Bones Are Forever (6 page)

I selected the flat, serrate-edged portion of the temporal, the part that had formed the right side of the baby’s skull. A delicate circle of bone, the tympanic ring, was fused to an opening I knew to be the auditory canal.

Ring fusion bumped the gestational age to nine months.

Next I identified the facial bones. The maxillae and zygomatics, the ethmoid, the nasals, the palatines, the swirly little conchae from inside the nose. The mandible.

Until approximately one year postnatal, the human lower jaw remains unfused at the midline. As I examined the right and left halves, tiny teeth rolled around deep in the sockets. No surprise there. Tooth buds appear at nine to eleven weeks in utero. Though I could see the partially formed crowns, X-rays would be needed to evaluate dental development.

Moving on, I laid out the postcranial skeleton, measured the arm and leg bones, and compared the figures to a standardized chart. Each length supported the gestational age suggested by cranial development.

Satisfied that I’d learned what I could about age, I began teasing desiccated tissue from each tiny bone.

At noon Pomier popped in to report that St. Mary’s would make a scanner available after nine that night. A radiologist named Leclerc would meet us in the hospital lobby. Dr. Leclerc was urging discretion. Live patients. Dead babies. I was on the same page.

Lisa stopped by every half hour. Each time I told her I was fine working solo.

Which was true. I didn’t trust the emotions swirling inside me. Flashbacks to Kevin. Anguish for these infants. Fury at the woman who had killed them. I preferred to be alone.

By one I’d finished cleaning the bones. My stomach was growling, and a headache was gathering in my frontal lobe. I knew I should stop for lunch. Couldn’t. I felt driven to learn everything possible before returning the babies to the cold, dark cooler.

After placing a stool by the dissecting scope, I began the painstaking process of observing every bone under magnification. Millimeter by millimeter, I inspected each shaft, metaphysis, epiphysis,
groove, foramen, suture, and fossa, looking for indications of disease, malformation, or trauma.

Just past three Ryan called to report that Ralph “Rocky” Trees had no sheet as an adult, but he did have a juvenile jacket. Though the record was closed, Ryan was requesting access.

Rocky’s story checked out. He drove pickup jobs for his brother-in-law, Philippe “Phil” Fast. The brother-in-law owned a small operation with a couple of trucks and a warehouse. Trees was away from Saint-Hyacinthe last Tuesday morning through late Sunday afternoon. Phil scoffed at the notion that Rocky might have a girlfriend.

That was it. No greeting. No “how are you doing.” No good-bye.

By four-forty my gut was acid, my head was a bongo, and my back was on fire. But I’d completed my analysis. Sadly, my form held scant information.

Sex: Unknown
.

There are studies that claim jaw or pelvic shape or differentials in postcranial bone growth indicate the gender of a fetus or neonate. I’m not convinced.

Race: Unknown
.

Though a broad, low nasal bridge and wide cheekbones hinted at non-European input, there was no way to verify ancestry.

Congenital abnormalities: None
.

Pathologies: None
.

Trauma: None
.

Age: Full-term fetus
.

So little to say. Such a short life.

Already in the cellar, my spirits sank further.

Rather than call Lisa or Tanenbaum, I shot a final set of photos myself. Then I gathered the bones into a small plastic tub and wrote
LSJML-49278
on the lid and one side.

With robotic motions, I set the tub on the gurney and pushed it through the double doors to the morgue. “Good-bye, little one,” I said softly as the bay clicked shut.

I was wrapping LSJML-49277 in padded plastic sheeting when the desk phone rang. In no mood to talk or even be cordial, I ignored it.

I placed the window-seat baby inside a square plastic tub, packed it with more wadded sheeting, and marked the case number on the outside. Then I filled out and signed an evidence transfer form. Since the mummified baby would leave the morgue with me, chain of custody had to be maintained.

Finished with the remains, I turned to the towels.

Like the filaments I’d plucked from LaManche’s bathroom-vanity baby, the towels would be sent to the hair and fiber guys, perhaps to the folks in biology or DNA. Again, maybe useful, maybe not.

I sealed the attic towel in an evidence bag, jotted relevant information on the label, and set the bag to one side on the counter.

When I lifted the window-seat towel, something dropped with the sound of a tiny bean bag. Curious, I picked the thing up.

Between my gloved fingers was a small velvet sack with a drawstring closure. I teased it open. Inside was what looked like coarse-grain gravel. I poured some onto my palm. In the mix were a few green pebbles measuring a couple centimeters at most.

“Yowza. This’ll crack the case wide open.” My sarcasm was lost on the empty room.

After taking a few photos, I sealed the inclusion in a vial and placed it in a second evidence bag with the yellow towel. Then I called Lisa.

No answer.

I looked at the clock. Six-ten. Of course she was gone. Everyone was gone.

Feeling a heaviness the atomic weight of uranium, I took the tub containing the window-seat baby to a morgue bay adjoining autopsy room three and placed it on a gurney beside the bathroom-vanity baby, now wrapped and sealed in its own container. Then I wound my way to the elevator.

The basement was deserted. So was the twelfth floor. The building hummed with that eerie after-hours quiet unique to abandoned workplaces.

At the desk in my lab, I left Lisa a message asking that she transfer the bagged towels to the trace evidence section. As I cradled the receiver, my eyes drifted to the expanse of glass above my desk.

A dozen floors down, I could see the tops of apartment buildings,
church spires, small patches of green I knew to be gardens. In the distance, the Maison de Radio-Canada rose like a giant brick cylinder on boulevard René-Lévesque. Beyond it, the St. Lawrence River yawned gray and forbidding, even in June.

Past the black girders of the pont Champlain, the skyscrapers of
centre-ville
cut sharp silhouettes against the early summer dusk. I recognized Place Ville-Marie, Complexe Desjardins, the Centre-Mont-Royal, the Marriott Château Champlain.

The streets I’d searched for parking spaces that morning were clogged with traffic. Parents returning to the burbs for dinner and homework with the kids, lovers hurrying to nocturnal trysts, night-shifters dragging themselves to punch clocks on which time would seem to stand still.

How often Ryan and I had driven together from Wilfrid-Derome, discussing victims, suspects, aspects of a case. I can’t share my work with those close to me who are not on the job—Pete, Katy, Harry, my best friend, Anne. I can’t tell them what I’ve seen lying in a Dumpster or buried in a shallow grave. Can’t describe the congealed blood, the bloated body, the seething maggots. I missed having someone to talk to, someone who understood. Ryan had kept me balanced. Kept me caring.

I wondered at Ryan’s current coolness. Yes, we’d always danced around emotion, kept our innermost feelings to ourselves. Even in the good times.

Yes, the slaughter of innocents outraged him. Women. Children. The elderly. I knew that. But this current moodiness seemed different. More than me. More than dead babies.

Whatever. He’d tell me when he was ready. Or not.

While changing into street clothes, I decided on dinner at home before heading to St. Mary’s.

And remembered.

“Damn.”

I detest grocery shopping. Irrational, but there it is. I’ll make any excuse to avoid the supermarket. Then I pay the price. Like tonight. I hadn’t bought food since arriving in Montreal two days earlier.

As I tossed my soiled scrubs into a biohazard bin, another thought heightened my melancholy.

When I’d departed Charlotte, Birdie had been recovering from a urinary tract infection. Knowing he hated air travel, and feeling the trip might compromise his wee bladder, I’d left him in Dixie. The cat offered no protest.

Frozen dinner. Alone.

As I walked up the corridor, my spirits went subterranean. I was considering take-out options when, through the window, I noticed a figure in my lab.

I froze. Then recognition.

Ryan. Jabbing digits on a cell phone.

At six-thirty? What the hell?

Ryan turned when I pushed through the door. Before I could speak, he cut me off. “We got her.”

“Amy Roberts et cet?”

Ryan nodded.

“And?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“H
ER REAL NAME IS ANNALIESE RUBEN. SHE WAS POPPED TWICE
for prostitution, once in 2005, again in 2008. Both arrests were in Edmonton. First time she got probation. Second time she was a no-show for the court date.”

Ryan handed me three printouts.

The first was a response to the fingerprint search. Skipping the part about points of correspondence, I skimmed the physical descriptors. Annaliese Ruben had black hair, brown eyes, stood five feet tall, and weighed 195 pounds.

The second printout was a report on Ruben’s criminal history. The third provided her most recent mug shot, obtained using the fingerprint system number. Ruben’s thumbnail showed a woman with a moon face and dark tangled hair that badly needed grooming.

I handed back the sheets. “Might have an overactive thyroid.”

“Yeah?”

“The bulging eyeballs. Or it could be the lighting. Mug shots don’t bring out the best in folks.”

“Edmonton PD says the address Ruben provided after the second collar turned out to be an abandoned warehouse. They’ve had no contact with her since ’08, know nothing about her current whereabouts.”

Ryan pocketed his iPhone and hip-planted his hands. There
was stiffness in his movements, tension in his shoulders and jaw. Familiar signs. This case had gotten to him.

But there was more. A hardness in Ryan’s eyes that I hadn’t seen before.

I wanted to ask if there was something wrong, to say I was here if he wanted to talk. I didn’t. Just waited.

“Are you familiar with Project KARE?” Ryan spelled out the acronym.

“Isn’t it an RCMP task force created to investigate deaths and disappearances of women in and around Edmonton? I understand there have been quite a few.”

“That’s an understatement. But yeah, essentially, you’re right. Their mandate is to collar the scumbags responsible for HRMP murders.”

“High-risk missing persons.”

“Yes.” Ryan was keeping his voice carefully modulated.

“Meaning those involved in prostitution and drugs.” I sensed where this was going.

“Yes.”

“Annaliese Ruben is on the Project KARE list,” I guessed.

“Since 2009.”

“Who reported her missing?”

“Another prossie.”

That surprised me. “Sex-trade workers usually steer clear of the cops.”

“No shit. But the hookers in Edmonton are totally freaked.”

“Wasn’t someone arrested for those killings?”

“Thomas Svekla. A real piece of work. Charged with two murders, convicted of one.” Ryan shook his head in disgust. “He’d stuffed his victim into a hockey bag and hauled her from High Level to Fort Saskatchewan.”

“At least they got him.”

“Word is there’s more than one perp responsible.”

“So a predator may still be out there.”

“Yeah. Predator or predators.”

Ryan’s eyes looked dark and troubled. And too intensely blue to be real.

“But if Annaliese Ruben gave birth in Saint-Hyacinthe last Sunday, obviously she’s alive,” I said.

“And murdering babies.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Who but the mother could kill three different newborns at three times? And why’d she go rabbit?”

“What’s your next move?”

“Run the mug shot past Ralph Trees. See if Annaliese Ruben is Amy Roberts/Alma Rogers/Alva Rodriguez.”

“Then?”

“Then find her ass and haul it to the bag.”

*  *  *

I went with pad thai from the Bangkok at Le Faubourg on rue Sainte-Catherine. The line was short and I was running late.

St. Mary’s Hospital started life in 1924 as a forty-five-bed affair in Shaughnessy House, now the Canadian Centre for Architecture. A decade later, operations moved from there to avenue Lacombe in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood, just over the mountain from
centre-ville
. Today the old girl is a multipavilion institution offering 316 patient beds and a staff active in teaching and research.

Le stationnement
was a replay of twelve hours earlier. At eight-fifty a car finally pulled out on rue Jean-Brillant. I fired into the spot, grabbed my things, and bolted.

The area was surprisingly active for nine
P.M
. on a Tuesday. Cars filled the streets, and pedestrians chugged along the walks—shoppers clutching plastic grocery bags; hospital visitors, empty-handed, probably heading home; backpacked students from Université de Montréal or Collège Notre-Dame.