“Ryan. This better be good.”
“What time is it?” I had no idea if I’d been asleep five minutes or five hours. This was getting old.
“Four-fifteen.”
“Just a sec.”
I set the phone down and stumbled to the bathroom. I threw cold water on my face, sang one chorus of “The Drunken Sailor” as I jogged in place. Rewrapping my turban, I returned to Ryan. I didn’t want to increase his annoyance by making him wait, but, even more, I didn’t want to sound groggy, or to ramble. Better to take a minute to slap myself into shape.
“Okay, I’m back. Sorry.”
“Was someone singing?”
“Hm. I went out to St. Lambert tonight,” I began. I wanted to tell him enough, but didn’t want to go into the details at 4:15 A.M. “I found the spot where St. Jacques put the X. It’s some sort of abandoned church property.”
“You called to tell me this at four in the morning?”
“I found a body. It’s badly decomposed, probably already skeletal from the smell. We need to get out there right away before someone stumbles on it, or the neighborhood dogs organize a church supper.”
I took a breath and waited.
“Are you fucking crazy?”
I wasn’t sure if he was referring to what I’d found, or to my going out alone. Since he was probably right about the latter, I went for the former.
“I know a body when I find one.”
There was a long silence, then, “Buried or surface?”
“Buried, but very shallow. The portion I saw was exposed, and the rain was making it worse.”
“You sure this isn’t another pissant cemetery eroding out?”
“The body’s in a plastic bag.” Like Gagnon. And Trottier. It didn’t need saying.
“Shit.” I could hear a match being struck, then the long expulsion of breath that meant a cigarette had been lit.
“Think we should go now?”
“No fucking way.” I could hear him pull on the cigarette. “And what is this ‘we’? You have something of a reputation as a freelancer, Brennan, which doesn’t particularly impress me. Your go-to-hell attitude may work with Claudel, but it’s not going to slice with me. The next time you feel an urge to go waltzing around a crime scene, you might just politely inquire as to whether someone in the homicide squad has an opening on his dance card. We do still fit that sort of thing into our busy schedules.”
I hadn’t expected gratitude, but I was unprepared for the vehemence of his response. I was starting to get angry, and it was causing the hammering in my head to escalate. I waited, but he didn’t go on.
“I appreciate your calling back so soon.”
“Hm.”
“Where are you?” With my brain fully functional, I would never have asked. I regretted it immediately.
After a pause, “With a friend.”
Good move, Brennan. No wonder he was annoyed.
“I think someone was out there tonight.”
“What?”
“While I was looking at the burial, I thought I heard something, then I took a shot to the head that knocked me out. All hell was breaking loose with the storm, so I can’t be sure.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
Another pause. I could almost hear him turning things over in his head.
“I’ll send a squad to secure the site until morning. Then I’ll get recovery out there. Think we’ll need the dogs?”
“I only saw the one bag, but there must be more. Also, it looked like there’d been other digging going on in the area. It’s probably a good idea.”
I waited for a response. There was none.
“What time will you pick me up?” I asked.
“I won’t be picking you up, Doctor Brennan. This is real life homicide, as in the jurisdiction of the homicide squad, not Murder She Wrote.”
Now I was furious. My temples were pounding and I could feel a small cloud of heat directly between them, deep in my brain.
“‘More holes than the TransCanada,’” I spat at him. “‘Get me something else.’ Those are your words, Ryan. Well, I got it. And I can take you right to it. Besides, this involves skeletal remains. Bones. That’s my jurisdiction, unless I’m mistaken.”
The line was silent for so long I thought he might have hung up. I waited.
“I’ll come by at eight.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“Brennan?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe you should invest in a helmet.”
The line went dead.
RYAN WAS TRUE TO HIS WORD, AND BY EIGHT FORTY-FIVE WE WERE sliding in behind the recovery van. It sat not ten feet from where I’d parked the night before. But it was a different world from the one I’d visited hours earlier. The sun was shining and the street throbbed with activity. Cars and police cruisers lined both curbs, and at least twenty people, in plainclothes and uniform, stood talking in clumps.
I could see DEJ, SQ, and cops from St. Lambert scattered here and there, each wearing a different uniform and distinctive insignia. The assemblage reminded me of the mixed flocks birds will sometimes form, spontaneous jamborees of twittering and chirping, each bird declaring its species by the color of its plumage and the stripes on its wings.