Grave Secrets

Mrs. Specter maintained her cruising altitude silence as we sped toward Centre-ville, exited at Guy, and turned right onto rue Ste-Catherine. Perhaps she had run out of words, or simply talked herself calm. Perhaps being home was soothing her soul. Together we listened to Robert Charlebois.

Je reviendrai à Montréal… I will return to Montreal…

Together we watched the lights of the city go by.

In minutes we pulled up at my condo. The driver got out.

As I gathered my briefcase, Mrs. Specter grabbed my hand. Her fingers felt cold and clammy, like meat from the fridge.

“Thank you,” she said, almost inaudibly.

I heard the trunk squeak, thunk shut.

“I’m glad I can help.”

She drew a deep breath.

“You have no idea how much.”

The door on my side opened.

“Let me know when we can see Chantale. I’ll go with you.”

I laid my hand on Mrs. Specter’s. She squeezed, then kissed it.

“Thank you.” She straightened. “Shall Claude help you inside?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Claude accompanied me up the steps, waited as I located my key to the outer door. I thanked him. He nodded, placed my suitcase beside me, and returned to the limo.

Again, I watched Mrs. Specter glide into the night.

15

BY SEVEN THE NEXT MORNING I WAS RACING THROUGH THE asphalt underbelly of Montreal. Above me, the city yawned and stretched to life. Around me, the Ville-Marie Tunnel looked as gray as my mood.

Quebec was in the grip of a rare spring heat wave. When I’d arrived home near midnight, my patio thermometer still topped eighty, and the temperature inside felt like nine hundred Celsius.

The AC was indifferent to my preference for sleeping cool. Ten minutes of clicking buttons, pounding, and swearing had done nothing to coax it to life. Sweating and angry, I’d finally opened every window and fallen into bed.

The street boys had been equally unconcerned about my comfort and need for sleep. A dozen were en fête on the back stoop of a pizza joint ten yards from my bedroom window. Yelling did not dampen their party mood. Neither did threats. Or curses.

I had slept badly, tossing and turning under limp sheets, awakened repeatedly by laughter, song, and angry outbursts. I had greeted the dawn with a pounding headache.

The Bureau du Coroner and the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale are located in a thirteen-story glass and concrete T in a neighborhood east of Centre-ville. In deference to its principal occupant, the provincial police, or Sûreté du Québec, over the decades the structure has been dubbed the SQ building.

Several years back, the Gouvernement du Québec decided to pump millions into law enforcement and forensic science. The building was refurbished, and the LSJML was expanded and moved from the fifth to the twelfth and thirteenth floors, into space formerly occupied by a short-term jail. In an official ceremony, the tower was reborn as the Édifice Wilfrid-Derome.

Old habits die hard. To most it remains the SQ building.

Exiting the tunnel at the Molson brewery, I passed under the Jacques Cartier Bridge, shot across De Lorimier, turned right, and wound through a neighborhood where neither the streets nor the people are beautiful. Three-flats with postage-stamp yards and metal staircases spiraling up their faces. Gray stone churches with silver spires. Corner dépanneurs. Storefront businesses. The Wilfrid-Derome/SQ looming over all.

After ten minutes of searching, I located a spot that appeared, through some bureaucratic loophole, to be legal, without permit, during the precise period I planned to park. I rechecked the monthly, hourly, and daily restrictions, maneuvered into place, grabbed my laptop and briefcase, and headed up the block.

Children were dribbling toward a nearby school in twos and threes, like ants converging on a melting Popsicle. Early arrivals milled in the playground, kicking balls, jumping ropes, screaming, chasing. A small girl peered through the wrought-iron fence, fingers clutching the uprights like those of the child at Chupan Ya. She watched me pass, face expressionless. I did not envy her the next eight hours, trapped in a hot classroom, summer freedom still a month away.

Nor did I envy the day facing me.

I was not looking forward to a mummified head. I was not looking forward to a putrefied torso. I dreaded mediating the reunion between Chantale and her mother. It was one of those mornings I wished I’d taken a job with the telephone company.

Paid vacations. Great benefits. No corpses.

I was perspiring by the time I entered the lobby. The morning mix of smog, exhaust, and the cocktail emanating from the brewery had not helped my cranial vessels. My skull felt as though the contents had exceeded capacity and were pushing for a way out.

There’d been no coffee at the condo. As I displayed my buildingID to the scanner, passed through security gates, pushed for an elevator, swiped my lab card, and exited on the twelfth floor, that single word formed on my lips.