Here’s how the place works.
For almost twenty years I have served as forensic anthropologist for the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médicine legale, the central crime and medico-legal lab for the province of Quebec. Charlotte, North Carolina? Montreal? Right. The commute is a bitch. A story for another time.
The LSJML occupies the top two floors of Wilfrid-Derome, twelve and thirteen. The Bureau du coroner has ten and eleven. The morgue and autopsy suites are in the basement.
Ryan is a lieutenant-détective with the provincial police, the S?reté du Québec. The SQ has the rest of the building.
After entering the front doors, we swiped our security cards and passed through thunk-thunk metal gates. Ryan took an elevator to the Services des Enquêtes sur les crimes contre la personne, located on the second floor. I waited for the restricted LSJML/Coroner elevator.
I ascended with a dozen others mumbling “Bonjour” and “Comment ?a va?” At that hour, “Good morning” and “How’s it going?” are equally perfunctory no matter the language.
A woman from ballistics asked if I’d just come from the Carolinas. I said I had. She queried the weather. When I answered, my fellow passengers groaned.
Five of us exited on the twelfth floor. After crossing a marble-floored lobby, I swiped a different security card, then swiped it again to pass into the medico-legal wing. The board showed only two pathologists present, Jean Morin and Pierre LaManche, the chief. The others were testifying, teaching, or absent on personal leave.
Continuing along the corridor, I passed pathology and histology labs on my left, pathologists’ offices on my right. Through observation windows and open doors, I could see secretaries booting up computers, techs flipping dials, scientists and analysts donning lab coats. All the world slamming down coffee.
The anthropology/odontology lab was last in the row. There I used an old-fashioned key to enter.
My previous visit had been almost a month earlier. My desk was mounded with letters, flyers, and ads. A packet of prints from a Division d’identité judiciaire photographer. A copy of Voir Dire, the LSJML gossip sheet. One demande d’expertise en anthropologie form.
After removing my copious outerwear, I skimmed the anthropology consult request. Bones had been found in a farmer’s field near Saint-Chrysostome. If the remains were human, LaManche wanted a full bio-profile, estimated PMI, and trauma analysis.
Inwardly groaning, I walked to the side counter and opened a brown paper bag stamped with SQ identifiers. The contents included a partial tibia, a phalange, and one rib. Nothing human in the lot. That was why LaManche hadn’t phoned me in Charlotte. He knew. But perfectionist that he was, the old man had held the bones for my evaluation.
After getting coffee, I returned to the lab and dug three dossiers from a gray metal filing cabinet around the corner from my desk. LSJML-38426, LSJML-38427, LSJML-38428. The numbering system was different, but the covers were the same neon yellow as at the MCME.
I began by studying the pictures. And circled straight to that cellar with its rats and refuse and reek of decay.
Manon Violette’s bones were jumbled in a crate stamped with the words Dr. Energy’s Power Tonic. Marie-Jo?lle Bastien’s skeleton lay naked in a shallow grave. Angela Robinson’s was wrapped in a moldy leather shroud.
The images. My findings. Reports of the SQ and city cops. Lab results. The final positive IDs. The names of those responsible. Pomerleau. Catts, aka Menard.
At one point I lingered on a crime scene pic of the house on de Sébastopol. I thought of the original owners, Menard’s grandparents, the Corneaus. Wondered if the crash in which they’d died had ever been investigated.