Part 4 (1/2)

”There is a meeting at three this afternoon. I'll call to tell them you're coming.”

”Thank you. You won't regret this.”

He rose and walked me to the door.

”Is there a positive on the Vaillancourt brothers?”

”We'll know once their medical records show up. Hopefully today.”

He gave a two-thumbs-up gesture.

”Go get 'em, Tempe,” he said in English.

I returned the gesture and he shrugged, then retreated to his office.

In addition to being a superb administrator, Patineau filled out a s.h.i.+rt more impressively than most bodybuilders.

Mondays are busy for every coroner and medical examiner, and this one was no exception. As LaManche went through the cases I thought the meeting would never end.

A young girl had died in the hospital and the mother admitted only to shaking her. Three years is beyond the age for Shaken Baby syndrome, and a contusion suggested the child's head had been slammed against a hard surface.

A thirty-two-year-old paranoid schizophrenic was found with his stomach open, innards spewing onto the carpet of his bedroom. The family claimed the wound was self-inflicted.

Two trucks had collided outside St-Hyacinthe. Both drivers were burned beyond recognition.

A twenty-seven-year-old Russian seaman was found in his cabin with no signs of life. He was p.r.o.nounced dead by the s.h.i.+p's captain, and the body was preserved and brought ash.o.r.e. Since the death occurred in Canadian waters, an autopsy was required.

A forty-four-year-old woman was beaten to death in her apartment. Her estranged husband was being sought.

Medical files had arrived for Donald and Ronald Vaillancourt. So had an envelope of snapshots.

When the pictures were pa.s.sed around we knew that at least one twin lay in pieces downstairs. In a splendid Kodak moment Ronald Vaillancourt stood bare-chested, flexing his upper torso. The see-no-evil skull decorated his right chest.

LaManche a.s.signed each of the autopsies to a pathologist, and turned the Vaillancourt doc.u.ments over to me.

By ten forty-five I knew which twin had broken his fingers. Ronald ”Le Clic” Vaillancourt had fractured his second and third left digits in a barroom brawl in 1993. The hospital X rays showed the injury in the same location as the irregularities I'd spotted on the metacarpals. They also showed that Le Clic's arm bones lacked lines of arrested growth.

A motorcycle accident sent Le Clic back to the emergency room two months later, this time for hip and lower limb trauma. The radiographic picture was similar. Ronald's leg bones were normal. His record also indicated he had been thrown from a car in '95, stabbed in a street fight later that year, and beaten by a rival gang in '97. His X-ray file was two inches thick.

I also knew who had not been a healthy kid. Donald ”Le Clac” Vaillancourt was hospitalized several times during his childhood. As a toddler he experienced prolonged periods of nausea and vomiting, the cause of which was never diagnosed. At the age of six, scarlet fever nearly killed him. At eleven it was gastroenteritis.

Le Clac had also taken his lumps. His dossier, like his brother's, contained a large packet of X rays reflecting many visits to the trauma center. A broken nose and cheek. A knife wound to the chest. A blow to the head with a bottle.

As I closed the dossier I smiled at the irony. The turbulent life of the brothers would provide a diagram for sorting their bodies. Their many misadventures had left a skeletal map.

Armed with the medical files, I returned to the lower level and took up the parts identification process. I began with the tattooed segment of thorax and the fragments I'd a.s.sociated with it. That was Ronald. He also got the fractured hand and all tissue containing normal long bones.

Limb bones with lines of arrested growth went to Donald. Limb bones without lines went to his brother.

Next I showed Lisa, one of the autopsy technicians, how to radiograph the remaining fragments with the bones in positions identical to those on the antemortem hospital films. This would allow me to compare details of shape and internal structure.

Since the X-ray unit was in heavy demand, we worked through lunch, finally quitting at one-thirty when the other technicians and pathologists returned. Lisa promised she would finish as the machine became available, and I hurried upstairs to change.

Operation Carcajou was headquartered in a modern three-story structure on the sh.o.r.e of the St. Lawrence River, directly across from Old Montreal. The rest of the complex was occupied by the port police and the administrative offices of the maritime authority.

I parked facing the river. To the left I could see the Jacques Cartier Bridge arching across past ile-Notre-Dame, to the right the smaller Victoria Bridge. Enormous chunks of ice floated and bobbed on the dark gray water.

Farther up along the sh.o.r.e, I noticed Habitat '67, a geometric pile of residential s.p.a.ce originally built for Expo and later converted to private condominiums. The sight of the building caused a constriction in my chest. Ryan lived in that network of boxes.

I pushed the thought from my mind, grabbed my jacket, and bolted for the building. The cloud cover was breaking, but the day was still raw and damp. An onsh.o.r.e breeze, carrying with it the smell of oil and icy water, flapped my clothes.

A wide staircase led to Carcajou headquarters on the third floor. Inside gla.s.s doors sat a stuffed wolverine, the totem for which the unit is named. Men and women occupied desks in a large central room, their extension numbers in block letters on signs above their heads. Framed clippings decorated every wall, stories of Carcajou investigators and their quarry.

Some looked up, most did not as I crossed to the secretary, a middle-aged woman with overdyed hair and a mole on her cheek the size of a June bug. She dragged her eyes from her filing long enough to direct me to a conference room.

I entered to find a dozen men seated around a rectangular table, several others lounging along the walls. The unit's director, Jacques Roy, rose when he saw me. He was short and muscular, with a florid complexion and graying hair parted in the center, like the subject of an 1890s tintype.

”Dr. Brennan, we are so glad you're doing this for us. It will be a great help to my investigators as well as to the folks at your lab. Please.” He gestured to an empty place at the table.

I hung my jacket over the back of the chair and sat. As others drifted in, Roy explained the purpose of the meeting. Several of those present had recently rotated on to the Carcajou team. Others were old hands, but had requested a refresher session. Roy would give a quick overview of the Quebec biker scene. When Constable Quickwater arrived he would report on the major case management session he'd attended at the FBI Academy.

It felt like a time warp. It was Quantico all over again, only this time the language was French and the carnage being described was in a place I knew and of which I was fond.

The next two hours revealed a world that few will ever know. That glimpse sent a shudder through my body and a chill into my soul.

6.

”FIRST OF ALL, A LITTLE BACKGROUND INFORMATION.”

Roy spoke from the front of the room. He had notes on the podium, but didn't use them.

”Outlaw motorcycle clubs began on the West Coast of the United States shortly after World War II. Some returning vets couldn't adjust to the social requirements of peace and took to roaming the countryside on Harley-Davidsons, hara.s.sing the citizenry and generally making themselves obnoxious. They formed loose groups with names like the Booze Fighters, the Galloping Gooses, Satan's Sinners, the Winos. Right from the start these guys weren't candidates for the College of Cardinals.”

Laughter and m.u.f.fled comments.

”The group to have the greatest impact was a collection of social misfits calling themselves the p.i.s.sed Off b.a.s.t.a.r.ds of Bloomington. The P.O.B.O.B. eventually became the h.e.l.ls Angels, taking the name and the helmeted death's-head symbol from a World War II bomber squadron. From the founding chapter in San Bernardino, California-”

”Yahoo, Berdoo.” A comment from the back.

”Right.”