Deja Dead Page 0,54

care and handling of arrogant detectives.

“You don’t think that’s his real name?”

“If that’s his real name, I’m Margaret Thatcher.”

“So, where are you?”

There was another pause, and I could see him turning his face to the ceiling, deciding how best to rid himself of me.

“I’ll tell you where we are, we’re nowhere. We didn’t get piss all. No dripping weapons. No home movies. No rambling confession notes. No souvenir body parts. Zip.”

“Prints?”

“None usable.”

“Personal effects?”

“The guy’s taste falls somewhere between severe and stark. No decorative touches. No personal effects. No clothes. Oh yeah, one sweatshirt and an old rubber glove. A dirty blanket. That’s it.”

“Why the glove?”

“Maybe he worried about his nails.”

“What do you have?”

“You saw it. His collection of Miss Show Me Your Twangie shots, the map, the newspapers, the clippings, the list. Oh, and some Franco-American spaghetti.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing.”

“No toiletries? Drugstore items?”

“Nada.”

I picked through that for a moment.

“Doesn’t sound like he really lives there.”

“If he does, he’s the filthiest sonofabitch you’ll ever meet. He doesn’t brush his teeth or shave. No soap. No shampoo. No floss.”

I gave that some thought.

“How do you read it?”

“Could be the little freak just uses the place as a hidey-hole for his true crime and porno hobby. Maybe his old lady doesn’t like his taste in art. Maybe she doesn’t let him jack off at home. How should I know?”

“What about the list.”

“We’re checking out the names and addresses.”

“Any in St. Lambert?”

Another pause.

“No.”

“Any more information on how he might have gotten Margaret Adkins’s bank card?”

This time the pause was longer, more palpably hostile.

“Dr. Brennan, why don’t you stick to what you do and let us catch the killers?”

“Is he?” I couldn’t resist asking.

“What?”

“A killer?”

I found myself listening to a dial tone.

I spent what was left of the morning estimating the age, sex, and height of an individual from a single ulna. The bone was found by children digging a fort near Pointe-aux-Trembles, and probably came from an old cemetery.

At twelve-fifteen I went upstairs for a Diet Coke. I brought it back to my office, closed the door, and took out my sandwich and peach. Swiveling to face the river, I encouraged my thoughts to wander. They didn’t. Like a Patriot missile, they homed in on Claudel.

He still rejected the idea of a serial killer. Could he be right? Could the similarities be coincidental? Could I be manufacturing associations that weren’t there? Could St. Jacques merely have a grotesque interest in violence? Of course. Movie producers and publishing houses make millions off the same theme. Maybe he wasn’t a killer himself, maybe he just charted the murders or played some kind of voyeuristic tracking game. Maybe he found Margaret Adkins’s bank card. Maybe he stole it before her death and she hadn’t yet missed it. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

No. It didn’t tally. If not St. Jacques, there was someone out there responsible for several of these deaths. At least some of the murders were linked. I didn’t want to wait for another butchered body to prove me right.

What would it take to convince Claudel I wasn’t a dimwit with an overactive imagination? He resented my involvement in his territory, thought I was overstepping my bounds. He’d told me to stick to what I do. And Ryan. What had he said? Potholes. Not enough. Find stronger evidence of a link.

“All right, Claudel, you sonofabitch, that’s exactly what you’ll get.”

I said it aloud, snapping my chair into full upright position and tossing my peach pit into the wastebasket.

So.

What do I do?

I dig up bodies. I look at bones.

13

IN THE HISTOLOGY LAB I ASKED DENIS TO PULL OUT CASES 25906-93 and 26704-94. I cleared the table to the right of the operating scope and placed my clipboard and pen. I took out two tubes of vinyl polysiloxane and positioned them, along with a small spatula, a tablet of coated papers, and a digital caliper accurate to .0001 inch.

Denis placed two cardboard boxes on the end of the table, one large and one small, each sealed and carefully labeled. I eased the lid from the larger box, selected portions of Isabelle Gagnon’s skeleton, and laid them out on the right half of the table.

Next I opened the smaller box. Though Chantale Trottier’s body had been returned to her family for burial, segments of bone had been retained as evidence, a standard procedure in homicide cases involving skeletal injury or mutilation.

I removed sixteen Ziploc bags and put them on the left side of the table. Each was marked as to body part and