Page 5 of The Bone Code

A brief note about Ryan, Équipe des Crimes contre la Personne, Sûreté du Québec. Since he worked homicide for the SQ, the police in La Belle Province, and I am the forensic anthropologist there for the LSJML—the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médicine Légale—thelieutenant-détectiveand I have collaborated on murder investigations for decades, working out of the same headquarters in Montreal. Somewhere along the way, we began to date. Then we began to, well, more than date. Now we live together. Sort of.

More on that later.

After arriving at the annex, I muscled the car door open. It shut itself. Hunched forward, I hurried inside, hair whipping, briefcase twisting this way and that.

“Birdie?” Setting my purse and case on the counter.

No response from the cat. Not surprising. Climatic extremes upset his feline psyche.

“I’m home, Bird.”

Still nothing.

Like the MCME lobby, the interior of the annex was unnaturally dark for midafternoon. I hit the wall switch and turned on a dining-room lamp, then climbed the stairs to my bedroom. As I was yankingoff my Nikes, a small white face peeked from beneath the bed, ears flattened as low as possible.

“Chill, big guy. It’s just a little wind.”

Birdie studied me, wary. Perhaps irritated. Hard to tell with cats.

Or maybe he was picking up on my own anxiety. The weather really did look bad. Should I stay and ride it out? Or head for a motel in the foothills?

A gust fired a volley of gravel against the side of the house. The cat face withdrew back into its refuge.

“Fine. I’ll see what the experts are saying.”

Returning to the kitchen, I located the remote and navigated to the local twenty-four-hour news station. Hit mute as I waited out a guy offering to clean my gutters. An ad for Bojangles chicken. A promo for an upcoming Panthers game.

Eventually, the feed cut to an anchor seated behind a glass-topped desk with tiny lights looping its front-facing surface. John Medford. I’d met him a few times at charity fundraisers. Knew his pompadour was higher than his IQ.

Over Medford’s right shoulder, a graphic showed a regional map framed by another array of twinkly lights. An alarming green blob hovered to the southeast of Charlotte. A chyron at the bottom of the screen stated:Inara is coming!

I activated the sound. Medford’s voice was neutral, his brows canted at just enough of an angle to show appropriate concern.

“—at least one model shows her slamming into Charleston, then being squeezed between the clockwise circulation of a high-pressure system out in the Atlantic and the counterclockwise push of low pressure in the Mississippi Valley. Sound familiar to you longtimers out there? It should. That’s the combo that sent Hugo barreling at us back in ’eighty-nine. Of course, just one model is saying that. Others see the storm skimming the coast, then hightailing it offshore. But it’s always best to be prepared.”

A bullet list appeared beside the map. Medford worked through the points, putting his folksy touch on each.

“I’m sure y’all know the drill, but it never hurts repeating. Should Inara come our way, stay inside, preferably in an interior room—maybe a closet or a bathroom—and away from windows, skylights, and glass doors.”

OK. Birdie had me there.

“If flooding threatens your home, cut the electricity at the main breaker. If you lose power, turn off your major appliances—you know, the air conditioner, the water heater—big-ticket items you don’t want damaged. And you’d best not use small appliances, either, including your computer.”

Shit. Did my laptop and mobile have juice? As I dug both devices from my briefcase and plugged them in to charge, Medford droned on.

“I’m figuring we’ll be fine here in Charlotte, but it could be a real boomer over at the shore.” Encouraging smile. “Stay tuned. I’ll be back in thirty with an update.”

The station went to another commercial break. I hit mute again and was reaching for my cell phone when it rang. Warbled, actually. After checking caller ID, I answered.

“Hey, Ryan.”

“Bonjour, ma chère.”

“You still up in Yellowknife?”

After retiring from the SQ, Ryan went into business as a PI. At the moment, he was investigating something having to do with diamond mining and claims. And one unhappy party. I didn’t ask.

“Yes, ma’am. Today’s high will be minus fourteen.”