“L’Auberge des Neiges is located seventy-five kilometers north of the Island of Montreal, in the Laurentian Mountains. The nearest town is Sainte-Marguerite. Thus, Ms. Jurmain’s case fell to the SQ. Shall I continue?”

Again Schechter flapped an arrogant hand. I wanted to reach across the table and smack the self-righteous little prick.

“Thirty months after Ms. Jurmain’s disappearance, on twenty-one March, André Dubreuil and his son Bertrand stumbled on what they believed to be human remains. Their find was located twenty yards off a provincial road, approximately one half mile north of L’Auberge des Neiges. The SQ, the coroner, and the LSJML were notified. In that order.”

As I projected a second map, Schechter jotted his first note of the morning. Then, “You are a homicide detective with this SQ?”

“Section des crimes contre la personne.”

I translated. “Detective Ryan is with the equivalent of homicide, a section called Crimes Against Persons. He is assigned to special cases.”

“And this case would be deemed special because … ?” Schechter elongated the last word of his unfinished statement.

“From the outset it was suspected that the remains in question were those of Ms. Jurmain. Since she was a non-Canadian national, an American, the case was assigned to Detective Ryan.”

Schechter and Corcoran glanced at the police incident report Ryan slid to them. When their attention returned to the screen I moved through a new series of JPEGs.

The first provided a wide-angle view of a narrow two-lane blacktop, its gravel shoulder butting up to dense forest. The next six documented the route from the road to the body. On the ground, islands of snow overlaid dead vegetation, their perimeters darkened by meltwater runoff.