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organs and preserved them. The viscera were then bundled separately and placed with the body. Gagne’s killers had done the same with his legs.

“Ah, oui. I remember the case.”

“Gagne’s legs were sawed off below the knees. Same with Valencia. His arms and legs were cut several inches above or below the joints.”

Valencia had gotten greedy on a drug deal. He came to us in a hockey bag.

“In both those cases the limbs were hacked off at the most convenient place. In this case the guy neatly disconnected the joints. Look.”

I showed him a diagram. I’d used a standard autopsy drawing to indicate the points at which the body had been cut. One line ran through the throat. Others bisected the shoulder, hip, and knee joints.

“He cut the head off at the level of the sixth cervical vertebrae. He removed the arms at the shoulder joints, and the legs at the hip sockets. The lower legs were separated at the knee joints.”

I picked up the left scapula.

“See how the cuts surround the glenoid fossa?”

He studied the marks, sets of parallel grooves circling the joint surface.

“Same thing with the leg.” I switched the scapula for the pelvis. “Look at the acetabulum. He went right into the socket.”

LaManche inspected the deep cup that accommodates the head of the femur. Numerous gashes scarred its walls. Silently, I took the pelvis and handed him the femur. Its neck was ringed by pairs of parallel cuts.

He looked at the bone a long time, then returned it to the table.

“The only place he deviated was with the hands. There he just sliced right through the bone.”

I showed him a radius.

“Odd.”

“Yes.”

“Which is more typical? This or the others?”

“The others. Usually you want to cut a body up so it’s easier to dispose of, so you do it the fastest way possible. Grab a saw and hack away. This guy took more time.”

“Hmm. What does it mean?”

I’d given the question quite a bit of thought.

“I don’t know.”

Neither of us spoke for a few moments.

“The family wants the body for burial. I’m going to hold off as long as I can, but be sure you’ve got good pictures and everything you will need if we go to trial on this one.”

“I plan to take sections from two or three of the cut marks. I’ll look at them under the microscope to see if I can pinpoint the tool type.”

I chose my next words carefully, and watched him closely for a reaction.

“If I get any good features I’d like to try comparing these cuts to some I have on another case.”

The corners of his mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. I couldn’t tell if it was amusement or annoyance. Or perhaps I’d imagined it.

After a pause he said, “Yes. Monsieur Claudel has mentioned this.” He looked directly at me. “Tell me why you think these cases are connected.”

I outlined the similarities I saw between the Trottier and Gagnon cases. Bludgeoning. Cutting of the body after death. The use of the plastic bags. Dumping in a secluded area.

“Are these both CUM cases?”

“Gagnon is. Trottier is SQ. She was found in the St. Jerome.”

As in many cities, questions of jurisdiction can be tricky in Montreal. The city lies on an island in the middle of the St. Lawrence. The Communauté Urbaine de Montréal police handle murders occurring on the island itself. Off the island, they fall to local police departments, or to La Sûreté du Québec. Coordination is not always good.

After a pause he said, “Monsieur Claudel can be”—he hesitated—“difficult. Follow through on your comparison. Let me know if you need anything.”

Later that week I’d photographed the cut marks with a photomicroscope, using varying angles, magnifications, and intensities of light. I hoped to bring out details of their internal structure. I’d also removed small segments of bone from several joint surfaces. I planned to view them with the scanning electron microscope. Instead I was up to my neck in bones for the next two weeks.

A partially clothed skeleton was discovered by kids hiking in a provincial park. A badly decomposed body washed up on the shore of Lac St. Louis. While cleaning the basement of their newly purchased home, a couple found a trunk full of human skulls covered with wax, blood and feathers. Each find came to me.

The remains from Lac St. Louis were presumed to be those of a gentleman who died in a boating mishap the previous fall when a competitor took exception to his freelancing as a cigarette smuggler. I was