I stared into the flame blue irises.
“Then you come along and dig up Isabelle Gagnon.”
“I’m a threat,” I said, anticipating where he was going.
“His perfect MO is jeopardized, he feels a threat. And Dr. Brennan is the cause. You may topple the whole fantasy in which he’s the supreme player.”
I ran over the events of the past six weeks.
“I dig up and identify Isabelle Gagnon in early June. Three weeks later Fortier kills Margaret Adkins, and the next day we show up on Rue Berger. Three days after that I find Grace Damas’s skeleton.”
“You’ve got it.”
“He’s furious.”
“Exactly. The hunt is his way of acting out his contempt for women—”
“Or his anger at Granny.” Claudel.
“Maybe. Anyway, he sees you as blocking him.”
“And I’m a woman.”
Ryan reached for a cigarette, remembered where he was.
“Also, he made a mistake. Adkins was sloppy. Using the bank card almost cost him.”
“So he needs someone to blame.”
“This guy can’t admit he’s screwed up. And he definitely can’t deal with a woman catching him out.”
“But why Gabby? Why not me?”
“Who knows? Chance? Timing? Maybe she walked out before you did.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s obvious he’d been stalking me for some time. He put the skull in my yard?”
Nods.
“He could have waited, then grabbed me like he did the others.”
“This is one sick fucker.” Claudel.
“Gabby wasn’t like the others, she wasn’t a random-stranger killing. Fortier knew where I lived. He knew she was staying with me.”
I was talking more to myself than to Ryan and Claudel. An emotional aneurysm, formed over the past six weeks and held in check by force of will, was threatening to burst.
“He did it on purpose. The psycho prick wanted me to know. It was a message, like the skull.”
My voice was rising but I couldn’t hold it back. I pictured an envelope on my door. An oval of bricks. Gabby’s bloated face with its tiny silver gods. A picture of my daughter.
The thin wall of my emotional balloon ruptured, and weeks of pent-up grief and tension rushed through the puncture.
Razors of pain shot through my throat but I screamed, “No! No! No! You goddamn sonofabitch!”
I heard Ryan speak sharply to Claudel, felt his hands on my arms, saw the nurse, felt the needle. Then nothing.
RYAN CAME TO SEE ME AT HOME ON WEDNESDAY. THE EARTH HAD turned seven times since my night in hell, and I’d had time to construct an official version for myself. But there were holes I wanted to fill.
“Has Fortier been charged?”
“Monday. Five counts of first degree.”
“Five?”
“Pitre and Gautier are probably unrelated.”
“Tell me something. How did Claudel know Fortier would show up here?”
“He didn’t, really. From your questions about the school, he realized Tanguay couldn’t be the perp. He checked, found out the kids are in at eight, out at three-fifteen. Tanguay earned a perfect attendance ribbon. Hadn’t missed a day since he started, and there were no school holidays on the days you asked about. Also he’d learned about the glove business.
“He knew you were exposed, so he hauled ass back to your place to keep watch until he could get a unit back on site. Got here, tried the phone and found it dead. He vaulted the garden gate and found the French doors unlocked. You two were too busy dancing to hear him. He would have broken the glass, but you must have gotten the latch open when you tried to split.”
Claudel. My rescuer again.
“Anything new turn up?”
“They found an athletic bag in Fortier’s car with three choke collars, a couple of hunting knives, a box of surgical gloves, and a set of street clothes.”
I packed as he talked, perched on the end of my bed.
“His kit.”
“Yes. I’m sure we’ll tie the Rue Berger glove and the one with Gabby to the box in his car.”
I pictured him that night, Spiderman smooth, gloved hands bone white in the darkness.
“He’d wear the cycling suit and gloves whenever he went out to play. Even at Berger. That’s why we always came up empty. No hairs, no fibers, no latents.”
“No sperm.”
“Oh yeah. He also had a box of condoms.”
“Perfect.”
I went to the closet for my old sneakers, tucked them into the duffel.
“Why did he do it?”
“I doubt we’ll ever know. Apparently the grandmother could have run the showers and sifted the gold crowns out of the ovens.”
“Meaning?”
“She was tough. And fanatic.”
“About?”
“Sex and God. Not necessarily in that order.”
“For example?”
“Gave little Leo an enema and dragged him to church every morning. To cleanse body and soul.”
“The daily Mass and swish protocol.”
“We talked to a neighbor who remembers one time the kid was wrestling on the floor with the family dog. The old biddy nearly stroked out because the schnauzer had a hard-on. Two days later the pup turned up with a belly full of rat poison.”
“Did Fortier know?”
“He doesn’t talk about it. He does talk about a time he was seven and she caught him jacking off. Granny tied little Leo’s wrists to her own and dragged him around for three days. He’s got spiders in his head when it comes to hands.”
I paused in the middle of folding a sweater.
“Hands.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not all. There was also an uncle, a priest who’d been forced to take early retirement. Hung around the house in his bathrobe, probably abused the kid. It’s another topic he goes mute on. We’re checking it out.”
“Where is the grandmother now?”
“Dead. Right before he killed Damas.”
“The trigger?”
“Who knows.”
I started going through bathing suits, gave up, stuffed them all in the duffel.
“What about Tanguay?”
Ryan shook his head and expelled a long breath. “Looks like he’s just another citizen with a seriously impaired approach to sex.”
I stopped sorting socks and looked at him.
“He’s mainline fruitcake, but probably harmless.”
“Meaning?”
“He was a biology teacher. Collected roadkill, boiled the carcasses down and mounted the skeletons. He was building a display for his classroom.”
“The paws?”
“Dried them for a vertebrate paw collection.”
“Did he kill Alsa?”
“He claims he found her dead on the street near UQAM and brought her home for the collection. He’d just cut her up when he read the article in the Gazette. Scared him, so he stuffed her in a bag and left her at the bus station. We’ll probably never know how she got out of the lab.”
“Tanguay is Julie’s client, isn’t he?”
“None other. Gets his jolt by hiring a hooker to dress in Mama’s nightie. And …”
He hesitated.
“And?”
“You ready for this? Tanguay was dummy man.”
“No. The bedroom burglar?”
“You got it. That’s why his butt was sucked right up his throat when we were questioning him. He thought we’d hauled him on that. The dumb little bastard came out with it all by himself. Apparently, when he couldn’t score on the street, he’d use plan B.”
“Break in and crank up on someone else’s jammies.”
“You’ve got it. Better than bowling.”
There was something else that had been bothering me.
“The phone calls?”
“Plan C. Phone a woman, hang up, feel your genitals twi
nkle. Typical peeper stuff. He had a list of numbers.”
“Any theories on how he got mine?”
“Probably lifted it from Gabby. He was peeping her.”
“The picture I found in my wastebasket?”
“Tanguay. He’s into aboriginal art. It was a copy of something he saw in a book. Did it to give to Gabby. Wanted to ask her not to cut him out of the project.”
I looked at Ryan. “Pretty ironic. She thought she had a stalker when she actually had two.”
I felt my eyes well with tears. The emotional scar tissue was forming, but was still embryonic. It would take time until I could think of her.
Ryan rose and stretched. “Where’s Katy?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Gone for suntan lotion.” I pulled the drawstring on the duffel and dropped it to the floor.
“How’s she doing?”
“She seems fine. Looks after me like a private duty nurse.”
Unconsciously, I scratched at the stitches in my neck.
“But it may trouble her more than she lets on. She knows about violence, but it’s evening news violence, in South L.A. and Tel Aviv and Sarajevo. It’s always been something that happens to other people. Pete and I purposely sheltered her from what I do, kept Katy apart from my work. Now it’s real and close and personal. She’s had her world tipped, but she’ll come around.”
“And you?”
“I’m fine. Really.”
We stood in silence and studied each other. Then he reached for his jacket and folded it over his arm.
“Going to a beach?” His affected indifference was not quite convincing.
“Every one we can find. We’ve dubbed it ‘The Great Sand and Surf Quest.’ First Ogonquit, then a swing down the coast. Cape Cod. Rehobeth. Cape May. Virginia Beach. Our only plan is to be at Nags Head on the fifteenth.”
Pete had arranged that. He planned to be there.
Ryan placed a hand on my shoulder. His eyes spoke of more than professional interest.
“Are you coming back?”
I’d been asking myself all week. Am I? To what? The work? Could I go through this again with yet another twisted psychopath? To Quebec? Could I bear to let Claudel carve me up and serve me to some hearing commission? What about my marriage? That wasn’t in Quebec. What would I do about Pete? What would I feel when I saw him?
I’d made only one decision: I wouldn’t think about it for now. I’d vowed to put tomorrow’s uncertainties aside and leave my time with Katy unblemished.
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll have to finish my reports, then testify.”
“Yeah.”
A tense silence. We both knew it was a non-answer.
He cleared his throat and reached into his jacket pocket.
“Claudel asked me to give this to you.”
He held out a brown envelope with the CUM logo on the upper left-hand corner.
“Great.”
I stuck it in my pocket and followed him to the door. Not now.
“Ryan.”
He turned.
“Can you do this day after day, year after year, and not lose faith in the human species?”
He didn’t answer right away, seemed to focus on a point in space between us. Then his eyes met mine.
“From time to time the human species spawns predators that feed on those around them. They’re not the species. They’re mutations of the species. In my opinion these freaks have no right to suck oxygen from the atmosphere. But they’re here, so I help cage them up and put them where they can’t hurt others. I make life safer for the folks who get up, go to work each day, raise their kids or their tomatoes, or their tropical fish, and watch the ball game in the evening. They are the human species.”
I watched him walk away, admiring once again the way he filled his 501’s. And brains, too, I thought as I closed the door. Maybe, I said to myself, smiling. May, by God, be.
• • •
Later that evening Katy and I went for ice cream, then drove up the mountain. Sitting on my favorite overlook we could see the whole valley, the St. Lawrence a black cutout in the distance, Montreal a twinkling panorama spreading from its edges.
I looked down from my bench, like a passenger on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. But the ride was finally over. Perhaps I’d come to say good-bye.
I finished my cone and jammed the napkin in my pocket. My hand touched Claudel’s envelope.
Hell, why not.
I opened it and withdrew a handwritten note. Odd. It was not the formal complaint I’d expected. The message was written in English.
Dr. Brennan,
You are right. No one should die in anonymity. Thanks to you, these women did not. Thanks to you, Leo Fortier’s killing days are over.
We are the last line of defense against them: the pimps, the rapists, the cold-blooded killers. I would be honored to work with you again.
Luc Claudel
Higher up the mountain, the cross glowed softly, sending its message out over the valley. What was it Kojak said? Somebody loves ya, baby.
Ryan and Claudel had it figured. And we were the last line.
I looked at the city below. Hang in there. Somebody loves ya.
“À la prochaine,” I said to the summer night.
“What’s that?” asked Katy.
“‘Until the next time.’”
My daughter looked puzzled.
“Let’s go to the beach.”
Turn the page for a preview of
Bones of the Lost
by Kathy Reichs
Available from Scribner
PROLOGUE
HEART POUNDING, I CRAWLED TOWARD the brick angling down to form the edge of the recess. Craned out.
More footfalls. Then heavy boots appeared at the top of the stairs, beside them a pair of small feet, one bare, the other in a platform pump.
The feet started to descend, the small ones wobbly, their owner somehow impaired. The lower legs angled oddly, suggesting the knees bore little weight.
Anger burned hot in my chest. The woman was drugged. The bastard was dragging her.
Four treads lower, the man and woman crossed an arrow of moonlight. Not a woman, a girl. Her hair was long, her arms and legs refugee thin. I could see a triangle of white tee below the man’s chin. A pistol grip jutting from his waistband.
The pair again passed into darkness. Their tightly pressed bodies formed a two-headed black silhouette.
Stepping from the bottom tread, the man started muscling the girl toward the loading-dock door, pushing her, a hand clamping her neck. She stumbled. He yanked her up. Her head flopped like a Bobblehead doll’s.
The girl took a few more staggering steps. Then her chin lifted and her body bucked. A cry broke the stillness, animal shrill.
The man’s free arm shot out. The silhouette recongealed. I heard a scream of pain, then the girl pitched forward onto the concrete.
The man dropped to one knee. His elbow pumped as he pummeled the inert little body.
“Fight me, you little bitch?”
The man punched and punched until his breath grew ragged.
Rage flamed white-hot in my brain, overriding any instinct for personal safety.
I scuttled over and grabbed the Beretta. Checked the safety, thankful for the practice I’d put in at the range.
Satisfied with the gun, I reached for my phone. It wasn’t with the flashlight.
I searched my other pocket. No phone.
Had I dropped it? In my frenzied dash, had I left it at home?
The panic was almost overwhelming. I was off the grid. What to do?
A tiny voice advised caution. Remain hidden. Wait. Slidell knows where you are.
“You are so dead.” The voice boomed, cruel and malicious.
I whipped around.
The man was wrenching the girl up by her hair.
Holding the Beretta two-handed in front of me, I darted from the alcove. The man froze at the sound of movement. I stopped fiv
e yards from him. Using a pillar for cover, I spread my feet and leveled the barrel.
“Let her go.” My shout reverberated off brick and concrete.
The man maintained his grasp on the girl’s hair. His back was to me.
“Hands up.”
He let go and straightened. His palms slowly rose to the level of his ears.
“Turn around.”
As the man rotated, another fragment of light caught him. For a second I saw his face with total clarity.
On spotting his foe, the man’s hands dipped slightly. Sensing he could see me better than I could see him, I squeezed further behind the pillar.
“The fucking slut lives.”
You’ll die, too, fucking slut.
“Takes balls to send threats by e-mail.” My voice sounded much more confident than I felt. “To bully defenseless little girls.”
“Debt to pay? You know the rules.”
“Your debt-collecting days are over, you sick sonofabitch.”
“Says who?”
“Says a dozen cops racing here now.”
The man cupped an upraised hand to one ear. “I don’t hear no sirens.”
“Move away from the girl,” I ordered.
He took a token step.
“Move,” I snarled. The guy’s fuck-you attitude was making me want to smash the Beretta across his skull.
“Or what? You’re gonna shoot me?”
“Yeah.” Cold steel. “I’m gonna shoot you.”
Would I? I’d never fired at a human being.
Where the hell was Slidell? I knew my bluff was being sustained by coffee and adrenaline. Knew both would eventually wear off.
The girl groaned.
In that split second I lost the advantage that might have allowed him to live.
I looked down.
He lunged.
Fresh adrenaline blasted through me.
I raised the gun.
He closed in.
I sighted on the white triangle.
Fired.
The explosion echoed brutally loud. The concussion knocked my hands up, but I held position.