Bones Never Lie (Temperance Brennan, #17)(31)

“You do.”

Ryan and I exchanged glances, both at a loss.

“Nellie Gower was abducted in Vermont on October 18, 2007. Lizzie Nance in Charlotte on April 17, 2009. Tia Estrada in Salisbury on December 2, 2012. Add that to your notes.”

I started another two-column list.

“Now read what you’ve written.”

Ryan and I got it in the same instant.

“Sonofabitch.” I couldn’t help myself.

“There’s never call to be vulgar, sweetheart. But I think you understand what I’m saying.”

“Each of the later victims disappeared exactly one week before the date on which an earlier victim was taken.”

“Yes.” Breathy.

“You’re suggesting Pomerleau is reenacting previous abductions?”

“I have no idea of her motivation. Or why she’s now killing these poor little lambs.”

“Mama, I—”

“There was one survivor, a girl held five years in the cellar. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“She was a minor, so her identity was to remain secret. But it wasn’t hard to find the name.” Pause. “Tawny McGee.”

I said nothing.

“By tracking backward, I was able to establish the date of her disappearance. February 13, 1999.”

I looked at Ryan. He nodded confirmation.

A muffled voice buzzed in the background. Mama shushed someone, probably her nurse.

“Listen, Mama. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we can discuss—”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ll continue your pursuit.”

The voice buzzed again. The air went thick, as though the phone had been covered with a palm or pressed to a chest. Then three beeps told me the call had ended.

I looked up at Ryan. He was staring at the tablet.

I read the scribbled names and dates. Pictured the skeletons arranged on the tables in my Montreal lab.

Angela Robinson had been Neal Wesley Catts’s first victim, taken in California in 1985, well before his deadly partnership with Anique Pomerleau. Catts had transported Robinson’s remains to the East Coast, buried them in Vermont, then dug them up and reburied them, eventually, in the pizza parlor basement in Montreal.

Marie-Jo?lle Bastien, an Acadian from New Brunswick, was sixteen when she traveled to Montreal to celebrate spring break. She disappeared from rue Sainte-Catherine, on the city’s east side, following a movie and dinner with cousins. My skeletal analysis suggested she’d died soon after her abduction.

Manon Violette was fifteen when she was last seen in la ville souterraine, Montreal’s underground city. She bought boots, ate poutine, called her mother, then vanished. Her bones suggested she’d survived several years.

Tawny McGee was the only captive alive at the time of the 2004 raid. She’d been taken in 1999 at the age of twelve.

McGee visited me once following her rescue. Though reluctant, a social services psychiatrist had agreed to McGee’s request to come to my office.

I pictured the serious little face under the crooked beret. The clenched hands and somber voice. Managed not to wince at the memory.

“You’re not kidding. Your mom is good.” Ryan’s voice cut into my thoughts.

“You think the connections are real?”

“Three matches would be one hell of a coincidence.”

“Shelly Leal vanished on November twenty-first. If Mama is right, is Pomerleau memorializing some kid we don’t even know about?”

Ryan looked equally troubled by the thought.

“According to a statement Pomerleau gave the ER doctors in ’04, Catts grabbed her when she was fifteen,” I said.

“She was living on her own and not reported missing, so we may never know the exact date she was taken.”

“Ditto for Colleen Donovan. And my Jane Doe skeleton, ME107-10.”

“Any progress on that?”

I shook my head. “I sent the descriptors back through the usual data banks. Got no hits.”

“It always blows my mind. A kid that young, and no one’s looking.”

“Do the ages bother you?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Pomerleau and Catts preyed on girls in their mid-to late teens. These recent victims skew younger. Or look younger, in the case of Donovan.”

“Psychoses can evolve over time.”

Birdie chose that moment to hop onto the desk and roll to his back. I scratched his belly. He began to purr.

“You think we should tell Slidell?” I asked.

Ryan’s eyes gave me his answer.

I did go to Heatherhill Farm on Sunday. My guilt for staying away trumped my guilt for time lost on the investigation.

I found Mama sitting cross-legged on her bed, the Lilliputian laptop lighting her face. Her door was closed, and the TV was blasting.

After delivering the expected chastisement, Mama sighed and admitted she was delighted I’d come. Since the day was cold and overcast, which ruled out the deck, she insisted we stay in her room.

Mama was intense, restless. As we talked, she repeatedly scurried over to press her ear to the door.

Knowing the source of her agitation, I tried to steer our conversation toward lighter topics. Mama, as always, proved unsteerable.

Sadly, or happily, she’d found no new information on the abductions or murders. I told her she could stand down. Made comments suggesting greater progress than was actually occurring.