Death Du Jour (22 page)

At eight-thirty I carried Birdie to the car, Pete following with the paraphernalia. My cat travels with more baggage than I do.

As I opened the door Pete placed his hand over mine.

“You’re sure you don’t want to stay?”

He tightened his fingers and, with the other hand, gently stroked my hair.

Did I? His touch felt so good, and dinner had seemed so normal, so comfortable. I felt something inside me start to melt.

Think, Brennan. You’re tired. You’re horny. Get your ass home.

“What about Judy?”

“A temporary disturbance in the cosmic order.”

“I don’t think so, Pete. We’ve been over this. I enjoyed the dinner.”

He shrugged and dropped his hands.

“You know where I live,” he said, and walked back to the house.

*   *   *

I’ve read that there are ten trillion cells in the human brain. All of mine were awake that night, engaged in frenzied communication on one topic: Pete.

Why
hadn’t
I used my key?

Boundaries, the cells agreed. Not the old “here’s a line in the dirt, don’t cross it” challenge, but the establishing of new territorial limits, both real and symbolic.

Why the breakup at all? There was a time I wanted nothing more than to marry Pete and live with him the rest of my life. What had changed between the me then and the me now? I was very young when I married, but was the me in the making so very different from the me today? Or had the two Petes diverged course? Had the Pete I married been so irresponsible? So unreliable? Had I once thought that was part of his charm?

You are starting to sound like a Sammy Cahn song, the cells piped up.

What along the way had led to our present separateness? What choices had we made? Would we make those choices now? Was it me? Pete? Fate? What had gone wrong? Or had it gone right? Was I now on a new but correct path, the road of my marriage having led as far as it was going to take me?

Tough ones, the brain cells said.

Did I still want to sleep with Pete?

A unanimous yes from the cells.

But it’s been a lean year for sex, I argued.

Interesting choice of words, the id guys pointed out. Lean. No meat. Implies hunger.

There was that lawyer in Montreal, I protested.

That’s not it, the higher centers said. That guy hardly jiggled the needle. The voltage is in the red zone with this one.

There’s no arguing with the brain when it’s in that mood.

W
EDNESDAY MORNING
I
HAD JUST ARRIVED AT THE
university when my office phone rang. Ryan’s voice took me by surprise.

“I don’t want a weather report,” he said by way of greeting.

“Low sixties and I’m wearing sunblock.”

“You really do have a vicious streak, Brennan.”

I said nothing.

“Let’s talk about St-Jovite.”

“Go ahead.” I picked up a pen and began drawing triangles.

“We’ve got names on the four in back.”

I waited.

“It was a family. Mother, father, and twin baby boys.”

“Hadn’t we already figured that out?”

I heard the rustle of paper.

“Brian Gilbert, age twenty-three, Heidi Schneider, age twenty, Malachy and Mathias Gilbert, age four months.”

I connected my base series to a set of secondary triangles.

“Most women would be impressed with my detecting.”

“I’m not most women.”

“Are you pissed off at me?”

“Should I be?”

I unclenched my molars and filled my lungs with air. For a long time he didn’t reply.

“Bell Canada was unhurried as usual, but the phone records finally came on Monday. The only nonlocal number called during the past year was to an eight-four-three area code.”

I stopped in mid-triangle.

“Seems you’re not the only one whose heart’s in Dixie.”

“Cute.”

“Old times there are not forgotten.”

“Where?”

“Beaufort, South Carolina.”

“Are you on the level?”

“The old lady was a great dialer, then the calls stopped last winter.”

“Where was she calling?”

“It’s probably a residence. The local sheriff’s going to check it out today.”

“That’s where this young family lived?”

“Not exactly. The Beaufort link started me thinking. The calls were pretty regular, then they stopped on December twelfth. Why? That’s about three months before the fire. Something kept bugging me about that. The three-month part. Then I remembered. That’s how long the neighbors said the couple and the babies had been at St-Jovite. You had said the babies were four months old, so I figured maybe those kids were born in Beaufort, and the calls stopped when they arrived in St-Jovite.”

I let him go on.

“I called Beaufort Memorial, but there’d been no twin boys delivered there in the past year. Next I tried the clinics and hit pay dirt. They remembered the mother at . . .” More paper rustling. “. . . Beaufort-Jasper Comprehensive Health Clinic out on Saint Helena. That’s an island.”

“I know that, Ryan.”

“It’s a rural health clinic, mostly black doctors, mostly black patients. I spoke to one of the
OB-GYNS
, and, after the usual patient privacy bullshit, she admitted she treated a prenatal that fit my description. The woman had come in four months pregnant, carrying twins. Her due date was late November. Heidi Schneider. The doctor said she remembered Heidi because she was white, and because of the twins.”

“So she delivered there?”

“No. The other reason the doctor remembered her was because she’d disappeared. The woman kept her appointments through her sixth month, then never went back.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s all she’d give up until I faxed her the autopsy photo. I suspect she’ll be seeing that in her sleep for a while. When she phoned back she was more cooperative. Not that the chart info was all that helpful. Heidi wasn’t exactly forthcoming when she filled out the forms. She listed the father as Brian Gilbert, gave a home address in Sugar Land, Texas, and left the boxes for local address and phone number blank.”

“What’s in Texas?”

“We’re checkin’, ma’am.”

“Don’t start, Ryan.”

“How schooled are the Beaufort boys in blue?”

“I don’t really know them. Anyway, they wouldn’t
have jurisdiction out on Saint Helena. It’s unincorporated, so it’s the sheriff’s turf.”

“Well, we’re going to meet him.”

“We?”

“I’m flying in on Sunday and I could use a local guide. You know, someone who speaks the language, knows local protocol. I have no idea how you eat grits.”

“Can’t do it. Katy’s coming home next week. Besides, Beaufort is perhaps my favorite spot on the planet. If I ever do give you a tour, which I probably won’t, it will not be while you’re taking care of business.”

“Or why.”

“Why what?”

“Why anyone would eat grits.”

“Ask Martha Stewart.”

“Think about it.”

No need. I had as much intention of meeting Ryan in Beaufort as I did of registering myself as an available single person in the People Meeting People section of my local paper.

“What about the two charred bodies upstairs?” Back to St-Jovite.

“We’re still working on it.”

“Has Anna Goyette turned up?”

“No idea.”

“Any developments on Claudel’s homicide?”

“Which one?”

“The scalded pregnant girl.”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“You’ve been a fountain of information. Let me know what you find in Texas.”

I hung up and got myself a Diet Coke. I didn’t know at that point, but it was going to be a phone-intensive day.

All afternoon I worked on a paper I planned to
present at the American Association of Physical Anthropology meetings in early April. I felt the usual stress from having left too much until the last minute.

At three-thirty, as I was sorting photos of CAT scans, the phone rang again.

“You ought to get out more.”

“Some of us work, Ryan.”

“The address in Texas is the Schneider home. According to the parents, who, by the way, aren’t ever going to win Final Jeopardy, Heidi and Brian showed up sometime in August and stayed until the babies were born. Heidi refused prenatal care and delivered at home with a midwife. Easy birth. No problems. Happy grandparents. Then a man visited the couple in early December, and a week later an old lady drove up in a van and they split.”

“Where did they go?”

“The parents have no idea. There was no contact after that.”

“Who was the man?”

“No clue, but they say this guy scared the crap out of Heidi and Brian. After he left they hid the babies and refused to go out of the house until the old lady got there. Papa Schneider didn’t like him much either.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t like his looks. Said he brought to mind a . . . Let me get this exactly.” I could picture Ryan flipping pages in his notebook. “. . . ‘goddam skunk.’ Kinda poetic, don’t you think?”

“Dad’s a regular Yeats. Anything else?”

“Talking to these folks is like talking to my parakeet, but there was one other thing.”

“You have a bird?”

“Mama said Heidi and Brian had been members of
some sort of group. That they’d all been living together. Ready for this?”

“I just swallowed four Valium. Hit me.”

“In Beaufort, South Carolina.”

“That fits.”

“Like O.J.’s Bruno Maglis.”

“What else did they say?”

“Nothing useful.”

“What about Brian Gilbert?”

“He and Heidi met at college two years ago, both dropped out shortly after that. Mama Schneider thought he came from Ohio. She said he talked funny. We’re checking it out. ”

“Did you tell them?”

“Yes.”

For a moment neither of us spoke. Breaking the news of a murder is the worst part of a detective’s job, the one they all dread the most.

“I still could use you in Beaufort.”

“I still am not coming. This is detective work, not forensics.”

“Knowing the hood speeds the process.”

“I’m not sure Beaufort has hoods.”

Ten minutes later the phone rang again.

“
Bonjour,
Temperance.
Comment ça va?
”

LaManche. Ryan had wasted no time, and had argued his case well. Could I possibly help Lieutenant Detective Ryan on the matter in Beaufort? This was a particularly sensitive investigation, and the media were becoming restive. I could bill my time and my expenses would be covered.

The message light came on as we were speaking, indicating I’d missed a call. I promised LaManche I’d see what I could work out, and hung up.

The message was from Katy. Her plans for next week had recrystallized. She’d still come home for the weekend, but then wanted to join friends on Hilton Head Island.

As I sat back to organize, my eyes drifted to the computer screen with its unfinished paper. Katy and I
could
go to Beaufort for the weekend, and I
could
work on it there. Then she’d move on to Hilton Head and I’d stay to help Ryan. LaManche would be happy. Ryan would be happy. And God knew I could use the extra income.

I also had reasons for not going.

Since Ryan’s call an image of Malachy had been floating through my mind. I saw his half-open eyes and mangled chest, his tiny fingers curled in death. I thought of his dead sibling and his dead parents and his grieving grandparents. Thinking about that case plunged me into melancholy, and I wanted to get away from it for a while.

I checked my course syllabi for the next week. I had a film scheduled for Thursday in the human evolution course. I could switch that. Don Johanson would be just as enlightening on Tuesday.

A bone quiz in the osteology course, then open lab. I made a quick call. No problem. Alex would proctor if I organized everything for her.

I checked my agenda book. No more committee meetings this month. After tomorrow, no student appointments until late the following week. How could there be? I was sure I’d seen every student in the university yesterday.

It could work.

And the real truth was I had a duty to help if I could. No matter how small the contribution. I couldn’t bring
color back to Malachy’s cheeks, or close the terrible wound in his chest. And I couldn’t erase the older Schneiders’ pain, or give them back their child and grandchildren. But I just might be able to help rein in the psychopathic mutant who had killed them. And maybe save a future Malachy.

If you’re going to do this kind of work, Brennan, just do it.

I phoned Ryan and told him he could have me Monday and Tuesday. I’d let him know where I would stay.

I had another idea, so I made a second call, then dialed Katy. I explained my plan, and she was all for it. She’d meet me at home on Friday and we’d go down in my car.

“Go to the health clinic right now and get a TB test,” I told her. “Subdermal, not just the scratch thing. Then have it read on Friday before you leave.”

“Why?”

“Because I have a great idea for your project, and that’s a prerequisite. And while you’re at the clinic get a photocopy of your immunization record.”