“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who’s Alban Fisher?”
Hitch of hesitation. “I can find out. Why?”
“Remember the woman who phoned about the pizza parlor skeletons?”
“Yes.”
“Remember I thought her name was Ballant or Gallant or something like that?”
“Yes.”
“Both calls came from Rose Fisher’s house in Candiac.”
“Parent.”
“Sounds similar over a bad connection.”
“The phone account’s in the name of Alban Fisher?” Ryan guessed.
“Yes.”
“Alban in the directory?”
“Hold on.”
I laid down the receiver, pulled out the phone book, and thumbed to the F’s. Sometimes detecting doesn’t take much genius. Alban Fisher was listed at the Candiac address.
“He’s there.”
“The niece didn’t put anyone else in the picture. Said the women lived alone. I’ll give her a call.”
“I’ll get back to you when LaManche finishes.”
“Could be a simple heart attack.”
“Could be.”
“Happens all the time.”
“Second leading cause of death.”
“You sure the ticker isn’t numero uno?”
“No.”
“Anything else breaking?”
“Actually, yes.”
I told him about the forged button. He asked what it meant. I told him I hadn’t a clue.
Then I told him about Nicolò Cataneo.
There was a pause, after which Ryan’s voice sounded different. Harder, somehow.
“I don’t like the sound of that, Tempe. Wiseguys value life about as much as they value used dental floss. You watch your back.”
“I always do.”
“Window fixed?”
“Yes.”
“I missed you this weekend.”
“Did you?”
“Your friend still there?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll talk when she’s gone.”
“Anne doesn’t bite.”
Long pause. Ryan broke it.
“Let me know what LaManche says. Page me if I’m out.”
* * *
Before launching into my analysis of the third skeleton, I made a detour to the main autopsy room. Pelletier had the first of the crack twins on table one. LaManche had Louise Parent on table two.
Parent had arrived wearing a granny gown. The long flannel nightie lay spread on the counter. Red roses on pink. Lace-trimmed yoke with tiny pearl buttons.
Flashbulb memory. Gran, shuffling to bed with her Dearfoam slippers and her chamomile tea.
My gaze shifted to the body.
Parent looked small and pitiful on the perforated steel. So alone. So dead.
Stab of sorrow.
I pushed it down.
LaManche gently twisted the dead woman’s head. Opened her jaw. Levered one shoulder. The wrinkled back and buttocks were purple with livor.
LaManche pushed a finger into the discolored flesh. The pressure point did not blanch.
LaManche allowed the body to resettle onto its back, then lifted a lifeless hand. Paper-thin peelings were loosening from the underlying dermis.
“Lividity is fixed. Rigor mortis has come and gone. Skin slippage has barely begun.”
As LaManche jotted his observations, my eyes roamed the geography of Parent’s corpse.
The woman’s muscles were withered, her hair gray, her skin pale to the point of translucence. Her shriveled breasts lay limp on her bony chest. Her belly was going green.
“How long do you think she’s been dead?” I asked.
“I see no marbling, no bloating, only minimal putrefaction. The house was warm, but not excessively hot. I will of course check her stomach contents and eye fluids, but at this point I’d say forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”
Another stab of pain.
I had blown this woman off on Wednesday. She had phoned me again on Thursday. LaManche’s estimate placed her death on Friday or Saturday.
I noticed a thin white line on her abdomen.
“Looks like she’s had some sort of surgery.”
LaManche was already sketching the scar onto a diagram.
My eyes moved to Parent’s face.
Both eyes were half open and covered with dark bands.
In death, the eyelid muscles relax, exposing the corneas and allowing the epithelial tissue to dry. Tache noire sclérotique. Normal. But the change gave Parent the macabre look of yesterday’s roadkill.
I leaned in and inspected Parent’s teeth. Though worn, they were clean and only moderately discolored. The gums showed little swelling or resorption. Dental hygiene had been good.
I was straightening when my eye fell on something lodged between the right lateral incisor and canine. I drew closer.
Something was definitely there.
Digging a handheld lens from a drawer, I returned to the table.
Under magnification, details were clearer.
“Dr. LaManche,” I said. “Take a look at this.”
19
LAMANCHE CIRCLED THE TABLE AND I HANDED HIM the lens. He studied Parent’s dentition, then spoke without straightening.
“A feather.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
LaManche used forceps to transfer the feather to a plastic vial. Then he spread Parent’s jaws and examined her back teeth.
“I see no others.” Muffled through his mask.
“Luma-Lite?”
“Please.” He turned to the autopsy technician. “Lisa?”
As I dug the apparatus from a closet, Lisa transferred Parent to a gurney and rolled her next door to the X-ray room. By the time I rejoined them, she had also collected the granny gown and spread it on the X-ray table.
While LaManche and I donned orange-tinted plastic goggles, Lisa hooked up the Luma-Lite, an alternate light source composed of a black box and an enhanced blue fiber-optic cable. With it, we would be able to see trace evidence invisible to the naked eye.
“Ready?” Lisa asked.
LaManche nodded.
Lisa slipped on her goggles and hit the light switch.
In the dark, the pathologist began scanning Parent’s nightie. Here and there hairs lit up like tiny white wires. Lisa tweezed and transferred them into a plastic vial.
When we’d finished with the gown, LaManche turned to the corpse. Slowly, the light crept over Parent’s feet and legs. It probed the hills and valleys of her pubis, belly, rib cage, and breasts. Lit the hollow at the base of her throat.
Nothing glowed but a few more hairs.
“They look identical to her head hair,” I said.
“Yes,” LaManche agreed.
Parent’s hands and fingernails yielded nothing. Her eyes, nostrils, and ears were clean.
Then the beam entered the dark recess of the woman’s mouth.
“Bonjour,” Lisa said in the darkness.
One molar sparked like phosphorous along the gum line.
“That’s not a hair,” I said.
Lisa withdrew the thing with forceps.
Though we worked another thirty minutes in the dark, our efforts produced only two more hairs, both fine and wavy like those of the victim.
When Lisa restored the lights, LaManche and I headed back to the autopsy room. There he opened the molar vial and examined the contents under magnification. It seemed a decade until he spoke.
“It is another feather fragment.”
LaManche and I exchanged glances, identical suspicions crossing our minds.
At that moment, Lisa reappeared with Mrs. Parent. LaManche crossed to the gurney. I followed.
Grasping the tissue firmly, LaManche rolled the woman’s upper lip upward. The inner surface appeared normal.
When LaManche pulled Parent’s lower lip downward, I could see tiny horizontal lacerations marring the smooth purple flesh. Each corresp
onded to the position of a lower incisor.
Using thumb and forefinger, the pathologist spread Parent’s left eyelids. Then her right. Both eyes showed petechia, pinpoint red dots and blotching of the sclera and conjunctiva.
“Asphyxia,” I said, terrible images filling my thoughts.
I pictured this woman alone in her bed. Her safe place. Her refuge. A silhouette looming in the darkness. Fingers wrapping her throat. Oxygen hunger. Heart-pounding terror.
“Petechial hemorrhage can be caused by many things, Temperance. Its presence indicates little more than capillary rupture.”
“Resulting from sudden increase in vascular congestion in the head,” I said.
“Yes,” LaManche said.
“As in strangulation,” I said.
“Petechiae can occur due to coughing, sneezing, vomiting, straining at stool, laboring in childbirth—”
“I doubt this woman was having a baby.”
LaManche continued speaking as he probed Parent’s throat with a gloved finger.
“—foreign object obstruction, gagging, swelling of the airway linings.”
“Are you seeing indications of any of those?”
LaManche raised his eyes to mine.
“I have barely begun my external exam.”
“She could have been smothered.”
“There are no scratches, no broken nails, no signs of violence or of a defensive struggle.” More to himself than to me.
“She could have been smothered in her sleep. With a pillow.” I was verbalizing thoughts as they were forming in my head. “A pillow would leave no marks. A pillow would explain the feathers in her mouth and the cuts on her lip.”
“Coarse petechiae aren’t uncommon in corpses found prone with the head at a level lower than the rest of the body.”
“The lividity on her back and shoulders suggests she died face up.”
LaManche straightened. “Detective Ryan promised scene photos this afternoon.”
For a moment our gazes locked. Then I lowered my mask and told LaManche the story of Mrs. Parent.
The sad old eyes held mine. Then, “I appreciate your bringing the victim’s involvement with you to my attention. I will take extra care in performing my internal examination.”
The statement was unnecessary. I knew LaManche would be as meticulous with Mrs. Parent as he was with every corpse he studied, prime minister or petty thief. Pierre LaManche refused to acknowledge unexplained death.
* * *
By ten-thirty I’d unwrapped the bundled remains recovered from the second depression in the pizza parlor basement.
By eleven-thirty I’d disengaged the bones from their leather shroud, removed their matrix of dirt and adipocere, and arranged them anatomically on the autopsy table.
By three-forty I’d completed my inventory and examination.
The skeleton designated LSJML-38428 was that of a white female, sixty-five to sixty-eight inches in height, who had died between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. She had poor dental hygiene, no restorations, and a well-healed Colles’ fracture of the right radius. Her skeleton showed only minimal postmortem damage, and bore no evidence of trauma occurring at or near the time of her death.
My preliminary conclusions had been correct. Though slightly older, this third girl was disturbingly similar to the other two.
I was jotting a few last notes when I heard the door to the outer office open and close. Seconds later LaManche appeared. His expression told me he hadn’t come to report an aneurysm.
“I found excess deoxygenated hemoglobin in the venous blood, indicating cyanosis.”
“Asphyxia.”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing atypical for a woman in her seventh decade of life.”
“So she may have been smothered.”
“I fear that is a possibility.”
“Any injuries?”
LaManche wagged his head. “No fractures. No hemorrhage. No scratches or claw marks. No tissue under her nails. Nothing to suggest a struggle.”
“She could have been attacked while sleeping. Or drugged.”
“I will request a full toxicology screen.”
Again, the outer door opened then clicked shut. Booted footsteps crossed the ante-office.
Ryan was doing detective casual that day. Denim shirt, jeans, tan wool blazer with elbow patches.
Ryan and LaManche exchanged “Bonjour’s.”
Ryan and I exchanged nods.
LaManche filled Ryan in on his findings.
“Time of death?” Ryan asked.
“Did you observe any evidence of a last meal?”
“Saucepan, spoon, and cup in the dish rack. Empty soup can in the trash. Garden vegetable.”
“The stomach contents were completely evacuated. That would have occurred within three hours of consumption of the soup.”
“Niece says the ladies usually ate supper around seven, turned in around nine or ten.”
“If the soup was her supper, and not her lunch.” LaManche raised a finger. “And keep in mind that gastric physiology is extremely variable. Nervous stress and certain diseases can delay stomach emptying.”
I remembered the shaky voice at the other end of the line. Parent’s agitation had been evident even at a distance.
“I’ll request a warrant to pull up the phone records.”
“But the state of decomposition suggests death probably occurred on Friday. And now.” LaManche clasped his hands behind his back. “What have you brought us, Detective?”
Ryan slid a brown envelope from a jacket pocket and spread color photos on the counter.
One by one, the five-by-sevens took us to Louise Parent’s final day.
Exterior views of a blond brick bungalow. Ice-free walks. Front porch, window strung with multicolored lights. Blue wooden door. Wreath with Joyeuses fêtes! on a red velvet ribbon. Front lawn with plastic reindeer.
Enclosed backyard, a child’s sled leaning on the far side of chain-link fencing. Ice-free cement stoop. Snow shovel.
Wordlessly, LaManche and I worked our way through the photos.
Close-ups of the rear and front doors showing undamaged knobs and latches.
A kitchen, shot from the right, then the left. Stove, refrigerator, wraparound counter with stainless steel sink. Freestanding butcher block.
Single spoon, mug, and pan in the dish rack.
“Looks very tidy,” I said.
“Not a thing out of place,” Ryan agreed. “No signs of a break-in. No signs of company.”
“The doors were locked?” LaManche.
“Bastillo thinks so, but can’t swear to it.”
“That is the niece?”
Ryan nodded. “Bastillo got a call on her cellular just as she arrived at her mother’s door. She remembers having trouble with her key, but figured it was because she was holding the phone in one hand and trying to unlock the door with the other. She admits that if the door was open, she could have unwittingly locked it then unlocked it again.”
“Did the home have a security system?” LaManche.
Ryan shook his head no, then pulled a snapshot from his pocket and handed it to LaManche. LaManche passed it on to me.
The snapshot showed a plump woman with apricot hair and Jackson Pollock makeup. She looked to be somewhere just north of sixty.
“Rose Fisher?” I asked.
Ryan nodded.
I returned the snapshot and went back to the crime scene photos.
Living room with doilied sofa and love seat. Picture window. Lace curtains. Closed venetian blinds. Birdcage on an ornate metal stand.
I remembered the background twittering during Parent’s calls.
“What kind of bird?” I asked dismally.
“Cockatiel.”
Like Katy’s. Those were the sounds I’d tried to place over the phone.
“Who’s caring for it?”
Ryan gave me an odd look. “Bastillo.”
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“Has the victim’s sister turned up?” LaManche asked.
“Rose Fisher. No.”
“What do you make of that?”
“Bastillo says her mother and aunt liked to take off on road trips, but normally gave her a heads-up.”
“So she could feed the bird,” I guessed.
Ryan nodded.
“These ladies, they went by car?” LaManche asked.
“Fisher’s. A ninety-four Pontiac Grand Prix.”
“Is that vehicle now missing?”
“It’s not at Fisher’s house. I’ve put out an APB. If it’s out there, someone should spot the plate.”
“Who’s Alban Fisher?” I asked.
“Fisher’s husband. Tax accountant. Died in ninety-four. Rose never bothered to change the name on the phone.”
“Can Bastillo think of anyone who might have wanted to harm her mother or aunt?”
“The two had an ongoing beef with some neighbor about parking an SUV too close to their driveway. Bastillo insists we should check this guy out.”
“Bastillo seem credible?” I asked.
“I doubt she’ll be recruited by the Berkeley Roundtable, but she comes off sincere enough.” Ryan did a head nod toward LaManche. “Doc says homicide, I’ll start digging on the lady’s background.”
LaManche and Ryan became disembodied voices as I continued down the row of photos.
A corridor. A bedroom. A bathroom. A second bedroom, slightly smaller than the first. Maple dresser, nightstand, four-poster.
Dead body.
Louise Parent was a child-sized bulge under pale pink bedding. She lay facing the door, right arm thrown upward, head angled oddly on a rumpled pillow. Her eyes were black and empty crescents. Gray hair trailed limply across her face.
A pink floral quilt lay neatly drawn back across the foot of the bed. A second pillow sat atop the folded quilt. This one had no pillow slip.
“Bastillo moved the body?” I asked of no one in particular.
“Says she found her aunt unconscious and tried to rouse her.”
“Did she touch the pillow?”
“She doesn’t remember.”
Beneath the bed, I could see two neatly aligned slippers. On the nightstand, a folded pair of eyeglasses, a mug, and a vial of prescription pills.
“That is the Ambien that was sent to us?” LaManche asked.
“Yes. Labeled for thirty, filled last Wednesday. Eight missing.”
“Do you know the contents of the mug?”