Page 120 of The Bone Code

“Mélanie Chalamet was terminated less than two years after she was hired.”

“Why?”

“The file doesn’t say.”

“This was in 2002?”

“It was.”

“The year Lena went into foster care.”

“The very one.”

“Holy shit.”

“Holy shit.”

“What next?”

“Monday morning, I head to Laval.”

“I want to go with you.” The same knee-jerk response that had landed me in Nashville.

“What about Anne?”

“I’ll buy her a pricey chardonnay.”

“Birdie will be delighted to see you.”

“Where is he?”

“On the couch with a cold rag on his head.”

27

Monday, November 15

Lying just minutes away from Montreal, across the Rivière des Prairies, Laval is the city’s largest burb. The town occupies the Île Jésus and the Îles Laval. The Rivière des Milles Îles borders it on the north.

Lots of isles. Lots of rivers.

Ryan and I rolled into Laval at nine fifteen Monday morning. Were at Biotech City shortly thereafter.

InovoVax was headquartered in a twelve-story street-facing tower with a low, rectangular wing jutting off in back. The tower involved a lot of glass and steel. The wing was a windowless concrete box. Surrounding the whole was a half acre of thoughtfully landscaped grounds. Probably lovely in summer, the picnic tables were empty now, the trees bare and black, the dead brown lawn coated with frost.

Walking from Ryan’s Jeep to the building’s entrance, I feared the loss of digits to frostbite. The temperature was a breath-stopping minus fourteen Celsius, and a wet wind coming off all those rivers was scything my skin.

Ryan had phoned ahead. As per instructions, we passed through security and checked in with reception. After presenting ID and receiving temporary passes, we waited on a green leather sofa flanked by potted palms at one side of the lobby.

The woman sent to collect us was small and grim. She wore wireless specs, a white lab coat, and eerily quiet crepe-soled shoes. A lanyard-hanging badge gave her name as Mariette Plourde. So did she.

In the 2016 census, roughly twenty percent of Laval’s population self-classified as Anglophone. English-speaking. Mariette Plourde was not among them. And her French was so strongly accented I barely understood a word she said. I guessed her origins were far upriver.

Plourde led us past a bank of elevators and down a spotlessly clean first-floor corridor that would have made any OR proud. Twenty yards, then we entered a spacious office, also incandescently pristine. A plaque beside the door saidPersonnel et resources humaines/Personnel and Human Resources.

Shiny gray tile winked up from the floor. White vinyl shelves covered three walls, all filled with industry publications.The Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis. BioPharm International. BioWorld. Applied Clinical Trials.

A blond-oak table-and-chair set filled most of the room’s far end. Scandinavian sleek and angular, the chairs promised unrelenting discomfort. Chosen for that reason? My mind flashed an image of a nervous job applicant trying not to fidget.