three nights earlier.
“Location. Location. Location,” I said to the empty lab.
“Pardon?”
I hadn’t heard Denis come in.
“Something a realtor once told me.”
“Oui?”
“It isn’t what something is, so much as where it is that often shapes our reaction.”
He looked blank.
“Never mind. You took soil samples before you washed this?”
“Oui.” He held up two small plastic vials.
“Let’s get them over to trace.”
He nodded.
“Have X rays been done?”
“Oui. I just gave the bitewings and apicals to Dr. Bergeron.”
“He’s here on a Monday?”
“He’s going on holiday for two weeks so he came to finish some reports.”
“Happy day.” I put the skull in a plastic tub. “Ryan thinks he’s got a name.”
“Ah, oui?” His eyebrows shot up.
“He must have been up with the birds today. The message was taken by the night service.”
“For the St. Lambert skeleton or for your chum there?”
He indicated the skull. Apparently the story had already made the rounds.
“Maybe both. I’ll let you know.”
I headed for my office, stopping by Bergeron’s on the way. He’d spoken with Ryan. The detective had found a missing person match promising enough to request a mandat du coroner for the antemortem records, and was on his way.
“Know anything about her?”
“Rien.” Nothing.
“I’ll finish with the skull before lunch. If you need it, just come by.”
I spent the next two hours assessing the sex, race, and age of the skull. I observed features of the face and braincase, took measurements, and ran discriminant functions on my computer. We agreed. The skull was that of a white female. Like the St. Lambert skeleton.
Age was frustrating. All I had to go on was closure of the cranial sutures, a notoriously untrustworthy system for evaluating age. The computer couldn’t help. I estimated she’d been in her late twenties to mid-thirties when she died. Maybe forty. Again, consistent with the bones from St. Lambert.
I looked for other indicators of congruity. Overall size. Robusticity of muscle attachments. Degree of arthritic change. Condition of the bone. State of preservation. Everything matched. I was convinced this was the head missing from the Monastère St. Bernard skeleton, but I needed more. Then I turned the skull over and examined the base.
Coursing across the occipital bone, close to the point where the skull sits on the vertebral column, I could see a series of slashes. They were V-shaped in cross-section and ran from high to low, following the contour of the bone. Under the Luxolamp they looked similar to the marks I’d observed on the long bones. I wanted to be sure.
I took the skull back to the histo lab, set it next to the operating scope, and got out the headless skeleton. I withdrew the sixth cervical vertebra, placed it under the scope, and reexamined the cuts I’d described the week before. Then I switched to the skull, focusing on the gashes scoring its back and base. The marks were identical, the contours and cross-sectional dimensions matching perfectly.
“Grace Damas.”
I switched off the fiber-optic light and turned toward the voice.
“Qui?”
“Grace Damas,” repeated Bergeron. “Age thirty-two. According to Ryan, she went missing in February of ’92.”
I calculated. Two years and four months. “That fits. Anything else?”
“I really didn’t ask. Ryan said he’d stop in after lunch. He’s tracking something else down.”
“Does he know the ID’s positive?”
“Not yet. I just finished.” He looked at the bones. “Anything?”
“They’re a match. I want to see what the trace evidence folks have to say about the soil samples. Maybe we can get a pollen profile. But I’m convinced. Even the cut marks are the same. I wish I had the upper neck vertebrae, but it’s not critical.”
Grace Damas. All through lunch the name echoed in my head. Grace Damas. Number five. Or was it? How many more would we find? Each of the names was burned into my mind, like a brand on a heifer’s rump. Morisette-Champoux. Trottier. Gagnon. Adkins. Now another. Damas.
At one-thirty Ryan came to my office. Bergeron had already given him the positive on the skull. I told him it was good for the skeleton as well.
“What do you know about her?” I asked.
“She was thirty-two. Three kids.”
“Christ.”
“Good mother. Faithful wife. Active in the church.” He glanced at his notes. “St. Demetrius, over on Hutchison. Near Avenue du Parc and Fairmont. Sent the kids off to school one day. Never seen again.”
“Husband?”
“Looks clean.”
“Boyfriend?”
He shrugged. “It’s a very traditional Greek family. If you don’t talk about it, those things can’t be true. She was a good girl. Lived for her husband. They’ve got a friggin’ shrine set up for her