ACH YEAR, ONE HAPLESS BURG BECOMES JAMBOREE CENTRAL for the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. For a week, engineers, psychiatrists, dentists, lawyers, pathologists, anthropologists, and myriad lab geeks converge like moths on a rolled-up rug. New Orleans drew the short straw this year.

Monday through Wednesday are given over to board, committee, and business meetings. On Thursday and Friday, scientific sessions offer insider tips on cutting-edge theory and technique. As a grad student, then as a tenderfoot consultant, I attended these presentations with the ardent zeal of a religious fanatic. Now, I prefer informal networking with old friends.

Using either approach, the conference is exhausting.

Partly my fault. I volunteer for too much. Translate that to I do not struggle sufficiently against impressment.

I spent Sunday working with a colleague with whom I was coauthoring an article for publication in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. The next three days passed in a blur of Robert’s Rules, rémoulade, and rounds of drinks. Hurricanes for my booze-rational colleagues. Perrier for me.

Conversations centered on two topics: previous escapades and odd cases. Topping this year’s register of the bizarre and the baffling were skeletonized gallstones the size of Cocoa Puffs, a jailhouse suicide with a telephone cord, and a sleepwalking cop with his own bullet in his brain.

I floated a description of the Ferris case. Opinions differed concerning the peculiar beveling. Most agreed with the scenario I’d been considering.

My schedule did not permit sitting through the scientific papers. By the time I cabbed it to the New Orleans airport Wednesday, I was beat.

Mechanical problem. Forty-minute delay. Welcome to air travel in America. Check in a minute late and your flight has departed. Check in an hour early and your flight has been delayed. Mechanical problems, crew problems, weather problems, problem problems. I knew them all.

An hour later I’d finished entering committee minutes into my laptop, and my five-forty flight was posted for eight.

So much for the Chicago connection.

Frustrated, I dragged myself to customer services, stood in line, and obtained new routing. The good news: I would get to Montreal tonight. The bad news: I would land shortly before midnight. The additional bad news: I would visit Detroit on the way.

Frothing accomplishes little in these situations, other than raising one’s blood pressure.

At the airport bookstore, only a few million copies of the year’s blockbuster bestseller barred my way. I plucked one from the pyramid. The flap blurbed a mystery that would shatter an “explosive ancient truth.”

Like Masada?

Why not? The rest of the universe was reading the thing.

By wheels-down, I’d gotten through forty chapters. Okay. They were short. But the story was intriguing.

I wondered if Jake and his colleagues were reading the book, and if so, how they were rating the premise.

Thursday’s alarm was as welcome as a case of pinkeye. And almost as painful.

Arriving on the twelfth floor of L’édifice Wilfrid Derome, the building that serves as mother ship for the provincial police and forensics labs, I hurried straight to the staff meeting.

Only two autopsies. One went to Pelletier, the other to Emily Santangelo.

LaManche informed me that, following the request I’d made in my note, he’d asked Lisa to revisit Avram Ferris’s head. She’d retrieved additional fragments and sent them upstairs from the morgue. He asked when I anticipated finishing my analysis. I estimated early afternoon.

Sure enough, seven shards lay beside the sink in my lab. Their LSJML number matched that assigned to Ferris’s corpse.

After grabbing a lab coat, I played my phone messages, and returned two calls. Then I settled at my sand bowls and began jockeying the newcomer fragments into my reconstructed segments.

Two called the parietal home. One locked into the right occipital. One was a loner.

Three filled in the edge of the oval defect.

It was sufficient. I had my answer.

I was washing up when my cell warbled. It was Jake Drum with a miserable connection.

“Sounds like you’re calling from Pluto.”

“No service…” the line crackled and spit “…ince Pluto’s been demoted from planet to…”

Demoted to what? Moon?

“You’re in Israel?”

“Paris…nd changed plans…the Musée de l’Homme.”

I listened to a long stretch of transatlantic popping and sputtering.

“Are you phoning on a cellular?”

“…ocated an accession number…missing since the…eventies.”

“Jake. Call me back on a land line. I can hardly hear you.”

Apparently Jake couldn’t hear me either.

“…eep looking…all you back on a land line.”

My phone beeped and went dead.

I clicked off.

Jake had gone to Paris. Why?

To visit the Musée de l’Homme. Why?

Mental head slap.

I took Kessler’s photo to the scope, flipped it, and viewed the notation under magnification.

October, 1963. M de l’H.

What I’d taken to be the digit 1 was a lowercase L. And Ryan had been right. The first H was actually a smeared M. M de l’H. Musée de l’Homme. Jake must have recognized the abbreviation, flown to Paris, visited the museum, and dug up an accession number for the Masada skeleton.

LaManche wears soft-soled shoes and keeps his pockets empty of coins and keys. No scuffs. No jingles. For his bulk, the man moves extraordinarily quietly.

My mind was shaping the next “why?” when my nose sent it the scent of Flying Dutchman.

I swiveled. LaManche had entered through the histo lab and was standing behind me.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

LaManche and I took seats, and I placed my reconstructions between us.

“I’ll skip the basics.”

LaManche smiled forgivingly. I bit my tongue.

Picking up the segment that had comprised the right posterior of Ferris’s skull, I pointed my pen.

“Oval defect with radiating fractures.”

I indicated the spiderweb of intersecting cracks on that segment and on two others.

“Concentric-heaving fractures.”

“So the entrance is behind and below the right ear?” LaManche’s eyes remained on the segments.

“Yes. But it’s complicated.”

“The beveling.” LaManche zeroed in on the problem.

“Yes.”

Returning to the first segment, I pointed to the external beveling adjacent to the oval defect.

“If the gun barrel is in tight contact with the skull, ectocranial beveling can be created by the blow-back of gases,” LaManche said.

“I don’t think that’s the case here. Notice the shape of the defect.”

LaManche leaned closer.

“A bullet entering perpendicular to a skull’s surface usually produces a circular defect,” I said. “A bullet entering tangentially produces an irregular perforation, often more oval in shape.”

“Mais, oui. A keyhole defect.”

“Exactly. A portion of the bullet actually sheared off and was lost outside the skull. Thus the external beveling at the entrance.”

LaManche looked up. “So the bullet entered behind the right ear and exited the left cheek.”

“Yes.”

LaManche considered that.

“Such a trajectory is uncommon but possible in suicide. Monsieur Ferris was right-handed.”

“There’s more. Take a closer look.”

I handed LaManche a magnifying lens. He raised and lowered it over the oval defect.

“The rounded end looks scalloped.” LaManche studied the oval for another thirty seconds. “As though the circle is superimposed on the oval.”

“Or the reverse. The border of the circular defect is clean on the skull’s external surface. But check inside.”

He rotated the segment.

“Endocranial beveling.” LaManche grasped it immediately. “It’s a double entrance.”

I nodded. “The first bullet hit Ferris’s skull straight on. Textbook. Outside border clean, inside border beveled. The second struck the same spot, but at an angle.”

“Producing a keyhole defect.”

I nodded. “Ferris’s head moved or the shooter’s hand twitched.”

Fatigue? Sadness? Resignation? LaManche sagged as I voiced my ugly conclusion.

“Avram Ferris was shot twice in the back of the head. Execution style.”

That night Ryan cooked at my place. Arctic char, asparagus, and what we from Dixie call smashed potatoes. The spuds he baked, peeled, then worked with a fork, adding green onions and olive oil as he mashed.

I watched in awe. I’ve been called insightful. Brilliant even. When it comes to cooking, I have the vision of a guppy. Given an eon to ponder, my brain would never conceive a road map to mashed potatoes that did not pass through boiling.

Birdie was immensely appreciative of Ryan’s fruits de mer, and spent the evening trawling for handouts. Later, he settled on the hearth. His purring said feline life didn’t get much better.

Over dinner, I shared my conclusion regarding manner of death in the Ferris case. Ryan already knew. The investigation was now officially homicide.

“The weapon’s a Jericho nine-millimeter,” he said.

“Where was it?”

“Way back in a corner of the closet, under a cart.”

“Did the gun belong to Ferris?”

“If so, no one knew about it.”

I reached for more salad.

“SIJ recovered one nine-millimeter bullet from the closet,” Ryan went on.

“Only one?” That didn’t fit with my double-entry scenario.

“In a ceiling panel.”

Nor did that.

“What was a bullet doing overhead?” I asked.

“Maybe Ferris went for the shooter, they struggled, the gun discharged.”

“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.