Free Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs Page B

the femur. Its neck was ringed by pairs of parallel cuts.
    He looked at the bone a long time, then returned it to the table.
    “The only place he deviated was with the hands. There he just sliced right through the bone.”
    I showed him a radius.
    “Odd.”
    “Yes.”
    “Which is more typical? This or the others?”
    “The others. Usually you want to cut a body up so it’s easier to dispose of, so you do it the fastest way possible. Grab a saw and hack away. This guy took more time.”
    “Hmm. What does it mean?”
    I’d given the question quite a bit of thought.
    “I don’t know.”
    Neither of us spoke for a few moments.
    “The family wants the body for burial. I’m going to hold off as long as I can, but be sure you’ve got good pictures and everything you will need if we go to trial on this one.”
    “I plan to take sections from two or three of the cut marks. I’ll look at them under the microscope to see if I can pinpoint the tool type.”
    I chose my next words carefully, and watched him closely for a reaction.
    “If I get any good features I’d like to try comparing these cuts to some I have on another case.”
    The corners of his mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. I couldn’t tell if it was amusement or annoyance. Or perhaps I’d imagined it.
    After a pause he said, “Yes. Monsieur Claudel has mentioned this.” He looked directly at me. “Tell me why you think these cases are connected.”
    I outlined the similarities I saw between the Trottier and Gagnon cases. Bludgeoning. Cutting of the body after death. The use of the plastic bags. Dumping in a secluded area.
    “Are these both CUM cases?”
    “Gagnon is. Trottier is SQ. She was found in the St. Jerome.”
    As in many cities, questions of jurisdiction can be tricky in Montreal. The city lies on an island in the middle of the St. Lawrence. The Communauté Urbaine de Montréal police handle murders occurring on the island itself. Off the island, they fall to local police departments, or to La Sûreté du Québec. Coordination is not always good.
    After a pause he said, “Monsieur Claudel can be”—he hesitated—“difficult. Follow through on your comparison. Let me know if you need anything.”
     
    Later that week I’d photographed the cut marks with a photomicroscope, using varying angles, magnifications, and intensities of light. I hoped to bring out details of their internal structure. I’d also removed small segments of bone from several joint surfaces. I planned to view them with the scanning electron microscope. Instead I was up to my neck in bones for the next two weeks.
    A partially clothed skeleton was discovered by kids hiking in a provincial park. A badly decomposed body washed up on the shore of Lac St. Louis. While cleaning the basement of their newly purchased home, a couple found a trunk full of human skulls covered with wax, blood and feathers. Each find came to me.
    The remains from Lac St. Louis were presumed to be those of a gentleman who died in a boating mishap the previous fall when a competitor took exception to his freelancing as a cigarette smuggler. I was putting his skull back together when the call came.
    I’d been expecting it, though not this soon. As I listened my heart raced and the blood below my breastbone felt fizzy, like carbonated soda shaken in a bottle. I felt hot all over.
    “She’s been dead less than six hours,” LaManche was saying. “I think you’d better take a look.”

6
    M ARGARET A DKINS WAS TWENTY-FOUR . S HE HAD LIVED WITH HER common-law husband and their six-year-old son in a neighborhood nestled in the shadow of the Olympic Stadium. She was to have met her sister at ten-thirty that morning for shopping and lunch. She didn’t make it. Nor did she take later phone calls after speaking with her husband at ten. She couldn’t. She’d been murdered sometime between his call and noon, when her sister discovered her body. That was four hours ago. That’s all we knew.
    Claudel was