My hands reached out into the dark.
I heard a gravelly crunch.
My sensory-deprived brain computed the input.
Round. Hard. Roll trajectory two feet up and to the left.
Elbow-dragging my torso and legs, I groped the base of the wall. The smell was powerful now, a mix of mold and mildew and moth-eaten fabric, like clothes abandoned in an old attic trunk.
My bloody fingers finally grazed an edge. Pivoting to a hunch-sit, I teased the object up into my hands.
Gingerly, I hefted, weighing. I caressed the thing’s outer surface. Explored its dimensions. Probed its contours.
With horror, I recognized what was sharing my darkness.
12
LIFTING MY FINGERS, I ALLOWED THE SKULL TO ROLL back to its original position.
The searchdog’s name was Étoile. Star. And she was one.
The grave had been under two feet of snow. Didn’t matter. Étoile had nailed it.
Ryan had picked me up before dawn on Saturday. My window thermometer said minus six Celsius. Twenty-one Fahrenheit.
We talked little during the drive. Our flight from O’Hare had landed late, and it was midnight when I reached my condo in centre-ville, two before I got to sleep. Barely awake, I sipped the coffee Ryan provided and watched the city slide past my window.
My funk wasn’t entirely fatigue-induced. I was still bummed by events in Chicago.
Ryan and I never got to see Schechter. Excuse was he was taking depositions in Rock Island. Consequently, I was still clueless about the viper who’d smeared my reputation with false accusations.
The conversation concerning Lassie had been as painful as anticipated. Throughout, Cukura Kundze wept as though she’d lost her own grandchild. The only upside was that Mr. Tot had insisted on informing his son and daughter-in-law personally concerning their son’s fate.
In addition, I’d had another clash with my new neighbor, Sparky Monteil. Yeah, Sparky. Though built like a pear, the guy works hard at looking tough. Elvis hair. Badass tattoo on the side of his neck. My building superintendent, Winston, says the little twerp’s at least fifty-five.
Sparky moved into my complex sometime last spring. His boxes weren’t unpacked when the whining began. Seems Sparky hates cats. No, that doesn’t do it justice. Sparky would have every feline on the planet rounded up, bagged, and tossed into the sea.
Granted, our home owners’ association has a no-pets policy. But since Birdie and I are away so much in Charlotte, and since the little guy never sets paw outside the condo when in residence, I’ve been granted an exemption. Sparky is fighting to have that revoked.
Sparky exited the elevator as I was waiting in the lobby for Ryan. This morning’s grievance concerned turds in the courtyard.
Sorry, pal. My cat’s not with me this trip.
On top of all that, I was once again freezing.
The heater in Ryan’s Jeep wasn’t state of the art. The windows were frosted, and I could feel cold rising through my boots, up my legs, and into my pelvis. I suspected the only warmth I’d experience all day would be that leaching from the cup I clutched in gloved hands.
Our destination lay approximately fifty kilometers northwest of Montreal in Oka. When I hear the town name I think of three things: Mohawks, monks, and monastery cheese.
The last two are interrelated.
In 1815 a group of monks settled in Brittany and created a cheese called Port Salut. Six decades later their brainchild was the rage of Paris. Didn’t matter. In 1880 the army of the French Third Republic seized the order’s Abbaye de Bellefontaine, and the cheese-making Trappists were booted from the country.
At the invitation of Quebec Sulpicians, eight of the exiles set sail for Canada. From their vast holdings, the host brothers gave the immigrants land on the north shore of Lac des Deux-Montagnes. Naming the property La Trappe after Soligny-la-Trappe, the order’s 1662 founding site, the new arrivals established L’Abbaye Notre-Dame du Lac.
At its peak, the monastery boasted upward of two hundred monks. By the early twenty-first century only twenty-eight remained, most over seventy years of age. Today, L’Abbaye is no longer a working monastery but serves as a nonprofit center for preservation of the site’s heritage.
In making their transatlantic journey back in the day, the Trappist travelers brought with them their treasured recette de fromage and, once settled, the churning of cow’s milk began anew. As in the homeland, the cheese was a box office hit.
As far as I know, the brothers still oversee the production of Oka Trappist Cheese, which, over the years, has evolved a new-world character uniquely its own.
The Mohawk thing is a bit more complicated.
In the summer of 1990, the “Oka Crisis” made international news. Essentially a land dispute between the town and the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, the confrontation lasted from mid-July until late September, and resulted in a commuters’ nightmare, a public relations fiasco for the government, and the death of one Sûreté du Québec officer.
In a nutshell, here’s what happened.
The town of Oka wanted to expand a golf course onto land containing a Mohawk burial ground and a sacred grove of pines. The natives screamed sacrilege. Their appeal was denied and construction of the back nine began. Incensed, tribal members barricaded access to the terrain in dispute.
No big deal. The cops clear the protesters, right? Wrong.
When the SQ restricted access to Oka and Kanesatake, First Nations groups began arriving from across Canada and the U.S. of A. In solidarity with Kanesatake, the Kahnawake Mohawks blockaded a bridge connecting the Island of Montreal with the south shore suburbs at the point where the bridge passed through their territory.
At the peak of the confrontation, the Mercier Bridge and Routes 132, 138, and 207 were all blocked. Traffic jams were vicious and tempers were fraying.
Enter the Canadian Armed Forces.
Ultimately, the Mohawks negotiated an end to their protest with the army commander responsible for monitoring the south shore of the St. Lawrence River west of Montreal. The lieutenant colonel’s name was Gagnon.
Life has its ironies. The original cheese-bearing Trappists lived in a miller’s cottage while awaiting completion of their monastery. The miller’s name was Gagnon.
A fourth facet is Parc national d’Oka, one of a chain of Quebec wildlife reserves and tourist resorts. May through September, the park’s twenty-four square kilometers host campers, picnickers, hikers, canoers, and kayakers. In winter, a few hardy souls still feel the need to bunk out in the cold, but the majority of visitors are snowshoers and cross-country skiers.
Wouldn’t catch me. But I do like summer outings, biking the trails, sunning on the beach, bird-watching on the floating boardwalk into Grande-Baie marsh. No argument here. I’m a warm-weather wuss.
As Ryan headed north on the Laurentian Autoroute then west on Highway 640, I watched close-packed city buildings give way to equispaced and identical suburban houses, eventually to snow-covered countryside. Yellow smudged the horizon, then the sky oozed from black to gray.
Forty-five minutes after leaving my condo Ryan turned onto chemin Oka. By then the sun was a low-hanging white disk. Leafless trees cast long, fuzzy shadows across fields and blacktop.
In moments, we passed the main park entrance. Just inside the gate a small stone building announced Poste d’accueil Camping—Camping Welcome Center. A yellow diamond showed a turtle, lizard, frog, and snake in black silhouette.
Twenty meters beyond the park entrance, an SQ cruiser idled on the opposite shoulder, vapor pumping from its tailpipe.
Ryan made a U-turn and rolled to a stop. The cruiser’s occupant set a Styrofoam cup on the dash, pulled on gloves, and hauled himself out. He wore an olive green jacket with black fur collar, dark olive muffler, and olive hat, earflaps tied in the up position. His name plaque read Halton.
Lowering the window, Ryan showed his badge. Halton glanced at it, then bent to inspect m
e.
I held up my LSJML card.
Halton flapped an arm toward the woods, then spoke in French. “Take the service road skirting the edge of the park. Party’s at the river’s edge.”
“What river?” I asked.
“Rivière aux Serpents.” Halton grinned. “Little bastards should be sleeping this time of year.”
Ryan veered from the shoulder and we rolled forward, tires crunching on icy gravel. At our backs, across the highway, Le Calvaire d’Oka dominated the landscape. I’d once hiked the trail to its summit. A sort of woodland Way of the Cross, the path climbs five kilometers to a cluster of mid-eighteenth-century chapels. The view was kick-ass.
So was the poison ivy. I itched and oozed for weeks.
“Yield to reptiles?” Ryan’s lame joke suggested anxiety.
“And amphibians,” I said.
Ryan looked at me.
“The sign depicts herpetofauna. That includes amphibians.” It was way too early for a biology lesson.
“What’s the difference?”
“Amniotic egg.”
“I prefer scrambled.”
“Reptiles can reproduce out of water.”
“Breakthrough moment. When did it happen?”
“Over three hundred million years ago.”
“You’d think they’d be traffic savvy by now.”
I chose not to answer.
We were traveling a narrow road piled on both sides with snowplow off-load. Trees rose around us like tall, naked sentinels.
The downward gradient increased as we moved toward the river. Soon I spotted the shore. Lining it was the usual cluster of vehicles: a second police cruiser, a black transport van, a blue crime scene recovery truck.
A uniformed SQ officer waved us to a stop. Her name tag read Naveau. Again, the warm welcome of law and order.
We identified ourselves. Naveau told Ryan to park at the back of a rustic wooden structure that was probably a warming hut for cross-country skiers.
Ryan did as directed, then we both tugged on hats and got out of the Jeep. The sun was higher now, casting smudgy-edged shadows from tree trunks and branches. The air was so cold it felt crystalline.
Good news. A plastic tent had been erected over what I assumed was the spot that had interested the cadaver dog, Étoile. Freshly shoveled snow lay mounded to one side.
I recognized the setup from an exhumation I’d done years earlier on an Innu reserve near the town of Sept-Îsles. On that occasion the temperature had peaked at minus 34 Celsius. I knew that inside the tent a portable heater was pumping air through corrugated piping, warming the interior and melting the ground.
Four men stood outside the tent. Two wore coveralls and jackets stamped with the same logo as the crime scene truck. Service de l’identité judiciaire. Division des scènes de crime.
One wore a black Kanuk parka not unlike my own sky blue one. In the thickly padded anorak, Joe Bonnet, my new lab tech, looked like a marshmallow on a stick. Mercifully, Joe’s head was covered by a tuque. He thought the gel-spiked platinum hair looked punk. I thought it looked goofy, especially on a guy waving bye-bye to his thirties. But I never said so.
Joe was competent at his job but fragile. And needy. It wasn’t enough to refrain from censure or criticism. With Joe, you had to constantly praise and reassure. I suck at warm fuzzies. Most people know and accept that about me. Joe wasn’t getting it.
Needless to say, there had been blow-ups and pout-outs. His, not mine. Even under cease-fire, Joe and I were like stranger pets thrown together at Grandma’s house. Always edgy, always sniffing the mood of the other.
Partly my fault. Two years, and I was still bummed by the loss of my longtime assistant, Denis. What’s this retirement thing, anyway?
The fourth man wore an overcoat that barely buttoned across his ample midsection. Jean-Claude Hubert, chief coroner of the Province of Quebec.
Hubert waddled in our direction. His face was very flushed and very chapped.
“Detective Ryan. Dr. Brennan.” Hubert’s accent was upriver, perhaps Quebec City. “Thanks for coming out so early.”
“What’s the story?” I had the basics but wanted Hubert’s version.
“Jailhouse canary’s singing about a woman missing two years.”
“Florian Grellier,” Ryan said.
Hubert nodded. Three chins rippled above his muffler. “The victim was Christelle Villejoin. Grellier says she was murdered and buried out here.”
“Murdered by whom?” Ryan asked.
“Claims he doesn’t know.”
“How’d Monsieur Grellier happen upon this information?”
“Says he met some guy in a bar. Swears he never got the guy’s name, hasn’t seen him since the night they banged shots together.”
“When was that?” Ryan.
“Sometime last summer. Grellier’s a bit hazy on that.”
“You bring him out here?”
“No. He provided good landmarks, the road, the warming hut, the river. We ran a cadaver dog, she alerted.” Hubert gestured an upturned mitten in the direction of the tent. “Handler says there’s a ninety percent chance someone’s gone south in the dirt over there.”
“Pretty detailed mapping for a drunken recollection,” I said.
“Yeah.” Hubert puffed air through his lips. They badly needed ChapStick.
“What have you done so far?”
“Secured the area, shot photos, cleared snow, set up the tent. The heater’s been going since yesterday, so the ground should be thawed.”
“Bon,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
Hubert was right. The ground was sufficiently soft to dig. And another thing worked in our favor. Human nature. Either lazy or nervous, the perp had buried his vic only eighteen inches down.
By one, Bonnet and I had exposed the entire skeleton. Most of the bones we’d left in situ. Those found by sifting dirt through a screen we’d sealed into evidence bags.
I’d done an inventory, detailing everything but the phalanges. Those I merely counted.
One skull, including all twenty-one cranial bones and the six from the inner ear. One mandible. One hyoid. One sternum. Two clavicles. Two scapulae. Twenty-four ribs. Twenty-four vertebrae. One sacrum. One coccyx. Six arm bones. Six leg bones. Two innominates. Two patellae. Sixteen carpus. Ten metacarpus. Fourteen tarsus. Ten metatarsus. Fifty-six phalanges.
Two hundred and six bones. Damn, we were good.
Throughout the exhumation, Ryan and Hubert had come and gone. Turned out the heater recognized only two settings: Off and Tropic of Cancer. Though we’d opened a flap, the temperature in the tent rose to roughly 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Bonnet and I had peeled by layers, ended up working in T-shirts and jeans.
Now, as I made notes and Bonnet snapped photos, Ryan and Hubert stood peering into the pit. Their faces were flushed, their hairlines dampened by sweat.
The victim lay facedown, wearing bra and panties, with arms and legs twisted to the right. A fracture spidered the back of the skull.
“Eh, misère.” Hubert had uttered the expletive at least twenty times.
“Thoughts on body position?” Ryan asked me.
“Only preliminary.”
Ryan nodded.
“I’m guessing she was hit from behind. Then she either fell or was pushed into the grave.”
“Hit with what?” Taut.
“From the shape of the indentation, I’d say something flat with a raised central ridge.”
“She?” Hubert had picked up on my gender reference.
“Yes.”
“Because of the undies?”
“Because of cranial and pelvic features.”
“The rest of her clothing rotted away?”
“I doubt it. Granted, the underwear is polyester, and synthetics outlast natural fibers like cotton or linen, but I’d have found zippers, buttons, snaps, something. I don’t think she was wearing anything else.”
“And no shoes or socks,” Ryan pointed
out.
“No,” I agreed.
“Age?” Hubert asked.
Squatting, I lifted and rotated the skull.
Only eight yellowed teeth were present, their cusps worn flat. The remaining sockets were smoothed by bony infill.
The cranial sutures were fused. Both temporo-mandibular joints and occipital condyles were gnarled by arthritis.
“Old,” I said, not trusting my voice to add more.
“Gotta be Villejoin. How many grannies go missing around here?”
I imagined the grisly scene. A terrified old woman, forced to strip and face death on the edge of her own grave.
Had she begged for her life? Realizing there would be no mercy, had she closed her eyes? Listened to the wind in the trees? To birdsong? Had she heard the sound of the weapon as it arced toward her head?
Suddenly, I had to get out of that tent.
13
BACK IN TOWN, RYAN AND I GRABBED LUNCH AT A LA Belle Province. I had little appetite. The wet wipes and disinfectant had gone only so far. I just wanted to shampoo and scrub the remaining dirt from under my nails. But Ryan was resolute. He often showed a bubbe streak, insisting I eat when I least wanted food.
Ryan ordered poutine, a Quebec delicacy that I’ve always found baffling. Take fries, top with cheese curds, cover with tasteless brown gravy. Yum.
I had pea soup and a salad.
We went directly from the restaurant to the Édifice Wilfrid-Derome in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district just east of centre-ville. The Laboratoire des sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale occupies the top two floors of the T-shaped structure, the Bureau du coroner is on eleven, the morgue is in the basement. The remaining footage belongs to the SQ.
Ryan took an unsecured elevator to four. I took a restricted one servicing only the LSJML, the coroner, and the morgue.
Any weekday the labs, offices, and corridors would have been swarming with white-coated scientists and technicians. That afternoon the place was quiet as a tomb. God bless Saturday.
Swiping my security pass for the fourth time since entering the building, I passed through glass doors separating the medico-legal wing from the rest of the twelfth floor, and proceeded down a hall with offices on the right and labs on the left. Microbiology. Histology. Pathology. Anthropology-Odontology.