Bones Never Lie

CHAPTER 13

“DATES, TEMPE. DATES.” Almost breathless. “I was out of ideas so I ran a matrix on the dates.”

“What dates?”

“Some you gave me, most I found through online news reports.”

“I’m not following you, Mama.”

“The dates the children were taken. I don’t have all of them, of course. But I have enough.”

“What children?” I kept my voice even.

“The ones in Montreal. And the later ones. Do you have something to write with?” Dramatic stage whisper. “It’s unsafe to transmit this information electronically.”

I relocated to the desk and got pen and paper. Then I pressed a button and set the phone down.

“What was that? Am I on speaker?”

“It’s okay, Mama.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

Ryan appeared in the doorway. I gestured for him to be quiet but to come closer so he could hear.

“I located a great deal of information on the situation in Montreal.”

“How?”

“I started with names—Anique Pomerleau, Andrew Ryan, Temperance Brennan. I paired the names with key words such as ‘SQ,’ ‘Montreal,’ ‘skeletons.’ One loop led to another and another. That’s always the case. Coverage was quite extensive, you know, in both French and English.”

That was an understatement.

“Have I told you how very proud I am—”

“Where are you going with this, Mama?”

A beat, then, “You identified three girls from their skeletal remains in the cellar: Angela Robinson, Marie-Joëlle Bastien, and Manon Violette. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“Write down those names.”

I did.

“Angela Robinson went missing on December 9, 1985. Marie-Joëlle 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-Joëlle 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.”

“Ditto for Colleen Donovan. And my Jane Doe skeleton, ME107-10.”

“Any progress on that?”

I shook my head. “I sent the descriptors back through the usual data banks. Got no hits.”

“It always blows my mind. A kid that young, and no one’s looking.”

“Do the ages bother you?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Pomerleau and Catts preyed on girls in their mid- to late teens. These recent victims skew younger. Or look younger, in the case of Donovan.”

“Psychoses can evolve over time.”

Birdie chose that moment to hop onto the desk and roll to his back. I scratched his belly. He began to purr.

“You think we should tell Slidell?” I asked.

Ryan’s eyes gave me his answer.

I did go to Heatherhill Farm on Sunday. My guilt for staying away trumped my guilt for time lost on the investigation.

I found Mama sitting cross-legged on her bed, the Lilliputian laptop lighting her face. Her door was closed, and the TV was blasting.

After delivering the expected chastisement, Mama sighed and admitted she was delighted I’d come. Since the day was cold and overcast, which ruled out the deck, she insisted we stay in her room.

Mama was intense, restless. As we talked, she repeatedly scurried over to press her ear to the door.

Knowing the source of her agitation, I tried to steer our conversation toward lighter topics. Mama, as always, proved unsteerable.

Sadly, or happily, she’d found no new information on the abductions or murders. I told her she could stand down. Made comments suggesting greater progress than was actually occurring.

She demanded a full update. I gave a vague overview of developments on my end.

She asked about Ryan. I outdid myself at vague.

When I broached the subject of chemo, my questions were rebuffed. When I asked about Goose, Mama rolled her eyes and flapped a dismissive hand.

Ryan had stayed in Charlotte and reviewed the files he hadn’t tackled on Saturday. Slidell had hit pawnshops in search of Leal’s ring.

I arrived home around nine. Over Ben & Jerry’s chocolate nougat crunch, Ryan filled me in on his day.

He’d focused on the investigation chronologies, the time-ordered outlines of actions taken by detectives and calls and inquiries received from the public. He looked and sounded discouraged. “With Donovan and Koseluk, there was little to review. Within weeks of each disappearance, nothing was happening and no one was calling. I gave up on those.”

Other bodies hit the morgue. The cops moved on. I didn’t say it.

“With Estrada, the investigation was more thorough. Interviews were conducted in Salisbury and Anson County—registered sex offenders, friends and family, teachers, the campground owners, residents along the highway.”

He could have been talking about Nance or Gower. About the investigation of any murdered child. I didn’t say that, either.

“A few interviews triggered follow-ups. None yielded a serious suspect.”

“Everyone had an alibi?”

Ryan nodded. “There was the usual flurry of phone tips following the discovery of Estrada’s body. A sporting goods store owner was accused, a kid who drove his Harley too loud and too fast, a farmer who shot his collie.”

“Bike hater, dog lover.”

“You’ve got it. The calls thinned, stopped within a month.”

“There was the scandal, then the lead detective retired. Hull ultimately inherited the file,” I said.

“The final call came from a reporter at the Salisbury Post. She phoned six months after Estrada disappeared.”

“And that was it.”

Ryan set down his bowl and spoon. Patted his chest. Remembered where he was and dropped his hands.

“It’s okay to smoke.” It wasn’t. I hate the smell of cigarettes in my house.

“Uh-huh.” A corner of his mouth twisted up ever so slightly. A few moments passed before Ryan spoke again. “It wasn’t that the cops didn’t want to solve these cases. They had nothing to go with. There was no ex-con working at a kid’s home, no psycho teacher, no parent with a history of violence. The vics were too young to have angry boyfriends. Donovan was high-risk, but not the others.”

“And Donovan and Estrada weren’t the type the media bothers to cover.” I couldn’t help but sound bitter.

“When the bodies turned up, there were no witnesses or forensics.”

“Nothing to suggest a suspect.”

“Until Rodas got a DNA hit.”

I flashed on a dark figure darting through flames with a five-gallon can in her hands. The memory brought with it the smell of kerosene and my own burning hair. The terror of waking in a house that was burning down around me. Anger grabbed me like a muscle cramp. “Pomerleau despises me,” I said.

“She hates us both.”

“It’s because of me that she’s here.” I knew it was melodramatic, said it anyway. “I let her escape. She wants to remind me, to taunt me.”

“We all let her escape.”

“It’s because we failed that children are dead. That another may die soon.”

Two stormy blue eyes locked on to mine. “This time the moth has flown too close to the flame.”

“She. Will. Burn.”

Silly, but we smacked a high five.

The next morning our confidence was blown to hell.