"They"re paws."

"What?"

"Paws from some kind of animal."

"Are you sure?"

"Flip one over."

He did. With his pen.

"You can see the ends of the lower limb bones."

"What"s he doing with them?"

"How the h.e.l.l should I know, Ryan?" I thought of Alsa.

"Christ."

"Check the refrigerator."

"Oh, Christ."

The tiny corpse was there, skinned and wrapped in clear plastic. Along with several others.

"What are they?"

"Small mammals of some sort. Without the skin I can"t tell. They"re not horses."

"Thanks, Brennan."

Bertrand joined us. "What"ve you got?"

"Dead animals." Ryan"s voice betrayed his aggravation. "And another glove."

"Maybe the guy eats roadkill," said Bertrand.

"Maybe. And maybe he makes lampshades out of people. That"s it. I want this place sealed. I want every friggin" thing confiscated. Bag his cutlery, bag that blender, bag everything in the G.o.dd.a.m.n refrigerator. I want that disposal sc.r.a.ped and every inch of this place hosed with Luminol. Where the h.e.l.l"s Gilbert?"

Ryan moved toward a wall phone to the left of the door.

"Hold it. That phone got a redial b.u.t.ton?"

Ryan nodded.

"Hit it."

"Probably get his priest. Or Grammama."

Ryan pushed the b.u.t.ton. We listened to a seven-note melody followed by four rings. Then a voice answered, and the bubble of fear I"d been carrying all day rose to my head and I felt faint.

"Veuillez laissez votre nom et numero de telephone. Je vais vous rappelez le plutot possible. Merci. Please leave your name and number and I"ll return your call as soon as possible. Thanks. This is Tempe."

36.

THE SOUND OF MY OWN VOICE HIT ME LIKE A BLOW TO THE HEAD. My legs buckled and my breath came in rapid gasps.

Ryan helped me to a chair, brought water, asked no questions. I have no idea how long I sat there, feeling nothing but emptiness. Eventually, my composure crept back, and I began to a.s.sess the reality.

He"d phoned me. Why? When?

I watched Gilbert don rubber gloves and slide his hand around the inside of the disposal. He drew something out and dropped it in the sink.

Was he trying to reach me? Or Gabby? What had he intended to say? Had he intended to speak at all, or just check whether I was there?

A photographer moved from room to room, his flash like a firefly in the gloomy flat.

The hang-ups. Was it he?

A tech in rubber gloves and coveralls taped books and sealed them into evidence bags, marking each, then signing across the seal. Another brushed white powder across the red-black varnish of the shelves. A third emptied the refrigerator, removing packages in plain brown wrappers, and placing them in a cooler.

Had she died here, her last visual images the ones I now saw?

Ryan spoke to Charbonneau. s.n.a.t.c.hes of the conversation floated to me through the suffocating heat. Where"s Claudel? Took off. Roust the superintendent. Find out about bas.e.m.e.nts, storage areas. Get keys. Charbonneau left, returned with a middle-aged woman in housecoat and slippers. They disappeared again, accompanied by the book packer.

Again and again Ryan offered to take me home. There was nothing I could do, he told me gently. I knew that, but I couldn"t leave.

Grammama arrived around four. She was neither hostile nor cooperative. Reluctantly, she provided a description of Tanguay. Male. Quiet. Brown hair, thinning. Medium everything. Could have fit half the men in North America. She had no idea where he was or how long he"d be gone. He"d left before, but never for long. She only noticed because Tanguay asked Mathieu to feed the fish. He was nice to Mathieu and gave him money when he cared for the fish. She knew little else about him, rarely saw him. She thought he worked, thought he had a car. Wasn"t sure. Didn"t care. Didn"t want to get involved.

The recovery team spent all afternoon and late into the night dissecting the apartment. I didn"t. By five I needed out. I accepted Ryan"s offer of a ride and left.

We spoke little in the car. Ryan repeated what he"d said on the phone. I was to stay home. A team would watch my building around the clock. No late night sorties. No solo expeditions.

"Don"t ride me, Ryan," I said, my voice betraying my emotional brittleness.

The rest of the drive was spent in strained silence. When we reached my building Ryan put the car in park and turned to me. I could feel his eyes on the side of my face.

"Listen, Brennan. I"m not trying to give you a hard time. This sc.u.m is going down. You can take that to the bank. I"d just like you to live to see it."

His concern touched me more than I was willing to admit.

They pulled out all stops. APB"s went out to every cop in Quebec, to the Ontario Provincial Police, the RCMP, and the state forces in New York and Vermont. But Quebec is big, its borders easy to cross. Lots of places to hide or slip out.

In the days that followed I grappled with the possibilities. Tanguay could be lying low, biding his time. He could be dead. He could have taken off. Serial killers do that. Sensing danger, they pack up and relocate. Some are never caught. No. I refused to accept that.

Sunday I never left home. Birdie and I did what the French call coconer coconer. We coc.o.o.ned. I didn"t get dressed, avoided the radio and television. I couldn"t bear to see Gabby"s photo, or hear the overdone descriptions of the victim and suspect. I made only three calls, first to Katy, then to my aunt in Chicago. Happy Birthday, Auntie! Eighty-four. Well done.

I knew Katy was in Charlotte, just wanted to rea.s.sure myself. No answer. Of course. Curse the distance. No. Bless the distance. I didn"t want my daughter anywhere near the place a monster had held her picture. She would never know what I"d found.

The last call was to Gabby"s mother. She was sedated, couldn"t come to the phone. I spoke to Mr. Macaulay. a.s.suming they released the body, the funeral would be on Thursday.

For a time, I sat sobbing, my body rocking as though to a metronome. The demons that live in my bloodstream screamed for alcohol. Pleasure-pain, such a simple principle. Feed us. Numb us. Make it go away.

But I didn"t. That would have been easy. You"re down love-forty, so lob one in, shake hands at the net, and it"s Miller time. Except this wasn"t tennis. If I gave up in this game, I would lose my career, my friends, my self-respect. h.e.l.l, I might as well let St. Jacques/Tanguay do me in.

I would not give in. Not to the bottle, and not to the maniac. I owed it to Gabby. I owed it to myself and to my daughter. So I stayed sober and waited, desperately wishing I had Gabby to talk me through. I checked frequently to be sure the surveillance team was in place.

On Monday Ryan called around eleven-thirty. LaManche had completed the autopsy. Cause of death: ligature strangulation. Though the body was decomposed he"d found a groove buried deep in the flesh of Gabby"s neck. Above and below it the skin was torn in a series of gouges and scratches. The vessels in the throat tissue showed hundreds of tiny hemorrhages.

Ryan"s voice receded. I pictured Gabby desperately clawing to breathe, to live. Stop. Thank G.o.d we found her so quickly. I couldn"t have faced the horror of Gabby on my autopsy table. The pain of losing her was unbearable enough.

". . . hyoid was broken. Also, whatever he used had links or loops or something, left a spiral pattern in the skin. "

"Was she raped?"

"He couldn"t tell because of the decomposition. Negative for sperm."

"Time of death?"

"LaManche is giving it a minimum of five days. We know the upper limit is ten."

"Pretty wide window."

"Given this heat and the shallow burial, he thinks the body should be in worse shape."

Oh, G.o.d. She may not have died the day she disappeared.

"Have you checked her apartment?"

"No one saw her, but she"d been there."

"What about Tanguay?"

"Ready for this? The guy"s a teacher. Small school out on the west island." I heard the rustle of paper. "St. Isidor"s. Been there since 1991. He"s twenty-eight. Single. For next of kin on his application he put "none." We"re checking it. He"s been living on Seguin since "91. Landlady thinks he was somewhere in the States before that."

"Prints?"

"Lots. We ran them, came up empty. Sent them south this morning."

"Inside the glove?"

"At least two readable and a smudged palm."

An image of Gabby. The plastic bag. Another glove. I jotted down a single word. Glove.

"He has a degree?"

"Bishops. Bertrand"s out in Lennoxville now. Claudel"s trying to roust someone at St. Isidor"s, not having much luck. The caretaker is about a hundred and no one else is around. They"re closed for the summer."

"Any names turn up in the apartment?"

"None. No pictures. No address books. No letters. Guy must live in a social vacuum."

A long silence as we mulled that over, then Ryan said, "Might explain his unusual hobbies."

"The animals?"

"That. And the cutlery collection."

"Cutlery?"

"This squirrel had more blades than an orthopedic surgeon. Surgical tools mostly. Knives. Razors. Scalpels. Kept them stashed under the bed. Along with a box of surgical gloves. Original."

"A loner with a blade fetish. Great."

"And the standard p.o.r.n gallery. Well thumbed."

"What else?"

"Guy"s got a car." More rustling. "A 1987 Ford Probe. It"s not in the neighborhood. They"re looking for it. We got the driver"s license photo this morning and sent that out too."

"And?"

"I"ll let you judge for yourself, but I think Grammama was right. He"s not memorable. Or maybe the Xerox/fax reproduction doesn"t do him justice."

"Could it be St. Jacques?"

"Could be. Or Jean Chretien. Or the guy that sells hot dogs on Rue St. Paul. Richard Petty"s out. He"s got a mustache."

"You"re a laugh riot, Ryan."

"This guy doesn"t even have a parking ticket. He"s been a real good boy."

"Right. A real good boy who collects knives and p.o.r.n and carves up small mammals."