ÉCOR IS NOT A PRIORITY AT PHO NGUYEN. TWO STEPS DOWN from the sidewalk, the place has a white tile floor, white walls, and maybe a dozen Formica-topped tables. White.

But the soupe Tonkinoise kicks ass.

Santangelo was there when I arrived, seated in a back corner, perusing the menu. She smiled on seeing me. Waved.

“This cold will either cure or kill me.” I pulled off my muffler and gloves and unzipped my parka. “Glad you called. I needed some fresh air.”

“You walked?”

“It’s not far.” Pho Nguyen’s other attraction is that it’s only blocks from my condo.

Stuffing my accessories into a sleeve, I hung the jacket on the chair back. An Asian kid approached as soon as I sat. His cheekbones were high, his hair thick and black, with one platinum streak in front. A gold earring looped his right brow.

“I’ll have a number six, medium.”

“What’s that?” Santangelo asked.

“Pho bo. Beef noodle soup.”

“The same for me.” Santangelo tucked the menu back into its holder.

The kid crossed to the front counter and bellowed our order into the kitchen.

“I’m not what you’d call an adventurous eater,” Santangelo said.

“You’ll like this.”

The kid returned with small plates piled with basil, lime, and sprouts.

Santangelo shot me a quizzical look.

“I’ll talk you through it,” I said.

I brought Santangelo up to date on the Keiser and Villejoin investigations. On Ayers’s distress over missing a bullet track. Fully engaged in transitioning to the coroner’s office, she’d not kept current. When the soup arrived, we focused on adding hot sauce, soy sauce, and the fresh embellishments.

We’d been slurping and twirling for a while when Santangelo finally got to the subject on her mind.

“Do you know the real reason I’m leaving the lab?”

“No.”

“The atmosphere has gone rancid. It’s Briel.” Santangelo practically spit the name. “She’s poison.”

Like Ryan, I used silence, allowing her to go on. She did. Big-time.

“The woman is ambitious to the point of ruthlessness. She’s everywhere, has a finger in every pie. She’s in the autopsy room at all hours of the night. Teaches a university course. Has a research grant. Plans to present papers at about a zillion scientific conferences. She’s a callous, unfeeling, coldhearted climber.”

“Don’t hold back.”

“It isn’t funny, Tempe. Briel is determined to be a superstar and she doesn’t care who she destroys on her march to glory. Did you know she fired her graduate student today? Had the girl in tears.”

“Duclos?”

Santangelo nodded.

“Why?”

“Probably because the kid has warm blood in her veins.”

“Why doesn’t someone rein Briel in?”

“She has the other pathologists cowed and the chief coroner eating out of her hand.”

Santangelo toyed with her soup using the little china spoon. Set it down. Picked up her chopsticks. Dropped them. Pushed her bowl toward the center of the table.

“You said you watched Briel’s interview Wednesday night?”

“Yes.”

“You heard her plug this Body Find outfit? Corps découvert? It’s her husband’s company.”

“You’re kidding.” I couldn’t keep the shock from my voice.

“I heard her talking about it with Joe Bonnet. She and her husband are going to be the next Mulder and Scully.” Santangelo’s voice was coated with disdain.

“Who’s she married to?”

“Sebastien Raines. An archaeologist.”

That surprised me. I thought I knew all the archaeologists in Montreal, at least by name.

“Is Raines on faculty with one of the universities?”

Santangelo shook her head. “He does cultural resource management.”

Typically, CRM archaeologists work for governments and for businesses that must, by law, save archaeological resources threatened by development. Some do the archaeological portions of environmental impact studies. Some direct salvage digs.

Although many private sector archaeologists are very good surveyors and excavators, academics view them as a whole as second-rate. Why? They work on short contracts and rarely publish. Many are employed by companies that prefer nothing be found that would delay their projects. Rightly or wrongly, those at universities see opportunity for corruption in CRM work.

“Where did Raines train?”

“No clue.”

“How does he figure into Briel’s Mulder-and-Scully scenario?”

“Briel and Raines are starting this company, Body Find. Corps découvert. When everything is in place they plan to hawk it as one-stop shopping for law enforcement. Archaeology, anthropology, pathology, psychology, entomology, botany, geophysics, cadaver dogs, remote sensing. They’ll find your body, ID it, determine PMI, cause of death. You’ll only need a lab for complex testing like mass spectrometry or DNA sequencing. They’ll even provide expertise in underground mine safety, mapping, ingress-egress methods. You name it, Body Find will be there for you! Better, quicker, cheaper!”

“Such companies already exist,” I said. “NecroSearch International, for example. They do fantastic work. Although NecroSearch limits itself largely to victim location.”

“There’s one other big difference. NecroSearch is a nonprofit. Every team member is a volunteer. Body Find’s objective will be to make bucks.”

“Privatized forensics?”

Santangelo nodded. “And Briel is doing everything she can right now to raise her profile. When it’s time to launch the business, she wants to trade on her status as the Canadian Idol of crime solving.”

“Including anthropology,” I said, seeing the implication.

“Yeah. Imagine that.”

I stared at Santangelo. She stared back. Around us, china clinked and conversation hummed.

The waiter approached. Feeling tension, he left the check and quietly slipped away.

“Nail her, Tempe.” Santangelo’s tone was soft, but her words were edged with emotion.

“Why me?”

“Why not? You’ve never been afraid to take a good bite of charlatan.”

Back home, the dragging fatigue again threatened to flatten me. Nevertheless, I did a Google search on Sebastien Raines. It turned up zilch.

Next I called Jean Tye, a colleague at the Université de Montréal. Tye knew little beyond the fact that Briel’s husband had applied for a position at the U of M in 2007. Since Raines had done zero research, published nothing, and completed only a master’s degree, he’d not been considered a serious candidate. He’d heard that Raines had also submitted an application to the Université du Québec à Montréal. UQAM had also declined to hire him.

Tye was aware that Raines was involved in contract archaeology. He remembered that Raines had done some fieldwork in France, and that his MA had been granted by an institution with which Tye was unfamiliar. His specialty was urban archaeology, digging up garbage dumps, abandoned cemeteries, and building ruins.

And one other thing. Sebastien Raines was active in a number of radical fringe separatist groups. According to Tye, Raines’s desire for an independent French-speaking North American nation was so extremist that the guy offended most members of the Bloc Québécois.

Ryan called shortly after eight. He planned to meet Claudel and Otto Keiser at the Édouard-Montpetit apartment at ten the next morning.

Saturday. What the hell. I agreed to ride along.

By nine I was back in bed. New sheets. New nightie. Same old cat.

I was unconscious in minutes.

In sleep, I sifted. Organized. Played with patterns.

I saw Rose Jurmain’s skeleton, gnawed and scattered in piney woods. As I watched, it rose, bones ghostly in the moonlight. Tendrils grew around its perimeter, rippling like seaweed under water. Written on each tendril was a name and identifier.

Edward Allen, the father. Perry Schechter, the attorney. Janice Spitz, the lover. Andre and Bertrand Dubreuil, the discoverers. Red O’Keefe–Bud Keith, the auberge kitchen worker. Chris Corcoran, the Chicago pathologist. ML, the Chicago anthropologist.

No. That’s wrong. ML analyzed Laszlo Tot’s bones.

The ML tendril went dark and drifted to the ground.

The scene morphed to Christelle Villejoin, buried in bra and panties in a shallow grave. Slowly, the old woman sat up. The undies looked zombie white against her earth-stained bones.

Christelle’s tendrils were fewer in number than Rose’s.

Anne-Isabelle, the sister. Yves Renaud, the discoverer of Anne-Isabelle. Sylvain Rayner, the retired physician. Florian Grellier, the tipster. Red O’Keefe–Bud Keith, Grellier’s bar buddy. M. Keith, the handyman.

Bud Keith–Red O’Keefe. A Rose tendril gently overlapped with a Christelle tendril.

A figure appeared, face veiled, hand outstretched. In the palm lay four phalanges. A corner of the veil lifted, revealing features. Marie-Andréa Briel.

Briel’s face darkened, then changed to that of Marilyn Keiser. Keiser’s body was mottled black and purple. Though less luminous, her tendrils were the most numerous of all.

Uri Keiser, Myron Pinsker Sr., Sam Adamski, the husbands. Otto and Mona, the son and daughter. Myron Pinsker Jr., the stepson. Lu and Eddie Castiglioni, the janitors. Natalie Ayers, the pathologist.

The dream toggled to a new scene.

Ryan stood at a lectern, projector shooting a white beam of light into darkness behind him. Three students occupied chairs before him. Ryan fired question after question. The students answered.

If O’Keefe/Keith was guilty, why did he do it?

Money?

The Villejoins had little. Jurmain kept only a few dollars in her room at the auberge.

O’Keefe/Keith was small-time. Maybe a little was enough.

How did O’Keefe/Keith cross paths with Marilyn Keiser?

Might Myron Pinsker be the killer?

Rage? Jealousy? Fear of losing his inheritance?

Are there assets we don’t know about?

Did Pinsker’s life intersect those of the other vics?

Were Jurmain and Villejoin random, selected because of their age and gender?

What about the Villejoins’ neighbor, Yves Renaud?

The janitor twins, Lu and Eddie Castiglioni?

Shotgun questions and answers, back and forth.

I kicked at the blankets.

Now Hubert was speaking from the lectern.

Cause of death was unknown for Jurmain. Villejoin was bludgeoned. Keiser was burned.

That’s wrong.

Keiser was shot. Student three was now Chris Corcoran.

Ayers did the autopsy but missed it. Student two had become Marie-Andréa Briel.

Briel found the bullet track, Hubert said. Briel found the phalanges. All hail Briel.

A moth fluttered into the projector beam, wings frenzied in the stark illumination.

I saw its velvety antennae. The layers of silken hair covering its abdomen.

The moth flew directly toward me.

Its jaws opened.