Death Du Jour (42 page)

I had to find my sister.

I had to stop the madness that was rolling in like Piedmont thunder.

A
S THE PLANE TOOK OFF
I
CLOSED MY EYES AND
leaned into the seat, too exhausted from another restless night to notice my surroundings. Normally I enjoy feeling the acceleration as I rise and watch the world grow small, but not at that moment. The words of a frightened old man rebounded through my brain.

I stretched, and my foot tapped the package I’d placed beneath the seat. Hand-carried. Always in view. Chain of custody could be important.

Beside me, Ryan flipped through the USAirways magazine. Unable to get a flight from Savannah, he’d driven to Charlotte for the six thirty-five. At the airport he’d elaborated on the statement taken in Texas.

The old man had fled to protect his dog.

Like Kathryn, I thought, afraid for her baby.

“Did he say exactly what they intend to do?” I asked Ryan in a low whisper. The attendant demonstrated seat belts and oxygen.

Ryan shook his head. “The guy’s a zomboid. He was at the ranch because they gave him a place to stay and let him keep his dog. He wasn’t really tuned in to the credo, but he picked up enough.” The magazine dropped to his lap.

“He’s rambling on about cosmic energy and guardian angels and fiery inhalation.”

“Annihilation?”

Ryan shrugged. “He says the people he lives with don’t belong to this world. Seems they’ve been battling the forces of evil and now it’s time to go. Only he couldn’t bring Fido.”

“So he hid under the porch.”

Ryan nodded.

“Who are these forces of evil?”

“He’s not sure.”

“And he can’t say where the righteous are going?”

“North. Remember, Gramps is not at the top of the bell curve.”

“He’s never heard of Dom Owens?”

“No. His troop leader was someone named Toby.”

“No last name.”

“Last names are of this world. But that’s not who frightens him. Apparently Toby and the cocker got along. It’s some woman that scares the shit out of him.”

What had Kathryn said? “It’s not Dom. It’s her.” A face flashed in front of me.

“Who is she?”

“He doesn’t have a name, but he says this chick told Toby that the Antichrist had been destroyed and doomsday was at hand. That’s when the wagon train rolled.”

“And?” I felt numb.

“The dog wasn’t invited.”

“Nothing else?”

“He says the lady is definitely mother superior.”

“Kathryn also spoke of a woman.”

“Name?”

“I didn’t ask. It just didn’t sink in at the time.”

“What else did she say?”

I repeated what I could remember.

Ryan placed a hand on mine.

“Tempe, we really don’t know anything about this Kathryn except that she’s spent her life with the encounter culture. She shows up at your place claiming she found you through the university. You say your address isn’t listed. That same day forty-three of her closest friends take a hike in two states and the lady does her own vanishing act.”

True. Ryan had voiced misgivings about Kathryn earlier.

“You never found out who pulled the cat trick?”

“No.” I withdrew my hand and went to work on the thumbnail.

For a while neither of us spoke. Then I remembered something else.

“Kathryn also made reference to an Antichrist.”

“How?”

“She said Dom didn’t believe in Antichrists.”

Ryan was quiet a long time. Then,

“I talked to the guys who worked the Solar Temple deaths in Canada. Do you know what went down in Morin Heights?”

“Just that five people died. I was in Charlotte, and the American media focused mostly on Switzerland. The Canadian end got very little press.”

“I’ll tell you what happened. Joseph DiMambro sent a team of assassins to kill a baby.” He paused to let that sink in. “Morin Heights was the kickoff for the fireworks overseas. Seems this kid’s birth hadn’t been approved by Big Daddy, so he viewed him as the Antichrist. Once the tyke was dead the faithful were free to make the crossing.”

“Jesus Christ. Do you think Owens really is one of these Solar Temple fanatics?”

Ryan shrugged again. “Or it could be some sort of copycat shuck. It’s hard to know what the Adler Lyons babble means until the psychologists work it out.”

A treatise had been found at the compound on Saint Helena. And a map of Quebec Province.

“But I don’t give a hog’s tit which looney is in the lead if innocent people are trailing along to their deaths. I’m going to catch this bastard and gut him and fry him up myself.”

His jaw muscles bunched as he picked up the magazine.

I closed my eyes and tried to rest, but the images wouldn’t settle.

Harry, buoyant and full of life. Harry in sweats and no makeup.

Sam, unnerved by the invasion of his island.

Malachy. Mathias. Jennifer Cannon. Carole Comptois. A charred cat. The contents of the package at my feet.

Kathryn, eyes pleading. As if I could help her. As if I could take her life and somehow make it better.

Or was Ryan right? Had I been set up? Was Kathryn sent for some sinister purpose of which I was unaware? Was Owens responsible for the slaughtered cat?

Harry had spoken of order. Her life sucked and the order was going to pull her clear. So had Kathryn. She said the order affects everyone. Brian and Heidi had broken it. What order? Cosmic order? An order from on high? The Order of the Solar Temple?

I felt like a moth in a jar, batting against the glass with random thought after random thought, but unable to escape the cognitive restraints of my own jumbled thinking.

Brennan, you’re making yourself crazy! There’s nothing you can do at thirty-seven thousand feet.

I decided to break free by dropping back a hundred years.

I opened my briefcase, pulled out a Bélanger diary, and skipped to December of 1844, hoping the holidays had put Louis-Philippe in a better mood.

The good doctor enjoyed Christmas dinner at the Nicolet house, liked his new pipe, but did not approve of his sister’s plan for a return to the stage. Eugénie had been invited to sing in Europe.

What he lacked in humor, Louis-Philippe made up for in tenacity. His sister’s name was written often in the early months of 1845. He apparently expressed his views frequently. But, much to the doctor’s annoyance, Eugénie would not be dissuaded. She was leaving in April, would do concerts in Paris and Brussels, then spend the summer in France, returning to Montreal at the end of July.

A voice ordered trays and chair backs into full upright and locked position for landing in Pittsburgh.

An hour later, again airborne, I skimmed through the spring of 1845. Louis-Philippe was busy with hospital and city affairs, but made weekly visits to his brother-in-law. Alain Nicolet, it appears, did not travel to Europe with his wife.

I wondered how Eugénie’s tour had gone. Apparently Uncle Louis-Philippe had not, since she was mentioned little during those months. Then an entry caught my eye.

July 17, 1845. Due to irregular circumstances, Eugénie’s stay in France would be prolonged. Arrangements had been made, but Louis-Philippe was vague as to their nature.

I stared at the whiteness outside my window. What “irregular circumstances” had kept Eugénie in France? I calculated. Élisabeth was born in January. Oh, boy.

Throughout the summer and fall Louis-Philippe made only brief reference to his sister. Letter from Eugénie. Doing well.

As our wheels touched pavement at Dorval Airport, Eugénie reappeared. She, too, had returned to Montreal. April 16, 1846. Her baby was three months old.

There it was.

Élisabeth Nicolet was born in France. Alain could not be her father. But who was?

Ryan and I deplaned in silence. He checked his messages while I waited for the baggage. When he returned his face told me the news was not good.

“They found the vans near Charleston.”

“Empty.”

He nodded.

Eugénie and her baby faded into another century.

*   *   *

The sky was nickel and a light rain blew across the headlights as Ryan and I drove east along Highway 20. According to the pilot, Montreal was a balmy thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.

We rode in silence having already agreed on our courses of action. I wanted to rush home, to find my sister and relieve myself of a building sense of foreboding. Instead, I would do as Ryan asked. Then I would pursue a plan of my own.

We parked in the lot at Parthenais and Ryan and I picked our way toward the building. The air smelled of malt from the Molson brewery. Oil filmed the pools of rainwater collecting on the uneven pavement.

Ryan got off on the first floor and I continued to my office on the fifth. After removing my coat, I dialed an inside extension. They’d gotten my message and we could begin as soon as I was ready. I went at once to the lab.

I gathered scalpel, ruler, glue, and a two-foot length of rubber eraser material and set them on my worktable. Then I opened my carry-on package, unwrapped and inspected the contents.

The skull and mandible of the unknown Murtry victim had made the trip undamaged. I often wonder what the airport scanner operators think when my skeletal parts go through. I placed the skull on a cork ring in the middle of the table. Then I squeezed glue into the temporomandibular joint and fixed the jaw in place.

While the Elmer’s dried, I found a chart of facial tissue thicknesses for white American females. When the jaw felt firm I slid the skull onto a holder, adjusted the height, and secured it with clamps. The empty orbits stared directly into my eyes as I measured and cut seventeen tiny rubber cylinders and glued them onto the facial bones.

Twenty minutes later I took the skull to a small room down the corridor. A plaque identified the section as Section d’Imagerie. A technician greeted me and indicated that the system was up and running.

Wasting no time, I placed the skull on a copy stand, captured images of it with a video camera, and sent them to the PC. I evaluated the digitized views on the monitor and chose a frontal orientation. Then, using a stylus and drawing tablet attached to the computer, I connected the rubber markers projecting from the skull. As I directed the crosshairs around the screen a macabre silhouette began to emerge.

When satisfied with the facial contour, I moved on. Using the bony architecture as a guide I sampled eyes, ears, noses, and lips from the program’s database, and fitted predrawn features onto the skull.

Next I tested hair, and added what I thought would be the least distracting style. Knowing nothing of the victim, I decided it was better to be vague than wrong. When I was happy with the components I’d added to the captured cranial image, I used the stylus to blend and shadow to make the reconstruction as lifelike as possible. The whole process took less than two hours.

I leaned back and looked at my work.

A face gazed from the monitor. It had drooping eyes, a delicate nose, and broad, high cheekbones. It was pretty in a robotic, expressionless way. And somehow familiar. I swallowed. Then with a touch of the stylus I modified the hair. Blunt cut. Bangs.

I drew in a breath. Did my reconstruction resemble Anna Goyette? Or had I simply created a generic young female and given the hair a familiar cut?

I returned the hair to the original style and evaluated the likeness. Yes? No? I had no idea.

Finally, I touched a command on the drop-down menu, and four frames appeared on the screen. I compared the series, looking for hints of inconsistency between my merged image and the skull. First, the unaltered cranium and jaw. Next, a peel image, with bare bone on the skull’s left, fleshed features on the right. Third, the face I’d created superimposed in ghostly translucence over bone and tissue markers. Last, the finished facial approximation. I clicked the final image to full screen and stared at it a long time. I still wasn’t sure.

I printed, then stored the image, and hurried to my office. As I left the building I dropped copies of the
sketch on Ryan’s desk. The attached note consisted of two words: Murtry,
Inconnue.
Unknown. I had other things on my mind.

*   *   *

When I climbed out of the taxi the rain had eased, but the temperature had plummeted. Thin membranes were forming on puddles and crystallizing on wires and branches.

The apartment was as dim and still as a crypt. Dropping my coat and bags in the hall, I went directly to the guest room. Harry’s makeup lay scattered across the dresser. Had she used it this morning or last week? Clothes. Boots. Hair dryer. Magazines. My search turned up nothing to indicate where Harry had gone or when she had left.

I’d expected that. What I’d not expected was the alarm that gripped me as I rummaged from room to room.

I checked the machine. No messages.

Calm down. Maybe she phoned Kit.

Negative.

Charlotte?

No word from Harry, but Red Skyler had called there to say he’d contacted the Cult Awareness Network. They had nothing on Dom Owens, but there was a file on Inner Life Empowerment. According to CAN, the outfit was legit. ILE operated in several states, offering insight seminars that were useless but nontoxic. Confront the intimate you and the intimate other. Crap, but probably harmless and I shouldn’t be too concerned. If I wanted more information I could call him or CAN. He left both numbers.