Already in the cellar, my spirits sank further.

Rather than call Lisa or Tanenbaum, I shot a final set of photos myself. Then I gathered the bones into a small plastic tub and wrote LSJML-49278 on the lid and one side.

With robotic motions, I set the tub on the gurney and pushed it through the double doors to the morgue. “Good-bye, little one,” I said softly as the bay clicked shut.

I was wrapping LSJML-49277 in padded plastic sheeting when the desk phone rang. In no mood to talk or even be cordial, I ignored it.

I placed the window-seat baby inside a square plastic tub, packed it with more wadded sheeting, and marked the case number on the outside. Then I filled out and signed an evidence transfer form. Since the mummified baby would leave the morgue with me, chain of custody had to be maintained.

Finished with the remains, I turned to the towels.

Like the filaments I’d plucked from LaManche’s bathroom-vanity baby, the towels would be sent to the hair and fiber guys, perhaps to the folks in biology or DNA. Again, maybe useful, maybe not.

I sealed the attic towel in an evidence bag, jotted relevant information on the label, and set the bag to one side on the counter.

When I lifted the window-seat towel, something dropped with the sound of a tiny bean bag. Curious, I picked the thing up.

Between my gloved fingers was a small velvet sack with a drawstring closure. I teased it open. Inside was what looked like coarse-grain gravel. I poured some onto my palm. In the mix were a few green pebbles measuring a couple centimeters at most.

“Yowza. This’ll crack the case wide open.” My sarcasm was lost on the empty room.

After taking a few photos, I sealed the inclusion in a vial and placed it in a second evidence bag with the yellow towel. Then I called Lisa.

No answer.

I looked at the clock. Six-ten. Of course she was gone. Everyone was gone.

Feeling a heaviness the atomic weight of uranium, I took the tub containing the window-seat baby to a morgue bay adjoining autopsy room three and placed it on a gurney beside the bathroom-vanity baby, now wrapped and sealed in its own container. Then I wound my way to the elevator.

The basement was deserted. So was the twelfth floor. The building hummed with that eerie after-hours quiet unique to abandoned workplaces.

At the desk in my lab, I left Lisa a message asking that she transfer the bagged towels to the trace evidence section. As I cradled the receiver, my eyes drifted to the expanse of glass above my desk.

A dozen floors down, I could see the tops of apartment buildings, church spires, small patches of green I knew to be gardens. In the distance, the Maison de Radio-Canada rose like a giant brick cylinder on boulevard René-Lévesque. Beyond it, the St. Lawrence River yawned gray and forbidding, even in June.