Bones to Ashes

ALSO BY KATHY REICHS

BREAK NO BONES

CROSS BONES

MONDAY MOURNING

BARE BONES

GRAVE SECRETS

FATAL VOYAGE

DEADLY DÉCISIONS

DEATH DU JOUR

DÉJÀ DEAD

SCRIBNER

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2007 by Temperance Brennan, L.P.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007002405

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-4491-3

ISBN-10: 1-4165-4491-7

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For those buoyant, bighearted, bodacious Acadiens.

On ouaira quosse que d’main nous amèneras…

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As usual, this novel was a team effort. Let me introduce the team.

I owe massive thanks to Andrea and Cléola Léger, without whom this story might never have been written. Andrea and Cléola introduced me to the warm, generous, and effervescent world of the Acadian people. Merci. Merci. Mille mercis.

I am enormously indebted to all those who welcomed me during my stay in New Brunswick. This list includes, but is hardly limited to, Claude Williams, MLA, Maurice Cormier, Jean-Paul and Dorice Bourque, Estelle Boudreau, Maria Doiron, Laurie Gallant, Aldie and Doris LeBlanc, Paula LeBlanc, Bernadette Léger, Gerard Léger, Normand and Pauline Léger, Darrell and Lynn Marchand, Fernand and Lisa Gaudet, Constable Kevin Demeau (RCMP), George and Jeannie Gaggio, and Joan MacKenzie of Beaverbrook House. Special thanks go to those in Tracadie, especially Claude Landry, MLA, Père Zoël Saulnier, and Raynald Basque and the staff at Cojak Productions. Soeur Dorina Frigault and Soeur Zelica Daigle, RHSJ (Les Hospitalières de Saint-Joseph), generously opened their archives and provided a tour of the museum and cemetery at the former site of the lazaretto.

Robert A. Leonard, PhD, professor of linguistics and director of the Forensic Linguistics Project, Hofstra University, interrupted his busy schedule to provide guidance on forensic linguistics. (You were really a founding member of Sha Na Na? Yes, Kathy. No way. Yes, Kathy. Awesome!)

Ron Harrison, Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, provided information on guns, sirens, and a variety of cop stuff.

Normand Proulx, Directeur général, Sûreté du Québec, and l’inspecteur-chef Gilles Martin, adjoint au Directeur général, adjoint à la Grande fonction des enquêtes criminelles, Sûreté du Québec, provided statistics on homicides and information on cold case investigations in Quebec.

Mike Warns, design engineer, ISR, Inc., fielded endless questions and coached me on techie stuff. A true Renaissance man, Mike is also largely responsible for the poetry.

Dr. William C. Rodriguez, Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, and Dr. Peter Dean, HM Coroner for Greater Suffolk and South East Essex, helped with details of skeletal and soft tissue pathology.

Paul Reichs provided valuable input on the manuscript.

Nan Graham and my Scribner family made the book a lot better than it might otherwise have been. Ditto for Susan Sandon and everyone at Random House UK.

Jennifer Rudolph-Walsh supplied countless intangibles and the usual unflagging support.

A useful resource was Children of Lazarus: the story of the lazaretto at Tracadie by M. J. Losier and C. Pinet, Les Éditions Faye, 1999.

BONES TO ASHES

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?

Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers.

—from “Evangeline” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1

B ABIES DIE. PEOPLE VANISH. PEOPLE DIE. BABIES VANISH.

I was hammered early by those truths. Sure, I had a kid’s understanding that mortal life ends. At school, the nuns talked of heaven, purgatory, limbo, and hell. I knew my elders would “pass.” That’s how my family skirted the subject. People passed. Went to be with God. Rested in peace. So I accepted, in some ill-formed way, that earthly life was temporary. Nevertheless, the deaths of my father and baby brother slammed me hard.

And Évangéline Landry’s disappearance simply had no explanation.

But I jump ahead.

It happened like this.