Authors: Kathy Reichs
She was lying half under a small wooden table, her arms and legs spread wide, white cotton panties stretched taught between her knees. A sea of blood surrounded her, giving way at its perimeter to the geometric pattern of the linoleum. Dark smears covered the walls and counter fronts. From off camera, the legs of an upturned chair seemed to point at her. You are here.
Her body looked ghostly white against the crimson background. A pencil-thin line looped across her abdomen, a happy-face smile just above her pubis. She was slit from this scar upward to her breastbone, and her innards protruded from the opening. The handle of a kitchen knife was barely visible at the apex of the triangle formed by her legs. Five feet from her, between a work island and the sink, lay her right hand. She’d been forty-seven years old.
“Jesus,” I whispered softly.
I was picking my way through the autopsy report when Charbonneau appeared in my doorway. I guessed his mood was not congenial. His eyes looked bloodshot and he didn’t bother with greetings. He entered without asking and took the chair opposite my desk.
Watching him, I felt a momentary sense of loss. The lumbering walk, the looseness in his movement, just the
largeness
of him touched something I thought I’d abandoned. Or been abandoned by.
For a moment I saw Pete sitting across from me, and my mind flew backward in time. What an intoxicant his body had been. I never knew if it was his size, or the relaxed way he had of moving it. Maybe it was
his
fascination with
me
. That had seemed genuine. I could never get enough of him. I’d had sexual fantasies, damn good ones, but from the moment I saw him standing in the rain outside the law library they’d always involved Pete. I could use one right now, I thought. Jesus, Brennan. Get a grip. I snapped back to the present.
I waited for Charbonneau to begin. He was staring down at his hands.
“My partner can be a sonofabitch.” He spoke in English. “But he’s not a bad guy.”
I didn’t respond. I noticed that his pants had four-inch hems, hand sewn, and wondered if he’d done the job himself.
“He’s just—set in his ways. Doesn’t like change.”
“Yes.”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. I felt unease.
“And?” I encouraged.
He leaned back and picked at a thumbnail, still avoiding eye contact. From a radio down the hall Roch Voisine sang softly of Hélène.
“He says he’s going to file a complaint.” He dropped both hands and shifted his gaze to the window.
“A complaint?” I tried to keep my voice flat.
“With the minister. And the director. And LaManche. He’s even looking up your professional board.”
“And what is Monsieur Claudel unhappy about?” Stay calm.
“He says you’re overstepping your bounds. Interfering in stuff you got no business in. Messing up his investigation.” He squinted into the bright sunlight.
I felt my stomach muscles tighten, and a hotness spread upward.
“Go on.” Flat.
“He thinks you’re . . .” He fumbled for a word, no doubt seeking a substitute for the one Claudel had actually used. “. . . overreaching.”
“And what exactly does that mean?”
He still avoided eye contact.
“He says you’re trying to make the Gagnon case into a bigger deal than it really is, seeing all kinds of shit that isn’t there. He says you’re trying to turn a simple murder into an American-style psycho extravaganza.”
“And why am I trying to do that?” My voice wavered slightly.
“Shit, Brennan, this isn’t my idea. I don’t know.” For the first time his eyes met mine. He looked miserable. It was obvious he didn’t want to be there.
I stared back, not really seeing him, just using the time to quell the alarm call going out to my adrenals. I had some idea of the type of inquiry a letter of complaint could set in motion, and I knew it wouldn’t be good. I’d investigated such charges when I sat on the board’s ethics committee. Regardless of outcome, it was never pretty. Neither of us spoke.
“Hélène the things you do. Make me crazy ’bout you,” crooned the radio.
Don’t kill the messenger, I told myself. My eyes dropped to the dossier on my desk. A body with skin the color of milk reproduced in a dozen glossy rectangles. I considered the photos, then looked at Charbonneau. I hadn’t wanted to broach this yet, didn’t feel ready, but Claudel was forcing my hand. What the hell. Things couldn’t get worse.
“Monsieur Charbonneau, do you remember a woman named Francine Morisette-Champoux?”
“Morisette-Champoux.” He repeated the name several times, twirling through his mental Rolodex. “That was several years ago, eh?”
“Almost two. January of 1993.” I handed him the photos.
He thumbed through them, nodding his head in recognition. “Yeah, I remember. So?”
“Think, Charbonneau. What do you recall about the case?”
“We never got the turd that did it.”
“What else?”
“Brennan, tell me you’re not trying to hook this one in, too?”
He went through the photos again, the nodding transformed to negative shaking.
“No way. She was shot. Doesn’t fit the pattern.”
“The bastard slit her open and cut her hand off.”
“She was old. Forty-seven, I think.”
I gave him an icy stare.
“I mean, older than the others,” he mumbled, reddening.
“Morisette-Champoux’s killer drove a knife up her vagina. According to the police report there was extensive bleeding.”
I let that sink in.
“She was still alive.”
He nodded. I didn’t need to explain that a wound inflicted after death will bleed very little since the heart is no longer pumping and blood pressure is gone. Francine Morisette-Champoux had bled profusely.
“With Margaret Adkins it was a metal statue. She was also alive.”
Silently, I reached behind me and pulled the Gagnon file. I withdrew the scene photos and spread them in front of him. There was the torso lying on its plastic bag, dappled by the four o’clock sunlight. Nothing had been moved but the covering of leaves. The plunger lay in place, its red rubber cup snug against the pelvic bones, its handle projecting toward the body’s severed neck.
“I believe Gagnon’s killer shoved that plunger into her with enough force to drive the handle through her belly and clear up to her diaphragm.”
He studied the photos for a long time.
“Same pattern with all three victims,” I hammered on. “Forceful penetration with a foreign object while the victim is alive. Body mutilation after death. Coincidence, Monsieur Charbonneau? How many sadists do we want out there, Monsieur Charbonneau?”
He ran his fingers through the bristle on his head, then drummed them on the arm of the chair.
“Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?”
“I just realized the Morisette-Champoux connection today. With only Adkins and Gagnon, it seemed a bit thin.”
“What does Ryan say?”
“Haven’t told him.”
Unconsciously I fingered the scab on my cheek. I still looked like I’d gone to a TKO with George Foreman.
“Shit.” He said it with little force.
“What?”
“I think I’m beginning to agree with you. Claudel’s going to bust my balls about this.” More drumming. “What else?”
“The saw marks and pattern of dismemberment are almost identical for Gagnon and Trottier.”
“Yeah. Ryan told us that.”
“And the unknown from St. Lambert.”
“A fifth?” It came out “fit.”
“You’re very quick.”
“Thanks.” Back to drumming. “Know who she is yet?”
I shook my head. “Ryan’s working on it.”
He ran a meaty hand over his face. His knuckles were covered with patches of coarse gray hair, miniature versions of the crop on his head.
“So what do you think about victim selection?”
I gave a palm up gesture. “They’re all female.”
“Great. Ages?”
“Sixteen to forty-seven.”
“Physicals?”
“A mix.”
“Locations?”
“All over the map.”
“So what’s the sicko bastard go for? The way they look? The boots they wear? The place they shop?”
I replied with silence.
“You find
anything
common to all five?”
“Some sonofabitch beat the crap out of them, then killed them.”
“Right.” Tilting forward, he placed his hands on his knees, hunched and lowered his shoulders, and gave a deep sigh. “Claudel’s going to shit flaming bullets.”
When he’d gone I called Ryan. Neither he nor Bertrand was in, so I left a message. I went through the other dossiers, but found little of interest. Two drug dealers blasted and sawed up by former friends in crime. A man killed by his nephew, dismembered with a power saw, then stored in the basement freezer. A power failure had brought him to the attention of the rest of the family. A female torso washed up in a hockey bag, with head and arms found downriver. The husband was convicted.
I closed the last file and realized I was starving—1:50
P.M
. No wonder. I bought a ham and cheese croissant and a Diet Coke in the cafeteria on the eighth floor, and returned to my office, ordering myself to take a break. Ignoring the order, I tried Ryan again. Still out. A break it would be. I bit the sandwich and allowed my thoughts to meander. Gabby. Nope. Out of bounds. Claudel. Veto. St. Jacques. Off limits.
Katy. How could I get through to her? Right now, no way. By default, back to Pete, and I felt a familiar flutter in my stomach. Remember the tingling skin, the pounding blood, the warm wetness between my legs. Yes, there had been passion. You’re just horny, Brennan. I took another bite of my sandwich.
The other Pete. The nights of anger. The arguments. The dinners alone. The cold shroud of resentment that had smothered the lust. I took a swig of Coke. Why was I thinking about Pete so often? If we had a chance to do it all again . . . Thanks, Ms. Streisand.
Relaxation therapy wasn’t working. I reread Lucie’s printout, careful not to drip mustard on it. I reviewed the list on page three, trying to read the items Lucie had crossed out, but her pencil marks obscured the letters. Out of curiosity, I erased each of her lines and read the entries. Two cases involved bodies stuffed into barrels then doused with acid. A new twist on the ever-popular drug burn.
The third item puzzled me. Its LML number indicated a 1990 case, and that Pelletier had been the pathologist. No coroner was listed. In the name field it read: Singe. The data fields for date of birth, date of autopsy, and cause of death were empty. The entry “
démembrement/postmortem
” had prompted the computer to include the case in Lucie’s list.
Finishing the croissant, I went to the central files and pulled the jacket. It contained only three items: a police incident report, a one-page opinion by the pathologist, and an envelope of photographs. I thumbed through the pictures, read the reports, then went in search of Pelletier.
“Got a minute?” I said to his hunched back.
He turned from the microscope, glasses in one hand, pen in the other. “Come in, come in,” he urged, sliding the bifocals onto his face.
My office had a window; his had space. He strode across it and gestured to one of two chairs flanking a low table in front of his desk. Reaching into his lab coat, he withdrew a pack of du Maurier’s and extended it to me. I shook my head. We’d been through the ritual a thousand times. He knew I didn’t smoke, but would always offer. Like Claudel, Pelletier was set in his ways.
“What can I help you with?” he said, lighting up.
“I’m curious about an old case of yours. Goes back to 1990.”
“Ah,
Mon Dieu
, can I remember that far back? I can barely remember my own address sometimes.” He leaned forward, cupped his mouth, and looked conspiratorial. “I write it on matchbooks, just in case.”
We both laughed. “Dr. Pelletier, I think you remember just about everything you want to remember.”
He shrugged and wagged his head, all innocence.
“Anyway, I brought the file.” I held it up, then opened it. “Police report says the remains were found in a gym bag behind the Voyageur bus station. Wino opened it, thinking maybe he could find the owner.”
“Right,” said Pelletier. “Honest rubbies are so common they should form their own fraternal organization.”
“Anyway, he didn’t like the aroma. Said”—I skimmed the incident report to find the exact phrase—“‘the smell of Satan rose up out of the bag and surrounded my soul.’ Unquote.”
“A poet. I like that,” said Pelletier. “Wonder what he’d say about my shorts.”
I ignored that and read on. “He took the bag to a janitor, who called the police. They found a collection of body parts wrapped up in some sort of tablecloth.”
“Ah,
oui
. I remember that one,” he said, pointing a yellowed finger at me. “Grisly. Horrible.” He had that look.
“Dr. Pelletier?”
“The case of the terminal monkey.”
“Then I read your report correctly?”
He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“It really was a monkey?”
He nodded gravely. “Capucin.”
“Why did it come here?”
“Dead.”
“Yes.” Everyone’s a comedian. “But why a coroner case?”
The look on my face must have prompted a straight answer. “Whatever was in there was small, and someone had skinned it and cut it up. Hell, it could have been anything. Cops thought it might be a fetus or a neonate, so they sent it to us.”
“Was there anything odd about the case?” I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.
“Nah. Just another sliced-up monkey.” The corners of his mouth twitched slightly.
“Right.” Dumb question. “Anything strike you about the way the monkey was cut up?”
“Not really. These monkey dismemberments are all the same.”
This was going nowhere.
“Did you ever find out whose monkey it was?”
“Actually, we did. A blurb appeared in the paper, and some guy called from the university.”
“UQAM?”
“Yeah, I think so. A biologist or zoologist or something. Anglophone. Ah. Wait.”
He went to a desk drawer, pushed the contents around, then withdrew a stack of business cards bound with a rubber band. Rolling the band off, he flicked through the cards and handed one to me.