Déjà Dead

In the summer of 1994, forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Tempe" Brennan works at the Laboratoire de Médecine Légale (LML) in Montreal, a medico-legal facility analogous to a medical examiner's office. Her director, Pierre LaManche, sends her to examine bones found by utility workers near Le Grand Séminaire, a Catholic seminary compound. LaManche suspects an old cemetery, but Tempe discovers a partially skeletonized human torso in a plastic garbage bag with a bathroom plunger lodged in the pelvis, and a second bag containing a decomposing head with red hair. She calls homicide, and Detective Luc Claudel responds. That night, Tempe recalls Chantale Trottier, a 16-year-old girl whose dismembered body arrived at the morgue in garbage bags less than a year earlier, and the phrase "serial murder" begins to haunt her.

Tempe determines the victim is a young white female. Using dental records, forensic dentist Marc Bergeron confirms the remains belong to Isabelle Gagnon, age 23, missing since April 1994. Tempe raises a possible link to the Trottier case: Both victims were female, dismembered, and bagged in plastic. Claudel dismisses her with open contempt. Tempe, who has been sober for six years, channels her frustration into her work, presenting LaManche with a detailed analysis showing the killer struck Gagnon's skull at least three times from behind and dismembered the body with unusual precision, neatly disconnecting joints with a knife and saw rather than hacking through bone. LaManche authorizes Tempe to pursue a cut-mark comparison between the two cases.

Meanwhile, Tempe reconnects with her closest friend, Gabby Macaulay, a cultural anthropologist who studies sex workers on the Main, Montreal's red-light district along Boulevard St. Laurent. Tempe, separated from her husband Pete and mother to a college-age daughter named Katy, relies on Gabby as her primary emotional support. Over dinner, Gabby is distracted and drinking heavily, growing shaken when Tempe mentions the murders. In the weeks that follow, Gabby calls from a pay phone in a panic, describing a man from her research who is stalking her at the Métro, in the park, and outside her university office. She describes his disturbing eyes but refuses to name him, citing the unspoken rules of the street.

On June 23, a third victim is discovered. Margaret Adkins, 24 and a mother, is found bludgeoned to death with her abdomen slashed open, her left breast severed and placed in her mouth, and a Virgin Mary figurine forced into her vagina while she was still alive. Tempe notes internal gashes on the vertebrae similar to those on Gagnon.

The investigation accelerates when a bank card video still from Adkins's stolen card leads detectives to a squalid room at 1422 Rue Berger, rented under the alias "St. Jacques." Inside, they find pornographic images, clippings about serial killers, a city map with three circled X's marking body dump sites, and a legal pad listing seven names with surveillance logs. A figure bolts from the room and escapes into a holiday crowd. The crime scene team discovers a newspaper photo of Tempe, her image circled and marked with an X on her chest.

Tempe conducts a microscopic analysis of saw marks on the bones of both Gagnon and Trottier, consulting saw expert Aaron Calvert in Oklahoma. The cuts in both cases are consistent with a chef's saw, a specialty handsaw designed for cutting through bone and gristle. The killer shows anatomical knowledge in his technique. Tempe shares her findings with Detective Lieutenant Andrew Ryan of the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), the provincial police, who encourages her to build a stronger case.

Analyzing the map's third X, Tempe drives alone to an abandoned monastery in St. Lambert belonging to the Archdiocese of Montreal. She discovers a shallow burial containing human remains in a plastic bag but is struck on the head and knocked unconscious before she can retreat. The next morning, a recovery team unearths the dismembered skeleton of a white female, dead two to five years, buried in four locations within the grounds. The head is missing. Ryan identifies the victim as Grace Damas, a 32-year-old mother of three who disappeared in February 1992. Tempe later confirms that a skull planted anonymously in her garden is the missing head.

Through a database search, Tempe identifies a fifth linked victim: Francine Morisette-Champoux, a 47-year-old woman murdered in January 1993, who was beaten, shot, eviscerated, and had a kitchen knife driven into her vagina while alive. A pattern of antemortem vaginal penetration with foreign objects now connects three cases: Gagnon (plunger), Adkins (statue), and Morisette-Champoux (knife). FBI profiler John Samuel Dobzhansky, an old friend of Tempe's, confirms the cases likely represent a single offender whose consistent "signature," the ritualistic expression of rage through beating, mutilation, and object insertion, distinguishes him from an evolving modus operandi. He warns that the killer is escalating and that Tempe may be a target.

Tempe discovers two further connections: Three victims lived exactly six stops from the Berri-UQAM Métro station, a major downtown transit hub near the Berger apartment, and several victims' homes were listed for sale with real estate agencies. A formal task force forms under Ryan's coordination to investigate seven potentially linked homicides, including two earlier murders of sex workers that Tempe suspects do not fit the same signature.

Gabby reappears at Tempe's apartment, describing her stalker's escalating intrusions into her home, then vanishes again. In the guest room trash, Tempe finds a disturbing pencil drawing of a disemboweled woman inscribed with the words "Don't cut me." Soon an envelope arrives at Tempe's door containing Gabby's health insurance card and a map fragment marked with an X. At the indicated location in St. Lambert, the team finds Gabby's body in a shallow grave outlined with bricks. A surgical glove on her chest contains a snapshot of Tempe and Katy at Myrtle Beach, a deliberate threat against Tempe's daughter.

The task force raids an apartment on Rue Séguin belonging to Jean Pierre Tanguay, a 28-year-old biology teacher linked to the red-light district through a young sex worker named Julie. The apartment contains surgical tools, skinned animal carcasses, and a copy of a journal featuring Gabby's published article. However, Tempe's forensic analysis exonerates Tanguay. X-ray microfluorescence, a technique that identifies the elemental composition of materials, shows the surgical glove from Tanguay's kitchen does not match the one buried with Gabby; the Gabby glove instead matches one recovered from the Berger apartment. A bite mark preserved in cheese at the Berger flat also fails to match Tanguay's teeth. He is not St. Jacques.

With horror, Tempe realizes the real killer remains free, and Katy is on her way to Montreal. Through a chain of investigative calls, Tempe identifies the killer as Leo Fortier: A former employee at the butcher shop where Damas worked, the grand-nephew of the monastery's elderly caretaker, and a psychiatric patient with a history of violence against women. His former psychiatrist describes a man raised by a domineering, fanatically religious grandmother whose need for control stems from watching his mother die at the hands of an abortionist while his grandmother stood by.

That evening, Fortier breaks into Tempe's apartment by disabling her power and phone lines. Wearing a spandex bodysuit and surgical gloves, he seizes her from behind, loops a choke chain around her neck, and taunts her about Katy. When Tempe's cat startles him, she kicks him in the groin and flees toward the kitchen. He catches her by the trailing chain and pins her against the counter. Tempe finds a steak knife on the countertop and thrusts it over her shoulder into Fortier's eye. Moments later, Claudel, who had independently realized Tanguay could not be the killer based on school attendance records, bursts through the French doors and secures Fortier.

Tempe recovers in the hospital with 37 stitches. Fortier is charged with five counts of first-degree murder for the killings of Damas, Morisette-Champoux, Trottier, Gagnon, and Adkins; Gabby's murder is also attributed to him. Luminol testing at the monastery basement reveals massive bloodstain evidence confirming it as his killing and dismemberment site. Tanguay is cleared as a nuisance offender unconnected to the murders. Before leaving Montreal for a beach vacation with Katy, Tempe opens an envelope from Claudel containing not the formal complaint she feared but a handwritten note thanking her for ensuring the victims did not die in anonymity and expressing his wish to work with her again.