Then I remembered.

Ryan's hasty retreat. The look in his eyes.

Jamming my toothbrush back into its charger, I wandered to the bedroom and stared at the frosted window. Crystal ine spirals and snowflake geometries. So delicate. So fragile.

Like the fantasy I'd constructed of a life with Ryan?

I wondered again what was going on.

And why I was acting the featured ditz in a Dons Day comedy.

"Screw this, Doris," I said aloud.

Birdie looked up, but kept his thoughts to himself.

« 24 »

"And screw you, Andrew Ryan."

Returning to the bathroom, I layered on the Revlon.

The Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Medecine Legale occupies the top two floors of the Edifice Wilfrid-Derome, a T-shaped building in the Hochelaga-Maissoneuve district, just east of Centre vil e. The Bureau du Coroner is on the eleventh floor, the morgue is in the basement. The remaining space belongs to the SQ.

At eight-fifteen the twelfth floor was fil ing with white-coated men and women. Several greeted me as I swiped my security pass, first at the lobby entrance, then at the glass doors separating the medicolegal wing from the rest of the The. I returned their "bonjour"s and continued to my office, not in the mood to chat. I was stil upset from last night's encounter with Ryan. Make that nonencounter.

A:-, at most medical examiner and coroner facilities, each workday at the LSJML begins with a meeting of the professional staff. I'd barely removed my outerwear when the phone rang. Pierre LaManche. It had been a busy night. The chief was anxious to begin.

When I entered the conference room, only LaManche and Jean Pel etier were seated at the table. Both did that half-standing thing older men do when women enter a room.

LaManche asked about the Petit trial. I told him I thought my testimony had gone wel .

"And Monday's recovery?"

"Except for mild hypothermia, and the fact that your animal bones turned out to be three people, that also went wel ."

"You wil begin your analyses today?" asked LaManche in his Sorbonne French.

"Yes." I didn't mention what I thought I already knew based on my cursory examination in the basement. I wanted to be sure.

"Detective Claudel asked me to inform you that he would come today at one-thirty."

"Detective Claudel wil have a long wait. I'l hardly have begun."

Hearing Pel etier grunt, I looked in his direction.

Though subordinate to LaManche, Jean Pel etier had been at the lab a ful decade when the chief hired on. He was a smal , compact man, with thin gray hair and bags under his eyes the size of mackerels.

« 25 »

Pel etier was a devotee of Le Journal. I knew what was coming.

"Oui." Pel etier's fingers were permanently yel owed from a half century of smoking Gauloises cigarettes. One of them pointed at me. "Oui. This angle is much more flattering. Highlights your lovely green eyes."