Bones to Ashes Read online

  Around eleven, a skull came in from Iqaluit, a pinpoint on the Quebec map a zillion miles north on Frobisher Bay. I looked the place up. Though I wanted to stay with Hippo’s girl, I stuck with my promise to LaManche, and started on the new arrival.

  Leaving the lab around five, I delivered the Lac des Deux Montagnes bone plug and sock to the biologist at McGill, then stopped by Hurley’s for my version of a pint: Diet Coke on the rocks with a twist. It wasn’t for the soft drink, of course, but for the contact with friends the pub would provide.

  As I passed through the game room, I glanced up at the wall-mounted TV. A classic school portrait showed as a backdrop to a grimfaced anchorman. The young girl’s eyes were green and mischievous, her hair center-parted and pulled into shoulder-length braids. Phoebe Quincy.

  A small group of regulars was gathered around the downstairs bar: Gil, Chantal, Black Jim, and Bill Hurley himself. They greeted me, faces somber, then recommenced airing their views on the Quincy disappearance.

  “Sweet mother o’ Jesus, thirteen years old.” Chantal shook her head and signaled for another pint. A Newfoundlander, she could outdrink the best of the best. And often did.

  “Hope to God she’s just gone walkabout.” Black Jim’s accent changed with his story of the moment. No one knew where Jim really originated. Every time someone asked, he produced a different tale. Tonight he was speaking Aussie.

  “How long’s she been gone?” Bill signaled the bartender and a Diet Coke was set before me.

  “Three days. Went to dance class. Sufferin’ Jesus.” Chantal.

  “You involved?” Bill asked me.

  “No.”

  “Ryan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is Ryan? You finally manage to lose that slug?”

  I sipped my Coke.

  “It doesn’t look good, does it?” Gil resembled an aging French version of the Fonz.

  “She may turn up,” I said.

  “They think some bugger nipped her?” Black Jim.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you imagine what her poor parents are going through?” Gil.

  “They catch the bastard, I’ll volunteer to cut off his dick, bye.” Chantal.

  I stared into my mug, rethinking my decision to delay going home. I’d wanted to shed the mantle of sorrow and death, arrive home diverted and refreshed, but it seemed there would be no relief tonight.

  What had happened to Phoebe? Was she out there on the streets, alone but stubbornly following her own play? Or was she being held in some dark place, helpless and terrified? Was she even alive? How were her parents surviving the endless hours of uncertainty?

  And what about the corpse from Lac des Deux Montagnes? Who was she? Had she been murdered?

  And the other girl in my lab. Hippo’s girl. When had she died? An irrational leap of thought. Could the skeleton be Évangéline Landry? Where was Évangéline?

  I realized Bill was talking to me. “Sorry. What?”

  “I asked where Ryan is.”

  Obviously, word hadn’t reached the pub that Ryan and I had split. Or whatever it was we’d done.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You OK? You look beat.”

  “It’s been a tough couple of days.”

  “Fuckin’ hell,” said Chantal.

  I listened to the conversation a few minutes longer. Then I downed my Coke and set out for home.

  Friday morning brought no new anthropology cases. I was composing a report on the Iqaluit cranium when Ryan showed up in my lab.

  “Nice do.”

  My left hand did an automatic hair-behind-the-ears tuck, then I realized Ryan’s remark was directed at the skull. It was sun-baked white, its crown capped with dried green moss.

  “It’s been lying on the tundra a very long time.”

  Normally Ryan would have asked how long. He didn’t. I waited for him to get to the point of his visit.

  “Got a call from Hippo Gallant this morning. Guy named Joseph Beaumont is doing a nickel to dime at Bordeaux.”

  Bordeaux is the largest of Quebec’s correctional facilities.

  “Last night the CFCF six o’clock aired a story on Phoebe Quincy. Included footage on Kelly Sicard and Anne Girardin.”

  “Only those two?”

  Ryan raised palms in a “who knows why?” gesture. “Beaumont caught the report, requested a sit-down with the warden. Claims he knows where Sicard is buried.”

  “Is he credible?”

  “Beaumont could just be a con looking to better his life. But the guy can’t be discounted.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “Let’s make a deal.”

  “And?”

  “We’re negotiating. Wanted to give you a heads-up. If the tip’s legit, a team will go out immediately. We’ll want to move before the press scents blood.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  I was checking my field kit when Ryan phoned.

  “We’re on.”

  “When?”

  “CSU truck’s already on the move.”

  “Meet you in the lobby in five.”

  Ryan took Autoroute 15 northwest out of the city, cut east, then north toward Saint-Louis-de-Terrebonne. Midday traffic was light. He briefed me as he drove.

  “Beaumont settled for getting his mail privileges reinstated. Three months back the dolt received a copy of Catch-22 with LSD mixed into the binding glue.”

  “Creative pals. What’s his story?”

  “Six years ago, Beaumont shared a cell with a guy named Harky Grissom. Claims Grissom told him about a kid he’d waxed back in ninety-seven. Said he picked her up at a bus stop in the middle of the night, took her home, abused her, then smashed her skull with a socket wrench.”

  “Beaumont could have read about or listened to reports of Sicard’s disappearance.”

  “Grissom told Beaumont the kid he killed was crazy for NASCAR. Claims he lured her with promises she’d meet Mario Gosselin.”

  I watched the yellow center line click up Ryan’s shades.

  “The bit about Sicard liking stock car racing was dead-on.” Ryan glanced at me and the yellow dashes slid sideways. “And never made public.”

  “Where’s Grissom now?”

  “Paroled in ninety-nine. Killed in a car wreck the same year.”

  “He won’t be of any help.”

  “Not without a séance, but he wouldn’t have helped in any case. We have to rely on Beaumont’s memory.”

  Ryan hung a right. To both sides lay woods. In moments, I saw what I’d been expecting. Pulled to the side of the asphalt were the LSJML crime scene truck, a black coroner’s van, an SQ patrol unit, an unmarked Chevrolet Impala, and an SUV. Apparently the speed and stealth had worked. No cameras or microphones were present. Not a single poised pen. For now.

  Hippo was talking to a pair of uniformed cops. Two morgue technicians smoked by their van. A guy in civvies was filling a bowl from a canteen for a border collie.

  Ryan and I got out. The air hit me like caramel syrup. That morning’s Gazette had called for rain and a high in the nineties. June in Quebec. Go figure.

  Walking toward Hippo, Ryan explained the lay of the land.

  “According to Beaumont, Grissom described an abandoned barn off Route 335, in woods backing up to a horse farm.”

  I followed the compass of Ryan’s hand.

  “The highway’s behind us. The Parc équestre de Blainville is off through those trees. Saint-Lin-Jonction and Blainville lie to the south.”

  I felt a heaviness in my chest. “Anne Girardin disappeared in Blainville.”

  “Yeah.” Ryan kept his eyes straight ahead.

  We reached the group. Hands were shaken, greetings exchanged. Maybe it was the sticky heat. Maybe unease over what we might soon unearth. The usual humor and banter were absent.

  “Barn’s about ten yards in.” Hippo’s face was slick, his pits dark. “Good wind will bring her down.”

  “What’s b
een done?” Ryan asked.

  “Ran the dog through,” Hippo said.

  “Mia,” the dog handler cut in.

  The collie’s ears shot up at the sound of its name.

  Hippo rolled his eyes.

  “Her name is Mia.” Sylvain was embroidered on the handler’s shirt.

  Hippo is famous for loathing what he dubs “hot-shit” technology. It was clear cadaver dogs got the same fish eye as computers, iris scanners, and touch-tone phones.

  “Mia didn’t seem overly impressed.” Hippo took a tin from his pocket, thumbed open the lid, and palmed antacid tablets into his mouth.

  “The place is full of horseshit.” Sylvain’s voice had an edge. “Throws her off scent.”

  “GPR?” I truncated the exchange with a question about ground-penetrating radar.

  Hippo nodded, then turned. Ryan and I followed him into the trees. The air smelled of moss and loamy earth. The thick foliage hung undisturbed by even a whisper of movement. Within yards, I was perspiring and breathing deeply.

  In thirty seconds we were at the barn. The structure rose from a clearing barely larger than itself, leaning like a ship in an angry sea. Its planks were gray and weathered, its roof partially collapsed. What I assumed had been its main double doors now lay in a heap of rotten lumber. Through the opening, I could see dimness pierced by shafts of dust-filtered sunlight.

  Hippo, Ryan, and I stopped at the threshold. Crooking two fingers, I pulled my shirt by the collar and flapped. Sweat now soaked my waistband and bra.

  The barn’s interior was ripe with the mustiness of moisture and age. Rotting vegetation. Dust. And something sweetly organic.

  The CSU techs looked like astronauts in their masks and white coveralls. I recognized each by movement and body form. The daddy longlegs was Renaud Pasteur. The Demster Dumpster was David Chenevier.

  Hippo called out. Pasteur and Chenevier waved, then resumed their tasks.

  Chenevier was guiding a three-wheeled apparatus in parallel paths back and forth across the barn floor. A rectangular red box hung below the rig’s main axle, its bottom inches from the ground surface. A small LCD screen rested on the handlebars.

  Pasteur was alternating between shooting stills and video, and clearing debris in front of Chenevier. Rocks. Soda cans. A length of rusted metal stripping.

  Drew the short straw, I thought, seeing Pasteur pick something up, examine it, then toss it aside.

  Forty minutes later Chenevier was covering the last and farthest corner of the barn. Pausing, he made a comment. Pasteur joined him, and the two discussed something on the monitor.

  A chill replaced my hotness. Beside me, I felt Ryan tense.

  Chenevier turned. “We got something.”

  10

  R YAN AND I PICKED OUR WAY ACROSS THE UNEVEN GROUND. Hippo zigzagged behind. He was wearing a shirt that could only have been purchased at a discount store. A deep-discount store. Shiny penguins in mufflers and berets. The fabric looked flammable.

  Chenevier and Pasteur opened a space to allow us a view of the monitor. A layer cake of colors squiggled across the screen. Reds. Greens. Blues. Centered in the cake was a pale gray hump.

  GPR isn’t as complicated as the name implies. Each system includes a radio transmitter and receiver connected to a pair of antennae coupled to the ground.

  A signal is sent into the soil. Since a subsurface object or disturbance will have electrical properties different from those of the surrounding dirt, a signal reflecting off that object or disturbance will bounce back to the receiver slightly later in time. A different wave pattern will appear on the monitor.

  Think of a fish finder. The thing tells you something’s down there, but can’t tell you what.

  “Could be an animal burrow.” Chenevier’s face was soaked with sweat. “Or a trench for old piping.”

  “How far down?” I asked, studying the inverted gray crescent.

  Chenevier shrugged. “Eighteen or twenty inches.”

  Deep enough for a hurried gravedigger.

  Mia was summoned and led to the spot. She alerted by sitting and barking once, sharply.

  By noon I’d marked off a ten-foot square with stakes and string. Ryan and I started in with long-handled spades. Pasteur shot pics. Chenevier sifted.

  Hippo stood to one side, mopping sweat and shifting from foot to foot. Now and then one hand would go into a pocket. The jangle of keys would join the click of Pasteur’s shutter and the hiss of soil trickling through mesh.

  The barn floor was rich with organics, easy to dig, easy to sift.

  By twelve-thirty we’d exposed an amoeba-like splotch visibly darker than the surrounding earth. Soil staining. A sign of decomposition.

  Ryan and I switched to trowels and began scraping dirt, both anticipating and dreading what we’d find beneath the discoloration. Now and then our eyes would meet, drop back to the hollow we were creating.

  The first bone turned up in the screen.

  “Got something.” Chenevier’s voice cut the silence.

  “Gaubine!” Hippo popped antacid.

  Chenevier crossed to me and extended a hand.

  Sitting back on my heels, I took what lay in his palm.

  There are 206 bones in the adult human skeleton, all varying in size and shape. Singly, they yield few clues about a person’s life story. But together, like interlocking puzzle pieces, they say a lot. Age. Sex. Ancestry. Health. Habit. The more bones, the more is revealed.

  Chenevier’s find, however, disclosed the jigsaw solo.

  Slender and less than ten centimeters long, the bone looked like a pin that might be worn to keep a topknot in place. Thicker at one end, it tapered to a subtle knob on the other.

  I looked up to eight curious eyes.

  “It’s a baculum.”

  Four blank stares.

  “A bone found in the penis of most mammals. I’d guess this one comes from a large domestic dog.”

  Still no one spoke.

  “The os baculum aids in copulation when mating must take place during brief encounters.”

  Pasteur cleared his throat.

  “When animals have to perform quickly.” I adjusted my mask.

  “Pour l’amour du bon Dieu!” Hippo’s expletive suggested the same emotions swirling in me. Relief. Bewilderment. Hope.

  I handed the bone to Pasteur. As he photographed and bagged it, Ryan and I resumed digging.

  By three, Grissom’s “victim” lay fully exposed. The snout was broad, the cranium rugged. Caudal vertebrae snaked between hind legs seemingly too short for the torso.

  “Long tail.”

  “Some kind of pit bull mix.”

  “Maybe shepherd.”

  The testosterone set seemed inordinately interested in the dog’s heritage. I couldn’t have cared less. I was sweaty, itchy, and desperate to shed my Tyvek coveralls. Designed to protect wearers from blood, chemicals, and toxic liquids, the things reduced air circulation and were hotter than hell.

  “Whatever his breed, the guy was a player.” Pasteur held up the ziplock containing the dog’s penis bone. Chenevier raised a palm. Pasteur high-fived it.

  Already the jokes had begun. I was glad I hadn’t told them that the os baculum is sometimes called a hillbilly toothpick. Or that best in show goes to the walrus, whose males occasionally reach thirty inches. It was going to be bad enough as it was.

  During graduate school a fellow student had studied the os baculum of rhesus monkeys. Her name was Jeannie. Now professors and respected researchers, my old classmates still tease her about “Jeannie’s penies.”

  By two the dog’s bones had been packaged and placed in the coroner van. Probably unnecessary, but better to err on the side of caution.

  By six Ryan and I had taken the entire ten-foot square down twenty-four inches. Nothing had turned up in the pit or the screen. Chenevier had resurveyed the barn and surrounding field, and found no indications of additional subsurface disturbance.

  Hippo approac
hed as I was peeling off my coveralls.

  “Sorry to drag you out here for nothing.”

  “It’s the job, Hippo.” I was ecstatic to be out of the Tyvek. And relieved that we hadn’t unearthed Kelly Sicard.

  “How long since Old Yeller strutted his stuff?”

  “The bones are fleshless, odorless, and uniformly soil-stained. The only insect inclusions I found were dried puparial casings. Buried at that depth, inside the barn, I’d estimate the dog’s been dead at least two years. But my gut feeling says more.”

  “Ten years?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Could have belonged to Grissom. Or Beaumont.”

  Or Céline Dion, I thought.

  Hippo looked off into the distance. Grime coated his lenses, making it hard to read the expression behind them. I suspected he was scripting a chitchat with his erstwhile informant.

  “You want to hang around a few, I’ll give you a lift.”

  I looked over at Ryan. He was talking on a cell phone. Behind him, heat shimmered mirage-like above the blacktop and the vehicles parked along it.

  Catching Ryan’s eye, I gestured that I’d ride with Hippo. He flicked a wave, continued his conversation.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I’ll fill you in on Luc Tiquet.”

  I stared at Hippo.

  “Sûreté du Québec, Rimouski? My buddy Gaston’s bones?”

  “What’s his story?”

  “I’ll tell you in the car.”

  Climbing into the Impala was like climbing into a pottery kiln.

  As Hippo turned onto the highway, I maxed the AC and held a hand to the vent. Hot air blasted my fingers.

  “L’air conditionné est brisé.”

  On Hippo’s tongue the word for broken came out “breezy.” Hardly.

  Static erupted from the radio. I peeled damp hair from my neck as I waited it out.

  “Have you checked the coolant?”

  “Pain in the ass.” Hippo waved dismissively. “Heat won’t last. Never does.”

  I bit back a comment. Useless. Coolant was probably a mystery to Hippo’s mind.

  When I lowered my window, the smell of fertilizer and fresh-mown fields flooded the car.

  I slumped back, shot forward as scorching vinyl contacted bare skin. Crossing my arms, I eased into the seat, closed my eyes, and let the wind whip my hair.