Free Monday Mourning by Kathy Reichs

haven’t heard from Claudel today. Actually, I’m looking forward to sharing something with him.”
    I licked sugar from my finger and dipped more from the blotter.
    “You going to share it with Honey Bun?”
    “LaManche authorized expenditure for a special test I requested.”
    “Without passing it by Authier?”
    I nodded.
    “LaManche can be a rascal. What test?”
    “Carbon 14.”
    “As in mummies and mastodons?”
    I walked Ryan through the short course I’d given LaManche, but decided against mentioning the strontium isotope analysis. Too iffy.
    “How far out for results?”
    “Hopefully, no more than a week. LaManche suggested I move on to the third skeleton. Basically, he’s telling me to forget about PMI for now.”
    “Not bad advice.”
    “It’s frustrating.”
    “Goes with the job.”
    Ryan’s beeper sounded. He checked the number and clipped the gizmo back on his belt.
    “Granted, these kids didn’t die last week, or even last month,” I went on. “But I can’t shake the thought that time is being wasted. I just have a bad feeling about this case.”
    “Why?”
    I told Ryan about Mrs. Gallant/Ballant/Talent.
    “What exactly did she say?”
    “That she knew what had gone on in that building.”
    “Which was?”
    “We didn’t get that far.”
    “She could be a crackpot.”
    “She could be.”
    “You say she sounded old.”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s possib—”
    “I’ve thought of that, Ryan. But what if she
is
sharp and she
is
on the level? And she
does
know something?”
    “She’ll ring back.”
    “She hasn’t.”
    “Are you having her call tracked?”
    “Yes.”
    “Want me to see what I can find out?”
    “I can handle it.”
    “What threat could an old lady pose to anybody?”
    “This woman knows about our little field trip to the basement. God knows who else read or heard about it. You saw
Le Journal.
The media were on the thing like cats on a fish wagon.”
    “Other than its age, what do you know about this building?”
    “Three dead girls were buried in its basement.”
    “You can be a pain in the ass, Brennan.”
    “I work at it.”
    “Have dinner with me tonight?” Ryan asked.
    “I’m busy.”
    Deafening quiet slipped across the office. Thirty seconds. A full minute.
    Uncrossing his ankles, Ryan straightened from the wall. The ice blue eyes looked straight into mine. It was not a happy look.
    “We need to talk.”
    “Yes,” I said.
    Adios, cowboy, I thought, watching Ryan disappear through the door.
     

9
     
    M IDWEEK, LATE AFTERNOON IS NOT A GOOD TIME FOR MOTORING in Montreal. Through the Ville-Marie Tunnel and onto the 20, I flew along at a clip that reached thirty-five mph at its peak. At the Turcot Interchange, my progress could be measured in spastic movements of car lengths.
    A bumper sticker glimmered in the taillights ahead of me.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
The first reading drew a chuckle. By the tenth, the humor had bled out. Translate: The traffic snarl will continue until impatience subsides.
    To ease the boredom, I scanned billboards. Slogans in mangled English and French hawked cell phones and Hondas and sitcoms and hair spray.
    With darkness, a hard wind had kicked up. Now and then the car rocked, as though toed at one end by a giant sneaker. A winter city crept by my windshield. Lamp-lit windows in the high hills of Westmount. The blackened rail yards. Suburban bungalows electric with discount store Christmas schlock.
    Past Ville St-Pierre, congestion eased, and I gunned it back up to a blistering thirty. My fingers drummed the wheel. The dashboard clock said five-thirty. Anne’s flight had probably landed.
    A full hour after leaving the lab, I entered the terminal at Dorval Airport. Anne had cleared customs and was standing at the end of a chute of people awaiting arrivals.
    I did the windmill thing with my arms. Catching sight of me, Anne grasped the pull-handle of a boxcar-sized suitcase and wheeled it in my