Page 135 of The Bone Code
“Yes.” Noncommittal.
“Eisenberg said Melanie’s file was deleted from the InovoVax system. Why?”
“Maybe it’s routine.”
“Or maybe it was done to cover someone’s tracks.”
“Whose?”
“I don’t know.” I was saying that a lot. “Do you think Sorg could be right about Murray?”
“Being an arrogant tool doesn’t make the guy a murderer.”
“No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t.”
Still.
I settled back in my seat. As we rode in silence, new images joined the balls bubbling in my mind. Headlights on a rainy street. A body slamming a bus stop upright.
“Can you check out what model car Murray drives?” I asked. “Or have Claudel do it?”
Our eyes met. Ryan’s looked dubious.
“Humor me,” I said.
“OK.” Then, “Where to?”
“I’m ninety-nine percent certain the remains at the morgue are those of Melanie and Ella, but I want to take one final look.”
“That thorny one percent.”
“When I’m finished with the bones, I’ll start going through Melanie’s papers.”
Two hours later, the skeletons lay articulated on their stainless-steel gurneys, one adult, one juvenile. Brown and weathered, they looked like macabre Halloween props.
I’d been over every bone and tooth. Checked every measurement, reviewed every morphological detail, reassessed all trauma. Though confirmation by DNA was still lacking, there was no doubt in my mind.
I looked at my clipboard. At the form I’d completed fifteen years earlier.
LSJML-41207 Os non identifiés d’une femme.The unidentified woman was Melanie Chalmers/Mélanie Chalamet.
I flipped the page.
LSJML-41208 Os non identifiés d’un enfant. The unidentified child was Ella Chalmers/Chalamet.
A mother dead at age thirty-two. Her child dead at age ten.
Silence echoed in the empty morgue. Expectant?
“Who are you, Mélanie Chalamet?” I whispered. “Where did you come from? Why did you move to Canada and change your name? Whom did you fill with such rage or so seriously threaten that they took your life? And why your daughter’s?”
I lifted the ziplock lying beside the small, unfinished skull. Stared at the garish plastic ring only a child could love.
My eyes drifted to the little orbits, sightless forever.
“I am so sorry, Ella. I promise—”
Tears threatened. I blinked them away.
