Déjà Dead (27 page)

“Lot of strange ones down here, chère.”

Okay, class, begin.

I told her the whole story. As she listened, she swirled the dregs in her cup, watching the black-brown liquid intently. When I’d finished, she continued with the cup, as if scoring my answer. Then she signaled for a refill. I waited to find out my grade.

“I don’t know his name, but I most likely know who you talkin’ about. Skinny dude, personality of a mealworm. He’s strange, all right, and whatever’s ailing him ain’t no small thing. But I don’t think he’s dangerous. I doubt he’s got the brains to read a ketchup label.”

I’d passed.

“Most of us avoid him.”

“Why?”

“I’m only passing on the word from the street, ’cause I don’t do business with him myself. The guy makes my skin crawl like a gator in mud.” She grimaced and gave a small shudder. “Word is he’s got peculiar wants.”

“Peculiar?”

She put her cup on the table and looked at me, evaluating.

“He pays for it, but he doesn’t want to fuck.”

I scooped noodles from my soup and waited.

“Girl named Julie goes with him. No one else will. She’s about as smart as a runner bean, but that’s another story. She told me it’s the same show every time. They go to the room, our hero brings a paper bag with a nightie inside. Nothing kinky, lacy kinds of stuff. He watches her put it on, then tells her to lie on the bed. Okay, no big deal. Then he strokes the nightie with one hand and his dick with the other. Pretty soon he gets hard as an oil derrick and blows a gusher, grunting and groaning like he’s off in some other creation. Then he makes her take off the gown, thanks her, pays her, and leaves. Julie figures it’s easy money.”

“What makes you think this is the guy worrying my friend?”

“One time, he’s stuffing Granny’s nightie back in the ditty bag, Julie sees a big ol’ knife handle. She tells him, you want more pussy, cowboy, lose the knife. He tells her it’s his sword of righteousness or some damned thing, goes on about the knife, and his soul, and ecological balance, and crap like that. Scares the shit out of her.”

“And?”

Another shrug.

“He still around?”

“Haven’t seen him for a while, but that don’t mean much. I never did see him regular. He’d kind of drift in and drift out.”

“Did you ever talk to him?”

“Cutie, we’ve all talked to him. When he’s around he’s like a case of the drips, irritating as hell but you can’t shake it. That’s how I know he’s got the personality of roach larvae.”

“Ever see him with Gabby?” I slurped some more noodles.

She sat back and laughed. “Nice try, sugar.”

“Where could I find him?”

“Hell if I know. Wait long enough, he’ll show up.”

“How about Julie?”

“It’s a free trade zone here, chère, folks come and go. I don’t keep track.”

“Have you seen her lately?”

She gave it some thought. “Can’t say as I have.”

I studied the noodles at the bottom of the bowl and I studied Jewel. She had lifted the lid a tiny crack, allowed a peek inside. Could I raise it farther? I took the chance.

“There may be a serial killer out there, Jewel. Someone murdering women and slicing them up.”

Her expression never changed. She just looked at me, a stony gargoyle. Either she hadn’t understood, or she was dulled to thoughts of violence and pain, even death. Or perhaps she’d thrown on a mask, a facade to conceal a fear too real to validate by speech. I suspected the latter.

“Jewel, is my friend in danger?”

Our eyes locked.

“She female, chère?”

I motored my way home, letting my thoughts drift, paying little attention to my driving. De Maisonneuve was deserted, the traffic lights playing to an empty house. Suddenly, a pair of headlights appeared in my rearview mirror and bore down on me.

I crossed Peel and slid to my right to allow the vehicle to pass. The lights moved with me. I shifted back to the inner lane. The driver followed, shifting to high beam.

“Asshole.”

I sped up. The car stayed on my bumper.

A prickle of fear. Maybe it wasn’t just a drunk. I squinted into the rearview mirror, trying to make out the driver. All I could see was a silhouette. It looked large. A man? I couldn’t tell. The lights were blinding. The car unidentifiable.

Hands slick on the wheel, I crossed Guy, turned left around the block, ignoring red lights, shot up my street, and dived underground into the garage of my building.

I waited until the electric door had settled, then bolted, key ready, ears alert for the sound of footsteps. No one followed. As I passed through the first-floor lobby, I peeked through the curtains. A car idled at the curb on the far side of the street, lights burning, its driver a black profile in the predawn dimness. Same car? I couldn’t be certain. Was I losing it?

Thirty minutes later I lay watching the curtain of darkness outside my window fade from charcoal to mourning dove gray. Birdie purred in the crook of my knee. I was so exhausted I’d pulled off my clothes and fallen into bed, skipping the preliminaries. Not like me. Usually I’m compulsive about teeth and makeup. Tonight, I didn’t care.

W
EDNESDAY IS GARBAGE DAY ON MY BLOCK
. I
SLEPT THROUGH THE
sound of the sanitation truck. I slept through Birdie’s nudging. I slept through three phone calls.

I woke at ten-fifteen feeling sluggish and headachy. I was definitely not twenty-four anymore. All-nighters took their toll, and it made me cranky to admit it.

My hair, my skin, even the pillow and sheets smelled of stale smoke. I bundled the linens and last night’s clothes into the washer, then took a long, sudsy shower. I was spreading peanut butter on a stale croissant when the phone rang.

“Temperance?” LaManche.

“Yes.”

“I have been trying to reach you.”

I glanced at the phone machine. Three messages.

“Sorry.”

“
Oui
. We will be seeing you today? Already Monsieur Ryan is calling.”

“I’ll be there within the hour.”

“
Bon
.”

I played the messages. A distraught graduate student. LaManche. A hang-up. I wasn’t up to student problems, so I tried Gabby. No answer. I dialed Katy and got her machine.

“Leave a short message, like this one,” it chirped cheerily. I did, not cheerily.

In twenty minutes I was at the lab. Stuffing my purse in a desk drawer, and ignoring the pink slips scattered across the blotter, I went directly downstairs to the morgue.

The dead come first to the morgue. There, they are logged in and stored in refrigerated compartments until assigned to an LML pathologist. Jurisdiction is coded by floor color. The morgue opens directly onto the autopsy rooms, the red floor of each morgue bay stopping abruptly at the autopsy room threshold. The morgue is run by the coroner, the LML controls the operatories. Red floor: coroner. Gray floor: LML. I do my initial examinations in one of the four autopsy rooms. Afterward, the bones are sent up to the histology lab for final cleaning.

LaManche was making a Y incision in the chest of an infant, her tiny shoulders propped on a rubber headrest, her hands spread at her sides as if poised to make a snow angel. I looked at LaManche.

“
Secouée
,” was all he said. Shaken.

Across the room Nathalie Ayers bent over another autopsy as Lisa lifted the breastplate from a young man. Below a shock of red hair his eyes bulged purple and swollen, and I could see a small, dark hole on his right temple. Suicide. Nathalie was a new pathologist at the LML, and didn’t yet do homicides.

Daniel put down the scalpel he was sharpening. “Do you need the bones from St. Lambert?”

“
S’il vous plaît
. In number 4?”

He nodded and disappeared into the morgue.

The skeletal autopsy took several hours, and I confirmed my initial impression that the remains were of one individual, a white female around thirty years of age. Though little soft tissue remained, the bones were in good condition and retained some fat. She’d been dead two to five years. The only oddity was an unfused arch on her fifth lumbar vertebra. Without the head, a positive ID would be tough.

I asked Daniel to transfer the bones to the histo lab, washed, and went upstairs. The pile of pink slips had grown. I phoned Ryan and gave him my summary. He was already working missing persons reports with the St. Lambert police.

One of the calls was from Aaron Calvert in Norman, Oklahoma. Yesterday. When I tried his number, a syrupy voice told me he was away from his desk. She assured me she was devastatingly sorry, and guaran teed that he’d get the message. Professionally affable. I set the other messages aside and went to see Lucie Dumont.

Lucie’s office was crammed with terminals, monitors, printers, and computer paraphernalia of all kinds. Cables climbed walls to disappear into the ceiling, or were taped in bundles along the floor. Stacks of printouts drooped on shelves and file cabinets, fanning out like alluvium seeking the lowest point.

Lucie’s desk faced the door, the control panel of cabinets and hardware forming a horseshoe behind her. She worked by rolling from station to station, sneakered feet propelling her chair across the gray tile. To me, Lucie was the back of a head silhouetted against a glowing green screen. I rarely saw her face.

Today the horseshoe held five Japanese in business suits. They circled Lucie, arms held close to their bodies, nodding gravely as she pointed to something on a terminal and explained its significance. Cursing my timing, I went on to the histo lab.

The St. Lambert skeleton had arrived from the morgue, and I set about analyzing the cuts the same way I had with Trottier and Gagnon. I described, measured, and plotted the location of each mark, and made impressions of the false starts. As with the others, the tiny gashes and trenches suggested a knife and a saw. Microscopic details were similar, and placement of cuts almost identical to those in the earlier cases.

The woman’s hands had been sawed at the wrists, the rest of her limbs detached at the joints. Her belly had been slashed along the midline deep enough to leave cuts on the spine. Although the skull and upper neck bones were missing, marks on the sixth cervical vertebra told me that she had been decapitated at the midthroat. The guy was consistent.

I repacked the bones, gathered my notes, and returned to my office, diverting up the corridor to see if Lucie was free. She and her Japanese suits were nowhere to be seen. I left a Post-it note on her terminal. Maybe she’d thank me for an excuse to bolt.

In my absence Calvert had called. Naturally. As I dialed his number, Lucie appeared in my doorway, her hands clasped tightly in front of her.

“You left me a message, Dr. Brennan?” she asked, flashing a quick smile. She spoke not a word of English.

She was thin as soup in a homeless shelter, with a burr haircut that accentuated the length of her skull. The absence of hair and pale skin magnified the effect of her eyeglasses, making her seem little more than a mannequin for the oversized frames.

“Yes, Lucie, thank you for stopping by,” I said, rising to clear a chair.

She tucked her feet behind the chair leg, one behind the other, as she slid into her seat. Like a cat oozing onto a cushion.

“Did you get stuck with tour duty?”

She twitched a smile, then looked blank.

“The Japanese gentlemen.”

“Yes. They are from a crime lab in Kobe, chemists mostly. I do not mind.”

“I’m not sure you can help me, but I wanted to ask,” I began.

Her lenses focused on a row of skulls I keep on the shelf behind my desk.

“For comparison,” I explained.

“Are they real?”

“Yes, they’re real.”

She shifted her gaze and I could see a distorted version of myself in each pink lens. The corners of her lips jumped and resettled. Her smiles came and went like light from a bulb with a bad connection. Reminded me of my flashlight in the woods.

I explained what I wanted. When I’d finished, she tipped her head and stared upward, as if the answer might be on the ceiling. Taking her time. I listened to the whir of a printer somewhere down the hall.

“There won’t be anything before 1985, I know that.” Facial flicker. On. Off.

“I realize it’s a bit unusual, but see what you can do.”

“Quebec City, also?”

“No, just the LML cases for now.”

She nodded, smiled, and left. As if on cue, the phone rang. Ryan.

“How about someone younger?”

“How much younger?”

“Seventeen.”

“No.”

“Maybe someone with some sort of—”

“No.”

Silence.

“I’ve got one sixty-seven.”

“Ryan, this woman belongs neither to the Clearasil nor the Geritol set.”

He continued with the relentlessness of a busy signal. “What if she had some kind of bone condition or something? I read abou—”

“Ryan, she was between twenty-five and thirty-five.”

“Right.”

“She probably went missing somewhere between ’89 and ’92.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Oh. One other thing. She probably had kids.”