Y EYES JUMPED TO CORCORAN. HE CONTINUED STARING AT THE screen.

“Is that so?” Ryan’s tone suggested trench warfare. “To what purpose?”

“That is what I intend to find out.”

Schechter wiggled manicured fingers at the pointer.

I handed it to him.

“Project the close-up of the undisturbed remains.”

Stomach knotted, I did as requested. As demanded.

The red dot appeared on the half-buried skeleton, drifted across the mandible, the clavicles, and the upper ribs. Coming to rest, it performed jerky pirouettes around the breastbone.

“That’s the sternum,” I said.

“I am aware of that.”

The gut clench eased. Was that where Schechter was going? If so, he was a bigger dumbass than I thought. He must not have consulted an osteologist.

Closing the death scene file, I opened another containing photos taken at the LSJML. The first few depicted a body bag, zipped then unzipped, the latter displaying jumbled bones visible in the bag’s interior.

The next series showed an autopsy table, dirt-encrusted skeleton atop the stainless steel. A few bones were connected by desiccated muscle or ligament. Most lay loose, in positions approximating those they’d occupied when the body was intact.

“Here you see the remains as they arrived at the morgue, prior to any manipulation. Shall I identify individual elements?”

Schechter gave another haughty wave. The old wheezer had quite a repertoire.

“Shall I explain my cleaning process?”

“Not germane.”

“Dandy. Let’s proceed to ID.”

“My client does not question that the remains are those of his daughter.”

“Groovy. Let’s talk about trauma. Shall I clarify the terms antemortem, perimortem, and postmortem?”

“Succinctly.”

“With skeletal remains, antemortem refers to trauma occurring prior to death, injuries sustained earlier in life and showing evidence of healing. Perimortem refers to trauma suffered at or close to the time of death. Postmortem refers to trauma inflicted after death, damage associated with decomposition, abuse of the body, animal scavenging, and such.”

“How is this germane?” Clearly, Schechter liked the word.

“It is germane to your client’s understanding of what happened to his daughter. And, perhaps more important, what did not.”

Again the hand.

“I will not belabor the importance of distinguishing between perimortem and postmortem trauma. I would like to make clear, however, that, for the anthropologist, this distinction has more to do with bone quality than it does with time of death. It’s a complex subject, so forgive me if I oversimplify.

“In fresh or living bone the moisture content is relatively high and the collagen, the component that gives bone its elasticity, is somewhat flexible. This permits a certain degree of bending under stress. With decomposition, moisture is lost and collagen degrades, so the bending capability diminishes. In other words, dry bone responds to loading like an inorganic, rather than an organic, material. It fails, or breaks, when subjected to smaller forces. Think of a green stick versus a dry stick. The former yields, the latter snaps under pressure.”

Schechter made a note on his tablet but did not interrupt.

“Practically speaking, this means that fractures to dry bone are less clean and have more jagged edges. Fragments tend to be smaller. Breakaway spurs, relatively common in fresh bone, are rare. Concentric circular and radiating fractures, patterns produced by the transmission of energy through bone, are uncommon.”

“Most impressive. We’re all experts now.”

Knowing his game book, I ignored Schechter’s rudeness.

“Distinguishing an antemortem injury or defect is equally important in accurately determining manner of death. Since the first signs of healing are often difficult to detect, skeletal remains are examined on three levels, macroscopic, radiographic, and histologic.”

“Let’s skip the jargon.” Schechter.

“Macroscopic means eyeballing. The first indication of antemortem repair is a narrow band of surface resorption immediately adjacent to the fracture site. This reflects inflammation at the point where the overlying membrane was torn away. Next, gradual erosion can be seen at the broken ends. These changes are evident anywhere from ten to fourteen days after injury.

“Radiographic means X-ray. Here healing appears as a blurring of the fractured edges, again roughly ten to fourteen days post-injury. The gap between the broken ends then widens as callus formation proceeds.”

Schechter’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“A callus is an unorganized network of woven bone that forms quickly at a fracture site. It functions like putty to hold the broken ends in place. As repair progresses, the callus is gradually replaced by true bone.

“Histologic means under the microscope. Here healing is first evidenced by spicules of woven bone within the callus. These spicules can be seen as early as five to seven days post-injury.”

“Will we be getting to Rose sometime today?”

I opened a new PowerPoint file. Rose’s skeleton was now in my lab, clean of soil and tissue. Each bone was aligned with anatomical precision, right down to the distal phalanges of the hands and feet.

“As Detective Ryan mentioned earlier, the remains suffered considerable postmortem damage due to animal scavenging.”

I chose a shot of Rose’s right thigh bone. Instead of a rounded knob on one end and condyles on the other, the femoral shaft terminated in long jagged spikes. I clicked to the tibia, then the fibula, demonstrating similar damage in the lower leg.

“Notice the cracking and longitudinal splintering. Those features, along with dispersal of elements away from the body, suggest large carnivore feeding.”

Moving to a femoral close-up, I pointed the laser at one circular defect, then another.

“Those are canine tooth punctures. Based on size, I’d say the diners were Ursus americanus.”

“Black bears,” Corcoran said.

“Bears eat carrion?” Schechter made no attempt to hide his revulsion.

“With relish,” I said.

I proceeded to a tight shot of the lower jaw.

“But they weren’t alone. Notice the lower edge.” I ran the beam along the mandibular border. “See the parallel grooving?”

“Rodent gnawing,” Corcoran said.

“Exactly. Once skeletonization was complete, the rats and mice moved in.”

Corcoran was slowly wagging his head. “I’ve never understood the appeal once the flesh is gone.”

“Dry bone is a rich source of dietary mineral and protein.”

Schechter pulled on his nose with a thumb and index finger. “If your point is to shock me, Dr. Brennan, you fail.”

“My point is to inform you.”

“Let’s cut to the chase.” Schechter glared in my direction.

“Let’s.” I almost smiled. I was looking forward to deflating this arrogant gasbag.

“Bottom line.” Leaning forward, I rested my forearms and interlaced my fingers as Schechter had done. “I observed significant damage to Rose Jurmain’s skeleton, all of it postmortem in nature.”

“What do you mean postmortem in nature?”

“I mean postmortem. As in, inflicted after death.”

“By bears.”

“And rodents.”

“You observed no evidence of perimortem trauma?”

“Neither perimortem nor antemortem.”

“What about the sternum.”

“You heard me.”

Schechter’s mouth crawled into a reptilian smile. “Have you no image of the sternum, Doctor? Or are you reluctant to share it?”

Ryan moved forward in his chair. I laid a hand on his arm. He looked at me. I gave a barely perceptible shake of my head.

“C’est un ostie de crosseur.” The guy’s a flaming asshole. Roughly translated.

“He’s going down,” I replied in French.

I worked keys on my laptop. Rose’s breastbone replaced her jaw on the screen. Beside it was an X-ray.

Snatching the pointer, Schechter danced the red dot around a small round defect two inches up from the bone’s lower end. The dot then shot to the X-ray, where the defect appeared as a dark circle within the gray-white of the bone’s spongy interior.

“You going to tell me bears did that?”

“No. I am not.”

“How do you explain it?” Schechter demanded.

“How do you explain it?” I asked, almost sweetly.

“Clearly that’s a gunshot wound.”

“I see no evidence of that.”

“Meaning?”

“No bullet fragments or metallic trace on the X-ray. No jagged edges. No shattered bits of bone. No radiating fractures or blowout fragments.”

“You’re saying the hole is antemortem trauma?”

“No. I am not.” I knew it was childish to bait Schechter but couldn’t help myself. The guy was so unpleasant I was looking forward to booting him under the bus.

“Explain.”

“The hole did not result from trauma of any kind.”

“Not trauma.” For the first time Schechter’s voice held a note of uncertainty.

“No.”

“Elaborate.”

“My explanation requires an understanding of sternal development.”

Schechter did the hand thing. With a bit less flair than before.

I gathered my thoughts, then began.

“The sternum begins life as two vertical cartilaginous bars lying one beside the other. Eventually, the bars fuse along the midline. The cartilaginous sternum then ossifies, meaning it turns to bone. This ossification progresses from six centers, four of which form the body, or long thin part, of the sternum. If there’s no objection I’ll confine my comments to the sternal body, since that’s where the hole is situated.”

“Please.” It was Schechter’s first use of the word all morning.

I moved the laser sideways across Rose’s sternum.

“Note the transverse ridges. Each marks the site of fusion of separate juvenile elements called sternebrae. Ossification begins in the first sternebra during the fifth to sixth fetal month, in the second and third during the seventh to eighth fetal month, and in the fourth during the first year after birth.

“That is, if things progress normally. But sometimes they don’t. Occasionally a sternebra ossifies from more than one point of origin. In the lower sternebrae this variation usually involves two centers placed one beside the other.”

I paused. To annoy? Maybe.

“Failed union of these side-by-side centers results in an anomaly known as a sternal foramen.” I spoke slowly, a teacher addressing a dull student. “A variation resulting from incomplete fusion of a lower sternal segment as it ossifies from separate left and right centers.”

Schechter scribbled, underlined, then spoke again.

“You’re saying Rose had one of these things.”

“Yes. It’s stated on page three of my report, in the section headed ‘unique identifiers.’ ”

As Schechter flipped pages I projected a new image. With a tight shot of Rose’s foramen filling the screen, I listed characteristics.

“Single, circular defect, with a diameter of fourteen millimeters. Smooth, round edges, like a doughnut hole. Midline location, in the lower third of the sternal body. It’s textbook.”

“Could Rose have functioned normally with something like that?” Schechter’s cheeks had gone blotchy.

“People do it all the time.”

“Would she not have exhibited symptoms?”

“No.”

“How common is this condition?”

“Sternal foramina occur in roughly seven to ten percent of the population.”

No one spoke for what seemed a very long time.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

“You found nothing to suggest that Rose had been shot?”

“Nothing.”

“No evidence of homicide?”

I shook my head. “No signs of strangulation, bludgeoning, stabbing, or slashing. No defense wounds on her finger, hand, or arm bones. Other than damage caused by bears, no signs of violence at all.”

“Show me.”

I took him through the skeleton, bone by bone.

Now and then, a mollified Schechter posed a question.

When my presentation finished we all sat mute.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

I could see Schechter’s mind working, trying to classify new information. Perhaps tallying his billable hours for old Edward Allen.

“Tell me, Mr. Schechter. What prompted all this?” My gesture took in the screen, the reports, the four of us seated at the table.

“That’s hardly—”

“Germane. Indulge me.”

Schechter studied me, lips drawn into a thin hard line. I expected him to gather his pen and tablet and take his leave. To my surprise, he answered.

“Mr. Jurmain was informed that his daughter’s death investigation had either been botched or deliberately falsified.”

“By me.”

“Yes.”

“Informed by whom?”

Schechter hesitated, no doubt deciding how much to share, how much to hold back.

“The caller left no name.”

Anger overrode any triumph I might have felt at besting the man.

“You launched this witch hunt based solely on an anonymous tip?”

“My client believed the call to be genuine.”

“You could have counseled your client concerning proper protocol.”

Again the long stare.

I stared back.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Without comment, Schechter packed his belongings, snapped his briefcase, and walked to the door. Hand on the knob, he turned.

“You have an enemy, Dr. Brennan. I suggest it is in your interest to learn who placed that call.”

With that, he was gone.