“What river?” I asked.

“Rivière aux Serpents.” Halton grinned. “Little bastards should be sleeping this time of year.”

Ryan veered from the shoulder and we rolled forward, tires crunching on icy gravel. At our backs, across the highway, Le Calvaire d’Oka dominated the landscape. I’d once hiked the trail to its summit. A sort of woodland Way of the Cross, the path climbs five kilometers to a cluster of mid-eighteenth-century chapels. The view was kick-ass.

So was the poison ivy. I itched and oozed for weeks.

“Yield to reptiles?” Ryan’s lame joke suggested anxiety.

“And amphibians,” I said.

Ryan looked at me.

“The sign depicts herpetofauna. That includes amphibians.” It was way too early for a biology lesson.

“What’s the difference?”

“Amniotic egg.”

“I prefer scrambled.”

“Reptiles can reproduce out of water.”

“Breakthrough moment. When did it happen?”

“Over three hundred million years ago.”

“You’d think they’d be traffic savvy by now.”

I chose not to answer.

We were traveling a narrow road piled on both sides with snowplow off-load. Trees rose around us like tall, naked sentinels.

The downward gradient increased as we moved toward the river. Soon I spotted the shore. Lining it was the usual cluster of vehicles: a second police cruiser, a black transport van, a blue crime scene recovery truck.

A uniformed SQ officer waved us to a stop. Her name tag read Naveau. Again, the warm welcome of law and order.

We identified ourselves. Naveau told Ryan to park at the back of a rustic wooden structure that was probably a warming hut for cross-country skiers.

Ryan did as directed, then we both tugged on hats and got out of the Jeep. The sun was higher now, casting smudgy-edged shadows from tree trunks and branches. The air was so cold it felt crystalline.

Good news. A plastic tent had been erected over what I assumed was the spot that had interested the cadaver dog, Étoile. Freshly shoveled snow lay mounded to one side.

I recognized the setup from an exhumation I’d done years earlier on an Innu reserve near the town of Sept-Îsles. On that occasion the temperature had peaked at minus 34 Celsius. I knew that inside the tent a portable heater was pumping air through corrugated piping, warming the interior and melting the ground.

Four men stood outside the tent. Two wore coveralls and jackets stamped with the same logo as the crime scene truck. Service de l’identité judiciaire. Division des scènes de crime.

One wore a black Kanuk parka not unlike my own sky blue one. In the thickly padded anorak, Joe Bonnet, my new lab tech, looked like a marsh-mallow on a stick. Mercifully, Joe’s head was covered by a tuque. He thought the gel-spiked platinum hair looked punk. I thought it looked goofy, especially on a guy waving bye-bye to his thirties. But I never said so.

Joe was competent at his job but fragile. And needy. It wasn’t enough to refrain from censure or criticism. With Joe, you had to constantly praise and reassure. I suck at warm fuzzies. Most people know and accept that about me. Joe wasn’t getting it.

Needless to say, there had been blow-ups and pout-outs. His, not mine. Even under cease-fire, Joe and I were like stranger pets thrown together at Grandma’s house. Always edgy, always sniffing the mood of the other.

Partly my fault. Two years, and I was still bummed by the loss of my longtime assistant, Denis. What’s this retirement thing, anyway?

The fourth man wore an overcoat that barely buttoned across his ample midsection. Jean-Claude Hubert, chief coroner of the Province of Quebec.

Hubert waddled in our direction. His face was very flushed and very chapped.

“Detective Ryan. Dr. Brennan.” Hubert’s accent was upriver, perhaps Quebec City. “Thanks for coming out so early.”

“What’s the story?” I had the basics but wanted Hubert’s version.

“Jailhouse canary’s singing about a woman missing two years.”

“Florian Grellier,” Ryan said.

Hubert nodded. Three chins rippled above his muffler. “The victim was Christelle Villejoin. Grellier says she was murdered and buried out here.”

“Murdered by whom?” Ryan asked.

“Claims he doesn’t know.”

“How’d Monsieur Grellier happen upon this information?”

“Says he met some guy in a bar. Swears he never got the guy’s name, hasn’t seen him since the night they banged shots together.”

“When was that?” Ryan.

“Sometime last summer. Grellier’s a bit hazy on that.”

“You bring him out here?”

“No. He provided good landmarks, the road, the warming hut, the river. We ran a cadaver dog, she alerted.” Hubert gestured an upturned mitten in the direction of the tent. “Handler says there’s a ninety percent chance someone’s gone south in the dirt over there.”

“Pretty detailed mapping for a drunken recollection,” I said.

“Yeah.” Hubert puffed air through his lips. They badly needed Chap-Stick.

“What have you done so far?”

“Secured the area, shot photos, cleared snow, set up the tent. The heater’s been going since yesterday, so the ground should be thawed.”

“Bon,” I said.

“Let’s do it.”

Hubert was right. The ground was sufficiently soft to dig. And another thing worked in our favor. Human nature. Either lazy or nervous, the perp had buried his vic only eighteen inches down.

By one, Bonnet and I had exposed the entire skeleton. Most of the bones we’d left in situ. Those found by sifting dirt through a screen we’d sealed into evidence bags.

I’d done an inventory, detailing everything but the phalanges. Those I merely counted.

One skull, including all twenty-one cranial bones and the six from the inner ear. One mandible. One hyoid. One sternum. Two clavicles. Two scapulae. Twenty-four ribs. Twenty-four vertebrae. One sacrum. One coccyx. Six arm bones. Six leg bones. Two innominates. Two patellae. Sixteen carpus. Ten metacarpus. Fourteen tarsus. Ten metatarsus. Fifty-six phalanges.

Two hundred and six bones. Damn, we were good.

Throughout the exhumation, Ryan and Hubert had come and gone. Turned out the heater recognized only two settings: Off and Tropic of Cancer. Though we’d opened a flap, the temperature in the tent rose to roughly 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Bonnet and I had peeled by layers, ended up working in T-shirts and jeans.

Now, as I made notes and Bonnet snapped photos, Ryan and Hubert stood peering into the pit. Their faces were flushed, their hairlines dampened by sweat.

The victim lay facedown, wearing bra and panties, with arms and legs twisted to the right. A fracture spidered the back of the skull.

“Eh, misère.” Hubert had uttered the expletive at least twenty times.

“Thoughts on body position?” Ryan asked me.

“Only preliminary.”

Ryan nodded. “I’m guessing she was hit from behind. Then she either fell or was pushed into the grave.”

“Hit with what?” Taut.

“From the shape of the indentation, I’d say something flat with a raised central ridge.”

“She?” Hubert had picked up on my gender reference.

“Yes.”

“Because of the undies?”

“Because of cranial and pelvic features.”

“The rest of her clothing rotted away?”

“I doubt it. Granted, the underwear is polyester, and synthetics outlast natural fibers like cotton or linen, but I’d have found zippers, buttons, snaps, something. I don’t think she was wearing anything else.”

“And no shoes or socks,” Ryan pointed out.

“No,” I agreed.

“Age?” Hubert asked.

Squatting, I lifted and rotated the skull.

Only eight yellowed teeth were present, their cusps worn flat. The remaining sockets were smoothed by bony infill.

The cranial sutures were fused. Both temporo-mandibular joints and occipital condyles were gnarled by arthritis.

“Old,” I said, not trusting my voice to add more.