At nine o’clock Christmas morning, Myron Pinsker identified the purse as belonging to his stepmother, Marilyn Keiser. Pinsker claimed to have given Keiser the file along with shampoos and lotions he’d bagged while vacationing at the Hotel Ocean Sunset in Florida the previous summer.

“Claudel says that after IDing the handbag Pinsker blanched and started shaking like he had the DTs. Claudel got him a glass of water, did the head-below-the-knees thing. As he’s rebagging the evidence, Pinsker keels, the glass shatters, and blood flies everywhere.”

“I assume Claudel did a deck dive, too.”

“I see sun and sand have mellowed your take on humanity.”

“Come on, Ryan. You know Claudel freaks at the sight of blood.”

“I have to admit, Charbonneau’s account was hilarious.”

Michel Charbonneau is Luc Claudel’s longtime partner.

“Picture this. Claudel’s struggling not to toss his cookies, dialing for a medic, but his fingers are jumping all over the keys. Pinsker’s on the floor with a shard up his ass. Or wherever. Claudel starts hollering for backup. Pinsker comes to, sees the purse, goes apeshit all over again, rocking and howling like a dingo.”

“Genuine grief?”

“Precisely my question to Claudel.”

“His answer?”

“‘Do I look like a freakin’ shrink?’”

I thought for a moment.

“How often is the Dumpster emptied?”

“Twice weekly. But the purse handle was hooked over an interior piece. There’s no telling how long the thing was in there.”

“The homeless man?”

“Harmless. Hoped his find would score him a six-pack.”

“Latents?”

“Negative. The purse is fabric.”

“So this big break is actually a nonstarter.”

“So far.”

“And the pension checks?”

“Cashed all at once at one location. No one remembers who brought them in. Signature’s nothing like Keiser’s. Name’s illegible.”

“The casher must have presented ID.”

“Must have.”

“What does Pinsker say?”

“Denies knowing anything about them.”

Out on the bay, sails flashed tangerine in the last light of evening.

“What about my Oka samples?” I asked.

“Still cooling their heels in the DNA queue.”

“Did you ask how long it would be?”

“They’ll get back to me. When they stop laughing.”

“Locate any relatives up in the Beauce?”

“Working on it.”

No real news on Keiser, and nothing on Oka. So why the text message?

“When are you coming north?” Ryan’s voice sounded lower, softer somehow.

“I usually get a call around January second.”

With my free hand I twisted a bougainvillea vine.

“Remember the year we found Santa?”

Ryan referred to a bearded man who’d fallen down his chimney wearing long red underwear. His body was found three years later, on December 26, rigid as granite.

“Yeah.” I smiled. “Good times.”

“Charlie misses you.”

“Give him a peck on the beak from me.”

“He’s practicing carols. Really nails the Chipmunk thing.”

Though I laughed, a cold heaviness had curled in my chest.

“Please buy him a gift for me.”

“Already got a cardigan with your name on the tag.”

A soft breeze lifted my hair.

“Merry Christmas, Brennan.”

“Merry Christmas, Ryan.”

KATY AND I RETURNED TO CHARLOTTE ON DECEMBER 28, BRONZED and gorgeous. Or so we told ourselves. Pounds up and peeling was closer to the truth.

On the 29th, my daughter called for a late family Christmas. We met at Pete’s house. My old house. It’s easier now. Used to be a bitch.

Pete played chef. Standing rib roast for us. New York strip for Boyd, a very Ho Ho Ho kind of dog. Especially with a bellyful of steak.

Pete gave Katy a racing bike, the chow a rawhide bone, and me a gold David Yurman bracelet.

I was stunned, said it was way too much. Pete waved off my objections.

I wondered. Was my gift the reason for the surprising but delightful absence of the lovely and exceedingly busty young Summer?

Whatever. I kept the jewelry.

I spent New Year’s Eve with Charlie Hunt. Dinner at the Palm, noise-makers, hats, slow dancing. After midnight we shook hands and went our separate ways.

Well, not exactly a handshake. But we each slept solo. Or at least I did.

Andrew Ryan: Tall, Nova Scotia Irish, sandy-going-gray hair, corn-flower eyes.

Charlie Hunt: Very tall, exotically mélangé, black hair, jade eyes.

What was right with this picture?

What was wrong was serious history. And baggage roomy enough to swallow a Walmart.

Evenings, Ryan and I talked on the phone, but not as we had in the past. Our conversations stayed outside the guardrail, prudently distant from the dangerous ground of feelings and future.

We discussed LaManche. The chief had suffered a setback, an infection that would delay his return to work.

We hashed over the Keiser, Oka, and Villejoin investigations, everything we knew. Not much to hash.

Ryan had revisited those living on the Villejoin’s block in Pointe-Calumet. Claudel had canvassed Keiser’s building on Édouard-Montpetit. They’d learned which neighbors were neat, which drank, which were churchgoers, which were stoners.

Claudel had reinterviewed Keiser’s stepson, Myron Pinsker, and again contacted her son and daughter in Alberta. Ryan had tracked down Yves Renaud, the nurse who’d discovered Anne-Isabelle Villejoin.

Everyone checked out. No one provided new facts.

Ryan had also reinterrogated Florian Grellier, the snitch who’d led them to the Oka grave, hoping to shake something loose. Grellier’s story remained disappointingly consistent. He’d scored his info from an anonymous bar buddy. Beyond that, he knew jackshit.

On January 12, Le Journal de Montréal ran a short piece backgrounding Marilyn Keiser’s disappearance and reminding readers about Christelle Villejoin. A flood of confessions and sightings followed. Stories ranged from “I killed them for their livers” to “I saw them in Key West with a tall black man.” Apparently the guy was a snappy dresser.

A psychic swore Villejoin was still in Quebec, in a small, dark space. She’d seen no sign of Keiser.

Winter is my slow season up north. Waterways freeze and snow hides the land. Kids are in school. Campers and sportsmen stow their gear and grab their remotes.

Corpses miraculously found outdoors arrive solid as deer carcasses hung in a freezer. In those cases, the pathologist rules. Defrost. Y-incision.

Still, the wind-chill days generate plenty for the anthropologist. Folks die and putrefy in their beds. Folks crank up heaters or build fires that burn down the house. Folks off themselves in barns, bathtubs, and basements.

Perhaps Hubert still had a hard-on over the missing phalanges. Perhaps the tundra was atypically calm. Early January passed with no call from Montreal for my services.

While enjoying the sixty-degree sunshine in Charlotte, I examined three cases for the Mecklenburg County ME, worked on a research grant, cleaned closets, plastered and painted a cracked wall I’d been looking at for years.

In between professional and domestic chores, I spent time with my daughter. Unhappy with her job in the Public Defender’s Office, Katy was considering a change, perhaps graduate or law school. I listened to her complaints and ponderings, murmured sympathy at appropriate points, rendered opinions when asked.

I also saw quite a bit of Charlie Hunt. He and I shared dinners, attended a few movies and a Bobcats game, played tennis twice. Though the kettle was racing toward a boil, I kept the lid on. A little neckin’, as we say in the South, then home to bed with my cat.

Weeks passed.

The Oka woman remained inconnue. Unknown.