Deja Dead Page 0,10

but I couldn’t help it. I knew Claudel’s reputation for avoiding the autopsy room, and I wanted to discomfort him. For a moment he looked trapped. I enjoyed his unease. Grabbing a lab coat from the hook on the door, I hurried down the hall and inserted my key for the elevator. He was silent as we descended. He looked like a man on the way to a prostate exam. Claudel rarely rode this elevator. It stopped only at the morgue.

The body lay undisturbed. I gloved and removed the white sheet. From the corner of my eye I could see Claudel framed in the doorway. He’d entered the room just far enough to be able to say he’d been there. His eyes wandered over the steel countertops, the glass-fronted cabinets with their stock of clear plastic containers, the hanging scale, everything but the body. I’d seen it before. Photographs were no threat. The blood and gore were somewhere else. Distant. The murder scene was a clinical exercise. No problem. Dissect it, study it, solve the puzzle. But place a body on an autopsy table and it was a different matter. Claudel had put his face in neutral, hoping to look calm.

I removed the pubic bones from the water and gently pried them apart. Using a probe, I teased around the edges of the gelatinous sheath that covered the right pubic face. Gradually it loosened its hold and came away. The underlying bone was marked with deep furrows and ridges coursing horizontally across its surface. A sliver of solid bone partially framed the outer margin, forming a delicate and incomplete rim around the pubic face. I repeated the process on the left. It was identical.

Claudel hadn’t moved from the doorway. I carried the pelvis to the Luxolamp, pulled the extensor arm toward me, and pressed the switch. Fluorescent light illuminated the bone. Through the round magnifying glass, details appeared that hadn’t been apparent to the naked eye. I looked at the uppermost curve of each hipbone and saw what I’d been expecting.

“Monsieur Claudel,” I said without looking up. “Look at this.”

He came up behind me, and I moved over to allow him an unobstructed view. I pointed to an irregularity on the upper border of the hip. The iliac crest was in the process of attaching itself when death had occurred.

I set the pelvis down. He continued looking at it, but didn’t touch it. I returned to the body to examine the clavicle, certain of what I’d find. I withdrew the sternal end from the water and began to tease away the tissue. When I could see the joint surface I gestured for Claudel to join me. Wordlessly I pointed to the end of the bone. Its surface was billowy, like the pubic face. A small disk of bone clung to the center, its edges distinct and unfused.

“So?” Sweat beaded his forehead. He was hiding his nervousness with bravado.

“She’s young. Probably early twenties.”

I could have explained how bone reveals age, but I didn’t think he’d be a good listener, so I just waited. Particles of cartilage clung to my gloved hands, and I held them away from my body, palms up, like a panhandler. Claudel kept the same distance he would with an Ebola patient. His eyes stayed on me, but their focus shifted to thoughts inside his head as he ran through the data, looking for a match.

“Gagnon.” It was a statement, not a question.

I nodded. Isabelle Gagnon. Age twenty-three.

“I’ll have the coroner request dental records,” he said.

I nodded again. He seemed to bring it out in me.

“Cause of death?” he asked.

“Nothing apparent,” I said. “I may know more when I see the X rays. Or I may see something on the bones when they’re cleaned.”

With that he left. He didn’t say good-bye. I didn’t expect it. His departure was mutually appreciated.

I stripped off my gloves and tossed them. On the way out I poked my head into the large autopsy suite and told Daniel I was finished with this case for the day. I asked him to take full body and cranial X rays, A-P and lateral views. Upstairs I stopped by the histology lab and told the head technician that the body was ready for boiling, warning him to take extra care since this was a dismemberment. It was unnecessary. No one could reduce a body like Denis. In two days a skeleton would appear, clean and undamaged.

I spent the rest of the afternoon with the glued-together skull.