Deja Dead Page 0,6

over the air.

“Claudel,” it said, sounding irritated.

Constable Groulx handed me the mike. I identified myself and gave my location. “I’ve got a homicide here,” I said. “Probable body dump. Probable female. Probable decapitation. You’d better get recovery out here right away.”

There was a long pause. No one was finding this good news.

“Pardon?”

I repeated what I’d said, asking Claudel to pass the word along to Pierre LaManche when he called the morgue. There would be nothing for the archaeologists this time.

I returned the mike to Groulx, who’d been listening to every word. I reminded him to get a full report from the two workers. He looked like a man who’d just been sentenced to ten to twenty. He knew he wouldn’t be going anywhere for some time. I wasn’t terribly sympathetic. I wouldn’t be sleeping in Quebec City this weekend. In fact, as I drove the few short blocks to my condo, I suspected that no one would be sleeping much for a long time. As things turned out, I was right. What I couldn’t know then was the full extent of the horror we were about to face.

2

THE NEXT DAY BEGAN AS WARM AND SUNNY AS ITS PREDECESSOR, A fact that would normally draw me into high spirits. I am a woman whose moods are influenced by the weather, my outlook rising and falling with the barometer. But that day the weather would be irrelevant. By 9 A.M. I was already in autopsy room 4, the smallest of the suites at the Laboratoire de Médecine Légale, and one that is specially outfitted for extra ventilation. I often work here since most of my cases are less than perfectly preserved. But it’s never fully effective. Nothing is. The fans and disinfectants never quite win over the smell of ripened death. The antiseptic gleam of the stainless steel never really eradicates the images of human carnage.

The remains recovered at Le Grand Séminaire definitely qualified for room 4. After a quick dinner the previous evening, I’d gone back to the grounds and we’d processed the site. The bones were at the morgue by 9:30 P.M. Now they lay in a body bag on a gurney to my right. Case #26704 had been discussed at the morning staff meeting. Following standard procedure, the body had been assigned to one of the five pathologists working at the lab. Since the corpse was largely skeletonized, the little soft tissue that remained far too decomposed for standard autopsy, my expertise was requested.

One of the autopsy technicians had called in sick this morning, leaving us shorthanded. Bad timing. It’d been a busy night: a teenage suicide, an elderly couple found dead in their home, and a car fire victim charred beyond recognition. Four autopsies. I’d offered to work alone.

I was dressed in green surgical scrubs, plastic goggles, and latex gloves. Fetching. I’d already cleaned and photographed the head. It would be X-rayed this morning, then boiled to remove the putrefied flesh and brain tissue so that I could do a detailed examination of the cranial features.

I’d painstakingly examined the hair, searching for fibers or other trace evidence. As I separated the damp strands, I couldn’t help imagining the last time the victim had combed it, wondering if she’d been pleased, frustrated, indifferent. Good hair day. Bad hair day. Dead hair day.

Suppressing these thoughts, I bagged the sample and sent it up to biology for microscopic analysis. The plunger and plastic bags had also been turned over to the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires where they’d be checked for prints, traces of bodily fluids, or other minuscule indicators of killer or victim.

Three hours on our hands and knees the previous night feeling through mud, combing through grass and leaves, and turning over rocks and logs had yielded nothing else. We’d searched until darkness closed us down, but came away empty. No clothing. No shoes. No jewelry. No personal effects. The crime scene recovery team would return to dig and sift today, but I doubted they’d find anything. I would have no manufacturer’s tags or labels, no zippers or buckles, no jewelry, no weapons or bindings, no slashes or entrance holes in clothing to corroborate my findings. The body had been dumped, naked and mutilated, stripped of everything that linked it to a life.

I returned to the body bag for the rest of its grisly contents, ready to start my preliminary examination. Later, the limbs and torso would be cleaned, and I would do a complete analysis of all the bones.