“Maybe the shooter placed the gun in Ferris’s hand and pulled the trigger.”

“Simulated suicide?” Ryan.

“Every TV viewer knows you gotta have gunshot residue.”

“LaManche didn’t find any.”

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.”

I munched and thought.

LaManche had recovered one bullet fragment from the victim’s head. SIJ had dug one bullet from the ceiling. Where was the rest of the ballistic evidence?

“You said Ferris may have been sitting on a stool when he took the shots?” I asked.

Ryan nodded.

“Facing the door?”

“Which was probably open. SIJ’s going over the office and hallways. You wouldn’t believe how much crap is stacked in this place.”

“What about casings?”

Ryan shook his head. “Shooter must have collected them.”

That didn’t make sense either.

“Why leave the gun, then turn around and collect the bullet casings?”

“An astute question, Dr. Brennan.”

I had no astute answer.

I offered salad to Ryan. He declined.

Ryan changed gears. “Dropped in on the widow again today.”

“And?”

“The lady won’t be topping my Miss Congeniality ballot.”

“She’s grieving.”

“So she says.”

“You don’t buy it?”

“My gut says there’s something to gnaw on there.”

“Bad metaphor.” I was thinking of the cats.

“Good point.”

“Any suspects?”

“A plethora.”

“Big word,” I said. “Sexy.”

“Tap pants,” Ryan said.

“Small words.”

Over dessert, I told Ryan what I’d learned about Kessler’s photo.

“Drum actually diverted to Paris?”

“Apparently.”

“He’s convinced the print shows this Masada skeleton?”

“And Jake’s not one to get worked up easily.”

Ryan gave me an odd look.

“How well do you know this Jake?”

“More than twenty years.”

“The query concerned depth, not length of acquaintance.”

“We’re colleagues.”

“Just colleagues?”

Eye roll. “Getting a little personal?”

“Mmm.”

“Mmm.”

“I’m thinking maybe we should pool our tips.”

I hadn’t a clue what that meant.

“I also had another chat with Courtney Purviance,” Ryan said. “Interesting lady.”

“Congenial?”

“Until the discussion turns to Ferris or details of the business. Then she slams shut like a bank vault.”

“Protecting the boss?”

“Or afraid she’s going to find herself out on the street. I picked up vibes she’s not all that fond of Miriam.”

“What did she say?”

“It’s not what she said.” Ryan thought a moment. “It was more her demeanor. Anyway, I did pry loose that Ferris dealt in artifacts from time to time.”

“Items from the Holy Land?” I guessed.

“Legally obtained and transported, of course.”

“There’s a huge black market in illegal antiquities,” I said.

“Colossal,” Ryan agreed.

Synapse.

“You think Ferris was involved with the Masada bones?”

Ryan shrugged.

“And that got him killed?”

“Kessler thought so.”

“Have you tracked Kessler down?”

“I will.”

“Could all be coincidence.”

“Could be.”

I didn’t think so.

RYAN WOKE ME SHORTLY AFTER SIX FOR SOME PRE-SUNRISE BONDING. Birdie slipped from the bedroom. Down the hall, Charlie squawked a line from Clarence Carter’s “Strokin’.”

While I showered, Ryan toasted bagels and made coffee. Over breakfast we discussed the cockatiel’s reeducation process.

Though unmentioned on the occasion of our Yuletide exchange, I’d quickly noted Charlie’s unorthodoxrépertoire noir. Upon questioning, Ryan had admitted that our feathered darling came to him via a vice squad raid on a female enterprise. The ladies’ taste had been lusty, and the bird had absorbed.

For months I’d been working to redirect Charlie’s musical and oratorical talents. With mixed results.

At eight, I popped in a cockatiel-training CD and Ryan and I rode together to L’édifice Wilfrid Derome. He headed to thecrimes contre la personne squad room on the first floor, and I took the LSJML elevator to the twelfth.

After shooting close-ups and composing a summary report, I told LaManche that the remains in my possession could be released to the Ferris family. Though burial had taken place while I was in New Orleans, arrangements had been made for placement of the cranial fragments in a coffin-side pit.

At ten-thirty, I phoned Ryan. He said he’d meet me in the lobby in five. I waited ten. Bored, I slipped into the cafeteria for a Diet Coke roadie. At the counter, I made an impulse buy of Scottish shortbreads. One never knew.

Ryan was waiting when I returned to the lobby. Popping the soda, I stashed the cookies in my shoulder bag.

For twenty-seven years Avram Ferris had run his import business out of a light-industrial park off the autoroute des Laurentides, midway between Montreal island and the old Mirabel airport.

Constructed in the seventies, Mirabel was envisioned as Montreal ’s once-and-future aviation jewel. Though thirty miles out, a high speed rail line was to connect the airport with the city center. Lickety-split. You’d be at the gate!

The rail line never happened.

By the early nineties the commute was intolerable and getting worse. Sixty-nine bucks for a taxi downtown.

Frustrated, officials finally threw in the towel and mothballed Mirabel in favor of its geographically friendlier rival. Mirabel now gets cargo and charters. All other domestic, North American, and international flights arrive and depart Dorval, recently rechristened Pierre Elliott Trudeau International.

Avram Ferris didn’t care. He’d started Les Imports Ashkenazim near Mirabel, and that’s where he’d kept it.

And that’s where he’d died.

He’d lived in Côte-des-Neiges, a middle-class residential neighborhood tucked behind the Jewish General Hospital, just northwest of le centre-ville.

Ryan took the Décarie expressway, cut east on Van Horne, then north on Plamondon to Vézina. Pulling to the curb, he pointed to a two-story redbrick box in a row of two-story redbrick boxes.

I scanned the block.

Each building was identical, its right side a mirror image of its left. Wood-framed doors jutted in front, balconies hung from upstairs windows. All walks were shoveled. All shrubs were wrapped. In the driveways, Chevy and Ford station wagons waited under tubular-framed, plastic-shrouded shelters.

“Not the Jaguar and SUV set,” I said.

“Looks like the homeowners held a meeting and banned any trim that ain’t white.”

Ryan chin-cocked the building directly opposite. “Ferris’s unit is upstairs on the left. His brother’s down, Mama and another brother are in the duplex next door.”

“Ferris’s commute must have been hell.”

“Probably stayed here out of love of architectural self-expression.”

“You said Avram and Miriam had no kids?”

Ryan nodded. “They married late. The first wife had health problems, died in eighty-nine. Ferris remarried in ninety-seven. So far, no progeny.”

“Isn’t that against the rules?”

Ryan gave me a quizzical look.

“The mitzvot.”

The look held.

“Jewish law. You’re supposed to have babies. Not waste your seed.”

“You’re thinking of the farmer’s almanac.”

Ryan and I walked to the small front stoop.

Ryan stepped up and rang the top bell.

We waited.

Ryan rang again.

We waited some more.

An old woman trudged by behind us, grocery cart rattling in cadence with her boots.

“Isn’t the widow supposed to hunker in?” Ryan asked, hitting the bell a third time.

“Shiva only lasts a week.”

“And then?”

“You say daily kaddish, don’t party, don’t shave or snip and clip for a while. But basically you get on with your life.”

“How do you know all this?”

“My first boyfriend was Jewish.”