MONDAY I AWOKE TO THE SOUND OF PLOWS BLASTING TRIPTYCH warnings to overnight parkers.

Wreep! Wreep! Wreep!

Déplacez votre voiture! Move your car! Move your ass!

Though the media were reporting that most main arteries were clear, through a side window I could see that my block still looked like a postcard from Finland. I knew the same scene was playing on side streets and alleys all over town. Shovels would be flying, and those who’d failed to relocate their vehicles would now do so only after heavy-duty lifting. Hospital ERs would be hopping.

Knowing traffic would be brutal and parking would involve angling ass-end into waist-high snowbanks, I opted for mass transit. Today my Nanook trek paid off. I rode standing shoulder to armpit with commuters smelling of wet wool and sweat.

At Édifice Wilfrid-Derome, small white mountains hid the fences surrounding the parking lots. Cars were wedged into every square millimeter of cleared pavement. Those blocking others had notes below their wipers. Courtesy? Or excuses to leave early?

Elevator talk was all about the storm. La tempête de neige.

Upstairs at the LSJML it was business as usual. Except in the medico-legal section. There, nothing had been usual since LaManche dropped his bomb one sparkling Friday in September.

Blocked coronary vessels. Bypass surgery in October. Medical leave until the new year.

In addition to myself and LaManche, the three other pathologists had been present that day. Michael Morin. Natalie Ayers. Emily Santangelo. So was Marc Bergeron, the lab’s consulting odontologist. We’d all sat stunned.

Sure, the chief had suffered a pesky episode a few years back. But he’d recovered quickly. Once again arrived first each morning, turned the lights off at night. Triple bypasses were for frail, old men. LaManche was only fifty-eight.

I remember meeting LaManche’s hound dog gaze. Dropping my eyes. Glancing out the window. This can’t be real, I thought. The day is too beautiful. Irrational, but that’s what I thought.

The following week, LaManche raised the issue of a temporary replacement. The decision was quick and unanimous. Ours was a congenial unit. There’d be no stand-in. Until the boss returned the pathologists would assign cases and make administrative decisions by consensus. The extra workload would be equally shared.

And that’s how it was working, three months down the road.

Sort of.

After shedding my substantial outerwear, I snapped on a lab coat and headed to the staff lounge. At the exit from our wing, where the hall makes a turn, I passed a closed and locked door. Venetian blinds allowed a peek of an empty desk.

Beside the dark office, an erasable board announced daily staff whereabouts. Congé de maladie was scribbled in the box beside LaManche’s name. Sick leave.

A lead weight settled in my heart.

The surgery went well. He’ll be fine.

Still, the silent office and the Magic Marker entry gave me shivers.

LaManche had always been there for me, a voice of wisdom and reason. Of compassion and perspective earned by decades of working with the dead and with the bereaved left behind. That voice was now banished because of bum piping.

LaManche isn’t old. Agitated, I swiped my card, missed, swiped again. The glass panels whooshed open. It’s not fair.

Life’s not fair. Gran’s favorite retort zinged at me from the past.

Screw capricious fate. I couldn’t imagine the LSJML without LaManche. Didn’t want to.

Though the lounge was deserted, the puddled floor told me others had already been there. Dropping coins into an honor box, I poured coffee translucent as smoky quartz.

Back in the medico-legal wing, I hurried to the far end of the corridor. My watch said nine ten. Morning meeting usually kicks off at nine.

Our section’s conference room is exactly what you’d envision in a government building. Algae green walls. Gray tile floor. Window blinds. Phone credenza. Gunmetal table and chairs. A blackboard/projection screen hangs at one end, a door opens to an audiovisual closet at the other.

Two pathologists sat with their backs to the windows. Sunlight warmed Ayers’s chestnut hair and glinted off Morin’s freckled brown dome. A third sat at the far end. Santangelo’s slumping shoulders suggested fatigue.

Facing the old-timers was Marie-Andréa Briel, the new kid on the LSJML block. Briel had joined the staff the previous fall, during a period when I was away in Charlotte. Lab policy is that, for their first year, new pathologists do no homicide cases, so I hadn’t really worked with Briel. Though I’d seen her in the halls, and we’d nodded across the table at staff meetings, we’d had virtually no personal interaction. I knew little about her from firsthand experience. What snippets I’d been given weren’t golden.

One late afternoon, exhausted, LaManche had confided that an offer had been extended and accepted. In his opinion, the applicant wasn’t the pick of the litter. But old Jean Pelletier had been gone for over a year and he and the others had been doing the work of five.

Though he’d yet to reveal it, the chief probably knew he was looking at surgery in the not too distant future. Another pathologist had to be hired.

Why such a prolonged search? The pay is low, and the LSJML requires fluency in French. You guessed it. The litter wasn’t that big.

Ayers and Morin smiled when I entered. Santangelo flicked a wave.

“Bonjour, Tempe.” Morin’s French was that of the islands. “Comment ça va?”

“Ça va bien.” I’m doing fine.

“Couldn’t stay away from our Montreal weather, eh?” Ayers knew my feelings on snow.

“No comment.” I took a seat.

Briel glanced in my direction.

I nodded. Smiled.

Briel looked down at her notepad, vertical lines creasing the gap where heavy dark brows reached for each other over her nose.

I looked at Ayers. She shrugged. Who knows?

I tried again with my newest colleague. “I hope you’re now feeling comfortable here.”

Briel’s face rose, frown lines in place. “Oui.”

“Not letting these old goats get on your nerves.”

Ayers bleated softly.

“I can handle difficulties.”

Marie-Andréa Briel was not blessed with beauty. Perhaps thirty-two, she had a substantial fundament, frizzy black hair, and skin the color of fluoridated teeth. That skin now went incandescent.

“I’m not implying that anyone is difficult. That’s not what I meant. I’m very happy here. Thankful for the chance to learn.”

Though grammatically flawless, Briel’s French was oddly without accent or inflection. Definitely not Québécois or European. I made a mental note to ask about her origins.

Morin reached over and patted Briel’s hand. “You’re doing fine.”

The frown lines relaxed. A micron.

“The old lady from Oka is downstairs?” Morin asked me.

“Yes. I started my analysis on Saturday, hope to finish today.”

“Then outa here for a Dixie Christmas?” Ayers.

“That’s the plan.”

“Put elf hats on the hunting dogs?” Ayers loved to tease about my Southern roots.

“Yep. Then the cousins gather in my trailer to drink hooch and eat pork skins.”

“Bon.” Morin distributed photocopied rosters of the day’s cases. “Then let’s not waste time.”

I skimmed the daily morgue sheet. Eight autopsies. A typical Monday. Busy as hell.

Morin went over each case.

A Ski-Doo had slammed into a tree near Sainte-Agathe. A second snowmobile had then plowed into the first. Two dead. Alcohol intoxication was suspected.

An Argentine seaman had died in a home-rigged sauna in the Gay Village. The presumed host was in critical condition at the General. Alcohol and drug intoxication were suspected.

Two men and a woman had been discovered dead in their beds in Baie-Comeau. Carbon monoxide poisoning was suspected.

A man had been gunned down outside a convenience store in Longueuil.

A woman had been stabbed in her home in Lac-Beauport. The estranged husband was in custody.

Only the Longueuil shooting victim’s identity was unknown. Prints were being run and a photo was being shopped to known gang members.

Nothing for the anthropologist. Hot damn. I’d be free to work on the Oka lady.

Though Briel offered, Morin assigned himself the stabbing victim. Mo went onto the roster beside that case.

Santangelo got the snowmobilers. Sa.

Ayers volunteered for the sailor and the gunshot death. Again Briel offered, but was refused. The shooting was clearly a homicide. The sautéed sailor was a foreign national. That meant potential diplomatic issues. Ay.

Briel’s brow-pucker deepened as Morin wrote Br beside the chalet vics then tossed her a ziplock filled with vials of prescription drugs.

“Christelle Villejoin’s antemortem records,” he said, handing me an envelope whose size did not look encouraging.

“No X-rays?”

Morin shook his head.

“Dentals?”

“Apparently les soeurs Villejoin were not fond of medical professionals. Everything in the file looks pretty old.”

Great.

Morin turned to budget matters. Additional cuts had been demanded by the ministry. Nothing new. Each year funding grew more spartan. The joke was that soon autopsies would be billed by the pound.

We were pushing from the table when Briel spoke up.

“I have taken on a student.”

We all paused.

“A student?” Morin raised a questioning brow.

“I am beginning a new project and need a new research assistant.”

“A project?” The brow floated higher.

“Montreal remains the last U.S. or Canadian city with a population over one million that does not fluoridate its water. Some communities in the West Island do fluoridate. Pointe-Claire, Dorval, Beaconsfield, Baied’Urfé, Kirkland, and parts of Dollard-des-Ormeaux and Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue.”

Ayers groaned softly. It was an old issue.

Briel ignored her.

“Though the Quebec government endorses and has offered to subsidize fluoridation in Montreal, the city refuses. I have read statistics stating that Montreal children have seventy-seven percent more cavities compared to children in areas of Quebec where fluoride is added to the water. The dichotomy on the Island of Montreal provides a natural laboratory. My assistant and I will be comparing the decay rates of unfluori-dated city children to those of their fluoridated surburban counterparts.”

“All costs will have to—”

“I have a grant.”

“What happened to your old student?”

“I had to let her go.”

“Who is the new student?” Santangelo asked.

“Solange Duclos. She is a fourth-year biology major at l’Université de Montréal. She will come for six hours each week beginning next Tuesday.”

“Shouldn’t this have been discussed prior to making a commitment?” Santangelo’s voice had an edge. “There are security and safety issues.”

Briel’s cheeks flamed again, reminding me of Chris Corcoran. Which reminded me of Edward Allen Jurmain and his snake-belly informant. I would begin digging as soon as I finished with the Oka woman.

“—visibility for the lab. I plan to present my findings to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. And to publish them in the Journal of Forensic Sciences and the Journal of the Canadian Dental Association.”

Ayers started to comment. Morin cut her off.

“You are new here. There is much to absorb.”

Briel’s shoulders hitched back. “I have completed a residency program in anatomic and clinical pathology. And several postdocs. I am not without experience.”

“Our autopsy schedule is very demanding,” Ayers said. “Look at today. You have two cases.”

“I don’t mind working late. Or on weekends. The research will be done on my own time.”

Ayers shook her head. Santangelo wrote something on her roster.

“Access must be limited to our section alone,” Morin said. “As with your previous student, Ms. Duclos must not enter the morgue or any other restricted area of the building. And she must, for security purposes, submit to a full background check.”

“The background check has already been done.”

“Have Ms. Duclos come to my office when she arrives on Tuesday.” Morin looked around the table. “Other business?”

Nothing.

“Let’s get cutting.”

Downstairs, the Oka bones were as I’d left them.

The clock said ten past ten. Normally, I’d have begun with a full skeletal inventory. Since Hubert would be phoning soon, I decided to jump protocol and go straight to ID. Completion of the bone count could wait.

To avoid the influence of preconceived bias, I perform my analyses prior to viewing documentation. I see working in the dark as a sort of double-blind check.

Setting the antemortem records aside, I began to construct a biological profile.

By noon I’d determined that the skeleton was, in fact, that of a white female in excess of sixty-five years of age. Though I’d noted widespread osteoarthritis, advanced periostitis, and significant tooth loss, I’d found nothing sufficiently unique to positively establish ID.

I was sliding Christelle Villejoin’s medical records from their envelope when I heard the anteroom door open. Seconds later, Briel appeared.

Though the frown lines were present, she made a lip gesture I chose to interpret as a grin.

“Taking a break?” I asked.

“Bones interest me. May I watch while you work?”

I matched her nonanswer with one of my own.

“I apologize for knowing so little about you. I’m away so much. You come to us from where?”

She misinterpreted my meaning. “My father was a diplomat. We moved a great deal.”

OK. That explained the accent.

“Where was home before Montreal?”

“Montpellier, France.”

“Ooh, climate shock.” I laughed.

She did not. “My husband is from here.”

“Still. In winter.” I pantomimed weighing two objects, one in each hand. “South of France? Quebec? That’s devotion above and beyond.”

The perpetual frown never faltered.

“What does your husband do?”

“He is in private business.”

Conversation was like pulling impacted molars. I remembered why I’d given up in the past. Nevertheless, I soldiered on.

“Do you live in the city?”

“We have a condo on Fullum.”

“Handy. You can walk here.”

“Yes. May I observe you?”

When working, there are things I avoid like a case of the drips. Cops trying to rush me. Prosecutors trying to sway me. Anyone trying to look over my shoulder.

I started to dodge her request. As I had previous ones.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve explained. I don’t—”

“It’s my lunch hour. My own time.”

“I’m really humping to get this one done.” I smiled modestly. “Besides, most of what I do is flat-out boring.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

I was framing a firmer refusal when the door opened again. My second visitor was Ryan. His expression told me something was very wrong.

“What’s up?” I asked.

Ryan chin-cocked the remains. “Is it Villejoin?”

“I haven’t finished.”

Ryan nodded to Briel, then spoke to me. “The situation could be nastier than we thought.”