The eighth image showed yellow crime scene tape looping a stand of pines. In the ninth, people stood inside the tape. Ryan was there in a pea green parka and bright blue scarf. Two recovery techs wore navy jump-suits stamped Service de l’identité judiciaire, Division des scènes de crime. So did I. Vapor billowed from every mouth.

Shot ten was a close-up of a small dark mound emerging from the snow. Embedded in the jumble of leaves, twigs, moss, and pine needles was a glossy brown object the size of a cabbage. A mass of matted gray hair lay to its right.

“The skull.” I circled it using the laser pointer.

The next few shots focused on the partial skeleton, spread in a largely linear pattern from the skull. Mandible. Vertebrae. Ribs. Sternum. Pelvic halves. Sacrum. Right hand. Right leg. Everything was stained the same burnt umber.

One by one, I named the bones.

“Obviously human,” Corcoran said.

“Animals had scattered bones over approximately twenty square meters,” I said.

As I projected my site map, Ryan produced hard copies. “Dr. Brennan documented the position of each skeletal element.”

When Corcoran and Schechter looked up, I resumed the presentation, moving outward from the central cluster through the dispersed remains.

“Each plastic cone marks the location of a bone or bone cluster.” Advancing through the images, I again identified body parts. “Right femur, tibia, and patella. Right calcaneous. Right tarsals, metatarsals, and phalanges. Right radius. Right ulna and hand bones. Left lower central incisor. Right upper central incisor.”

“Could we move this along?” Schechter said.

Ryan resumed.

“Given Ms. Jurmain’s known history of alcoholism, the evidence of prescription drug abuse, eyewitness accounts, and the climatic conditions on the night of her absence from the inn, the coroner ruled manner of death as accidental and cause of death as hypothermia exacerbated by intoxication.”