Bones Never Lie (2 page)

Rodas opened the carton, withdrew a stack of reports, and slid one to each of us. “Sorry if my style’s less formal than yours.” His voice was deep and gruff, the kind you associate with white cheddar and the Green Mountain Boys. “I’ll give you the rundown, then take questions on anything that’s unclear.”

I started flipping through pages. Heard Tinker and Slidell doing the same.

“Between two-thirty and three
P.M
., on October 18, 2007, a twelve-year-old white female named Nellie Gower disappeared while riding her bicycle home from school. Six hours later, the bike was found on a rural two-lane a quarter mile from the Gower farm.”

A nuance in tone caused me to look up. Rodas’s Adam’s apple made a round-trip before he continued. “Nellie’s body was discovered eight days later at a granite quarry four miles outside town.”

I noted that Rodas was using the child’s name, not depersonalizing, as cops often do—the kid, the vic. It didn’t take Freud to recognize that Rodas was emotionally invested in the case.

“The ME found no signs of trauma or sexual assault. The child was fully clothed. Manner of death went down as homicide, cause as unknown. The scene yielded nothing. Ditto the body. No tire tracks, no trace, no blood or saliva, no forensics at all.

“The usual persons were interviewed—registered sex offenders, parents and relatives, friends, friends’ families, neighbors, babysitters, a Girl Scout leader, those working at the school, the church, the community center. Anyone with even the remotest link to the victim.”

Rodas dug spirals of bound three-by-fives from the tub and winged them around the table croupier-style. Went silent as each of us viewed the grim cards we’d been dealt.

The first several prints showed the quarry. A leaden sky overhung an expanse of rock and soil bereft of trees. On the left, a gravel road climbed from the foreground toward a ragged horizon.

Temporary barricades had been set up along the road. Parked behind them were cars, pickups, and media vans. Drivers and passengers stood in twos and threes. Some conversing, others staring across the sawhorses or looking at the ground. A number wore T-shirts printed with the words
Find Nellie
above the face of a smiling adolescent.

I knew the players. Samaritans who’d devoted hours to searching and to answering phones. Gawkers eager for a glimpse of a body bag. Journalists seeking the best slant on another human tragedy.

Inside the barrier were cruisers, a crime scene truck, a coroner’s van, and a pair of unmarked cars, each angled as though suddenly frozen in flight. I recognized the usual responders. Evidence and coroner’s techs. A woman in a windbreaker with
Medical Examiner
printed in yellow block letters on the back. Cops in uniform, one with his head cocked to speak into a shoulder radio.

A canopy had been erected at center stage. Below the blue plastic, yellow tape stretched from pole to pole, forming a rough rectangle. Enclosed in the rectangle was a painfully small mound. Rodas squatted beside it, face grim, notepad in hand.

The next series focused on the child. Nellie Gower lay on her back, legs straight, arms tight to her torso. Her red wool jacket was zipped to her chin. Her sneaker laces were looped in symmetrical bows. The bottom of a polka-dot blouse was neatly tucked into bright pink jeans.

Several photos framed the face printed on the tees. No smile now.

Nellie’s hair covered her shoulders in long chocolate waves. I noted that it was parted down the center of her scalp and evenly draped, as though combed and arranged.

Eight days of exposure had wrought the inevitable. The child’s features were bloated, her skin mottled purple and green. A maggot mass filled her mouth and each of her nostrils.

The last three shots were close-ups of the child’s right hand. Dotting the palm were traces of a filmy white substance.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“CSS bagged both hands. The ME swabbed her skin and scraped under her nails. The trace guys thought it might have been remnants of a tissue.”

I nodded, still staring at the photos. Synapses were firing in my brain. I remembered another child. Another set of heartbreaking photos.

I knew why I’d been called. Why Skinny was here.

“Sonofabitch.”

Rodas ignored Slidell’s outburst. “We got a few leads, phone tips, a witness saying a teacher showed unusual interest in Nellie, a neighbor claiming he saw her in a truck with a bearded man. Nothing panned out. Eventually, the case went cold. We’re a small department. I had to move on. You know how it is.”

Rodas looked at Slidell, then Barrow. Met eyes that knew only too well. “But it ate at me. Kid like that. Whenever I had spare time, I’d pull the file, hoping to spot something I missed.”

Again, the Adam’s-apple bob. “According to all accounts, Nellie was timid. Careful. Not likely to go with a stranger. We all believed the perp was local. Someone she knew. I guess we got channeled on that.

“Last year I figured what the hell. Think outside the box. I tried VICAP.”

Rodas was referring to the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a national database maintained to collect and analyze information about homicides, sexual assaults, missing persons, and other violent crimes. The repository contains approximately 150,000 open and closed investigations submitted by some 3,800 state and local agencies, and includes cold cases dating as far back as the 1950s.

“I entered what we had, MO, signature aspects, crime scene descriptors and photos, victim details. Took weeks to get a response. Then damned if our profile didn’t match an unsolved here in Charlotte.”

“The Nance kid.” Slidell spoke through barely parted lips.

“Never got a collar on that one.” Tinker’s first words since telling Slidell he was posted locally.

Slidell opened his mouth to reply. Apparently reconsidered and closed it.

I glanced at the tub. 090431070901. Lizzie Nance. Skinny’s own gut-eating failure.

On April 17, 2009, Elizabeth Ellen “Lizzie” Nance left a ballet class, heading for her mother’s apartment three blocks away. She never made it home. Media coverage was massive. Hundreds turned out to answer tip lines, post flyers, and search the woods and ponds near Lizzie’s complex. To no avail.

Two weeks after Lizzie’s disappearance, a decomposed body was found at a nature preserve northwest of Charlotte. The corpse lay supine with feet together, arms tucked to its sides. A black leotard, tights, and pink cotton underwear still wrapped the putrefied flesh. Bright blue Crocs still covered the feet. Residue found under a thumbnail was identified later as common facial tissue.

Slidell led the homicide investigation. I analyzed the bones.

Though I spent days bending over a scope, I spotted not a single nick, cut, or fracture anywhere on the skeleton. Tim Larabee, the Mecklenburg County medical examiner, was unable to establish definitively whether sexual assault had occurred. Manner of death went down as homicide, cause as unknown.

Lizzie Nance died when she was eleven years old.

“Fortunately, Honor had also entered his unsolved. The system picked up the similarities.” Rodas raised both hands. “So here I am.”

A moment of silence filled the room. Tinker broke it. “That’s it? Two girls roughly the same age? Still wearing their clothes?”

No one responded.

“Wasn’t the Nance kid too far gone to exclude rape?”

Palming the table, Slidell leaned toward Tinker. I cut him off.

“The autopsy report noted complicating factors. But the child’s clothing was in place, and Dr. Larabee was confident in concluding there’d been no rape.”

Tinker shrugged, not realizing or not caring that his cavalier attitude was offending everyone. “Seems weak.”

“It’s not just the VICAP profile that brings me to Charlotte,” Rodas continued. “By the time we found Nellie, her body had been rained on for a day and a half. Her clothes were saturated with a mixture of water and decomp runoff. Though not optimistic, I submitted everything to our forensics lab up in Waterbury for testing. To my surprise, some DNA had survived.”

“All hers,” Slidell guessed.

“Yes.” Rodas placed his forearms on the table and leaned in. “Eighteen months ago, I went over the file yet again. This time I caught something I thought could be a break. The residue from Nellie’s hand hadn’t been submitted with her clothing. I phoned the ME; she found the scrapings taken at autopsy by her predecessor. Knowing it was a long shot, I had her send them up to Waterbury.”

Rodas looked straight at me.

I looked straight back.

“The material contained DNA not belonging to Nellie.”

“You sent the profile through the system?” Tinker asked the unnecessary question.

Rodas chin-cocked the report in my hands. “Take a look at the section marked ‘Updated DNA Results,’ Dr. Brennan.”

Curious why I’d been singled out, I did as instructed.

Read a name.

Felt the flutter of adrenaline hitting my gut.

THE REPORT WAS
short, printed in both French and English.

Struggling to make sense of it, I reread the closing paragraph. In both languages.

A match was obtained on DNA sample 7426 to Canadian national number 64899, identified as Anique Pomerleau, W/F, DOB: 12/10/75. The subject is currently not in custody.

Anique Pomerleau.

My eyes rose to Rodas. His were still fixed on me. “You can imagine how amped I was. Years of nothing, then I get word they’ve sequenced DNA that isn’t Nellie’s. I told the analyst to shoot the profile through CODIS.”

Like VICAP, the Combined DNA Index System is a database maintained by the FBI. CODIS stores DNA profiles and uses two indexes to generate investigative leads.

The convicted offender index contains profiles of individuals convicted of crimes ranging from misdemeanors to sexual assault and murder. The forensic index contains profiles obtained from crime scene evidence, such as semen, saliva, or blood. When a detective or analyst enters an unknown profile, the CODIS software electronically searches both indexes for a potential match.

A match within the forensic index links crimes to one another, possibly identifying serial offenders. Based on a “forensic hit,” police in multiple jurisdictions can coordinate their investigations and share leads. A match between the forensic index and the convicted offender index provides investigators with an “offender hit.” A suspect. A name.

Anique Pomerleau.

“She’s not American.” Lame, but that’s what I said. What I meant was, how did Rodas get a match to a Canadian citizen? Our neighbors above the forty-ninth use the CODIS software but maintain their own national repository of DNA data.

“We came up blank in the U.S., so I decided to send the profile north. It’s not uncommon. Hardwick is less than an hour’s drive from the border.” Rodas pointed at the report I was holding. “That’s from the Canadian National DNA Data Bank.”

I knew that. In the course of my work at the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médicine legale in Montreal, I’d seen dozens of these reports. The pseudoephedrine and oxymetazoline I’d taken for my cold were short-circuiting my ability to articulate clearly. “How did you make the connection to me?” I clarified.

“The hit was in Canada, so it seemed logical to start there. I have a buddy at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He ran the name and found an Anique Pomerleau who fit the identifiers. Pomerleau is wanted by the Sûreté du Québec on a warrant dating to 2004.”

“Hold on. You’re saying that five years after the Canadians are looking for this chick, she leaves DNA on a dead kid in Vermont?” Tinker, king of compassion.

“The lead detective still works there, but apparently, he went AWOL recently.” Rodas gave a wry smile. “I got the feeling that was a story in itself.”

I felt a soft pulsing in my wrist. Stared at the delicate blue vein worming under my skin.

“No one remembered much about the perp or the case. But a coroner hooked me up with a pathologist who’s been around forever. Pierre LaManche.

“LaManche told me Pomerleau was a suspect in the deaths of several young girls. Said her accomplice was a guy named Neal Wesley Catts. Back in ’04, Catts either shot himself or Pomerleau killed him. Then she vanished.

“I told LaManche about the DNA found on Nellie Gower’s hand and about the VICAP match to your unsolved here in Charlotte. He advised me to contact Dr. Brennan.”

Anique Pomerleau.

The monster.

The only one who ever got away.

I kept my face blank. My eyes focused on the vessel snaking my flesh.

“You’re thinking Pomerleau did both Gower and the Nance kid.” Tinker, again stating the obvious.

“I think it’s a possibility.”

“Where’s she been all this time?”

“We sent out a BOLO.” Be on the lookout. “So did the SQ, though I didn’t feel a lot of love there. Can’t really blame them. It’s been ten years. Pomerleau’s maybe dead, maybe using an alias, and the only pic they have dates to 1989.”

I remembered. It was the only photo we had. Taken when Pomerleau was around fifteen.

“So. After Montreal, Pomerleau goes to ground for three years, then resurfaces and grabs a kid in Vermont.” From his tone, I knew Slidell was rolling the theory past his own ears.

“Last I checked, North Carolina’s a few miles from the tundra,” Tinker said. “How’d Pomerleau end up here?” When no one responded, he pressed on. “DNA links this Pomerleau to the Gower kid. But what links Gower to Nance? I said it before, and I’ll say it again. It’s sad, but kids are murdered every day. What makes you so sure we’re looking at one doer?”

The pressure in my sinuses suddenly felt explosive. Discreetly, I pressed a hand to one cheek. My skin was fiery hot. Was the virus upping the ante? Or was it the shock of what I was hearing?

As I reached for a tissue to blow my nose, Rodas ticked off points, beginning with his right thumb. “Both victims were female. Both were eleven to fourteen years of age. Both vanished during daylight from a public road—a highway, a city street. Both were left on the surface in an unprotected setting—a quarry, a field. Both bodies were lying faceup, with arms and legs straight, hair carefully arranged.”