Bones to Ashes

Yet? Ask Hippo to run a missing persons check? Not realistic. She could have taken another name, now be living elsewhere.

Drawing a deep breath, I told Hippo the story of Évangéline Landry. When I finished, he was mute for so long I thought his attention had wandered. It hadn’t.

“You really believe something happened to this kid?”

That question had tortured me over the years. Had Oncle Fidèle and Tante Euphémie, tired of nurturing their two young nieces, simply sent them home? Or had it been the other way around? Had Évangéline grown bored with the Lowcountry? With my friendship? Had my summer soul mate merely outgrown me? I didn’t believe it. She would have told me she was leaving. Why Tante Euphémie’s remark about danger?

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

We were crossing onto the island. I watched Hippo’s gaze slide sideways to the turgid water of the Rivière des Prairies. I wondered if he was thinking of the girl snagged by the boat in the Rivière des Mille Îles in 1999, Ryan’s DOA number one. Or the girl washed ashore in Dorval in 2001, Ryan’s DOA number two. Or the one found last week in Lac des Deux Montagnes, perhaps DOA number three in the chain.

“You say the skeleton’s of mixed race,” Hippo said. “Was your friend?”

“That’s my impression. But I haven’t had time to fully clean the skull. I never thought of Évangéline that way. I just thought she was exotic in a mysterious sort of way.”

Hippo took a moment to chew on that.

“You told me the stuff’s pretty beat up. You good with a PMI pushing forty years?”

I’d given the question of postmortem interval considerable thought. “I’m certain this girl was buried, then the bones were held for some period aboveground. The problem is, I’ve got zip on context. Buried how? In sandy soil? Acid soil? Shallow grave? Deep? Coffin? Fifty-gallon Hefty? Time since death could be ten, forty, or a hundred and forty.”

Hippo did some more mental chewing. Then, “How well did you know this kid’s family?”

“I knew Évangéline’s aunt and uncle, but only superficially. I didn’t speak French and they were self-conscious about their English. Laurette was at Pawleys very little, and wasn’t bilingual, so the few times I saw her it was mainly hello and good-bye.”

“You said there was a sister?”

“Obéline, eight years younger than Évangéline.”

Hippo turned onto Papineau. We were creeping now, with traffic bumper to bumper.

“Ben. You know the system, homicide cops gotta focus on fresh cases. They got time, they can look at old, unsolved ones. Problem is they never got time because people keep capping people. That’s where Cold Case comes in. We take files no one’s working.”

Hippo signaled a left, waited while three teens slouched through the crosswalk. Each wore clothing large enough to house the other two.

“Nineteen sixty to 2005 we got five hundred seventy-three dossiers non résolus in this province. Cold Case squad was created in 2004. Since then we’ve cleared six of those unsolved cases.”

Forty years. Six answers. Five hundred and sixty-seven victims’ families still waiting. That depressed me.

“How can so many get away with murder?”

Hippo hiked one shoulder. “Maybe there’s no evidence, no witnesses. Maybe someone screws up. Most investigations, you don’t score a viable lead the first couple days, the thing’s going nowhere. Years pass. The jacket fills up with forms saying ‘no new developments.’ Eventually, the detective decides it’s time to move on. Sad, but what’s one more unsolved killing?”

We were just blocks from the Édifice Wilfrid-Derome. I wondered if Ryan was somewhere behind us, returning to SQ headquarters. Wondered if he would stop by my office or lab.

Making a right onto Parthenais, Hippo kept talking.

“Some of these murder squad cowboys think we cold-casers been put out to pasture. That ain’t how I see it. My thinking, a killing’s no less important because it happened ten years back. Or twenty. Or forty. Ask me, cold case vics should be getting priority. They been waiting longer.”

Hippo swung into the Wilfrid-Derome lot, shot down a row of cars and braked beside my Mazda. Throwing the Impala into park, he turned to me.

“And you can double that for kids. The families of missing and murdered kids live in agony. Every year that anniversary rolls around, the day the kid disappeared or the body was found. Every Christmas. Every time the kid’s birthday pops up on the calendar. A dead kid’s just one big ugly wound that refuses to heal.” Hippo’s eyes met mine. “The guilt eats at ’em. What happened? Why? Why weren’t we there to save her? That kinda hell don’t ever go cold.”

“No,” I agreed, feeling a new appreciation for the man beside me.

Hippo reached through the space between us, snatched his jacket from the backseat, and dug out a small spiral pad. Taking a pen from the center console, he wet a thumb and flipped pages. After reading a moment, his eyes met mine.