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.