Bones to Ashes (23 page)

Focus, I thought, arranging bones on the autopsy table.

Lisa shot stills as I worked through my analysis.

The child’s cranial and facial features indicated Caucasoid ancestry.

Fusion of the ischial and pubic pelvic rami suggested an age over eight. Absence of a tiny round bone at the base of the thumb, a sesamoid, suggested prepubescence. Long-bone development suggested a range of nine to ten years.

Sex assessment is imprecise with children. Though the clothing and pigtails pointed to female gender, I left that part of the biological profile blank.

Bergeron phoned as I was making final notes. He was upstairs and had Anne Girardin’s antemortem records. The dentals were a match.

No surprise.

It was almost ten when I finally got home. After I showered, Harry and I ate Thai from the corner restaurant, then I excused myself. She understood and did not press.

Again, my brain resisted sleep. When I finally drifted off, it was into a landscape of disjointed dreams. Anne Girardin. Évangéline. The skeleton from Sheldrake Island, Hippo’s girl. Pawleys Island. Ryan.

Then I was awake. I checked the clock. Two-forty. I closed my eyes. Checked again. Three-ten. Three-fifty.

At four, I gave up. Throwing back the covers, I went to the kitchen and brewed a cup of jasmine tea. Then I booted my laptop and began researching Sheldrake Island.

Dawn lit the shade when I finally sat back. Stunned. Appalled. Certain of two things.

Sheldrake Island was, indeed, Île-aux-Becs-Scies. Hippo’s girl had suffered a hideous death.

I
SUSPECT LACK OF SLEEP MUDDLED MY THINKING.

Or maybe it was Pete’s early morning call about grounds. And filing papers. And young Summer’s inability to find a caterer.

Or maybe Hippo’s shocker.

In looking back, there’s always the mental cringe. The suspicion that I could have done better.

After speaking with Pete, I woke Harry and explained what I’d learned on the Net. Then I apologized for abandoning her again.

I need to be certain, I said.

We could be back to square one, she said.

Yes, I agreed.

Harry went shopping. I went to the lab.

It took only an hour with the skeleton. The diagnosis seemed so obvious now. How could I have been so dense about the lesions?

It’s the horror of other places, other times, I told myself. Not twentieth-century North America.

True. Nevertheless, a sorry defense.

When I’d finished with the bones, I logged onto my computer, wanting to arm myself fully for the upcoming conversation with Hippo. I was closing the Web browser when a
ping
told me a new e-mail had landed.

Contacting a government office on a weekend is like phoning the Pope on Easter morning. Curious who’d e-mailed on a Saturday, I clicked over to my in-box.

I didn’t recognize the sender: [email protected].

When I opened the message, icy-hot barbs shot through my chest.

Temperance:
Staring your severed head in the face
…
Death. Fate. Mutilation.

A photo had been inserted below the text.

Thursday night. Harry and I, backlit by the bulbs at Milos’s entrance.

I stared at the photo, breath stuck in my throat. It wasn’t only the shock of seeing myself. Or the idea that I’d been watched by a stranger. Something was off. Wrong.

Then it registered.

Harry’s head was on my body, mine on hers.

My gaze drifted to the italicized line in the message. Poetry? Lyrics?

I did another browser search using the words “death,” “fate,” and “mutilation.” Every link pointed me the same way.

Death was a heavy metal band formed in 1983, disbanded in 1999. Its founder, Chuck Schuldiner, was considered the father of the death metal genre. The group’s
Fate
album was released in ’92. One cut was titled “Mutilation.”

When I brought up the lyrics, my pulse jackhammered. The line from the e-mail was there. And the refrain. Over and over.

You must die in pain.

Mutilation.

Jesus Christ! Where was Harry?

I tried her cell. She didn’t answer. I left a message. Call me.

Who was this creep, [email protected]?

Same gut reaction I’d had to the phone call.

Cheech?

Same line of questions.

Alpha male courtship? Threat? Why?

And then I was angry.

Pulling air into my lungs, I punched Fernand Colbert’s number. He answered.

“Working on Saturday?” I asked.

“Got a wiretap in place.”

I knew not to ask details. “Hope my request isn’t jamming you up.”

“
Mais non.
And I need the barbecue sauce.”

“Any luck with the trace?”

“Yes and no.”

“Well, then.”

“Let me explain. Phone companies track everything going in or out of a landline, with the possible exception of local calls that are handled within the same switcher. This is also true of cell phones.”

“This is the yes part.”

“Yes. Here’s how a cell call to a landline works. You dial a number on your mobile. It calls the closest tower. Using the same technology as your caller ID, it says, ‘I’m Tempe’s phone and I want to call 1-2-3-4-5.’ The tower sends your call to the MTSO, the central Mobile Telephone Switching Office, which connects to the land-based phone system. You with me?”

“So far. I have a feeling you’re getting to the no part.”

“The MTSO connects with the landline’s main exchange, which sends the call to the main exchange serving your destination. From there your call goes to the destination’s local exchange and then to the destination phone.

“At every stop your phone’s identification is logged because everybody who touches the call wants to get paid. Your number is not only associated with you but also with your carrier. The kicker is, all your information isn’t kept in one place, and companies won’t release it without a subpoena and reimbursement of the cost of looking it all up.

“The other kicker is that with some wireless services, you don’t need to provide any ID, much less valid ID, to start the service.”

“And any mope can buy a convenience store throwaway mobile.”

“Exactly. Having the phone number doesn’t help if you don’t know who owns the phone.”

“My mope called from a cell phone bought at a Wal-Mart,” I guessed.

“Or Costco or Kmart or Pop’s Dollarama. If it’s really important, we could find out where the phone was purchased, then check the store’s surveillance cameras, maybe nail the guy that way.”

“No. That’s a bit extreme at this point. But I have another request.”

“It’ll cost you a case.”

“You’ve got it, barbecue boy.”

I described the e-mail, but not the contents.

“Same jerk?”

“I’m not sure. Probably.”

“He threatening you?”

“Not overtly.”

“If the guy’s that canny with the phone, it’s probably pointless to try to track him through e-mail.”

“I thought you might say that.”

“Scenario. Guy drives around with a laptop equipped with a wireless card, lets it detect networks. When he finds one that’s unsecured, he sets up a Hotmail account using false information. Sends e-mail. Shuts down his laptop and drives away.”

“You can just sit in a car using another person’s network?”

“
Oui.
The originating IP address belongs to someone who probably doesn’t even have logging to show there was another user on his network. Some geeks do it for sport. Call it wardriving, even if they’re on foot. They wander around looking for vulnerable wifi networks, sometimes make directional antennas out of Pringles cans. You can buy pens that flash green when you’re within thirty feet of a signal.”

Great. Something else to worry about.

“Here’s another trick,” Colbert said. “Many hotels have wireless networks they leave open so they don’t have to train the guests how to log in with a Service Set Identifier, or SSID, which can be up to thirty-two characters long. With a closed system the user has to key in, but with an open system the SSID is broadcast to all wireless devices within range. So if you pull into a parking lot between a couple of airport hotels, you can probably log into their wireless network completely anonymously.”

“Discouraging.”

“Yeah. But I’m game to give it a shot.”

Thanking Colbert, I disconnected.

OK. Time to bring Ryan into the loop.

Instead, I phoned Hippo.

He answered immediately. So much for weekend leisure in the glam world of law enforcement.

“I have news on the skeleton from Rimouski,” I said.

“Yeah? I’ve been buried in these freakin’ cabinets so long, Gaston’s problem’s gone out of my head.”

“Agent Tiquet got the bones from the Whalen brothers, who bought them at Jerry O’Driscoll’s pawnshop in Miramichi. O’Driscoll purchased them from Tom Jouns, who claimed to have dug them from a Native burial ground.”

“Sounds like one of those road rallies where you follow clues.” Hippo slurped like he was chewing a caramel.

“O’Driscoll said the cemetery was on an island. I found the name Île-aux-Becs-Scies written on the girl’s skull.”

“Yeah, I remember you asking about
becs scies
.”

“Île-aux-Becs-Scies is now called Sheldrake Island.”

Hippo said something indecipherable.

“Are you eating caramels?”

“Taffy.”

“Sheldrake is a thirty-two-acre island located in the Miramichi River, about eight miles east of Chatham. In the early nineteenth century the place served as a quarantine station for newly arriving immigrants. In 1844, the New Brunswick government turned Sheldrake into a leper colony.”

All mastication stopped. “Say what?”

“There was an outbreak of leprosy in the province.”

“Like in the Bible? People with fingers and toes falling off?”

“In some cases. Leprosy is caused by the
Mycobacterium leprae
bacillus. It’s now called Hansen’s disease.”

“There were lepers in New Brunswick?”

“Yes, Hippo. New Brunswick.”

“How come I never heard of that?”

“There’s a lot of stigma attached to leprosy. More so in those days. Many said lepers brought the disease on themselves through sin or lack of cleanliness. Entire families were shunned. People were reluctant to talk about it. When they did, they called it
la maladie
.”

“When did this happen?”

“The first cases appeared around 1820. During the next two decades more and more people began showing symptoms, at first within families, later among neighbors. Seven died. Public health officials began to panic.”

“No shit.”

“Keep in mind, leprosy is one of the most feared of all diseases. It’s been around for thousands of years, causes disfigurement, and, until the 1940s, had no known cure. Back then, no one even knew if leprosy was contagious.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, but the mechanism is unclear. For many years, transmission was attributed to long-term contact between affected and healthy persons. Today, most researchers think the bacterium is spread through respiratory droplets. Like tuberculosis.”

“So it
is
dangerous to be around lepers?”

“Leprosy is neither fatal nor highly infectious. It’s a chronic condition communicable only to persons with a genetic predisposition, probably about five percent of the population. But that wasn’t known in the nineteenth century.”

“So they banished people?”

“In 1844, the New Brunswick government passed legislation mandating the isolation of anyone showing symptoms of leprosy. A board of health was named and authorized to visit, examine, and remove from their homes people suspected of being infected. Sheldrake was chosen because there were a few ramshackle buildings on the island.”

“Like that place in Hawaii.”

“Molokai. Yes. Only Sheldrake was worse. The sick were abandoned with little food, only crude shelter, and virtually no medical care. The colony existed for five years. Of the thirty-seven patients admitted, fifteen died and were buried on the island.”

“
What happened to the rest?”

“A handful escaped. One was a ten-year-old kid.”

Barnabé Savoie. His story had almost made me cry. Terrified, the child had fled Sheldrake for the only haven he knew. Home. Barnabé was taken from his father at gunpoint, bound with ropes, and hauled back to the island.

“They put kids out there?”

“Many. Babies were born on Sheldrake.”

“
Crétaque!
These escapees, they get caught?”

“Most were rounded up and returned to the island. After that, even worse restrictions were imposed. All the sick were confined to one building, boundaries were set around it, and time was limited for fresh air and exercise. An armed guard was hired to enforce the new regulations.”

An image flashed in my head. Children with twisted features and rag-wrapped fingers. Coughing. Weeping for their mothers. I willed it away.

“What about the others, the ones that survived?”

“I’m not sure what happened to them. I’m going to do more research.”

“What’s this got to do with Gaston’s skeleton?”

“The girl had leprosy.”

I heard rattling. Pictured Hippo switching ears, considering the implications of my statement.

“You’re saying the kid died a hundred and sixty years ago?”

“It looks that way.”

“So that’s the end of it.”

“I know an archaeologist on faculty at UNB in Fredericton. Once the remains have been officially cleared for release, I can give her a call.”

Something banged, then a voice called out in the background.

“Hold on.”

The connection muffled as Hippo must have pressed the phone to his chest. When he reengaged, his voice was jazzed.

“You still there?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t believe this.”

“S
OMEONE POPPED OUR FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHER.”

“Cormier?”

“Body was spotted early this morning behind a warehouse near the Marché Atwater. Two slugs to the back of the head. Ryan just left the scene. Says Cormier was capped elsewhere, then dumped. Time line points to sometime after midnight.”