Page 36 of The Bone Code

Herrin said a report would be plenty. Vislosky asked a few questions, offered zero new intel. Nguyen had nothing requiring my attention, promised to phone or email should that change. Each advised me to go.

Laying aside my mobile, I felt relieved. And a bit unloved.

Until I dialed Ryan. I could hear his jockeys jangling.

After calling American Airlines, I gathered my belongings and assorted feline paraphernalia, then went in search of the cat.

Like Anne, Birdie is uncannily skilled at reading my mind. And at decoding my actions. It took forty minutes to locate him under a bed, inside the torn lining of a box spring.

The drive to Charlotte was irritatingly noisy with my back-seat passenger persistently voicing his indignation. To drown out the meowing, I listened to the local NPR station, curious about whether Thursday’s discovery might make the news.

There was no mention of the bin or the bodies, which didn’t surprise me. Neither Herrin nor Vislosky struck me as the media-friendly sort. Or perhaps the case had already dropped from the cycle.

One story did catch my attention, a brief report on the rising number of capnocytophaga deaths in South Carolina. While listening, I thought of Walter Klopp and the man he’d autopsied two days earlier.

According to the newscaster, although the CDC hadn’t yet designated it an official cluster, medical authorities were monitoring the regional incidence of capno. I wondered what count was needed to make the CDC scoreboard.

An interesting side note to the piece was a reported increase in gun sales in the state. Those interviewed said they’d heard capno came from pets. Apparently, Joe Citizen was arming up to blast anyone trying to impound Fluffy or Fido.

At the annex, I unpacked and did laundry. Then I phoned Archie, the twelve-year-old who looks after Birdie when I travel.

First glitch. Archie’s mother said he was away at his school’s fall mountain camp.

I tried my neighbor Walter.

Second glitch. Walter’s niece Rhonda was visiting from Colorado. Rhonda was severely allergic to cats.

“Crap!” Belted with such vehemence, Birdie braced for flight.

I looked at the cat. He looked at me, offered no suggestion.

For the rest of that day and into the evening, I read with greater care the documents Ryan had sent.

What I found was not promising.

A word about my schizoid cross-border life.

For eons, I have taught biological and forensic anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Decades back, a notice about the National Faculty Exchange made the agenda at a departmental faculty meeting. The NFE, a program in which a professor from one institution changes places for an academic year with a professor from another institution, had a gentleman in Canada wanting to come to UNCC.

What fun, I thought. And off I went.

While teaching at Concordia and McGill, the two English-language universities in Montreal, I was approached by the director of the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale, the central crime and medico-legal lab for the province of Quebec. The LSJML, which went by a shorter name and acronym in those days, needed ananthropologue judiciaire. There were two prerequisites for the position: certification by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology and French language skills.

Though far from fluent at the time, I got the job.

Fantastique!

At the end of my NFE year, the LSJML was happy with me, and I was happy with them. Though I returned to Charlotte, we struck up an arrangement whereby I’d commute to Montreal every couple of months. With the understanding that I’d be immediately available should a disaster occur, a case prove urgent, or court testimony be needed.

That’s been my life ever since.

At ten the next morning, Birdie and I were at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport. The flight boarded on time but took off twenty minutes late. Which did nothing to improve the cat’s disposition. He was already out of sorts, and the delay goosed his protests to what may have been a personal best.

By the time we landed at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International in Dorval, I was the second least popular passenger on the plane. My under-the-seat companion took first prize.

Now for the promised intel on Andrew Ryan.

As I mentioned earlier, when he and I met, Lieutenant-Détective Ryan was assigned to the crimes-against-persons unit of the provincial police, the Sûreté du Québec. Since the SQ is headquartered in the same building as the LSJML, and my lab, it was inevitable that our paths would cross.