“Angela Robinson went missing on December 9, 1985. Marie-Jo?lle Bastien on April 24, 1994. Manon Violette on October 25, 1994.”
I scribbled each date beside the appropriate name.
“Did you write that?”
“I did.”
“Were there any others?”
“A girl’s name was written in a journal found at Pomerleau’s house. But we learned nothing about her, and no remains were ever found.”
“Do I have your full attention?”
“You do.”
Ryan and I exchanged glances, both at a loss.
“Nellie Gower was abducted in Vermont on October 18, 2007. Lizzie Nance in Charlotte on April 17, 2009. Tia Estrada in Salisbury on December 2, 2012. Add that to your notes.”
I started another two-column list.
“Now read what you’ve written.”
Ryan and I got it in the same instant.
“Sonofabitch.” I couldn’t help myself.
“There’s never call to be vulgar, sweetheart. But I think you understand what I’m saying.”
“Each of the later victims disappeared exactly one week before the date on which an earlier victim was taken.”
“Yes.” Breathy.
“You’re suggesting Pomerleau is reenacting previous abductions?”
“I have no idea of her motivation. Or why she’s now killing these poor little lambs.”
“Mama, I—”
“There was one survivor, a girl held five years in the cellar. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“She was a minor, so her identity was to remain secret. But it wasn’t hard to find the name.” Pause. “Tawny McGee.”
I said nothing.
“By tracking backward, I was able to establish the date of her disappearance. February 13, 1999.”
I looked at Ryan. He nodded confirmation.
A muffled voice buzzed in the background. Mama shushed someone, probably her nurse.
“Listen, Mama. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we can discuss—”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ll continue your pursuit.”
The voice buzzed again. The air went thick, as though the phone had been covered with a palm or pressed to a chest. Then three beeps told me the call had ended.
I looked up at Ryan. He was staring at the tablet.
I read the scribbled names and dates. Pictured the skeletons arranged on the tables in my Montreal lab.
Angela Robinson had been Neal Wesley Catts’s first victim, taken in California in 1985, well before his deadly partnership with Anique Pomerleau. Catts had transported Robinson’s remains to the East Coast, buried them in Vermont, then dug them up and reburied them, eventually, in the pizza parlor basement in Montreal.
Marie-Jo?lle Bastien, an Acadian from New Brunswick, was sixteen when she traveled to Montreal to celebrate spring break. She disappeared from rue Sainte-Catherine, on the city’s east side, following a movie and dinner with cousins. My skeletal analysis suggested she’d died soon after her abduction.
Manon Violette was fifteen when she was last seen in la ville souterraine, Montreal’s underground city. She bought boots, ate poutine, called her mother, then vanished. Her bones suggested she’d survived several years.
Tawny McGee was the only captive alive at the time of the 2004 raid. She’d been taken in 1999 at the age of twelve.
McGee visited me once following her rescue. Though reluctant, a social services psychiatrist had agreed to McGee’s request to come to my office.
I pictured the serious little face under the crooked beret. The clenched hands and somber voice. Managed not to wince at the memory.
“You’re not kidding. Your mom is good.” Ryan’s voice cut into my thoughts.
“You think the connections are real?”
“Three matches would be one hell of a coincidence.”
“Shelly Leal vanished on November twenty-first. If Mama is right, is Pomerleau memorializing some kid we don’t even know about?”
Ryan looked equally troubled by the thought.
“According to a statement Pomerleau gave the ER doctors in ’04, Catts grabbed her when she was fifteen,” I said.
“She was living on her own and not reported missing, so we may never know the exact date she was taken.”