But time behind the wheel had a sobering effect. Afraid to hit other ATMs as he’d initially intended, and afraid to return to Pointe-Calumet, Adamski stopped to purchase a garden spade. He then killed and buried Christelle in Oka.
Adamski then ditched the Villejoins’ bank card, scrubbed the Honda, and hightailed it to Poppy’s condo in Saint-Eustache. For several months he worked odd jobs, followed coverage of the Villejoin investigation, and lay low.
As time passed and Johnny Law failed to come knocking, Adamski grew increasingly confident he’d gotten away with murder. As was his pattern, he also grew increasingly disenchanted with his living arrangement.
During this period, Adamski logged a lot of couch time with Poppy’s TV. And bless her, she had cable. Along with hockey and reruns of The Rockford Files and Miami Vice, he followed news of a series of home invasions across the border in upstate New York. He learned that, over a two-year span, three senior citizens had been robbed and beaten to death.
Adamski began thinking about the old lady who’d disappeared from L’Auberge des Neiges. About the Villejoins. Though it had been years since he’d seen his former wife, he thought of her, too. He remembered Keiser’s threats to pull her money from the bank, wondered if she’d followed through.
He’d married Keiser for financial gain. But the old lady was nuts, still wanted sex. Living with her was intolerable. As with everything in his life, the plan hadn’t worked out. Like Poppy wasn’t working out.
Adamski did some calculation. Marilyn Keiser would be seventy-two. He’d killed the Villejoins and skated. The women were feeble, provided little challenge.
Adamski established that Keiser still lived in the same building. For weeks he sat in Poppy’s Honda on Édouard-Montpetit, watching his former wife’s comings and goings. He followed her to a synagogue, a market, a community center, a yoga studio.
One Friday, Keiser emerged with an overnighter and drove to Memphrémagog. Adamski followed. To his surprise, she went to his old hunting shack.
Three times he observed this weekend routine. When Keiser wasn’t there he checked security. Visibility. The proximity of neighbors.
Slowly, a plan took shape. He’d break into the cabin, hide Poppy’s car in the shed, and wait. When Keiser arrived he’d demand her stash. If it was hidden at the cabin, perfect. If it was at the apartment, he’d drive her back to town and kill her there. Either way, he’d make it look like a home intrusion.
Except Keiser didn’t surrender as easily as expected. When she finally broke, Adamski was so furious he doused her body with kerosene and tossed a match.
According to Adamski, the women were mostly to blame for their own deaths. His reasoning ran thus. He has problems with rage. They shouldn’t have crossed him. Flawless.
After nearly ten hours of watching the sleazy bastard, I was ready to burst my skin. Or shed it in disgust. Partly the coffee? Maybe.
My brain was still ragged from staring first at the microfilm, then at the grainy image on the closed-circuit TV. Exhaustion had scrambled my emotions, and I had no desire to sort my psyche. I felt sadness, sure. Repugnance. Anger. Yeah, a boatload of anger.
Anyway, by four I’d had it.
With Ryan’s promise to keep me looped in, I headed home.
That night I dreamed again of moths and skeletons and incinerated corpses. Ryan was there, Ayers, Chris Corcoran. Others, too murky to name.
I awoke at eight, again sensing a missed shoulder-tap from my subconscious.
What? The Jurmain, Villejoin, and Keiser cases were closed. The Lac Saint-Jean bones would soon be identified. Nothing remained but Edward Allen’s accuser. Was that the cause of the psst! from my id?
While feeding the cat, I realized I’d failed to tell Ryan about my discovery of the Sainte-Monique boating accident. No biggie. He’d call shortly with an update on Adamski.
“Big day today, Bird.”
Birdie kept crunching his little brown pellets.
“First, I’m going to resolve the Lac Saint-Jean case. Then I’m going to nail the rat bastard who smeared my name.”
Bird shot me the cat equivalent of a reproachful glance. At my use of language? The rodent reference?
I left him to breakfast alone.
* * *
At Wilfrid-Derome, a small tan envelope lay on my lab desk. Finally, Joe had taken postmortem X-rays of all the teeth recovered with the Lac Saint-Jean remains.
Sliding the little black films onto a light box, I examined each tooth.
The spot of dullness on the second upper baby molar glowed white and radiopaque. A restoration. Interesting, but of little value without antemortem dental records.
Next, I reexamined each of the Lac Saint-Jean skeletons. Then I called Labrousse, the gynecologist-coroner in Chicoutimi.
After describing my library microfilm find, I asked Labrousse to see what he could dig up locally on the drowning victims. He agreed to look for surviving family members, medical, and dental records. He also offered to check the coroner archives, but doubted anything would remain from 1958.
Agreeing that retention of fifty-year-old files was unlikely, I asked Labrousse to query three things. Was Richard Blackwater First Nations? Was Claire Clemenceau given antibiotics as an infant? Did she have any fillings?
Labrousse said he’d get back to me.
Next, I called the chief coroner.
To describe Hubert’s reaction as skeptical would be akin to calling Bull Run a minor skirmish. Or maybe he hated to admit that my skepticism was justified. Whatever.
His parting remarks: Valentin Gouvrard took tetracycline at age seven months. The kid from the lake had defective baby molars. Quelle coincidence!
Coincidence is right, I thought, hand lingering on the cradled receiver. A coincidence the size of Yankee Stadium.
Sometimes you just know. Call it intuition. Call it deductive reasoning based on experience and subconscious pattern recognition.
I was certain in my gut that the people from Lac Saint-Jean were the Sainte-Monique picnickers. I simply had to prove it.
I searched my brain. Was there anything to indicate the gender of the juvenile skeletons? Given the condition of the bone, measurement was impossible.
I came up blank.
I was gnawing on the problem when Ryan called. He sounded as tired as I felt. That didn’t surprise me. His update did.
“Adamski’s copping to Keiser and the Villejoins, coughing up detail like he’s writing a novel. But he’s adamant about having nothing to do with Jurmain.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Why own three murders and lie about the fourth?”
“You did suggest a little American custom called capital punishment.”
“Adamski lawyered up. He now knows extradition’s not on the table.”
“Is that little trick going to come back to haunt you?”
“No one told Adamski he’d go to the States. It’s not our fault if the moron misinterpreted reference to Jurmain’s citizenship. We were just placing her death in context.”
I thought a moment. Rose Jurmain’s bones had no signs of violence.
“Maybe being at the auberge was nothing more than bad luck for Adamski,” I said.
“Meaning the initial finding was correct. Jurmain wandered off drunk and froze to death.”
“There was no trauma to her skeleton.”
“Except for the bears.”
“Except for that. And her body wasn’t buried or hidden in any way.”
“Speaking of trauma, here’s another kicker. Adamski swears he gut-punched Keiser to death.”
“Why lie about shooting her?”
“Beats me. But the story skews right with his history.”
“But I saw the bullet track. Ayers showed me photos.”
“Maybe Adamski has self-image issues. You know, guns are for sissies, that sort of thing. Or maybe the gun belongs to someone he’s trying to protect. We’re still working him. It’s harder now
that he’s hired a mouthpiece.”
I told Ryan about the ’58 boating accident on Lac Saint-Jean.
“Did you ask Jacquème about his brother-in-law’s ancestry?”
“Yes, ma’am. Achille Gouvrard was pure laine.”
Pure laine. Pure wool. Translation: old-line white Québécois.
“And Jacquème remembered something else. Gouvrard fought at the battle of Scheldt in ’forty-four. Came home with shrapnel in his right thigh. Complained of bone pain when temperatures dropped.”
After disconnecting, I got up and popped an X-ray onto the light box. There wasn’t a trace of metal in the male’s right femur.
I studied his broad cheekbones and shoveled incisor.
More than ever I was convinced the man was not Achille Gouvrard.
My eyes shifted to the younger child’s discolored molars.
Again, shame burned my chest.
Briel spotted the tetracycline staining. I did not.
I looked away, out the window. At the scene I’d found calming for so many years. The river. The bridge. The drivers and pedestrians pursuing their everyday lives.
A moth lay on the sill, legs crimped, wings museum-mummy dry. Dead since this summer?
The little corpse triggered recall of my nighttime visitations. The moths. The skeletons. The burned corpses.
Something sat up deep in my brainpan.
I looked back at the bones.
Briel found the staining.
The something rippled the surface of my subconscious.
Briel found the bullet track.
The bullet track.
The something broke through into conscious thought.
36
GRABBING THE RECEIVER, I PUNCHED THE NUMBER for the Cook County Medical Examiner. When my call was answered, I asked for Chris Corcoran.
Chris’s extension rang three times, then rolled to voice mail.
I left a message. Call as soon as you can. It’s important.
I looked at the wall clock. Nine thirty. He was probably carving out someone’s liver.
The bullet track. Natalie Ayers, a veteran pathologist, missed it. Marie-Andréa Briel, a rookie, found it. That was the flag my subconscious was waving.
The case was a stunner for Chris Corcoran. He described it in detail when I was in Chicago. The woman dead on her living room floor. The autopsy revealing no sign of trauma. The grandson admitting to capping his grandma. The reautopsy. Chris found the injury so unique he wrote it up for publication.
OK.
I hurried to the library.
Where to start? Chris was working the case when Laszlo Tot’s body turned up in the quarry. That was July of 2005.
It takes time to write a scientific article, to revise, to await your place in the publication queue. Pulling the November 2007 Journal of Forensic Sciences, I checked the author index.
Nothing. I checked 2006, 2005, 2008. Nothing.
So much for that.
Back to the lab.
While awaiting word from Chris about his bullet track case, and from Labrousse about the Sainte-Monique drowning vics, I decided to do some Internet research.
Googling the name Marie-Andréa Briel generated an astonishing number of links. In addition to numerous online papers and blogs, Briel had coauthored articles for the Journal of Forensic Sciences, the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, and a number of Canadian and British journals. All with the first sacked student assistant. All in the past year.
Briel had given dozens of interviews in both French and English. She’d served on panels directed at student career networking. She was listed among the faculty of the Department of Pathology at Laval University, and on a dozen sites hawking biomedical experts. She’d joined every forensic society in the free world.
As I followed loops into loops, I was aware of Joe moving around in the lab, logging tissue samples, shooting photos, entering data into the system. Of Jean Leloup, Isabelle Boulay, Daniel Bélanger, and, of course, Céline crooning from the radio.
In all the cyber bytes tilled, I turned up nothing predating Briel’s arrival in Quebec. No biography. No résumé. No mention of past employment or educational background.
When I finally peeled my eyes from the screen, I noticed a figure behind me. I turned.
Joe’s arms were crossed on his torso.
“I’m sorry. Did you say something?” I was surprised to see him there.
“The dental X-rays. Lac Saint-Jean. They were OK?”
“Yes.” Had I not thanked him? “Thanks. They were fine.”
I hesitated, debating whether to share my revised take on the vics. Why not? It might appease him, make him feel part of the breakthrough.
Joe listened to my new theory, face utterly blank.
“What about the staining?” he asked.
“An excellent question,” I said. “For which I will find an answer.”
“Do you—”
The phone rang.
I swiveled, hoping it was Chris Corcoran. It was.
“Something breaking? You sounded revved.”
“Thanks for calling back so fast. When I was in Chicago last December you described a homicide in which a single bullet shot straight down the victim’s back, remember?”
“Damndest thing. The trajectory followed the alignment of the muscle fibers, completely masking the presence of the track. I did an informal survey. No one had seen anything similar. The case was so freaky, I wrote it up for the JFS, got a revise and resubmit. I still haven’t gotten to the cuts the reviewers suggested. Want a copy?”
“Can you fax it to me now?”
“Sure.”
I gave Chris the number, then hurried to reception. Minutes later his article came clicking in.
An Unusual Gunshot Death Involving Longitudinal Tracking Through a Single Erector Mass.
Twenty-four pages. I agreed with the reviewers. Overkill.
I did a speed-read while walking back to my lab.
A sixty-eight-year-old female was last seen alive at a family picnic on the Fourth of July. . . . Daughter discovered decedent in an advanced state of putrefaction. . . . Absence of organ perforation. . . . Absence of skeletal trauma. . . . Absence of metallic trace. . . . Cause of death undetermined. . . . Victim’s grandson confessed to shooting. . . .
My eyes froze on a sentence in a section subtitled Second Autopsy Findings.
Cross-sectional dissection demonstrated a single bullet track running longitudinally down the right erector mass.
Throat constricting with anger, I skimmed the rest.
. . . wound orientation suggested the victim was moving at the moment of projectile impact. . . . Cause of death reevaluated as homicide. . . . Extremely rare. . . . Review of the literature revealed no reported cases. . . .
I tossed the fax onto my desk, thoughts firing like kernels in a popper.
The bullet track was extraordinarily uncommon and difficult to spot. Ayers missed it with Keiser. Chris missed it in his Chicago case. Both are experienced pathologists.
Briel found it.
Luck? Skill? Coincidence?
Not a chance.
Briel couldn’t have read about Chris’s case. The article wasn’t yet in print.
My Internet search had turned up zip on Briel’s past. She claimed to have done a number of postdocs. Might one have been with the CCME?
My id popped another flashbulb image. Friday night’s dream. The tendrils floating from Rose Jurmain’s skeleton, one inscribed with the initials ML.
But that was wrong. ML analyzed Lassie’s bones. Not Rose’s.
Suddenly the skin on my face felt tight.
Briel was keen on anthropology. She’d taken a short course. Done the reexcavation at Oka. Jumped on the Lac Saint-Jean vics in my absence.
Might Briel be ML?
My cortex scoffed at my lower centers. Waaay overreaching.
Yet.
I dialed Chris again. This time he answered.
r /> “I read the article. Good job.”
“You think it’s too long?”
“A little. Do you remember having a pathologist at the CCME named Marie-Andréa Briel?”
“No. But they come and go.”
“You did the bullet track autopsy around the time Laszlo Tot’s body was dragged from the Thornton Quarry, right?”
“Yes.”
“You said Walczak uses freebies for skeletal cases, pathologists, residents, anthropology grad students, right?”
“It’s not my decision.”
“Someone named ML did the anthropology on Laszlo’s remains, right?”
“Sorry. I don’t remember. I’d have to recheck the file.”
“Can you do that for me? And if ML examined Lassie’s bones, find out who that person was?”
“Does this have to do with the jerk who called Edward Allen Jurmain?”
God Almighty.
Suddenly, it all made terrible sense.
Briel found the bullet track.
Briel found the phalanges.
Briel found the staining.
My competence wasn’t slipping. I was being sabotaged.
Was Briel the one who’d contacted Jurmain? She was here. She’d have known about my involvement in the case.
But why?
“Earth to Tempe.”
“Sorry. I’m not sure, Chris. Maybe. But I know one thing for certain. The merde’s about to hit the ventilateur.”
The line beeped.
“Gotta go. Let me know what you learn. And thanks.”
I clicked over.
Labrousse. I was on a roll.
“Good thing this area is so inbred.” Labrousse wasn’t using the expression metaphorically. Being an isolated population that had bottlenecked genetically and reproduced wildly, over the years the folks of Lac Saint-Jean had been mined extensively for medical research. “Families stay put around here. And have memories deeper than a hooker’s cleavage. On Blackwater, everyone’s in agreement. He was half Montagnais.”
Yes!
“And Claire Clemenceau?” I asked. “Any history of tetracycline?”