“Detective.” I stripped off my gloves.

“So. Temperance.” LaManche is the only person on the planet who uses the formal version of my name. In his starched, proper French, it comes out rhyming with “France.” “How long has this little person been dead?”

LaManche has been a forensic pathologist for over forty years and has no need to query my opinion on postmortem interval. It’s a tactic he employs to make colleagues feel they are his equals. Few are.

“The first wave of flies probably arrived and oviposited within one to three hours of death. Hatching could have begun as early as twelve hours after the eggs were laid.”

“It’s pretty warm in that bathroom,” Pomier said.

“Twenty-nine Celsius. At night it would have been cooler.”

“So the maggots in the eyes, nose, and mouth suggest a minimum PMI of thirteen to fifteen hours.”

“Yes,” I said. “Though some fly species are inactive after dark. An entomologist should determine what types are present and their stage of development.”

Through the open window, I heard a siren wail in the distance.

“Rigor mortis is maximal,” I added, mostly for Ryan’s benefit. The other two knew that. “So that’s consistent.”

Rigor mortis refers to stiffening due to chemical changes in the musculature of a corpse. The condition is transient, beginning at approximately three hours, peaking at approximately twelve hours, and dissipating at approximately seventy-two hours after death.

LaManche nodded glumly, arms folded over his chest. “Placing possible time of death somewhere between six and nine o’clock last night.”

“The mother arrived at the hospital around two-forty yesterday morning,” Ryan said.

For a long moment no one spoke. The implication was too sad. The baby might have lived over fifteen hours after her birth.

Discarded in the cabinet? Without so much as a blanket or towel? Once more I pushed the anger aside.

“I’m finished,” I said to Pomier. “You can bag the body.”

He nodded but didn’t move away.

“Where’s the mother?” I asked Ryan.

“Appears she may have split. Bédard is running down the landlord and canvassing the neighbors.”

Outside, the siren grew louder.

“The closet and dresser are empty,” I said. “There are few personal items in the bathroom. No toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant.”

“You’re assuming the heartless bitch bothered with the niceties of hygiene.”

I glanced at Pomier, surprised by the bitterness in his tone. Then I remembered. Pomier and his wife had been trying to start a family. Four months earlier she’d miscarried for the second time.

The siren screamed its arrival up the street and cut off. Doors slammed. Voices called out in French. Others answered. Boots clanged on the iron stairs leading to the first floor from the sidewalk.

Shortly, two men slipped under the crime scene tape. Uniform jumpsuits. I recognized both: Alex Gioretti and Jacques Demers.

Trailing Gioretti and Demers was an SQ corporal I assumed to be Bédard. His eyes were small and dark behind wire-rimmed glasses. His face was blotchy with excitement. Or exertion. I guessed his age to be mid-forties.