"Got tired of complaints from other tenants."

"Complaints about what?"

"Unsavory clientele, mostly. Some about noise late at night."

"What kind of noise?"

"d.a.m.ned if I know. But I'd heard enough carping. Is that a word? Carping?"

"Yes."

"Sounds like a fish."

Ryan dropped me at home, apologized, said he'd be on duty all weekend. He promised to phone if he heard anything on Menard or the other set of prints. Or anything on Anne.

I didn't ask if his work schedule extended into Sat.u.r.day night.

Screw it. Who cares?

My answering machine held no messages.

Katy wanted me in Charlotte by the twenty-second, so I tried busying myself with tasks that had to be done before my departure.

Bed linen. Plants. Gift wrapping of packages for the caretaker, the techs at the lab.

Ryan?

I set that one aside.

I also busied myself with tasks that just had to be done.

Laundry. Cat litter. Mail.

I blasted Christmas music, hoping jingling bells or heralding angels might kick-start me into a holiday mood.

No go. All I could think about were the bones on my lab tables, the printouts on my blotter, and where the h.e.l.l was Anne.

At three, I gave in and headed to Wilfrid-Derome.

Typical Sat.u.r.day afternoon. The lab was empty and still as a tomb.

One Demande d'expertise Demande d'expertise form lay on my desk. form lay on my desk.

Four months earlier an elevator worker had disappeared from an inspection job at a building in Cote St-Luc. Thursday his decomposed body was found in Parc Angrignon in LaSalle. X-rays showed multiple fractures. Pelletier wanted me to a.n.a.lyze the trauma when the bones were cleaned.

Setting the form aside, I again took up Claudel's list.

Overhead, the fluorescents hummed. Outside, gusts whined around the window casings. Now and then some frozen windborne particle ticked a pane.

Simone Badeau. Too old. Too old.

Isabelle Lemieux. Dental work. Dental work.

Marie-Lucille d'Aquin. Black. Black.

Micheline Thibault. Too young. Too young.

Tawny McGee. Way too young. Way too young.

Celine Dallaire. Broken collarbone at age fourteen. Broken collarbone at age fourteen.

The names went on and on.

After an hour I switched to Charbonneau's list.

Jennifer Kay. Esther Anne Pigeon. Elaine Ma.s.se. Amy Fish. Theresa Perez.

Now and then I crossed to the lab to recheck a bone, hoping to find some detail I'd overlooked. Each time I returned disappointed.

When I'd finished with the names, I went back through the lists by age. Then height. Date of disappearance.

I knew I was grasping at straws, but it was like a compulsion. I couldn't stop myself.

Down the corridor, I heard the security doors swoosh.

Place of disappearance.

Terrebonne. Anjou. Gatineau. Beaconsfield.

b.u.t.te County. Tehama County. San Mateo County.

At six I sat back, thoroughly discouraged. Two and a half hours, and I'd accomplished nothing.

Footsteps sounded hollow in the empty hall. Probably LaManche. Besides me, the chief would be the only one punching in on a Sat.u.r.day night.

Congratulations, Brennan. You have the same social life as a s.e.xagenarian with seven grandchildren.

Back to the lists.

I still had the persistent feeling I was missing some connection.

What?

The cut marks?

All three skulls bore evidence of sharp instrument trauma. With the girl in the leather shroud, the cuts appeared to have been made postmortem. With the others, the cuts appeared to have been made to fresh bone. With all three, the cuts were limited to the ear region.

Death sequence?

Carbon 14 dating suggested the girl in the leather shroud died in the eighties, the other two in the nineties.

Place of origin?

Strontium isotope a.n.a.lysis suggested the girl in the leather shroud might have been born or lived her early childhood in north-central California, then moved to Vermont or Quebec. The others might have lived their whole lives in Quebec.

Might have.

Maybe I was hanging too much on the strontium. Maybe the California angle was a dead end.

Another swoosh, then the sound of voices.

But Menard attended grad school in Chico. Chico is in north-central California. Menard was a renter where the dead girls were found. The period of his tenancy coincided with the timing of at least two of the deaths. Louise Parent saw him with young girls on two occasions. One running. One unconscious.

Was the California link mere coincidence?

My hindbrain thought sat up, settled back.

What?

Try as I might, I couldn't lure the thought from its lair.

Back to Menard.

Menard took possession of his grandparents' home in Montreal in 1988.

But the guy living there now isn't Menard, though he's using Menard's name.

I threw my pen on the blotter.

"So who the h.e.l.l is he?"

"I don't know."

I jumped at the voice.

Looking up, I saw Ryan standing in my doorway.

"But we got a hit on his girlfriend."

29.

"ANIQUE P POMERLEAU."

I curled my fingers in a give-it-to-me gesture.

"Went missing in 1990."

"Age?"

"Fifteen."

That fit. The woman at Menard's house appeared to be in her mid to late twenties.

"From where?"

"Mascouche."

"What happened?"

"Kid told her parents she was spending the weekend with a friend. Turned out the girls had cooked up a story so Pomerleau could bunk in with her new squeeze. When she didn't turn up on Sunday, the parents started checking. On Monday they filed the MP report. At that point Anique had been gone for almost sixty hours."

"She never made it to the boyfriend's place?"

"She made it all right. The two hit a couple of bars Friday night, got into a fight, Anique stormed out. Lover boy got lucky, spent the weekend with bachelorette number two."

"Cops believed his story?"

"The bartender and the lucky lady backed him up. Pomerleau was a troubled kid with a history of runaways. The parents insisted she'd been abducted, but the cops figured she'd taken off."

"Did they pursue the case?"

"Until the leads went cold."

"That was it?"

"Not quite. Three years later the Pomerleaus got a call from little Anique. Said she was fine, wouldn't divulge her whereabouts."

"That must have been a shock."

"Couple years go by, the phone rings again. Same deal. Anique tells them she's OK, but not a word about where she's living. Last call came in ninety-seven. Father's dead by then. Mother's living in a bottle of Bombay Sapphire."

"Pomerleau's prints were on file here in Quebec?"

Ryan nodded. "She's got a jacket full of petty stuff. Vandalism. Shoplifting. One incident involving a stolen auto. Probably joyriding. Last entry was four months before her disappearance."

I felt agitation bubbling to the surface. Here was another twist that didn't fit. "What on G.o.d's earth is Anique Pomerleau doing with Stephen Menard?"

"He's not Menard."