HE FRAGMENT LOOKED LIKE IT WAS EXPERIENCING A BLIZzard. A cloud of white dots stippled the lower mandibular border. Outliers spread across the angle and up the ascending ramus.

“What is it?” Courtney asked.

“I want you to x-ray every bone.” I kept my voice calm. “First Beck.” I pointed to the partial skeleton. “Then the other man.” I pointed to the pile containing the chunk of ilia, the femur, and the tibia. “Then those.” I pointed to the cranial fragments and the unassigned humerus. “Do them separately. Do not mix them up. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Start with Beck.” I removed Beck’s jaw fragment and placed his other bones on the tray.

When Courtney had gone, I phoned King. She picked up right away.

“The older vic was shot,” I said.

“No way.”

“There was lead snowstorm on the X-ray of his jaw.”

Silence.

“Very fine particles dispersed as a result of a high-velocity rifle round passing through the body,” I explained.

“Like a hunting rifle?”

“That’s my thinking,” I said.

“Got a few thousand of those babies around here. What about Beck?”

“We’re doing a full-body series. I’m also checking the bones I shifted to the older vic. You finding anything?”

“I pulled Beck’s death certificate. DOD is March fourth, 2008. I checked MP reports for that entire year, moving forward from that date. No one fits your profile.”

“The older guy had root canals on a couple of his lower molars, probably the second and third. We should run the film past a forensic odontologist, get it right before coding the dentals into CPIC.”

“You got one on your speed dial?”

“I do. But he’s in Montreal, and it’s the middle of the night there.” And flexibility was not one of Marc Bergeron’s attributes. I didn’t say it.

“Beck’s been dead a while,” King said. “He can wait a while longer.”

Using my iPhone, I took photos of the older man’s dental work, then e-mailed them to Bergeron. He’d have them when I called in the morning.

I looked at my watch. Twelve-ten. It was morning.

Figuring Ollie was tied up with Scar’s murder investigation, I called Ryan. He and Rainwater were at a bar on Highway 4, following another lead on Unka. I could hear music in the background, the noise of a lot of people in a small space.

“Rainwater thinks we’re being played.” Ryan sounded as tired as I felt. “He’s ordered a sweep, plans to sweat whoever gets caught in the net.”

I told Ryan about the commingled remains and the lead scatter.

“Both were capped?”

“I’ll know soon. The older vic had a couple of root canals.”

“You plan to call Bergeron?”

“Tomorrow. I’ve sent him pics.”

“Good thinking.”

“Keep me in the loop,” I said.

“Ditto.”

Courtney returned as I was disconnecting. While she x-rayed the rest of the older man, I viewed Beck’s postcranial films.

His femur and pelvic fragment were blizzard all the way. That answered one question. But generated more.

Had Beck and the older man both been murdered? If so, why?

Had one shot the other, then turned the gun on himself? If so, why? And which way around?

Had Beck and his companion fought following a night of drugs, alcohol, or both? Was Snook wrong about her half brother’s new commitment to sobriety?

The murder-suicide scenario wasn’t persuasive. Face-to-face shootings rarely involve a rifle. I made a note to ask if remnants of a weapon had been found at the scene.

Had Beck or the older man torched the house? Had someone else? Was the fire accidental?

Who was the older guy? Why had no one reported him missing? Was he not local?

I flipped to a blank page in my notebook and began a time line.

Farley McLeod died in 2007, Daryl Beck in 2008, Annaliese Ruben and Ronnie Scarborough yesterday. All were connected by kinship. Were their deaths connected? How?

Castain was also murdered yesterday. He wasn’t a relative. Where did he fit in?

Castain and Scarborough were taken out in drive-bys. Ruben was shot by a man on foot, almost certainly with a rifle. Beck and his buddy were killed with a hunting rifle.

Had the same weapon been used in all five shootings? Had the drive-bys been by pistol?

McLeod went down in a Cessna. His body was never recovered. Ruben’s body was also missing. Was this coincidental? Significant?

I felt agitated. Too many questions and too few answers. So complicated.

Too complicated.

And such a high body count. Even excluding the babies.

Courtney returned with the cranial fragments and X-rays.

Snowing on some, not on others. I saw no feature to allow assignment as Beck or non-Beck.

Courtney looked at me, eager for the inside poop.

“Thank you so much for your help.” I smiled an ultra-sincere smile. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”

She opened her mouth to speak.

“Do you have something I can use to keep the bones separated?”

She hurried off, hurt darkening her hazel eyes.

I was placing Beck’s bones in the tub when she returned with two cotton towels. I wrapped the cranial fragments in one, the older man’s remains in the other, tucked the bundles next to Beck, and pressed the lid into place.

“And the casket?” A wee bit petulant.

“Call,” I said. “The funeral home will collect it. And again: thank you so much. Maureen will be very pleased.”

Courtney nodded, trying but failing to hide her disappointment.

“I’m sorry. You know I can’t share details of an investigation.”

“I know.”

“Please keep everything you’ve seen here confidential.”

“Of course.”

“You’d make an excellent forensic nurse, Courtney.”

“Honestly?”

“If you’d like, I’ll send information.”

“Yes, please. And … anytime.”

“First I’ll explain what I see. Then you’ll explain why I’m looking at it on a beautiful Sunday morning.”

Marc Bergeron hadn’t given me the same time-zone consideration I’d given him. His call blasted me awake at six-forty-five.

“Do you have the images?” Booting my laptop.

“I’ve transferred them to my computer.”

I pictured Bergeron squinting through grimy lenses, dandelion hair backlit by the screen.

“Are they clear enough to determine which teeth have the root canals?” I asked.

“They will do. I assume the issue is identity.”

“The fragment was recovered from a house fire. It’s from the right posterior, near the mandibular angle.”

“I see that.”

I’d also downloaded the images to my Mac. During the pause that ensued, I opened the file so we were looking at the same thing.

“I also see evidence of a gunshot wound,” Bergeron said.

“Yes.”

I waited quite a long time.

“From the positioning of the sockets relative to the ramus, their sizes, and the recurve and compression of the roots themselves, I’d say the mesial tooth is forty-seven and the distal tooth is forty-eight.”

I’d been expecting him to say thirty-one and thirty-two. Then I remembered. CPIC uses the FDI dental scoring system, NCIC the universal system.

“The right second molar and wisdom tooth,” I said.

“Though small, as is common, the third molar is well formed and fully erupted. Whatever necessitated the root canal came later. It’s quite unusual to see one in a third molar.”

“Terrific. Thanks. Listen, the coroner is striking out with MP reports here in Yellowknife. Can you get this into CPIC for me?”

“Is this a lab case?” Bergeron was a stickler for rules.

“Yes.” In the very broadest sense, true. Three of Ruben’s babies were found in Quebec. My involvement had started there.

I could practically hear Bergeron frown.

“I’d have Ryan do it, but I’m afraid he’d screw up the coding,” I said.

“Does Dr. LaManche know of this case?”

“He does.” I made a note to e-mail the chief immediately.

“Please give me the details.”

“All we know is that the victim was male, in his forties, and not overly large. He died in March 2008.”

“That’s not much.”

“It’s not.”

“If the system finds a match, we must request original records.”

“Of course.”

After shooting a note to LaManche, I grabbed my new books and headed downstairs.

Another dawn in the Trader’s Grill. My fellow diners were an elderly couple all atwitter about wildflowers.

I didn’t expect to see Snook and didn’t. I ordered eggs and toast, then checked e-mail. Mostly out of boredom. It was too soon to hear from Bergeron, and I doubted King had learned much since midnight.

I was opening the book on Fipke and his pals when Ryan appeared. He looked like hell. Baggy eyes. Tension in his jaw that made him look gaunt. He spotted me and crossed to my table.

“Company?”

“Sure.”

Ryan dropped into the other chair and looked around. “Glad I found an empty seat.”

“Apparently, it will be hopping later.”

Ryan cocked a brow.

“The place is famous for Sunday brunch.”

“Don’t they do brunch every day?”

“I’m just reporting what I read.”

The waitress brought my eggs and poured Ryan coffee. He ordered what I was eating, and she left.

“Haven’t seen much of you,” he said.

“Things aren’t going as we’d hoped.” And the locals think I’m hitting the sauce. I didn’t say it.

“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

I smiled. It was our code for sharing info on cases. In the good days.

I briefed him on the exhumation and outlined my conversation with Bergeron.

He told me Rainwater had some of Unka’s thugs cooling their heels at G Division. He and Ollie were heading over there shortly.

Updates exchanged, we sat, avoiding each other’s eyes.

Ryan’s breakfast came. He ate it.

Across the restaurant, the two gray-hairs pored over their book of flora. My gaze drifted to them. I thought, How happy they look. How perfectly matched.

I felt Ryan’s fingers graze the back of my hand. They ran to my wrist, rested at my watch. My skin tingled in their wake. Startled, I looked over at him.

His eyes were on my face. I met them.

So impossibly blue. And tormented, like my own staring back from the rearview mirror.

“Lily’s in jail,” he said softly.

“She’s using again?” I was shocked. “She was doing so well.”

“The kid’s a born actress.”

“Oh, Ryan. I’m so sorry. How …?” I let the question hang.

“She reconnected with the creep she was seeing last year. He provided a few freebies, then she was on her own. Security nailed her boosting a smartphone at the Carrefour Angrignon.”

“The mall out in LaSalle?”

“Yeah. This time there was nothing I could do.”

Ryan looked so dejected, I wanted to wrap him in my arms and hold him close. To feel the scratch of his stubble against my cheek. To breathe the scent of his cologne.

Instead I sat, picturing in my mind the mixed blessing that was Lily. Recalling Ryan’s account of her entrance into his life.

Lily’s mother, Lutetia, was an Abaco Islander living in Nova Scotia during Ryan’s disastrous undergrad days. The two weren’t exactly lovers, but they were very, very compatible.

After getting knifed in a bar fight, Ryan changed allegiance from the dark side and joined the SQ. He and Lutetia went their separate ways but hooked up years later for a bonus round of enchantment.

Enter Lily.

Wanting to return to her Caribbean home and fearing Ryan might try to stop her, Lutetia didn’t share the fact of her pregnancy. Though mother and daughter returned to Canada twelve years later, Mama opted not to correct that omission.

Fast-forward to the inevitable.

A few years back, Lily showed up at Daddy’s door. She was seventeen, resentful, and angry as hell. And, it turned out, addicted to heroin.

Again and again Ryan got Lily into rehab. Again and again she went back on the junk.

Like every father, Ryan wanted to shield his child from pain, to protect her from every evil in the world. Lily made that impossible, and the toll on Ryan was heavy. One casualty was our relationship.

No matter. Ryan loved his little girl with every fiber of his being.

Dear God. I was worried about Katy joining the army, and Ryan’s daughter had resumed shooting poison into her veins. I was mortified.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“Listen?”

“Of course I will. You know I’m always here.”

“Where?” A ghost of the old Ryan grin.

“What?”

“Yellowknife? The Explorer? Trader’s Grill?”

Eye roll. “You know what I mean.”

“I do.” Ryan stroked my hand, then gestured at the books. “Planning to invest in a diamond mine?”

“I’m trying to educate myself on the history of the place.”

“What have you learned?” Ryan signaled for a refill.

“I’ve learned why bling is so bloody expensive. First you have to find the diamonds. Then you have to do a feasibility study to determine how much the mine will cost and how to build it. Then there’s the red tape: environmental agreements, land-use permits, water licenses, impact-benefit agreements, socioeconomic agreements. Approval involves dealing with federal, territorial, and aboriginal governments, regulatory agencies, landowners—everyone from the local farmer right up to the pope.”

The waitress poured Ryan’s coffee.

“Then you have to build the mine, which, in this climate, is a nightmare. The sites are so isolated that all personnel and supplies have to be flown in or transported over winter roads.”

“Ice road truckers!”

“Do you know what it costs to operate an ice road?”

“I do not.”

I flipped to a page in my book. “Lupin runs for almost six hundred kilometers, from Tibbitt Lake, east of Yellowknife, to the Lupin mine site in Nunavut. Construction and maintenance cost roughly six-point-five million dollars annually.” I looked at Ryan. “And the ice roads are only open maybe ten weeks a year.”

“Big bucks.”

“That’s just one budget item. Landing strips, power stations, machine shops, sewage and waste disposal, water treatment plants, telephone networks, storage buildings, offices, processing plants. And the workers can’t exactly drive home each night. The mines have to provide housing, food, recreational facilities. A lot of the miners work two-week rotations. That’s a long time to have nothing to do. Listen to this.”

I gave him no opening to opt out.

“Ekati construction cost nine hundred million dollars. Diavik cost one-point-three billion—that’s billion—dollars. They drained a whole damn lake!”

“Isn’t that the kind of thing that infuriates Mr. Squeeters? By the way, I saw him yesterday. When Rainwater and I drove past, Tyne was pulling out of the Giant gold mine.”

“I thought it was closed.”

“It is. But there are arsenic issues.”

“Arsenic?’

“A by-product of gold production. When the mine shut down, the owners walked, leaving a few zillion tons of the stuff.”

“Don’t mining companies have to fork over millions up front to cover the cost of cleanup before they’re granted permits to operate?”

“Ah, the good old days.” Ryan knocked back the last of his coffee. “Listen, if you’re really interested in this stuff, Rainwater says his great-uncle works at the mining recorder’s office, knows everything there is to know on the subject.”

“Sure, I’ll pop right in on a Sunday.”

“Rainwater says the old coot practically lives there. He’s a retired geology prof, and the government cooked up some sort of make-work position for him after he retired. Or something like that.”

“You and Rainwater going to be pen pals when this is over?”

Ryan raised palms and brows. “What? We’ve been thrown together a lot. Gassing passes the time.” He stood. “Can’t let the grass grow. Keep me in the—”

“Got it. Loop.”

So. Lily had blown rehab. Was that the reason Ryan had been so aloof with me? So snarky with Ollie? Not petty jealousy but anguish over his daughter?

My phone cut me off in midponder. Bergeron. I clicked on.

“I have a name for you.”