A human skull.
Damn.
Though I’d said it a half dozen times, reiteration couldn’t hurt. I’d come from Charlotte to Montreal a day early to prepare for court on Tuesday. A man had been accused of killing and dismembering his wife. I’d be testifying on the saw-mark analysis I’d done on her skeleton. It was complicated material and I’d wanted to review my case file. Instead, I was freezing my ass, digging up the basement of a pizza parlor.
Pierre LaManche had visited my office early this morning. I’d recognized the look, correctly guessed what was coming as soon as I saw him.
Bones had been found in the cellar of a pizza-by-the-slice joint, my boss had told me. The owner had called the police. The police had called the coroner. The coroner had called the medicolegal lab.
LaManche wanted me to check it out.
“Today?”
“S’il vous plaît.”
“I’m on the stand tomorrow.”
“The Pétit trial?”
I nodded.
“The remains are probably those of animals,” LaManche said in his precise Parisian French. “It should not take you long.”
“Where?” I reached for a tablet.
LaManche read the address from a paper in his hand. Rue Ste-Catherine, a few blocks east of Centre-ville.
CUM turf.
Claudel.
The thought of working with Claudel had triggered the morning’s first “damn.”
There are some small-town departments around the island city of Montreal, but the two main players in law enforcement are the SQ and the CUM. La Sûreté du Québéc is the provincial force. The SQ rules in the boonies, and in towns lacking municipal departments. The Police de la Communauté Urbaine de Montréal, or CUM, are the city cops. The island belongs to the CUM.
Luc Claudel and Michel Charbonneau are detectives with the major crimes division of the CUM. As forensic anthropologist for the province of Quebec, I’ve worked with both over the years. With Charbonneau, the experience is always a pleasure. With his partner, the experience is always an experience. Though a good cop, Luc Claudel has the patience of a firecracker, the sensitivity of Vlad the Impaler, and a persistent skepticism as to the value of forensic anthropology.
Snappy dresser, though.
Dr. Energy’s crate had already been loaded with loose bones when I’d arrived in the basement two hours earlier. Though Claudel had yet to provide many details, I assumed the bone collecting had been done by the owner, perhaps with the assistance of the hapless plumber. My job had been to determine if the remains were human.
They were.
That finding had generated the morning’s second “damn.”
My next task had been to determine whether anyone else lay in repose beneath the surface of the cellar. I’d started with three exploratory techniques.
Side-lighting the floor with a flashlight beam had shown depressions in the dirt. Probing had located resistance below each depression, suggesting the presence of subsurface objects. Test-trenching had produced human bones.
Bad news for a leisurely review of the Pétit file.
When I’d rendered my opinion, Claudel and Charbonneau had contributed to “damns” three through five. A few Quebecois expletives had been added for emphasis.
SIJ had been called. The crime scene unit routine had begun. Lights had been set up. Pictures had been taken. While Claudel and Charbonneau questioned the owner and his assistant, a ground-penetrating radar unit had been dragged around the cellar. The GPR showed subsurface disturbances beginning four inches down in each depression. Otherwise, the basement was clean.
Claudel and his semiautomatic manned rat patrol while the SIJ techs took a break and I laid out two simple foursquare grids. I was attaching the last string to the last stake when Claudel enjoyed his Rambo moment with the rats.
Now what? Wait for the SIJ techs to return?
Right.
Using SIJ equipment, I shot prints and video. Then I rubbed circulation into my hands, replaced my gloves, folded into a squat, and began troweling soil from square 1-A.
As I dug, I felt the usual crime scene rush. The quickened senses. The intense curiosity. What if it’s nothing? What if it’s something?
The anxiety.
What if I smash a critically important section to hell?
I thought of other excavations. Other deaths. A wannabe saint in a burned-out church. A decapitated teen at a biker crib. Bullet-riddled dopers in a streamside grave.
I don’t know how long I’d been digging when the SIJ team returned, the taller of the two carrying a Styrofoam cup. I searched my memory for his name.
Root. Racine. Tall and thin like a root. The mnemonic worked.
René Racine. New guy. We’d processed a handful of scenes. His shorter counterpart was Pierre Gilbert. I’d known him a decade.
Sipping tepid coffee, I explained what I’d done in their absence. Then I asked Gilbert to film and haul dirt, Racine to screen.
Back to the grid.
When I’d taken square 1-A down three inches, I moved on to 1-B. Then 1-C and 1-D.
Nothing but dirt.
O.K. The GPR showed a discrepancy beginning four inches below the surface.
I kept digging.
My fingers and toes numbed. My bone marrow chilled. I lost track of time.
Gilbert carried buckets of dirt from my grid to the screen. Racine sifted. Now and then Gilbert shot a pic.
When all of grid one was down a level three inches, I went back to square 1-A. At a depth of six inches I shifted squares as I had before.
I’d taken two swipes at square 1-B, when I noticed a change in soil color. I asked the Gilbert to reposition a light.
One glance and my diastolic ratcheted up.
“Bingo.”
Gilbert squatted by my side. Racine joined him.
“Quoi?” Gilbert asked. What?
I ran the tip of my trowel around the outer edge of the blob seeping into 1-B.”
“The dirt’s darker,” Racine observed.
“Staining indicates decomposition,” I explained.
Both techs looked at me.
I pointed to squares 1-C and 1-D. “Someone or something’s going south under there.”
“Alert Claudel?” Gilbert asked.
“Make his day.”
Four hours later all my digits were ice. Though I’d tuqued my head and scarved my neck, I was shivering inside my one-hundred-percent-microporous-polyurethane-polymerized-coated-nylon-guaranteed-to-forty-below-celsius Kanuk parka.
Gilbert was moving around the cellar, snapping and filming from various angles. Racine was watching, gloved hands thrust into his armpits for warmth. Both looked comfy in their arctic jumpsuits.
The two homicide cops, Claudel and Charbonneau, stood side by side, feet spread, hands clasped in front of their genitals. Each wore a black woolen overcoat and black leather gloves. Neither wore a happy face.
Eight dead rats adorned the base of the walls.
The plumber’s pit and the two depressions were open to a depth of two feet. The former had yielded a few scattered bones left behind by the plumber and owner. The depression trenches were a different story.
The skeleton under grid one lay in a fetal curl. It was unclothed, and not a single artifact had turned up in the screen.
The individual under grid two had been bundled before burial. The parts we could see looked fully skeletal.
Flicking the last particles of dirt from the second burial, I set aside my paintbrush, stood, and stomped my feet to warm them.
“That a blanket?” Charbonneau’s voice sounded husky from the cold.
“Looks more like leather,” I said.
He jabbed a thumb at Dr. Energy’s crate.
“This the rest of the dude in the box?”
Sérgeant-detective Michel Charbonneau was born in Chicotoumi, six hours up the St. Lawrence from Montreal, in a region known as the Saguenay. Before entering the CUM, he’d
spent several years working in the west Texas oil fields. Proud of his cowboy youth, Charbonneau always addressed me in my mother tongue. His English was good, though “de’s” replaced “the’s,” syllables were often inappropriately accented, and his phrasing used enough slang to fill a ten-gallon hat.
“Let’s hope so.”
“You hope so?” A small vapor cloud puffed from Claudel’s mouth.
“Yes, Monsieur Claudel. I hope so.”
Claudel’s lips tucked in, but he said nothing.
When Gilbert finished shooting the bundled burial, I dropped to my knees and tugged at a corner of the leather. It tore.
Changing from my warm woolies to surgical gloves, I leaned in and began teasing free an edge, gingerly separating, lifting, then rolling the leather backward onto itself.
With the outer layer fully peeled to the left, I began on the inner. At places, fibers adhered to the skeleton. Hands shaking from cold and nervousness, I scalpeled rotten leather from underlying bone.
“What’s that white stuff “ Racine asked.
“Adipocere.”
“Adipocere,” he repeated.
“Grave wax,” I said, not in the mood for a chemistry lesson. “Fatty acids and calcium soaps from muscle or fat undergoing chemical changes, usually after long burial or immersion in water.”
“Why’s it not on the other skeleton?”
“I don’t know.”
I heard Claudel puff air through his lips. I ignored him. Fifteen minutes later I’d detached the inner layer and laid back the shroud, fully exposing the skeleton.
Though damaged, the skull was clearly present.
“Three heads, three people.” Charbonneau stated the obvious.
“Tabernouche,” Claudel said.
“Damn,” I said.
Gilbert and Racine remained mute.
“Any idea what we’ve got here, doc?” Charbonneau asked.
I creaked to my feet. Eight eyes followed me to Dr. Energy’s crate.
One by one I removed and observed the two pelvic halves, then the skull.
Crossing to the first trench, I knelt, extricated, and inspected the same skeletal elements.
Dear God.
Replacing those bones, I crawled to the second trench, leaned in, and studied the skull fragments.
No. Not again. The universal victims.
I teased free the right demi-pelvis.
Breath billowed in front of five faces.
Sitting back on my heels, I cleaned dirt from the pubic symphysis.
And felt something go cold in my chest.
Three women. Barely past girl.
Chapter 2
Waking to the Tuesday morning weather report, I knew I was in for killer cold. Not the occasional mid-forties damp we whine about in January in North Carolina. I mean sub-zero cold. Arctic cold. If-I-stop-moving-I’ll-die-and-be-eaten-by-wolves cold.
I adore Montreal. I love the not-quite-eight-hundred-foot mountain, the old port, Little Italy, Chinatown, the Gay Village, the steel and glass skyscrapers of Centre-ville, the tangled neighborhoods with their alleys and gray stones and impossible staircases.
Montreal is a schizoid scrapper, continually fighting with herself. Anglophone-Francophone. Separatist-Federalist. Catholic-Protestant. Old-New. I find it fascinating. I delight in the whole empenada, falafel, poutine, Kong Pao multiculturalism of the place. Hurley’s Irish Pub. Katsura. L’Express. Fairmont Bagel. Trattoria Trestevere.
I partake in the city’s never-ending round of festivals, Le Festival International de Jazz, Les Fêtes Gourmandes Internationales, Le Festival des Films du Monde, the bug-tasting festival at the Insectarium. I frequent the stores on Ste-Catherine, the outdoor markets at Jean Talon and Atwater, the antique shops along Notre Dame. I visit the museums, picnic in the parks, bike the paths along the Lachine Canal. I relish it all.
I do not relish the climate from November to May.
I admit it. I have lived too long in the south. I hate feeling chilled. I have no patience with snow and ice. Keep your boots and Chap Stick and ice hotels. Give me shorts and sandals and a thirty blocker.
My cat, Birdie, shares this view. When I sat up he rose, arched, then tunneled back under the covers. Smiling, I watched his body compact into a tight, round lump. Birdie. My sole and loyal roommate.
“I’m with you, Bird,” I said, offing the clock radio.
The lump curled tighter.
I looked at the digits. Five thirty.
I looked at the window. Pitch black.
I bolted for the bathroom.
Twenty minutes later I was at my kitchen table, coffee at my elbow, Pétit file spread before me.
Marie-Reine Pétit was a forty-two-year-old mother of three who worked at a boulangerie selling bread. Two years earlier she’d gone missing. Four months later Marie-Reine’s decomposed torso had been discovered in a hockey bag in a storage shed behind the Pétit home. Marie-Reine’s head and limbs had been stashed nearby in matching luggage.
A search of the Pétit basement uncovered coping, hack, and carpenter’s saws. I had analyzed the cut marks on Marie-Reine’s bones to determine if a tool similar to one of hubby’s had made them. Bingo on the hacksaw. Rejean Pétit was now on trial for the murder of his wife.
Two hours and three coffees later, I gathered my photos and papers and rechecked the subpoena.
De comparaître personnellement devant la Cour du Québec, chamber criminelle et penal, au Palais de justice de Montréal, à 09:00 heures, le 3 decembre—-
Hot diggety. Personally invited to testify. As personal as a summons to a tax audit. No RSVP necessary.
I noted the courtroom.
Zipping into boots and parka, I grabbed gloves, hat, and scarf, set the security alarm, and headed down to the garage. Birdie had yet to uncurl. Apparently my cat had enjoyed a predawn breakfast.
My old Mazda started on the first try. Good omen.
At the top of the ramp, I braked too quickly and swam crosswise into the lane like a kid on a Slip ’N Slide. Bad omen.
Rush hour. The streets were clogged, every vehicle spinning up slush. The early morning sun turned my salt-spattered windshield opaque. Though I applied my wipers and sprayers repeatedly, for stretches I found myself driving blind. Within blocks, I regretted not taking a taxi.
In the late sixteenth century a group of Laurentian Iroquois lived in a village they called Hochelaga, situated between a small mountain and a major river, just below the last stretch of serious rapids. In 1642 French missionaries and adventurers dropped in and stayed. The French called their outpost Ville-Marie.
Over the years, the residents of Ville-Marie prospered and built and paved. The village took on the name of the mountain behind it, Mont Real. The river was christened the St. Lawrence.
Hello, Europeans. Good-bye, First Nations.
Today the former Hochelaga–Ville-Marie turf is known as Vieux Montréal. Tourists love it.
Stretching uphill from the river, Old Montreal oozes quaint. Gas lights. Horse drawn carriages. Sidewalk vendors. Outdoor cafes. The solid stone buildings that were once home to colonists, stables, workshops, and warehouses now house museums, boutiques, galleries, and restaurants. The streets are narrow and cobbled.
And offer not a chance of parking.
Wishing once again that I’d taken a taxi, I left the car in a pay lot, then hurried up Boulevard St-Laurent to the Palais de justice, located at 1 rue Notre-Dame est, on the northern perimeter of the historic district. Salt crunched underfoot. Breath froze on my scarf. Pigeons remained huddled when I passed, preferring collective body warmth to the safety of flight.
As I walked, I thought of the pizza basement skeletons. Would the bones really prove to be those of dead girls? I hoped not, but deep down I already knew.
I also thought of Marie-Reine Pétit, and felt sorrow for a life cut short by unspeakable malice. I wondered about the Pétit children. Father jailed for murdering the mother. Could these kids ever recover,
or were they irreparably damaged by the horror that had been thrust upon them?
Passing, I glanced at the McDonald’s franchise across St-Laurent from the Palais de justice. The owners had made a stab at colonial. They’d lost the arches and thrown up blue awnings. It didn’t really work, but they had tried.
The designers of Montreal’s main courthouse didn’t bother with architectural harmonization. The lower stories consist of an oblong box covered with vertical black bars overhanging a smaller glass-fronted box beneath. The upper stories shoot skyward as a featureless monolith. The building blends with the neighborhood like a Hummer parked in an Amish colony.
I entered the Palais to a packed house. Old ladies in ankle-length furs. Gangsta teens in clothes big enough to accommodate armies. Men in suits. Black-robed attorneys and judges. Some waited. Others hurried. There seemed no in-between.
Winding among large planters and uprights bearing starburst lights, I crossed to a bank of elevators at the back of the lobby. Coffee smells drifted from the Café Vienne. Already wired, I considered but passed up a fourth cup.
Upstairs, the scene was similar, though tipped in favor of the waiting game. People sat on perforated red metal benches, leaned against walls, or stood conversing in hushed voices. A few conferred with counsel in small interrogation rooms lining the corridor. None looked happy.
I took a seat outside 4.01 and pulled the Pétit file from my briefcase. Ten minutes later Louise Cloutier emerged from the courtroom. With her long blond hair and oversized glasses, the crown prosecutor looked about seventeen.
“You’ll be my first witness.” Cloutier’s face was tense.
“I’m ready,” I said.
“Your testimony is going to be critical.”
Cloutier’s fingers twisted and untwisted a paper clip. She’d wanted to meet the previous day, but the pizza basement caper had nixed that. Our late-night phone conversation hadn’t provided the degree of preparation she’d wanted. I tried to reassure her.
“I can’t tie the marks on the bones to Pétit’s specific hacksaw, but I can say firmly that they were made by an identical tool.”
Cloutier nodded. “Consistent with.”
“Consistent with,” I agreed.