Deja Dead Page 0,90

the data entry people have standard codes for the basics: date of birth, date of death, cause of death, and so on. But for something that’s odd, something that occurs only rarely, they’re pretty much on their own. They make up a code.”

“Like a dismemberment.”

“Right. Someone might call it an amputation, someone else might use the term disjointing, usually they just use the same word the pathologist put in the report. Or they might just enter it as cutting or sawing.”

I looked back at the lists, thoroughly discouraged.

“I tried all of those, and a few others. No go.”

So much for this idea.

“‘Mutilation’ brought up the other really long list.” She waited while I turned to the second page. “That was even worse than ‘dismemberment.’

“Then I tried ‘dismemberment’ in combination with ‘postmortem’ as a limiter, to select out the cases in which the”—she turned her palms upward and made a scratching motion with her fingers, as if trying to tease the word from the air—“the event took place after death.”

I looked up, hopeful.

“All I got was the guy with his dick chopped off.”

“Computer took you literally.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” Another joke that didn’t travel.

“Then I tried ‘mutilation’ in combination with the ‘postmortem’ limiter, and . . .” She reached across the desk and displayed the last printout. “Bango! Is that what you say?”

“Bingo.”

“Bingo! I think this may be what you want. You can ignore some of it, like those drug things where they used acid.” She pointed to several lines she’d penciled out. “Those are probably not what you want.”

I nodded absently, totally absorbed by page three. It listed twelve cases. She’d drawn lines through three of them.

“But I think maybe some of the others might be of interest to you.”

I was hardly hearing her. My eyes had been drifting through the list, but were now riveted on the sixth name down. A tingle of uneasiness passed through me. I wanted to get back to my office.

“Lucie, this is great,” I said. “This is better than I’d hoped for.”

“Anything you can use?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so,” I said, trying to sound casual.

“Do you want me to call these cases up?”

“No. Thanks. Let me look this over, then I think I’d rather pull the complete files.” Let me be wrong on this one, I prayed to myself.

“Bien sûr.”

She took off her glasses and began polishing a lens on the hem of her sweater. Without them she looked incomplete, wrong somehow, like John Denver after he switched to contacts.

“I’d like to know what happens,” she said, the pink rectangles back flanking the bridge of her nose.

“Of course. I’ll tell you if anything breaks.”

As I walked away I heard the wheels of her chair gliding across the tile.

In my office, I laid the printout on my desk and looked at the list. One name stared at me. Francine Morisette-Champoux. Francine Morisette-Champoux. I’d forgotten all about her. Stay cool, I told myself. Don’t jump to conclusions.

I forced myself to go over the other entries. Gagne and Valencia were in there, a pair of drug dealers with a lousy business sense. So was Chantale Trottier. I recognized the name of a Honduran exchange student whose husband had put a shotgun to her face and pulled the trigger. He had driven her from Ohio to Quebec, cut off her hands, and dumped her nearly headless body in a provincial park. As a parting gesture, he’d carved his initials on her breasts. I didn’t recognize the other four cases. They were before 1990, before my time. I went to the central files and pulled them, along with the jacket on Morisette-Champoux.

I stacked the files according to their LML numbers, thus achieving chronological order. I’d go about this systematically. Violating that resolution as soon as I made it, I went right to the Morisette-Champoux folder. Its contents made my anxiety rocket.

22

FRANCINE MORISETTE-CHAMPOUX WAS BEATEN AND SHOT TO DEATH in January 1993. A neighbor had seen her walking her small spaniel around ten one morning. Less than two hours later her husband discovered her body in the kitchen of their home. The dog was in the living room. Its head was never found.

I remembered the case, though I wasn’t involved in the investigation. I’d commuted to the lab that winter, flying north for one week of every six. Pete and I were at each other constantly, so I’d agreed to spend the whole summer of ’93 in Quebec, optimistic the three-month separation might rejuvenate the marriage. Right. The brutality of the attack