With horror, I recognized what was sharing my darkness.

LIFTING MY FINGERS, I ALLOWED THE SKULL TO ROLL BACK TO ITS original position.

The searchdog’s name was Étoile. Star. And she was one.

The grave had been under two feet of snow. Didn’t matter. Étoile had nailed it.

Ryan had picked me up before dawn on Saturday. My window thermometer said minus six Celsius. Twenty-one Fahrenheit.

We talked little during the drive. Our flight from O’Hare had landed late, and it was midnight when I reached my condo in centre-ville, two before I got to sleep. Barely awake, I sipped the coffee Ryan provided and watched the city slide past my window.

My funk wasn’t entirely fatigue-induced. I was still bummed by events in Chicago.

Ryan and I never got to see Schechter. Excuse was he was taking depositions in Rock Island. Consequently, I was still clueless about the viper who’d smeared my reputation with false accusations.

The conversation concerning Lassie had been as painful as anticipated. Throughout, Cukura Kundze wept as though she’d lost her own grandchild. The only upside was that Mr. Tot had insisted on informing his son and daughter-in-law personally concerning their son’s fate.

In addition, I’d had another clash with my new neighbor, Sparky Monteil. Yeah, Sparky. Though built like a pear, the guy works hard at looking tough. Elvis hair. Badass tattoo on the side of his neck. My building superintendent, Winston, says the little twerp’s at least fifty-five.

Sparky moved into my complex sometime last spring. His boxes weren’t unpacked when the whining began. Seems Sparky hates cats. No, that doesn’t do it justice. Sparky would have every feline on the planet rounded up, bagged, and tossed into the sea.

Granted, our home owners’ association has a no-pets policy. But since Birdie and I are away so much in Charlotte, and since the little guy never sets paw outside the condo when in residence, I’ve been granted an exemption. Sparky is fighting to have that revoked.

Sparky exited the elevator as I was waiting in the lobby for Ryan. This morning’s grievance concerned turds in the courtyard.

Sorry, pal. My cat’s not with me this trip.

On top of all that, I was once again freezing.

The heater in Ryan’s Jeep wasn’t state of the art. The windows were frosted, and I could feel cold rising through my boots, up my legs, and into my pelvis. I suspected the only warmth I’d experience all day would be that leaching from the cup I clutched in gloved hands.

Our destination lay approximately fifty kilometers northwest of Montreal in Oka. When I hear the town name I think of three things: Mohawks, monks, and monastery cheese.

The last two are interrelated.

In 1815 a group of monks settled in Brittany and created a cheese called Port Salut. Six decades later their brainchild was the rage of Paris. Didn’t matter. In 1880 the army of the French Third Republic seized the order’s Abbaye de Bellefontaine, and the cheese-making Trappists were booted from the country.

At the invitation of Quebec Sulpicians, eight of the exiles set sail for Canada. From their vast holdings, the host brothers gave the immigrants land on the north shore of Lac des Deux-Montagnes. Naming the property La Trappe after Soligny-la-Trappe, the order’s 1662 founding site, the new arrivals established L’Abbaye Notre-Dame du Lac.

At its peak, the monastery boasted upward of two hundred monks. By the early twenty-first century only twenty-eight remained, most over seventy years of age. Today, L’Abbaye is no longer a working monastery but serves as a nonprofit center for preservation of the site’s heritage.

In making their transatlantic journey back in the day, the Trappist travelers brought with them their treasured recette de fromage and, once settled, the churning of cow’s milk began anew. As in the homeland, the cheese was a box office hit.

As far as I know, the brothers still oversee the production of Oka Trappist Cheese, which, over the years, has evolved a new-world character uniquely its own.

The Mohawk thing is a bit more complicated.

In the summer of 1990, the “Oka Crisis” made international news. Essentially a land dispute between the town and the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, the confrontation lasted from mid-July until late September, and resulted in a commuters’ nightmare, a public relations fiasco for the government, and the death of one Sûreté du Québec officer.

In a nutshell, here’s what happened.

The town of Oka wanted to expand a golf course onto land containing a Mohawk burial ground and a sacred grove of pines. The natives screamed sacrilege. Their appeal was denied and construction of the back nine began. Incensed, tribal members barricaded access to the terrain in dispute.

No big deal. The cops clear the protesters, right? Wrong.

When the SQ restricted access to Oka and Kanesatake, First Nations groups began arriving from across Canada and the U.S. of A. In solidarity with Kanesatake, the Kahnawake Mohawks blockaded a bridge connecting the Island of Montreal with the south shore suburbs at the point where the bridge passed through their territory.

At the peak of the confrontation, the Mercier Bridge and Routes 132, 138, and 207 were all blocked. Traffic jams were vicious and tempers were fraying.

Enter the Canadian Armed Forces.

Ultimately, the Mohawks negotiated an end to their protest with the army commander responsible for monitoring the south shore of the St. Lawrence River west of Montreal. The lieutenant colonel’s name was Gagnon.

Life has its ironies. The original cheese-bearing Trappists lived in a miller’s cottage while awaiting completion of their monastery. The miller’s name was Gagnon.

A fourth facet is Parc national d’Oka, one of a chain of Quebec wildlife reserves and tourist resorts. May through September, the park’s twenty-four square kilometers host campers, picnickers, hikers, canoers, and kayakers. In winter, a few hardy souls still feel the need to bunk out in the cold, but the majority of visitors are snowshoers and cross-country skiers.

Wouldn’t catch me. But I do like summer outings, biking the trails, sunning on the beach, bird-watching on the floating boardwalk into Grande-Baie marsh. No argument here. I’m a warm-weather wuss.

As Ryan headed north on the Laurentian Autoroute then west on Highway 640, I watched close-packed city buildings give way to equi-spaced and identical suburban houses, eventually to snow-covered countryside. Yellow smudged the horizon, then the sky oozed from black to gray.

Forty-five minutes after leaving my condo Ryan turned onto chemin Oka. By then the sun was a low-hanging white disk. Leafless trees cast long, fuzzy shadows across fields and blacktop.

In moments, we passed the main park entrance. Just inside the gate a small stone building announced Poste d’accueil Camping-Camping Welcome Center. A yellow diamond showed a turtle, lizard, frog, and snake in black silhouette.

Twenty meters beyond the park entrance, an SQ cruiser idled on the opposite shoulder, vapor pumping from its tailpipe.

Ryan made a U-turn and rolled to a stop. The cruiser’s occupant set a Styrofoam cup on the dash, pulled on gloves, and hauled himself out. He wore an olive green jacket with black fur collar, dark olive muffler, and olive hat, earflaps tied in the up position. His name plaque read Halton.

Lowering the window, Ryan showed his badge. Halton glanced at it, then bent to inspect me.

I held up my LSJML card.

Halton flapped an arm toward the woods, then spoke in French. “Take the service road skirting the edge of the park. Party’s at the river’s edge.”