Bones Are Forever Read Online Free PDF

Gauloises cigarettes. “So very, very sad.”
    At that moment Marcel Morin and Emily Santangelo joined us. More pathologists. Bonjour and Comment ça va all around. After distributing copies of the day’s lineup, LaManche began discussing and assigning cases.
    A thirty-nine-year-old woman had been found dead, tangled up in a plastic dry-cleaning bag in Longueuil. Alcohol intoxication was suspected.
    A man’s body had washed ashore under the Pont des Îles on Île Sainte-Hélène.
    A forty-three-year-old woman had been bludgeoned by her husband following an argument over the TV remote. The couple’s fourteen-year-old daughter had called the Dorval police.
    An eighty-four-year-old farmer had been found dead of a gunshot wound in a home he shared with his eighty-two-year-old brother in Saint-Augustin.
    “Where’s the brother?” Santangelo asked.
    “Call me crazy, but I expect the SQ is pondering that very question.” Pelletier’s dentures clacked as he spoke.
    The Saint-Hyacinthe infants had been assigned LSJML numbers 49276, 49277, and 49278.
    “Detective Ryan is attempting to locate the mother?” LaManche said it more as statement than question.
    “Yes,” I said. “But there’s little to go on, so it could take time.”
    “Monsieur Ryan is a man of many talents.” Though Pelletier’s expression was deadpan, I wasn’t fooled. The old codger knew that Ryan and I had been an item, and loved to tease. I didn’t take his bait.
    Santangelo got the floater and the plastic-bag vic. The bludgeoning went to Pelletier, the gunshot death to Morin. As each case was dispensed, LaManche marked his master sheet with the appropriate initials. Pe. Sa. Mo.
    La went onto dossier LSJML-49276, the newborn from the bathroom sink. Br went onto LSJML-49277 and LSJML-49278, the babies from the window seat and the attic.
    When we dispersed, I returned to my office, pulled two case forms from my plastic shelving, and snapped them onto clipboardsinside folders. Each of us uses a different color. Pink is Marc Bergeron, the odontologist. Green is Jean Pelletier. LaManche uses red. A bright yellow jacket means anthropology.
    As I was digging for a pen, I noticed the flashing red light on my phone.
    And felt the tiniest of flutters. Ryan?
    Jesus, Brennan. It’s over .
    I dropped into my chair, picked up the receiver, and entered my mailbox and code numbers.
    A journalist from Le Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe .
    A journalist from Allô Police .
    After deleting the messages, I went to the women’s locker room, changed into surgical scrubs, and proceeded out of the medico-legal section to a side corridor running past the secretarial office to the library. Located there was an elevator requiring special clearance.
    When the doors opened, I stepped in and pressed a button that would take me to the morgue. There were only two other options: Bureau du coroner. LSJML.
    Downstairs, a left and then a right brought me to a Santorini-blue door marked Entrée interdite . Entrance prohibited. I swiped my card and started down a long narrow hall shooting the length of the building.
    On the left I passed an X-ray room and four autopsy suites, three with single tables, one with a pair. On the right, lining the wall, were drying racks for soggy clothing, evidence, and personal effects recovered with bodies, computer stations, and wheeled tubs and carts for transporting specimens to the labs upstairs.
    Through small windows in the doors, I could see that Santangelo and Morin were beginning their externals in rooms one and two. With each pathologist was a police photographer and an autopsy technician, or diener.
    Gilles Pomier and a tech named Roy Robitaille were arranging instruments in the large autopsy suite. They would be assisting Pelletier and LaManche, respectively.
    I continued on to number four, a room specially ventilated for decomps, floaters, mummified corpses, and other aromatics. My kind of cases.
    As did every autopsy suite, room four had