Bones to Ashes

“I went to SQ headquarters. I concluded these bones are old. Perhaps ancient.”

“That’s it?”

“In my judgment, the remains are those of a female adolescent.”

Easy, Brennan.

A coroner or pathologist orders a textbook or takes a short course, and Sha-zam! He or she is a forensic anthropologist! Why not score a copy of Operative Cardiac Surgery, hang a shingle, and start opening chests? Though it’s rare that an underqualified person attempts to practice my profession, when it happens on my turf, I am far from pleased.

“I see.” I matched Bradette’s cool with arctic.

“Under questioning, the officer admitted to having had these bones for many years. Furthermore, he stated that they originated in New Brunswick. New Brunswick is outside the scope of my authority.”

Months, perhaps years pass with no thought of Évangéline Landry. Then, unexpectedly, a synapse will flash. I never know what the trigger will be. A forgotten snapshot curling in the bottom of a box. Words spoken with a certain intonation. A song. A line from a poem.

Hippo’s chiac accent. New Brunswick. The skeleton of a girl, dead many years.

Neurons fired.

Irrationally, my fingers tightened on the receiver.

5

“I WANT THOSE BONES CONFISCATED AND SENT TO MY LAB.” MY voice could have carved marble.

“In my professional opinion, this is a waste of—”

“Tomorrow.” Granite.

“Pierre LaManche must submit an official request form.”

“Give me your fax number, please.”

He did.

I wrote it down.

“You will have the paperwork within the hour.”

After completing the form I went in search of a signature.

LaManche was now at a side counter in the pathology lab, masked and wearing a plastic apron tied behind his neck and back. A sliced pancreas lay on a corkboard before him. Hearing footsteps, he turned.

I told him about Gaston’s skeleton. I didn’t mention Évangéline Landry or her disappearance from my life almost four decades earlier as something that was prodding me to look more closely at adolescent remains from New Brunswick. I didn’t really believe there could be any connection, but somehow I felt I owed it to Évangéline to explore the identity of the New Brunswick skeleton.

Yet the tightness in my chest.

“Nouveau-Brunswick?” LaManche asked.

“The remains are currently in Quebec.”

“Might they have come from an old cemetery?”

“Yes.”

“You will be very busy this month.”

Spring to early summer is high season in my business in Quebec. Rivers thaw. Snow melts. Hikers, campers, and picnickers sally forth. Tada! Rotting corpses are found. LaManche was gently reminding me of this fact.

“The construction site bones are nonhuman. I’ll begin Dr. Santangelo’s case now. Then do your Lac des Deux Montagnes vic.”

LaManche gave a tight head shake. “Old bones kept as a souvenir.”

“PMI is unclear.”

LaManche said nothing.

“Dr. Bradette’s attitude offends me. A skeleton is lying ignored within our jurisdiction. No human being should be treated with such cavalier disregard.”

LaManche gazed at me over his mask. Then he shrugged. “If you think you will have time.”

“I’ll make time.”

I lay the form on the counter. LaManche stripped off a glove and signed it.

Thanking him, I hurried to the fax machine.

I spent the rest of that afternoon with Santangelo’s fire victim, a ninety-three-year-old man known to smoke in bed before removing his dentures and turning off his bedside lamp each night. The kids and grandkids had repeatedly warned, but the old geezer had ignored their advice.

Gramps wasn’t smoking now. He lay on stainless steel in autopsy room four.

If it was Gramps.

The skull consisted of charred fragments collected in a brown paper bag. The torso was an amorphous black mass with upper arms and legs raised due to contraction of the flexor muscles. The lower limbs were shriveled stumps. The hands and feet were missing.

No fingers, no prints. No teeth, no dentals. And the false choppers looked like a blob of Bazooka.

But one thing simplified my task. In 1988, the presumed vic had treated himself to a brand-new hip. Antemortem X-rays now covered the light boxes previously occupied by Geneviève Doucet.

Gramps’s prosthesis glowed white in his upper right femur. Postmortem X-rays showed a similar neon mushroom positioned identically within the burned right leg.

Making an incision along the outer pelvic edge, I peeled back charred muscle and tendon, manipulated the device from the hip socket, then buzzed through the proximal third of the bone with an autopsy saw.

Further cleaning revealed the serial number. Crossing to the counter, I checked the antemortem orthopedic records.

Bonjour, Gramps!

I photographed, bagged, and tagged the specimen, then returned to the body for a full skeletal exam. Although the implant made the ID a slam dunk, anthropological data would provide useful backup.

Cranial fragments showed large brow ridges and mastoid processes, and an occipital muscle attachment the size of my sneaker.

Male. I made notes and moved on to the pelvis.