“You heard Corcoran. They’ve got over two hundred bodies. The facility is overstretched.”

While I have been described as impatient, Lieutenant-détective Andrew Ryan, Section des crimes contre la personne, Sûreté du Québec, takes the term to a whole new plane. I knew the routine. Soon he’d be pacing.

Ryan and I were in a conference room at the Office of the Cook County Medical Examiner, on Chicago’s West Side. We’d flown from Montreal at the request of Christopher Corcoran, a staff pathologist with the CCME.

More than three years earlier, a fifty-nine-year-old woman named Rose Jurmain had taken a trip from Chicago to Quebec to view the fall foliage. On the fourth day of her visit she’d left her country inn for a walk and never returned. Her belongings remained behind in her room. No one saw or heard from her again.

Thirty months later remains were discovered in a forested area half a mile north of the inn. Decomposition was advanced and animal damage was extensive. I’d done the ID. Ryan had led the investigation. Now he and I were bringing Rose home.

Why the personal service? For me, friendship with Corcoran and an excuse to visit the old hometown. For Ryan? A free trip to the Windy City.

For Chris Corcoran and his boss? That would be one of my very first questions. Surely a CCME employee could have come to Montreal to collect the remains. Or a transport service. Until now the family had shown no interest in what was left of Rose Jurmain.

And why the request for our presence in Chicago nine months after resolution of the case? The Bureau du coroner had ruled Rose’s death an accident. Why the special interest now?

Despite my curiosity, so far there’d been no time for questions. Ryan and I had arrived to find media vans lining Harrison Street and the facility in lockdown.

While parking us in the conference room, Corcoran had provided a quick explanation. The previous day, a funeral home had attempted to collect a body for cremation. Inexplicably, the corpse was nowhere to be found.